Wasn’t there some part of you that liked it?
-- Nel Abbott (Part 1, Section 1)

Importance: This quote represents a conversation between Nel and Jules, the last thing Nel ever said to Julia in person. Nel drunkenly asks Jules at their mother’s funeral about the night she had tried to commit suicide in the Drowning Pool. At the time Jules thought that Nel was referring to when Robbie (Nel’s boyfriend) had raped Jules, and Jules thought Nel had known about the rape all along. Jules is so angry she stops talking to her sister. Jules repeats this quote in her head eight times throughout the novel. However as the reader learns in the end, Nel was ctually referring to how the water felt when Julia jumped in the Drowning Pool, not how the rape felt. Jules realizes that Nel never knew what Robbie had done to her, that Robbie had told Nel a different...