[05/26/2026]

[FICTION]

Not What Good Girls Do

by Erin Satterthwaite

Marlene had never heard of this website, ‘Myspace.’ Her eyes fixated on the pixelated teenage girls pressing their pink glossed lips together. The caption read: I kissed a girl and I liked it. One girl was her teenage daughter, Rachel. She wore tiny blue athletic shorts and a white Costco tank top which Marlene had specifically instructed her to wear only underneath her clothing. 

Her friend, Brenda, had called to inform Marlene that she had discovered these photos. The girls were returning from soccer camp soon and the women agreed they would figure out how to handle it at the book club that night. Marlene hung up the phone and considered slamming it down. Instead she gently set it down, and even wiped away some dust forming around the receiver. 

The truth was she was expecting Rachel to act out like this. Her husband, Michael, worked for a software company ‘IBM’ and had dragged the family from Massachusetts to a place that people called ‘Silicon Valley.’ She had pleaded with him that they were moving the kids across the country at far too young of an age. She was terrified that her kids would be traumatized and turn out odd, like her friend Sandra’s kid who wore a raccoon tail on the belt of his cargo shorts and developed a stutter after their family had moved. And they had only moved thirty minutes away. 

The women looked at each other nervously as they sat at Josefina’s large dining room table for the book club. Brenda, whose daughter had uploaded the photos, began the dreaded conversation. 

“They did it to impress the boys,” Brenda whined. “That's what they’re doing to impress boys nowadays—kissing other girls. It’s because of pornography!” 

Michelle put her hand to her forehead. “There are so many sick pedophiles on the internet who download these types of pictures. They can even print them out.” 

“I’ve seen this on Dr. Phil,” Susan said, nodding solemnly. 

“Pedophiles.” Marlene put her fingers to her bottom lip. 

“We should delete their Myspace accounts. We just need to email Myspace and explain,” Brenda said, pointing her finger to the table with each word.  

Susan said, “I am banning Lily from the computer.”

“Well, no more Neopets for Ashley, not anymore,” Michelle fumed. 

“Just— The kissing. It was to impress boys and pedophiles? She’s not a g— a homosexual?” Marlene stuttered. 

Josefina laughed and told the women that the photo caption was a reference to a popular radio song sweeping the nation, by pop sensation Katy Perry. She assured the women to not worry about the photos or the pedophiles and to simply ground their daughters when they returned from camp. 

“Anyways, for now let’s talk about what really matters here: A Million Little Pieces,” Josefina said. 

Josefina poured them each a glass of white wine. They sipped and began to discuss the devastating story of A Million Little Pieces. The women felt immense sympathy for James Frey. He thought he needed substances to numb his pain. They discussed this over many glasses of wine.

When book club ended, the women stumbled their separate ways. Two agreements had been made: to plan a PTA meeting about predators on the web and to book a trip to Napa for Labor Day weekend. Their small bodies slid into their oversized SUVs and they each drove to their respective homes. On the way home, Marlene turned the radio to the Top 40 hits. The station was in the middle of playing the wretched girls kissing girls song. She snarled her lips in disgust at the explicit lyrics. 

She stormed up the driveway, the lyrics spinning in her head. Cherry chapstick. It felt so wrong, it felt so right. She marched upstairs toward the computer room and entered Katy Perry’s name on Yahoo! She looked at pictures of the young pop star. Her stunning bright blue eyes and dark hair. In one photo, she wore a tiny pink playsuit with high heels. She was bent over with her hands resting on her smooth, long legs. Her eyebrows were raised and her mouth hung open as she made an innocent ‘surprised’ expression. Marlene found this to be even more nefarious than an overtly sexual image. In portraying herself as a ‘good girl,’ children would be easily tricked into admiring her depraved lifestyle. 

Filled with rage, Marlene wanted to ‘tell her off,’ a term her husband coined, with a slew of condemnations. This was an action which Marlene typically only reserved for waiters that did not smile enough. She easily found her contact information and wrote a long, scathing email detailing her disgust to customerservice@katyperrycollections.com. A sense of pride washed over her, standing up for good morals and behavior, yet she quickly felt frightened as she realized just how accessible people were online. 

She clicked on the ‘history’, which was a trick that the women in her book club taught her, so she could access the log of digital activity on the computer. She found Rachel’s profile in an instant. Her Myspace page had a green and pink plaid background with thick white text displaying the word ‘Rachelicious.’ Rachel’s profile image was of her pursing her lips while holding up a peace sign in a bright teal bikini at the beach. Marlene had no recollection of buying her this swimsuit. She had recently bought her a ‘tankini’ for the family’s Fourth of July pool party. She rapidly clicked through the images her daughter had posted until she saw the infamous soccer camp pictures. Filled with rage, she tried to log into her daughter's Myspace to delete the photos but couldn't guess the password. 

What else had her daughter been hiding from her? She scrolled further down the computer’s history until one website made her heart drop. XXXSLUTPIT.com. Such horrible words—slut and pit mashed together. Marlene pictured scantily clad women getting tossed into a dark abyss. She clicked on the link. 

The website was an obnoxious combination of magenta and black. Each user’s post on the website was assigned the word ‘slut’ with an accompanying number. She looked at the most recent post, from Slut 3076. The slut had jet-black hair that she had somehow made larger than her head. She had ghost-white skin and her black eyes peered through a thick layer of dark makeup. Behind her, a cream-tiled bathroom countertop was scattered with cosmetics and hair tools. Her body was gaunt, her bones protruding from her rib cage and collarbone. A skinny arm held up a silver digital camera at a high angle. She wore skimpy black underwear and a zebra-print bra, teeth clenched into a grimace, her other hand up as if it were a claw. 

The caption read: Am I pretty? i think i am so ugleeee :C. Marlene scrolled down further to look at the comments from users with faceless gray heads. 

Ugly stupid bitch 

Inbred trailer trash cunt 

Ugly as fuck but I’d rape you 

Marlene’s grip tightened on the mouse. These were the pedophiles her book club had warned her about, and the pedophiles were so rude. She was furious Rachel was being exposed to such explicit content. She used to only have to worry about her children ending up as drug addicts or homosexuals, but now she had to worry about her children happily prostituting themselves to drug addicts and homosexuals. 

She thought about her own youth. It was nothing like this. When Marlene was Rachel’s age, her friends used to ride bicycles and play in the creek. They had messy hair, crooked teeth, and skinned knees. They weren’t taking pictures of each other and they didn’t care what boys thought. She wished she could call one of these beloved girlfriends but the group quickly lost touch after they all found husbands and started their own families. Marlene remembered she did have somewhat of a rebellious streak herself. Her friends did get into their own trouble too—like when they threw toilet paper on the lawn of the rival school or that time they threw rocks at the recently immigrated Chinese neighbor while he rode his bike to work—but it seemed so innocent compared to the world Rachel was living in. 

She thought about the indecent photos of Rachel once more, her daughter's mischievous eyes and her cheeky smile. Rachel looked so excited, so happy. She felt a pang of resentment. Rachel had not smiled around her in over a year. Any time Marlene had tried to connect with her, she would scowl and complain. Not once did she smile when her mother brought her to the mall, church, or even on fun family day trips to Alcatraz. Marlene needed to explain to Rachel that a life in pursuit of ‘fun’ and ‘mischief’ would only result in pain and misfortune. It would most certainly lead to a heroin addiction, or a body desecrated by Tim Burton-themed tattoos like the portly cashier at Hollywood Video. 

Marlene realized she would need to have an uncomfortable conversation with Rachel about sex. Marlene was not well-versed in conversations on this matter. She winced at the women in the book club when they made their raunchy jokes about their husband’s ‘members.’ 

Marlene’s own mother had never broached the subject of sex with her. She had only alluded to it by telling Marlene about the expectations of a marriage and the ‘joys of motherhood’ when she was a young girl. Marlene’s mother once even slapped her hands for looking at the cover of a Cosmopolitan magazine in the grocery store checkout line. Once when she was nine, she had tried to shave the body hair that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The next night at dinner her mother loudly scolded Marlene, saying that only women who pose for ‘dirty magazines’ shave their pubic hair. Her sisters snickered. Marlene was mortified. She didn't even know what pubic hair was at the time, just that its removal, maybe even its mere presence, was ‘wrong.’ Now that she was a mother herself, she appreciated her own mother’s concern. Marlene's mother had taught her that sex was something sacred. One’s body should be concealed from those who sought to abuse it. Marlene felt proud that she could boast of only ever having had sex with one man. 

Michael’s guttural snoring echoed from the next room over. She looked back to the glowing computer screen, investigating the website further, seeing more and more images of women posing for ‘dirty’ photos. She understood that some sick-headed men enjoyed pornography, but who were the women who posed for these men? Why were they seemingly so excited, so willing to do so? Did they not know of the pride and joy of a dignified life? 

She scrolled further down into the Slut Pit. There was an image of a girl with large brown eyes looking up at the camera from her knees, an erect penis front of her doe-eyes. The girl had stuck out her tongue, smiling, in anticipation. She stared at this image for a moment longer. Marlene began to picture herself on her knees looking up with her tongue sticking out and giving the camera a cheeky smile. This image of herself being a desirable object, to be admired, enticed her. Her attempts to quell this distasteful desire were futile. The forbiddenness of these thoughts only made them more enticing. Marlene, as she knew herself, was no longer in control. She began to imagine herself from another person's perspective, as if there were a voyeur spying on her. She began to envision her own breasts being unveiled as Micheal unbuttoned her silk pajama top. She looked at the voyeur with her big brown eyes as she kneeled on the mattress hovering over Michael. The voyeur was overwhelmed with desire for Marlene as he peered upon her bare flesh. Sitting at the desk chair, Marlene began to part her lips. Her finger met her lips. She felt the corners of her lips turn upwards. She quickly shook her head. She turned off the computer. 

She decided she needed to sleep off her worries and her sudden bewildering thoughts. She wandered to the walk-in closet to put on her navy pajama set. She lifted the toile-printed duvet and covered her eyes with a silk pink sleep mask. The grating snoring had ceased. Michael inched closer to Marlene. He wrapped his hands around her hips and pressed his body against her. As she briefly embraced his touch, the images from the Slut Pit swarmed her mind once more. The big brown eyes, parted lips, pink tongue, mischievous eyes, the cheeky smile. Her head shook once more. 

“It’s too hot under the covers,” Marlene protested. 

She moved away from him, feeling his arms slip away from her body. He rolled over to the other side of the bed and sighed. Marlene exhaled. She readjusted her silk sleep mask and fell asleep. The images were briefly erased from her mind.

In her sleep she dreamt of riding bikes with her beloved girlfriends. Her dream turned into a nightmare as her friends began to ride their bikes straight into the Slut Pit, forever swallowed by a black, hollow void full of scantily-clad women. She dreamt of Katy Perry falling down the Slut Pit with exaggerated watermelon-sized breasts. She dreamt of Rachel falling next to Katy Perry, wearing her undershirt and tiny blue athletic shorts. They looked at each other, frightened, both descending deeper and deeper into the Slut Pit. 

The next morning Rachel got on the bus to return home, excited to tell her parents about the Hornets getting second place in the camp’s final tournament. Marlene had prepared for her return by printing the photos of Rachel kissing her friends at soccer camp, along with a list of new rules for Rachel. The first one read: NO KATY PERRY.

ERIN SATTERTHWAITE is a writer based in Brooklyn. Her work has been featured in Volume 0 and Forever Magazine.