“Guess birthdays don’t mean nothing in a group home. I mean, it kind of makes sense. Hard to celebrate the day you were born when everybody seems to wish you were never born at all. Especially after you come into this world and fuck it all up. I can name several people who wish I was never born.”

The seemingly small things like acknowledging holidays or celebrating birthdays—things that have special meaning to children—have been absent in Mary’s life for the past six years. She has come to believe it is because her life is not one worth celebrating. Mary’s feeling of being undeserving foreshadows the overall lack of care Mary’s foster mother and others in the child welfare system exhibit toward her. The apathy of authority figures along with the depressing, suboptimal conditions in Mary’s group home do not inspire personal growth. 

“Most of the crimes the other girls in the house committed are like that. Crimes of passion, ‘snapped’ moments, and good ole-fashioned wrong place—wrong time situations. My crime was more psychotic. I was the nine-year-old who killed a baby.”

Mary is different from her violent and uneducated housemates. No one in the group home, except for New Girl, is as intelligent—or calculating—as Mary. Regardless, Mary has allegedly killed a baby, and it’s unclear in Chapter 1 if she is being honest when she admits to it. Additionally, infanticide is a crime even criminals cannot accept, evidenced by Mary having to spend time in solitary confinement for her own safety. 

“The group home is always muggy, like we live in an old shoe, smelling like corn chips mixed with roach spray. I never call the group home ‘home.’ It’s not a home. No house where you fear for your life can be considered a home.”

Mary fears for her safety. At least two of the five girls who live with her are violent, and they frequently pick fights for no reason. The designation of “home” is a misnomer, as the group home serves as a low-security prison where inmates are instead roommates, and they have more access to things they could use to do harm.