Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses sexual assault and emotional abuse.

The red-and-white friendship bracelets made by Anna as a teenager and her mother in the present symbolize toxic relationships throughout the book, encompassing both friend and mother-daughter dynamics. For her 16th birthday, Anna made them for each of the five girls present, distributing them before the traumatic experience that sets the murders in motion years later. In the present, Mrs. Andrews ties one around the tongue of each of the first three murdered girls, simultaneously pointing to the lies and threats related to that night and permanently silencing the women.

The bracelets represent the ties that bind the female characters together. Even when ties have been broken—relationships severed—they leave lasting scars. When Anna rediscovers the bracelet in her jewelry box, she ties it on her wrist, “pulled so tight that it hurts. [She] loosen[s] it a little, and see[s] the angry red groove it has cut into [her] skin” (95). The object has given her a literal wound to match the emotional one. She thinks, “We pretend not to see the scars we give one another, especially those we love. Self-harm is always harder to ignore, but not impossible” (95).