Lighthouses

There are lots of big dreams of escape in Story of a Girl, and lighthouses represent Stacy's. In the Lamberts' basement there are only a few cheap pieces of Target furniture, "a few snapshots of Darren and Stacy and April taped to the wall, and of course Stacy's lighthouses. She was semiobsessed with them. […] Darren took her to this lighthouse down the coast for a picnic lunch and for, like, two weeks after that she could hardly stop smiling. She had all kinds of pictures of lighthouses […] and a big poster of one right over April's crib" (2.20).

The lighthouse where Stacy and Darren went, Pigeon Point, is two hours away, which to a small-town girl is a big trip. So when Stacy runs away, Deanna guesses that she's gone to stay at the youth hostel at Pigeon Point, next to the lighthouse. She hasn't; she's only gone to Corvette Kim's. But it's the place Deanna thinks Stacy might go if she could actually escape Pacifica—which, of course, none of our characters actually do.

In a time of chaos and uncertainty for Stacy—working a dead-end job at Safeway and living in her boyfriends' parents' basement does not scream financially secure, nor does she even know if she'll still be with Darren or be living in his basement in the near future—she clings to lighthouses because they remind her of one of the last times she was happy.