by Deb Caletti
His eyes were full of the questions I couldn’t answer. I hoped he wouldn’t say it, but he did. “I keep hearing, you know, that maybe you weren’t really the one—”
“I can’t,” I interrupted. “I can’t.”
“Okay. It’s okay.”
I wanted to break his gaze, stare out at a tanker in the distance, but I didn’t.
“Big lie?” he said finally. It was our old game, but his eyes looked worried, and his voice was gentle.
I shrugged.
He took that in. “Fuck. I’m sorry this happened. I can’t imagine. God, I feel so bad about that night.”
“I am,” I said. “I’m sorry.” My voice cracked. I was trying so hard not to cry.
“But there’s lots I’m not sorry about.”
I smiled, because I wasn’t sorry about those things either.
He took my fingers, and we walked again. We climbed the rocks and then hiked the path all the way to the labyrinth. We circled the maze. I could see the treasures people had left at the end—the shells, and feathers, and smooth, colored glass.
At the center, Nicco took my chin in his hand.
“Middle kiss,” I said.
“Love instead of seashells,” he said.
I could barely look at him. My chest ached with emotion. I was feeling everything, all over again. We headed back. It was the golden hour, just before sunset, when the sun turned everything a glowing yellow. We stood in the ocean and cupped our hands in the water and let it fall on our arms and legs to cool off. My legs in that boat, my legs that had wrapped around Nicco’s waist—they felt so different from the legs that now stood in the sea.
“Ready?” he asked.
Our plan had been to go back to his place. Being with him was the only good part of last summer, and I wanted it again, or I thought I did. Dr. Mann had helped me understand how badly I didn’t want this to be another R. W. Wright novel, where the girl who has sex gets punished forever. I didn’t want that ending.
But it turned out there would be a different ending altogether. Even though I’d driven all the way out there, and even though I’d told him I would stay with him a few nights, and even though that was what we were both expecting, I realized I’d changed my mind. This would be an ending where I listened to myself and used my voice, no matter what the world said back.
“Nicco.” I could barely speak.
He turned to look at me. God, those eyes.
“I can’t,” I whispered. My chest felt like it was caving in from grief and love and every large feeling.
“Oh, no.” He put his hands to his heart as if it had just broken.
“I’m sorry. I thought I could, but I can’t.”
“I get it.”
“It all feels like too much right now.”
“It’s okay.”
We were there by the water’s edge. Damn it, Max was trying to fetch another dog’s Frisbee. My throat was tight with tears. And then a sob escaped, and I put my palms to my eyes to stop it, but there was no stopping it.
Nicco put his arms around me. We just stood there, the surf lapping our ankles. When we separated, Nicco’s own eyes were filled with tears, and his shirt was damp and wrinkled from mine. He kissed my forehead. And then he pulled his loosened his tie over his head and tossed it in the water.
“Have a great adventure, tie,” he said. His voice cracked with emotion.
“Send us a postcard, tie,” I said as we watched it drift out.
“Don’t be gone forever, tie,” Nicco said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Exhibit 78: Recorded statement of Sydney E. Reilly, 5 of 5
I still believed that Agatha had things to tell me. About how she’d carried that body through her life all these years. About how she’d become free enough in the world to let her body be what it was. I couldn’t imagine all the stories she carried in those wrinkles and sags, stories of feeling beautiful and hideous, of feeling insecure and vulnerable, proud and strong. I’d never get the chance to talk to her. So I just let her tell me something else. A direction I should head.
Before I’d left for California, I’d rented a small house in Oregon, near Portland State University, where I’d be going to school in the fall, and that’s where I went next. After I moved in, I would advertise for a roommate, since Edwina was worried about me being lonely, and since I liked the idea of making new friends. Right then, though, I was driving down Highway 101 with an old friend sitting upright in the passenger seat. He liked the window rolled down.
“We could play the license game if you could talk,” I said. His hair blew in the wind. His nose tilted up, taking in every magnificent smell.
“Your conversational skills could use some work,” I said.
But this wasn’t true. He always told me the most necessary things. And he was the best listener anyone could ask for.
* * *
Just outside the city, I stopped to get gas at an ARCO station. A man filling his tank next to me leaned over to catch my eye. He asked me if I had a boyfriend, and then told me to smile, and when I turned away, he said, I know your type.
And then, in a park in Ashland where I let Max run around a bit, another man hovered near the bench where I sat. He stood too close to me and tried to make eye contact. He had one hand in his pocket, and I didn’t know what he was doing or about to do.
He made me nervous. Uneasy. I pretended to talk on my phone so he’d go away. When he didn’t go away, I had to leave. I had to leave.
When I got back to my car, I felt pissed. The world hadn’t changed and this made me so angry. It was the same as it had been for hundreds and hundreds of years, and this filled me with fury. I was angry at the paintings of women who were only bodies, who had faces with blank eyes and no mouths. I was angry at R. W. Wright, and his sexy, punished girls, and men who leered, and boys who grabbed, and the gaze, the gaze, the gaze. I was furious at dick flashers and violent men, the frauds, the thieves. I was pissed at how beauty was some highly prized commodity—sold and sought and viciously envied, made to feel shameful. Pissed at the guardians of your virginity who were just as much creepers and controllers as creepers and controllers.
And I was furious at mothers who encouraged you to be sexy but not have sex, and ladies’ man fathers, who flirted with waitresses and treated you like another unseen girl, because who were you supposed to be, then? The you in the middle of all this. The hopeful you, the wanting you, the you with dreams, the unsteady you, the you that wants to feel everything but isn’t allowed to, who doesn’t know what to make of this mess, and how could you?
“Goddamn it!” I said as I sat in that car. Max looked worried. He had reason to be. “This here is some worrisome shit,” I told him.
I gripped the steering wheel of the old Subaru. And right there in that parking lot in Ashland, Oregon, I made a decision, because our eyes do see, our mouths do speak, and we are not objects. I am not.
It wasn’t a decision that would change the whole world. I doubted I could do that. But the women of my family, going back generations—we’d been told lies about ourselves that we believed, and we’d even gone on to tell each other those same lies. I could maybe put an end to that particular plotline.
* * *
I got to my new place and settled in a little. Edwina had done the Edwina thing and sent a bunch of furniture, which had already arrived, along with my few boxes. I used a hammer and a drill and I hung pictures and shelves and curtains. It was a jumble of stuff, but it didn’t matter. It takes time to sort things out.
After a week or so, I went to the thrift shop I saw downtown. The store smelled like dusty old things that haven’t quite given up hope. I hunted around. I looked through used board games and radios, paperbacks and stereo speakers. And then I found one.
A tape recorder.
The recorder on my phone wouldn’t work for what I had in mind. And this was a double-awesome find because it still had the batteries in it, and when I pressed the button, th
e little spindles moved in a circle, just as they were supposed to. I found an unopened package of tapes, too, circa what, 1997? Who knows.
“Look!” I said to Max when I returned to the car. “Retro.”
He panted his regard.
“I know, huh? It’s hard to believe all the shit that’s still around.”
* * *
Back at the house, I opened the screen door to the yard, which was one of the biggest reasons I chose the place. Max needed a yard. Out on the grass, there was an old lawn chair from the previous tenants. I unfolded it and sat down. Max ran around and sniffed every bush and dandelion.
“You still can’t tell anyone!” I yelled to Max as he lifted his leg on a rhododendron.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with these tapes when I was done. Maybe I’d put them in a box in the closet with all the stuff from the hearing. Maybe I’d let someone listen to them. Maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe I would someday, but not yet. I didn’t know. It didn’t matter. The important thing was this: The truth is something you have to tell yourself first.
I settled into that low-slung lawn chair and set the recorder on my knees. I took a deep breath, because the truth might be ugly and hard, but it is necessary. And then I began the story that you—you, whoever is listening—are hearing now.
It’s a story that was years in the making. Eons in the making. It’s a story that went back and back and back. It’s a story I didn’t want to live anymore.
I pushed record. The little spindles spun.
I spoke.
“I had a bad feeling, even before I left home,” I said.
Acknowledgments
Boundless gratitude to my incredible editor, Liesa Abrams, who brought her own passion and heart and history to this book, and to my agent, Michael Bourret, who’s changed my life with his talent, intelligence, and extraordinary guidance. Love and my deepest appreciation to everyone at S&S, as always—Jon Anderson, Mara Anastas, Chriscynethia Floyd, Anna Jarzab, Caitlin Sweeny, Michelle Leo and the whole fantastic Education and Library team, Sara Berko, Laura Eckes, Alissa Nigro, Elizabeth Mims, Christina Pecorale, Christine Foye, Emily Hutton, Victor Iannone, and Leah Hays. Hard hugs to each of you.
Forever love and thanks to my family, which now so beautifully includes Erin, Pat and Myla, and our best buddy Max. And to my John, Sam, and Nick—I’ve said it before, but no amount of times would be enough: You are the joy and the meaning and the everything.
More from the Author
A Heart in a Body in the World
Essential Maps for the Lost
The Last Forever
Love Is All You Need
The Story of Us
Honey, Baby, Sweetheart
About the Author
Author photograph by Susan Doupé
DEB CALETTI is the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of over sixteen books for adults and young adults, including Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, a finalist for the National Book Award, and A Heart in a Body in the World, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book. Her books have also won the Josette Frank Award for fiction, the Washington State Book Award, and numerous other state awards and honors, and she was a finalist for the PEN USA Award. She lives with her family in Seattle.
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/teen
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Deb-Caletti
Simon Pulse
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ALSO BY DEB CALETTI
The Queen of Everything
Honey, Baby, Sweetheart
Wild Roses
The Nature of Jade
The Fortunes of Indigo Skye
The Secret Life of Prince Charming
The Six Rules of Maybe
Stay
The Story of Us
The Last Forever
Essential Maps for the Lost
A Heart in a Body in the World
AND DON’T MISS
He’s Gone
The Secrets She Keeps
What’s Become of Her
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Simon Pulse hardcover edition June 2020
Text copyright © 2020 by Deb Caletti
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Caletti, Deb, author.
Title: Girl, unframed / by Deb Caletti.
Description: First Simon Pulse hardcover edition. | New York : Simon Pulse, 2020. | Summary: While spending a summer with her famous mother and her criminal boyfriend, Sydney Reilly, age fifteen, finds love with Nicco, but her premonition of something bad coming proves dreadfully accurate.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018048710 (print) | LCCN 2018041558 (eBook) | ISBN 9781534426979 (hc) | ISBN 9781534426993 (eBook) |
Subjects: | CYAC: Coming of age—Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction. | Celebrities—Fiction. | Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. | Abused women—Fiction. | Mystery and detective stories. | San Francisco (Calif.)—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.C127437 Gir 2020 (eBook) | LCC PZ7.C127437 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018048710