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    ters and plot and fictional truths.
    I didn’t even know what the score of that game was. I drove
    home. I lay in bed in the darkness, bringing the night from start
    to end in my mind again and again - You let me kiss you. And I’d
    let you again. My words had felt daring and right (and lucky, too,
    given how the right words usually came to me only when it was
    too late), and his had seemed grateful and a little awestruck. It
    was powerful to make someone feel awestruck. It was new, and
    I liked it. I was sure that feeling of power could make me bold
    again and more bold, too. I was not somehow smaller than him,
    or less interesting. He wasn’t so large to be beyond me—he didn’t
    see me that way, not at all. This was what confidence felt like. It
    was swirling upward inside of me, and that was the irony. The
    biggest feeling I had that night was of my own power.
    Maybe he felt that, too. Maybe that was the seed. My power,
    his sudden powerlessness. This, too, is the ugly little heart of my
    guilt. I was the one who led, I was the one who stepped into that
    power and owned it and liked it. But then again, I was maybe
    only drunk from that kiss; my dark places were meeting his dark
    places, and I could only see his words as awestruck . I didn’t see
    the accusation there. It was already right there, wasn’t it, from
    the very beginning? Did that mean it would have been there no
    * 25 *
    Deb Caletti
    matter what I had done or said or felt? Could it be that there was
    never actually an escalation that I had caused, but instead only the
    ways he increasingly revealed himself?
    I wouldn’t see the accusation in those words until I had
    played that scene so many times in my mind. And many more
    times still, the way you do when you are trying and trying to
    understand the senseless logic of tragic things.
    * 26 *

Chapter 4
    When I woke, my new bedroom in the rented house
    was white with hazy morning sun still hid by clouds. I had left
    the window open, and the breeze coming through smelled damp
    and salty. I put on my robe, looked out to the long stretch of sand,
    twice as deep as the night before now that the tide was out. My
    heart did a little leap, that heart swoop that meant there were still
    things to look forward to. We were right to come here, if only
    because the ocean reminded you that impossible things were
    possible. Miles and miles of the deepest waters that moved like
    clockwork were possible. Creatures like jellyfish and sea urchins
    were, too. Millions and jillions of the tiniest grains of sand to
    form one long, soft beach—yep, even that was possible.
    Or maybe it was just the smell of bacon cooking that made
    me feel so good. Dad had the radio on, too—NPR, by the sound
    Deb Caletti
    of it. At home, he drove me crazy with the sound of that NPR,
    but I liked it right then. It was familiar but new in this new
    place. Pans were clattering, which meant French toast, too, and
    I could hear him whistling. I hurried, and for the first time in a
    while I was hurrying because of something good in front of me
    instead of something bad behind me.
    “The great day waits, Sweet Pea,” my father said hap-
    pily. He was wearing drawstring striped pajama bottoms
    and a white undershirt and was wielding a spatula. He had
    his scuffers on, which is what he called those old slippers of
    his with the open backs. His black-gray hair was longer than
    usual, though his beard and mustache were kept trim, and he
    had on the rectangular black glasses he wore in the mornings
    or when his contacts were bothering him. His nose was big,
    and he looked a bit rough, but women thought he was Italian
    because of his olive skin. They liked his edge, and he often got
    letters from them based only on that black-and-white jacket
    cover photo.5*
    “That looks so good,” I said. “I’m starving.”
    “I’m glad. You’re looking too thin. It makes me think of your
    mother.”
    My mother. Rachel Fournier Oates. It was true,