All of This Is True
Page 22
MIRI
Wait. You didn’t finish reading it, did you?
SOLEIL
[cries]
PENNY
Why would she? She’s had enough of Fatima’s garbage.
MIRI
No wonder you’re still angry. Fatima didn’t abandon you, Soleil. She did the very opposite. You need to read the book. Finish it. Then you’ll understand what Fatima did, not just for Nicholas, but for you. You’ll see. I promise you that once you read it, everything will be—
[Soleil’s phone buzzes]
[Miri’s phone rings]
[Penny’s phone buzzes]
[Nelson’s phone rings off camera]
MIRI
[gasps]
PENNY
No! [cries] Oh my god!
SOLEIL
[stares, eyes wide, at buzzing phone]
[Nelson steps into frame] Hello?
The Absolution of Brady Stevenson
BY FATIMA RO
(excerpt)
It was a rough winter for Sands Point Preserve. The beach took a beating from several late-winter storms that eroded miles of the rocky shore. Finally, the first week of April, it seemed that the harsh weather was gone for good. Warmth and sunshine brought the regulars back to the shore, the married couples hand in hand, North Shore runners wearing Fitbits and Lululemon, and a remorseful former championship wrestler with his dog.
Cletus spotted Sunny Vaughn before Stephan did—from at least twenty yards away. Tail wagging and tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, Cletus bounded toward her, expressing all the joy that Stephan held back. He followed behind, lengthening the leash as Cletus picked up distance.
“Hey,” Stephan said when he caught up to Sunny.
“Hey.” She knelt down and hugged Cletus. Her heart warmed as she nuzzled the dog’s neck. “Hi, Clee! You remember me, don’t you? How are you, pup?”
“He’s surprised to see you,” Stephan said, giving Cletus a pat.
Sunny stood. “And what about you?”
“I’m surprised too,” Stephan said. Sunny hadn’t spoken to him since his final movie night. Dr. Nihati was right—there were consequences. Stephan had transferred out of studio art class. He’d been eating lunch in his car, or when it was too cold outside, he ate in the stairwell.
“It sucks that there’s so much erosion.” Sunny looked up at the newly exposed roots on the cliffside. “It looks so different here now.”
“It was a shitty winter,” Stephan said, referring to much more than the weather. There’d been no Snow Ball for them.
Sunny nodded. She’d spent the winter angrily recounting every minute she had with Stephan Brady, whom she’d believed was Brady Stevenson. Although he had two names, Sunny and the girls referred to him mostly as “that bastard,” “that sicko pervert,” or “that lying fuck.” At home every night, she continued to email articles to Thora about the South Carlisle hazing scandal, research on the psychology of betrayal, the psychology of deception, the psychology of manipulation.
The ex-couple walked while Cletus barked at waves and sniffed seaweed. Stephan wanted to tell Sunny how much Cletus missed her, but he didn’t have the right to express affection, even from his dog.
“Why are you here?” Stephan asked. He couldn’t take another second of silence.
Sunny took a deep breath before answering. “Thora thought I should talk to you.”
“Oh.” Stephan braced himself.
“I’ve been emailing Thora ever since we met her—about us, being inside/out, sharing details,” Sunny said.
Stephan had suspected as much. He knew they were close, almost as close as he was with Thora. He nodded and kicked a rock into the water.
“The other day she showed up at my house. She had printed out all my texts and emails since . . . since I found out about you. It was a stack of papers this thick.” Sunny held up her fingers, measuring three inches. “Sometimes I sent her three emails a day. She handed me the papers and asked me where my scale was, so I brought her upstairs to my parents’ bathroom, and she made me put the pages on the scale.” Sunny stopped to face him. “They were almost three pounds.”
Stephan looked away.
“She said, ‘If you keep obsessing about him it’ll be too heavy to carry.’ Then she started reading the emails aloud, just kept reading louder and louder about how much I hated you and how sick I felt for getting into bed with you.” Sunny shuddered.
Clearly, Stephan disgusted her. He wanted to walk away, but Sunny was in the right to tell him off.
“All I did was curse you; page after page and week after week.” Sunny slapped her hand repeatedly into her palm. “But then, after seeing and hearing my words in that form like my own emotional timeline, I didn’t hate you anymore. I only hated how bitter I sounded. I used to be a happy person. I didn’t recognize myself in those emails. I was just . . . angry. I don’t want to be angry. That’s not who I am. That’s why I’m here.”
Stephan peered at Sunny and saw the kindness and compassion he recognized in her the day they met. He was almost friends with this girl; he could hardly believe it. He’d almost been her boyfriend. Almost. He swore that with the next girl he would do better. He’d start from someplace authentic.
Sunny crossed her arms. “I came to ask you . . .”
“Anything,” Stephan said. He owed her.
“Why did you lie to me?” she asked, fighting back her emotions.
Stephan had prayed every night for this chance. He’d thought of a dozen ways to explain himself, but all it came down to was his precious truth. “I was scared . . . I was afraid that if I told you what I’d done, you wouldn’t see anything good in me. I wanted to be good again. I thought that . . . if I could be with you, I would be.” He looked Sunny in the eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Sunny had wanted to hear those two words for a long time but hadn’t known how she would feel if she heard them. Right now, she believed him. She was wrong about who he had been at South Carlisle, but when he could have crossed the line with her, he hadn’t. If that meant he was a fraction of a decent person, she had to let her anger go.
“I have something of yours.” Sunny opened her bag and returned his first copy of The Drowning. “Thora wanted you to have this back. She said there’s something for you inside.”
Stephan tucked the book under his arm. “Thank you.”
As she glanced up the hill, Sunny remembered the Gatsby party they wouldn’t attend in July and Madame Lola’s prediction of Stephan’s incomplete fortune. “I hope you become the person you want to be,” Sunny said.
“Me too,” Stephan said softly. He looked up at the castle where they had kissed—Thora’s castle that symbolized God’s house. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Sunny leaned forward to rub the top of Cletus’s head. “Bye, pup. Be a good boy.” She straightened and looked into Stephan’s eyes. “I didn’t know you before you came to Morley. I can’t speak for what you did back then. But when I met you, I saw something good. I know you’re sorry for hurting me. And . . . I forgive you.” Sunny stepped back. “See you around, Brady Stevenson.”
Stephan watched her turn and walk away. “Thank you, Sunshine Vaughn,” he said, but she was too far away to hear. When Sunny disappeared up the trail, Stephan felt a tug at Cletus’s leash. “You wanna run, Clee? You wanna run?” Stephan asked. The dog leapt and spun and pulled. Stephan ran with him then. “Come on, boy! Come on!” They raced along the edge of the water. Waves rolled up to meet them. Embraced by the first warmth of spring, the dog chased his boy; the boy chased his dog. Stephan caught Cletus by the collar and unclipped the lead.
“Let’s run free! Let’s run free!” Stephan called. His eyes welled with tears. Cletus sprinted fast as a blur, cutting through the thin sheet of water, barely touc
hing the sand. Stephan ran and cheered behind him. With each stride, Stephan’s weight lifted. Lighter and lighter and lighter he felt. I’m lighter than that bird, lighter than that branch, lighter than that pebble, that reed, that leaf! Stephan waved his dog’s leash high over his head as if to wave every last cloud away. With his other hand, he clutched a familiar book. Inside was the answer he’d been waiting for, clear and simple, handwritten by the author herself:
Do you believe in absolution, the cleansing of the mind, body, and soul? Is that why you wrote THE DROWNING?
Yes.
Acknowledgments
Can you tell us about the publication journey for All of This Is True?
Well, [clears throat] I started writing this book for myself alone. It was a secret. I didn’t intend to publish it, I swear. But my agent, Molly Ker Hawn, read the opening pages and told me to keep writing. She basically pushed me into it. And then editor Andrew Eliopulos got ahold of it. He went and shared it with his team at HarperTeen. They thought it’d be a grand idea to publish it, so if you want to point fingers, this is mostly Andrew’s fault. And Erin Fitzsimmons—she made the cover that’s making everyone buy it. Bria Ragin played a part, too, you know. [shakes head] When Ellen Holgate at Bloomsbury UK read it, she just had to publish it on an entirely different continent, so that happened. I can’t even express how much Ellen contributed. And you wouldn’t believe the Sweet Sixteens, my friends, my family, and my husband—they encouraged me to finish the book when they didn’t even know what it was about. That only proves that people will blindly follow a crowd. But if you want to get psychological about it, I should really blame my parents for never pressuring me to be a doctor, because that’s probably how I got here in the first place. [pauses] Anyway, apparently lots of people are enjoying this novel now in a bunch of different languages, so I guess things work out sometimes—even if you don’t intend them to. [sighs]
About the Author
Photo credit Yolanda Perez Photography
LYGIA DAY PEÑAFLOR became a writer by writing letters to a friend she met on a cruise ship when she was fourteen. She is the author of Unscripted Joss Byrd and is also a teacher of child stars on movie sets. Lygia lives with her husband on Long Island’s North Shore, where she rides horses and watches reruns of everything. She is friends with many teens but is good at keeping secrets. All of This Is True is her second novel. Visit her online at www.lygiadaypenaflor.com.
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Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
ALL OF THIS IS TRUE. Copyright © 2018 by Lygia Day Szelwach. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover photographs © 2018 by Oleksii Hrecheniuk/Alamy Stock Photo and Kelly Knox/Stocksy
Cover design by Erin Fitzsimmons
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Peñaflor, Lygia Day, author.
Title: All of this is true : a novel / Lygia Day Peñaflor.
Description: First Edition. | New York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2018] | Summary: When Long Island teens Miri, Soleil, Penny, and Jonah befriend a bestselling YA novelist, they find their deepest, darkest secrets in the pages of her next novel, with devastating consequences. Told from different perspectives as interviews, journal entries, and book excerpts.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017034535 | ISBN 9780062673657 (hardcover)
Subjects: | CYAC: Best friends—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Authors—Fiction. | Secrets—Fiction. | Conduct of life—Fiction. | Long Island (N.Y.)—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.P4454 All 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017034535
* * *
Digital Edition MAY 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-267367-1
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-267365-7
18 19 20 21 22 PC/LSCH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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