Lips Unsealed Read Online Free

they started locking their doors. Before the murders, they didn’t think about it.
    I couldn’t get enough of Manson and his so-called family. I was fascinated when I learned about Manson’s foray into pop music: that his evil had been inspired by the Beatles song “Helter Skelter,” and his life had also intersected with Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson.
    I got out my copy of
Pet Sounds
and looked at Wilson, wondering how he could have gotten involved with Manson. Later, I learned he had picked up two girls who were hitchhiking, and they turned out to be members of Manson’s family. Soon Manson and a bunch of girls were living in Wilson’s house. He introduced Manson to the Beach Boys producer Terry Melcher, who rented his home to Polanski, and that was where the murders took place.
    It was weird, creepy, scary, terrible, and about the most interesting stuff I had ever come across. My mom scolded me when she saw me reading the stories in the paper. She didn’t approve of my fascination with Manson. She probably feared I was being brainwashed when I stared at his picture. His gaze was powerful; those eyes certainly did cast a spell, and I can understand now how he was able to lure weak-minded women under his influence.
    I especially got into the trial of Susan Atkins, a dark-haired flower child who was convicted of participating in eight of the murders. My mom forbade me to follow her story. She said it was too much for a child. But I snuck the paper into my room at night and read all the articles about her.
    A year later, another murder was in the headlines. It was New Year’s Day 1972, and Pete Duel, who costarred with Ben Murphy on the hit series
Alias Smith and Jones
, was found dead of a gunshot wound in his canyon home. I loved that show, and he was one of my favorite actors. Although his death was later ruled a suicide, I assumed it was a Manson-type slaughter of another actor.
    I wanted to see the scene myself, and without telling my mom, I tookoff on my bicycle, intending to ride to his home. I didn’t know that it was fifteen miles from my house, maybe more than that. It was also up in the hills. I pedaled most of the day, but never got close. I had no idea where I was going.
    That was one of the last times I spent all day riding my bike. All of a sudden it seemed like something a kid would do, and I didn’t feel like a kid anymore. I didn’t feel like an adult either. I didn’t know what I felt like, other than different. I was changing. My hormones had kicked into gear and were reshaping me in ways that my mom never took time to explain.
    I got my period, started to develop physically, and experienced moods when I just wanted to put on my headphones, listen to music, and be left alone. I traded in my bike and instead went over to my friend Christina’s and hid out in her guest house, where we burned incense and talked about which Beatle we liked best.
    I was walking across the street one day, heading to a neighbor’s house, when a boy who lived on the block and another guy whom I recognized from school pointed at me and yelled, “Hey look! There goes fatso!” A year earlier, I might have ignored them or run over and beat them up. Now those same words felt like a mortal wound. I stopped and nearly lost my breath, and when I caught it again, I burst into tears and ran home.
    My mom, rather than telling me that I looked wonderful the way I was and to ignore those nasty boys, suggested that I go on a diet and lose weight. She offered to help. She was always on a diet even though she didn’t need to be, and so she put me on the same program. She gave me a calorie-counter book and told me to keep my daily intake under 1,200. Thus began a ritual familiar to many girls—endless days of starvation, frustration, and disappointment in myself when I went off my diet.
    Around that same time, we moved from Burbank to a slightly larger place in Thousand Oaks. My dad had spent months building it. I was midway