53 pages • 1 hour read
Kiley ReidCome and Get It
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
Josh congratulates Millie for officially being appointed a resident director. He offers to train her on Thursdays, but this conflicts with the schedule of Agatha’s visits, so she chooses Tuesdays instead. Millie finds herself growing increasingly attracted to Agatha, especially as Agatha asks her contextual questions about student life. Agatha confides in her that coming to Fayetteville was something “[she] wanted to do for [herself]” (202).
Millie is too nervous to share her crushes with her friends for fear of defining her sexuality. She differentiates her crush on Josh as being emotional and spiritual while her crush on Agatha is physical and sensual. Thanks to her crushes, she is too distracted to interfere with Colette’s plan to copy Tyler’s Halloween decorations.
Chapter 12 Summary
Kennedy’s potential friendship with Shea fizzles out, and she finds herself envious of Peyton for finding a friend of her own, named Simi. Kennedy channels her energy into applying for Agatha Paul’s advanced nonfiction writing workshop. One night, while reading her cover letter to her mother, Kennedy overhears Tyler crying to Casey and Jenna. Tyler is livid that the RAs have stolen her Halloween decoration idea. Through Kennedy’s wall, she hears Ryland and Colette gathering to eavesdrop on Tyler’s reaction. Tyler and her friends realize it is an act of retaliation for their inspection prank.
Tyler walks over to confront the RAs, demanding that Colette take down the decorations. Ryland and Colette brush off her complaints, upsetting her further. The girls storm off, and Kennedy returns to reading her cover letter to her mother. Peyton knocks to remind her to wash her dishes. Kennedy argues with her, and Peyton offers to place her dirty dishes in her room. Kennedy dismissively agrees to it.
Chapter 13 Summary
Ryland borrows a tent from Millie so that he can camp out at the opening of a new Chick-fil-A and win free meal tickets for an entire year. Colette talks about wanting to become a resident director, which Millie tries to discourage considering Colette’s lack of initiative. Colette then tells Millie about the outcome of her revenge on Tyler, who failed to win the Halloween lawn decoration contest. They suspect that Tyler might try to strike back.
Millie nearly leaves, but Colette tries to keep her around. Colette advises Ryland to flirt with his friend, Craig, by suddenly kissing him and acting embarrassed the moment after. Ryland worries her advice might qualify as assault, but Colette tells them that the move has worked well for her so far.
Chapter 14 Summary
Agatha submits her second Teen Vogue profile, this time on Casey, though she incorporates details from Jenna. The profile’s success leads Agatha to consider writing her next book on the same topic, expanding it with real interviews. She wonders again if Robin is reading her work but also reflects on the lack of guilt she feels over her ethical breaches.
Agatha is assigned to write a third profile, which she decides to focus on Tyler. However, Tyler’s strong personality makes it difficult for Agatha to define her in her writing. She has a pleasant encounter with Tyler at Belgrade and decides to write a follow-up to her profile on Jenna instead, in which she fictionalizes even more details but primarily leans in on her most insensitive quotes. As she writes, she becomes conscious of an affinity she feels for the three girls, recognizing their moments of softness. When the Teen Vogue editors ask her for a fourth piece, they ask her to choose a more relatable profile subject. She considers Millie, whom she finds accommodating, conscientious, diplomatic, and attentive in contrast to the other girls.
Agatha asks Millie whether the other girls’ access to wealth makes her envious. Millie explains that what she feels most is frustration that overperforming in her role is a disadvantage. She explains that she cares so much for her residents that it hurts her when they don’t show any basic human kindness to her. Agatha reflects on the close relationship she and Millie have formed over the course of their arrangement. One night, just as Agatha is about to leave, Millie kisses her, and Agatha kisses back before the two realize their mistake. Millie apologizes, and the two re-establish their professional boundaries.
The narrative flashes back to 2014 when Robin, early on in their relationship, admitted to looking up Agatha on Google. Robin invited Agatha to talk about her first book. Agatha told her about one time in her youth when she’d almost run over a retired man with her car, causing him to die of a heart attack. The experience was the inception of her debut book, Satellite Grief, which studied physical grief and accidental death. Agatha explained that after the man’s death, she entered therapy to address a pleasure deprivation habit she’d developed.
In the present, Agatha continues to think about Millie and imagines a future where she puts Fayetteville and Millie in the past as she pursues another relationship. The following morning, she goes for a run and passes by Millie’s house-sit. Millie is there, so Agatha invites her over to her house. Moments later, Millie comes by Agatha’s, and they agree to enter a discreet relationship with one another. Afterward, Agatha sends her anonymized profile on Millie to Teen Vogue.
Chapter 15 Summary
The narrative flashes back to Kennedy’s early life, which is marked by the death of her father and her early attempts at baton twirling. Nichelle enrolls Kennedy in twirling lessons, and she becomes skilled enough to gain a full scholarship to the University of Iowa, where she is called the Golden Girl. Kennedy is treated like a celebrity, earning the attention of Colton, a boy she finds cute. She also meets Colton’s friend, a boy named Drew, and his dog, Sadie.
One night, Colton invites Kennedy back to his place to spend the night with him. The following morning, she gets up early to leave for a game. Closing the half door of her truck, Kennedy accidentally kills Sadie. Shocked, Kennedy leaves Sadie behind instead of telling Colton. She goes about her day as usual until Colton texts that he and Drew know what happened after reviewing a neighbor’s security camera, which recorded footage of Kennedy killing Sadie. Kennedy becomes ostracized by her community and loses her celebrity status as a twirler.
Kennedy’s writing workshop teacher comments that Kennedy’s experience is rich and sacrilegious enough to write about. Later on, the teacher edits her essay and tells her to submit it to the undergraduate literary magazine. Kennedy realizes the power of her writing. She applies to transfer universities and starts reading more while waiting for the results. During this time, she encounters Satellite Grief by Agatha Paul and finds reading her work transformative. After Kennedy is accepted to schools in Oklahoma and Arkansas, Nichelle finds out that Agatha Paul will be teaching at the latter university.
Chapters 11-15 Analysis
In this section, the consequences of the prank continue to play out in direct and indirect ways. Most directly, Colette enacts her retaliation against Tyler, proving her cunning as she prevents her from winning a Halloween lawn decoration contest. The petty nature of their dispute escalates Tyler’s animosity toward the RAs. This will eventually impact Millie as well, even though she is not involved in Colette’s retaliation.
Agatha’s relationship with the four girls shifts as she comes to realize the affinity she has developed for them, yet Reid highlights the illusory quality of this affinity. In Chapter 9, the experience of eavesdropping is compared to watching television. Though Agatha bears a clear distaste for the girls’ ethics and privileges, she also realizes how much she has come to appreciate their presence in her life, much like a television viewer appreciates the lives of the characters they’ve followed over several weeks. This emphasizes the narrative distance that exists between Agatha, who feigns personal access to her profile subjects, and the girls, who speak with the confidence that their conversations are taking place in private. In truth, Agatha is no closer to the girls than any of her readers are, which is also arguably what makes her writing so compelling to them. In this way, Reid draws attention to the voyeuristic quality that profile writing—and fictionalized writing—can sometimes take.
Agatha’s writing endeavors are complicated by her budding relationship with Millie, underscoring the theme of Crossing Personal and Professional Boundaries. She admits to herself that pursuing this relationship would be a mistake yet finds herself increasingly considering it in the hours that follow. At this juncture, the narrative shows how she opened up to Robin about her reasons for writing her first book. The pleasure deprivation habit she’d developed hints at the guilt she feels towards experiencing any kind of personal joy. Even now, her relationship with pleasure and joy is strained; she views pleasure as something forbidden. This detail plays into her reflections on a potential relationship with Millie. She understands that Fayetteville is just a transient phase of her life and that, even if she were to get together with Millie, they would have to eventually break up when she decides to move on with her life. She daydreams about telling another woman about her experience and appearing interesting to her. This convinces her that a relationship, if kept discrete, might not be such a bad idea. When she submits the profile she’s written on Millie soon after they consummate their relationship, she willfully looks past the moral implications of her actions, once again crossing boundaries.
Finally, Kennedy’s isolation is contextualized by her past: She has come to Fayetteville to escape her past and reckon with her social exclusion, a journey of self-discovery in line with the theme of The Complexities of New Adulthood. This also contextualizes her resentment for Tyler, who loves dogs, and her affinity for Agatha Paul, whose skill in writing allowed her to create something beautiful out of her traumatic experience. Notably, both Agatha and Kennedy’s traumatic experiences involve dogs and accidental deaths. However, considering how Agatha confides the wider truth behind her experience to Robin, her book may not represent the whole of her experience in the same way that her profiles do not fully represent their subjects. Kennedy resonates with the Agatha she sees in her writing but may be mistaking her for the real person.
