by Zan Romanoff
“Avery Riggs built this place around the turn of the century,” Cass says. “You know the name, right? As in Lowell’s Riggs Science Center, or—”
“It’s the Riggs Library,” Lulu says. “At St. Amelia’s.”
Every private school child in Los Angeles knows the Riggs name; over the course of a handful of generations of increasingly lawless progeny, the family has donated a wing or at least a building to almost every campus improvement project in the city. Plus, one of the Riggs heirs, Roman, was in her sister Naomi’s class in high school—at least until he dropped out at the beginning of their senior year to run a start-up that became Flash.
“Exactly,” Cass says. “Avery was the one who made all of that money in the first place. He came out here at the very beginning of Hollywood to try to be a king of cinema. Movies didn’t end up working out for him, but real estate did. This place was his first big success.”
They come out of the tree canopy and all of a sudden Lulu sees it: The Hotel. Its white face is lit by the car’s headlights and Los Angeles’ ambient glow, and it looks almost luminous, gleaming, against the black of the hillside at its back. Floor-to-ceiling glass enclosing the first story shimmers. The floor above it is punctuated by the iron railings of balconies, dark against radiant white.
Cass doesn’t exactly park. She just pulls the car to a stop and turns it off. A black Range Rover is sitting right next to the front door, but no one’s in it. Since there doesn’t appear to be anyone else here, Lulu figures it doesn’t really matter where they leave the car.
“Is it . . . open?” Lulu asks.
“For us,” Cass says. She unbuckles her seat belt and opens her door. She stands and stretches into the night, raising her long, bony arms to the full white moon, which is sweet and heavy overhead. Her shirt pulls up so that Lulu can mark the points of her hipbones, and imagine the shadow at the curve of her waist.
Cass notices that Lulu hasn’t moved. “We aren’t going to get in trouble,” she says. “I promise.”
“I don’t know what kind of girl you are,” Lulu says. “But breaking and entering, that’s really not—”
“You aren’t going to get in trouble,” Cass repeats.
“How can you be so sure?”
Cass rolls her eyes. “We’re not breaking to enter. I had that code, didn’t I?”
Lulu gets out of the car.
This is what she’s been craving: something completely new. The night air is cold on her skin, sharp and shivery, and even with the moon it’s surprisingly dark. She’s out here alone in a place she’s never been with a girl she doesn’t know.
Anything could happen. Anything at all.
Lulu turns to Cass. “This is your favorite place in Los Angeles?”
“Shhh,” Cass says. She holds an actual finger to her lips.
Lulu pauses.
“Hear that?” Cass asks.
Lulu shakes her head.
“Exactly.”
“You like that it’s quiet?”
“I like that it’s private,” Cass corrects. She takes a step forward and starts to say “Look—” but that’s as far as she gets before a light on one of the balconies flips on, flooding them both in buzzing fluorescent bright. Lulu’s heart spasms in her chest. She ducks instinctively.
When she looks up, Cass is still standing, an arm thrown over her eyes. “Ryan!” she yells. “Fuck! That light!”
On the balcony there’s a figure in silhouette—a boy, Lulu thinks. He drags something heavy into place and stands on it, fiddling with the base of the lamp that’s hung there. “Sorry,” he calls down. “Sorry, Cass, I forgot about the motion sensors.”
“I thought you were going to turn those off!”
“I did in Three,” the boy—Ryan—says. “But then I fell asleep in Four.”
“Why don’t you turn all of them off?”
“Then what if some random creeps came sniffing around?”
“Are you just hoping to blind them to death?”
“The security cameras, Cass. Can’t record a creep you can’t see.”
The light finally flicks off, and the dark that follows seems to swallow them all.
“You still there?” Ryan calls.
Cass scuffs the toe of one of her flats in the dirt. “Be hospitable, you asshole,” she says. “I brought someone with me. Come meet your first real guest.”
“Come up,” Ryan says. “It’s fucking freezing out.”
Cass looks at Lulu. She’s shy, suddenly, for the first time all night. “We don’t have to,” she says. “I just wanted to show you— I didn’t mean to— You don’t have to—”
“What kind of boy is Ryan?” Lulu asks.
“Nice,” Cass says. A smile steals across her face: small, secret. Oh, Lulu thinks. “A nice one.”
“I like nice boys,” Lulu says. “And, whatever. What else am I doing tonight?”
“Good point.”
* * *
Ryan must be Ryan Riggs, Lulu realizes as they head inside and up the stairs. Roman’s little brother. He goes to Lowell too, so it makes sense that he and Cass know each other.
Lulu doesn’t know anything else about him, though, which is sort of unusual. Private schools in LA are a very incestuous little ecosystem: Colonies from elementary school spread and mutate into middle and high schools, so that everyone knows someone who knows someone else. But Ryan had a private tutor until his freshman year, and he hasn’t been around much since then. She doesn’t really see him out at parties, anyway.
The room Ryan fell asleep in is still heavy with the scent of his body, a warm, animal funk that makes Lulu think of Owen, and then makes her wish she hadn’t. The rest of the space is very teenage boy too: There’s a twin bed pushed against one wall, the mattress covered by a tangle of white sheets and a white comforter; a coffee table with a vape pen, a handful of empty cartridges, and a collection of lighters on it; then, on the floor, a stack of books and a stack of external hard drives, plus an enormous Mac desktop with a pair of nice speakers plugged into it. Not much else.
Ryan doesn’t flick on the lights when they come in. Instead he goes out to the balcony, brings in an armful of candles, sets them on the table, and lights them.
“You’re getting very witchy, Ry,” Cass says.
“I’m learning about atmosphere,” he returns.
Cass sits on the floor like she did in the bathroom, this time with her back against the bed frame. Ryan settles himself next to her. He doesn’t touch her, but he could.
Lulu knows that distance well. It’s a suggestive positioning of bodies—close enough for warmth, but far enough that contact has to be intentional. It occurs to her that she’s definitely the third wheel in this extremely weird situation.
She sits facing them, cross-legged on the floor. Lulu is relieved when Cass pulls the vape off the table and charges it up before taking a hit. She inhales deeply, and exhales a curtain of white that obscures her face as it drifts toward the ceiling.
Lulu’s not usually much of a smoker—doesn’t like the heady, uncertain way it makes her feel, the unpredictable nature of her own self when she’s high—but at least soon they’ll all be messed up, and she can stop wondering if she should have left before they came up the stairs.
“I told you that party was going to suck,” Ryan says to Cass. Then, to Lulu, he says, “Oh, I mean, sorry, it was your friend’s thing, yeah?” In the candles’ flickering, forgiving light, Ryan looks searingly romantic. He’s dark haired and handsome, with high, finely cut cheekbones and a wide slash of a mouth.
“I thought it sucked too,” Lulu says. She reaches across the table and plucks the pen from Cass’s hand. She may not exactly know what’s going on here, but that doesn’t mean she can’t act like she does. That’s one of the rules: Behave like you belong. “And he’s not really my friend
.”
“Why did you go, then?” Cass asks.
They’ve only known each other for half an hour, and once again, Lulu can’t seem to keep herself from telling Cass the truth. “Saturday night,” she says. “I don’t know, it was something to do.”
“Why did you go, Cass?” Ryan asks. “Because as I recall, you don’t think much of Paisley—”
“Patrick,” she corrects.
“Or parties in general.”
“Broadening my horizons,” Cass says. “And hey, look, I made a friend.”
Lulu’s phone buzzes in her bag. She pulls it out and finds that her message to Bea still hasn’t gone through. Instead, Bea sent her: not funny srsly where the hell are you.
Left on an adventure but got a little stranded. Can you come get me? Lulu writes back, relieved to see the delivery confirmation pop up almost as soon as she’s hit SEND.
“Hey,” Ryan says. “No phones up here. There’s only one rule at The Hotel—”
“I didn’t tell her,” Cass says apologetically. “Sorry, Lulu, this is Ryan’s, like, thing.”
“My friend was just saying she’s leaving the party,” Lulu explains. “I think she’s going to come get me. Give me a ride home.”
“You sure?” Cass says. “I got you here. I mean, I can—”
“Thanks,” Lulu says. “But I’m good, really. Can you give me the address to give to her?”
* * *
“What the hell was that?” Bea asks. Lulu watches Cass disappear as the gate slides closed behind them. Cass is so pale she looks like a ghost against the driveway’s dim. “Did you get a good Flash or two out of it, at least?”
Lulu blinks at her own reflection where it appears in the windowpane, shimmering under a passing streetlight. She realizes that The Hotel is the first place she’s been in a year, at least, where she didn’t take a picture or a video. Even before Ryan told her she couldn’t use her phone, it didn’t even occur to her to try.
“Wasn’t anything worth seeing,” she says to Bea. She doesn’t feel like getting into it right now—even though if anyone has gossip on Ryan and Cass, it would be Bea, who has gossip on everyone. Everyone who matters, anyway.
“Oh, you know you’re always worth seeing, baby,” Bea says. She reaches out a hand across the space between them, and Lulu leans gratefully into her touch.
CHAPTER THREE
BEA MAKES THEM both breakfast in the morning. It’s nothing complicated: scrambled egg whites, avocado toast. Lulu squeezes juice from oranges from one of the trees in the backyard. They eat at the little table in the kitchen, where the light is good.
“You look like a religious figure,” Bea says, her eyes fixed on Lulu’s image in her phone. “Like the Madonna bathed in God’s holiness or something. I think my aunt has this photo as a painting in her bathroom, actually.”
Bea’s parents emigrated from the Philippines; they’re pretty agnostic, but her extended family includes some of the most Catholic people Lulu has ever met. Which isn’t saying that much, but still. Lulu secretly loves the art in Bea’s family’s houses—she’s probably talking about her aunt Tereza, who lives in the Valley, in a sea of gold-leafed crosses—but Bea thinks it’s tacky.
“You would know, Beatriz,” Lulu says. “And, I mean, Jesus’ mom was a Jew too, right?” She tilts her head. “Wait, are you filming?”
“I was,” Bea says. She tap, tap, taps at the screen and puts the phone down. “Now I’m not.”
“Can I see?”
Bea rolls her eyes. “I muted the audio,” she says. “And you look great. You know I wouldn’t put up anything that made you look bad.”
“We don’t always agree on what that is, though.”
Bea scoots her phone across the table to Lulu. “You can delete it if you really want.”
Lulu flicks it back. She knows she’s been a little too sensitive about stuff like this lately. Who cares if there’s another unflattering video of her on the internet for a day? Wouldn’t be the first time. And Bea doesn’t even have as many followers as she does, which is sort of a shitty thing to think about, maybe, but it’s also true.
When she looks up, Bea is touching her fingertips to the faint violet of a bruise blooming just above her collarbone. Apparently the reason it took her so long to notice that Lulu had actually disappeared last night was that she and Rich, her on-again, off-again, were getting it on. Again.
Gross.
“Has he texted you?” Lulu asks.
“Not yet,” Bea says. “But I’d bet I hear something about that Flash in, like, the next five—”
As if on cue, her phone vibrates on the table. She and Lulu both break into peals of laughter.
“He’s so predictable,” Lulu says.
Bea nods like, Well, yeah. There’s value in predictable, and they both know what it is. Rich is definitely someone who follows the rules.
“He says they all passed out at Patrick’s last night,” Bea reports, and she doesn’t have to clarify who we is for Lulu to know who she means. Rich, their friend Jules, and probably Owen too. “They’re thinking about breakfast. Would it be, like, way too weird if I invited them over?”
Lulu shrugs.
Bea puts her phone down more decisively this time. “You know this is up to you, Lu. I’m not bringing people to your house if you don’t want them here. I just thought, I don’t know. You might want to.” There’s a phrase that’s left unsaid in Bea’s sentence: You might want to see people again, be social, pretend things are fine, talk to Owen. Stop being such a recluse.
Lulu knows she’s being unfair by not giving a straight answer. Bea’s trying to be a good friend. It’s not her fault that Lulu just wants someone else to make this decision for her so that she won’t have to be responsible for whatever the consequences turn out to be.
She doesn’t think she’s wrong that Owen’s been looking for a way to un–break up with her for the last few weeks. He’s definitely been trying to talk to her about something, and what else could it be?
It’s just that at no point, in all of those days and nights, has she been able to figure out if she wants to let him or not.
It seems like the right thing to do.
She liked dating Owen the first time. Why wouldn’t she like doing it again?
She would definitely like how much easier it would make her life.
“No one will think less of you,” Bea says, a little softer. “It’s not like he— Everyone knows you guys were in love. I don’t think you should be embarrassed to take him back.”
Again, Lulu knows what Bea isn’t saying: It’s not like he embarrassed you. Of course it wasn’t. It was Lulu who hurt and embarrassed Owen, so badly that he ended things.
But maybe he’s over that, and now he wants things back the way they were.
“He was knocking on doors looking for you last night,” Bea says. “He was the one who found me, and told me you were, like, actually gone.”
“Found you—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Bea says. “We had not considered that we might want to make sure we’d actually locked the door of the room we were using.”
“I don’t want to think about it either,” Lulu says. “Anyway, of course it’s fine. Invite them over. It’s always fun to have them here.”
The boys used to come over a lot back when she and Owen were still together. Lulu and O would make out in the grass while everyone else kicked a soccer ball around the backyard.
“I really need to shower before they get here, though,” Lulu says.
Bea is looking at her phone again. “Rich wants to know if you’re the kind of Jews who eat bacon.”
They are in theory, but Lulu knows her stepmom’s shopping habits and her dad’s cholesterol. There’s no way there’s any bacon in the house right now.
“Tell Rich that
beggars can’t be choosers,” she advises. “But he’s welcome to bring his own.”
* * *
The boys take up so much space. Jules had to go home, but Patrick comes with, so it’s him, Rich, and Owen in the kitchen, sitting on the countertops and heckling Bea while she scrambles more eggs, these ones with their yolks.
Lulu swats Patrick’s calf and says, “Get down.”
“What, are your parents home?” he asks.
When have her parents ever been home? “They’re probably at Olivia’s soccer game,” Lulu says, which, now that she thinks about it can’t be true, because it’s a Sunday, but whatever.
“It’s so weird that you have a sister who’s twenty-one and a sister who’s five,” Patrick says. God, he has no tact.
“Six,” Lulu says, and then, “Half sister,” like either of these things matters to anyone but her. As if to prove her point, Patrick’s already turned away, in the process of doing something weird and violent to Rich’s upper thigh.
So she’s surprised to hear Owen pick up that piece of the conversation after her. “Half sister, Patrick,” he repeats. “You know that.”
Patrick nods. “Right,” he says. “Half sister. And your stepmom is hot.”
“Isn’t that the point of stepmoms?” Lulu asks.
Bea turns around from the stove. “You want to make more OJ, Lu?” she asks.
Lulu hates that Bea can tell she needs an out.
“I can get it,” Rich says. He’s moved so he’s standing next to Bea at the stove, like she might need his help scrambling eggs. It would be sweet if Lulu were in a better mood.
“We have to pick more oranges,” Lulu explains to him. “I’ve got it. I’ll be right back.”
It’s early afternoon already, and outside, the sun is warm through her clothes. Lulu thinks of stepping out of the car at The Hotel last night in her impractical outfit—a thin dress, no jacket—and the bite of the air against her skin. The way she felt exposed to some darker kind of night. Now the world seems tender again, offering up soft ground, green grass, sweet fruit.