by Zan Romanoff
“It’s nothing,” she tells Bea, because she can’t come up with a more convincing lie.
Bea assesses Lulu for a long moment before she says, “Okay.” She lets Lulu put her phone in her bag and rearrange her hair. “Froyo?”
This is their post-finals tradition. For every test, a scoop of vanilla with rainbow sprinkles eaten on the sun-warmed hood of Bea’s Audi in a strip-mall parking lot.
“Shit,” Lulu says. “I mean, I guess it wasn’t nothing. I was making plans with someone.”
“Someone who?”
“My friend Cass,” Lulu says. “We met at Patrick’s party the other night—remember, the girl who took me to that weird hotel? And she was talking about going to the beach, and I said I would. I just wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry, B.”
“You have to go right now?”
Lulu looks down at her phone. Cass has written back, Meet me in Malibu in 30-45? Point Dume?
She should go get frozen yogurt with Bea and then go home and study for the rest of her finals. She should stick around and say hi to Owen, remind him how much fun they had the other night.
She’s not going to, though.
“I’m so sorry,” Lulu says again. “Rain check? Double scoop tomorrow?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SUNLIGHT IS WHITE through the windshield as Lulu drives the 101 through the Valley, passing Sherman Oaks, Encino, Tarzana, and Woodland Hills before she hits the rows of luxury car dealerships that mark the beginning of Calabasas. It’s been a dry winter and the land is brown, mostly, occasional patches of green scrub sitting low against the shocking blue of the sky.
As she gets off the freeway and starts to climb the curves of Kanan Dume, she rolls the windows down and lets the clear, dry air rush across her body, tangling her hair and raising goose bumps on her arms. The radio’s signal gets lost in the shadows of the canyon and the hush of the wind. From the top of the hill she can see the dark, distant gleam of the ocean.
At the beach, she pays an attendant ten dollars to park, pleased to recognize Cass’s Volvo already there as she cruises toward a spot. The day is bright but windy, and even chillier than it was in the Valley, so the sand is mostly empty. Lulu kicks off her Uggs and carries them with her to where Cass is sitting, her hair flame bright against the pale sand and the ocean’s darkness.
“Hey,” Lulu says, when she’s close enough to be heard.
Cass doesn’t say anything, but she scoots over, leaving Lulu room to join her on her beach towel. It’s faded now, but clearly used to be a bright Barbie pink. It doesn’t look like Cass’s style at all, which Lulu loves. Cass is maybe the only person she knows who doesn’t care if she matches all the time.
Lulu drops down to sit at Cass’s side. They’re close enough that it’s awkward to look at each other while they talk, so instead she stares straight ahead at the restless ocean.
“What’s up,” Cass asks.
“Um,” Lulu says. “You know. Just took a final. Tomorrow I take another one.”
“How was it?”
“I didn’t bomb, I don’t think.”
“Didn’t bomb mine either.”
“Nice.”
There’s a pause before Cass asks, “How’s Owen doing?”
“Fine, probably,” Lulu says. “I don’t know, actually. I haven’t really seen him since you dropped us off the other morning.”
“Oh.”
“We don’t usually hang out that much anymore. That night was kind of an exception.”
“You guys seemed pretty chill, though.”
“We were together for a year,” Lulu says. “We’ve only been broken up for a few months. It’s weird, but it’s almost— It’s actually easier for us to pretend we’re still together, kind of, you know? Like, we know how to be nice to each other, and how to be close. It’s the being distant thing we haven’t figured out yet.”
“Yeah,” Cass says. “That makes a lot of sense, actually.” She’s been leaning back, but now she tilts her body forward and wraps her arms around her knees.
“Can I ask about you and Ryan?” As soon as she’s said it, Lulu understands just how much she doesn’t want to hear the answer.
“We’re,” Cass says, and then stops. “He’s my best friend.”
“Just a friend?”
“Nothing just about it.”
You’re hedging, Lulu thinks, but she doesn’t want to push the conversation out of the casual zone. She doesn’t know Cass well enough for that yet.
“That seems nice,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to have a guy friend who was just—who was only that. Or maybe an older brother, I guess? Best of both worlds, right? Someone who can tell you what the hell dudes are thinking, and also, you can date his friends.”
“You clearly don’t have an older brother.”
“You do?”
“This is his, actually.” Cass tugs the sleeve of the oversized plaid flannel she’s wearing. “So he is good for that. He would rather eviscerate himself than talk to me about dating, though, and he’d certainly eviscerate his friends for looking at me twice.”
“Eviscerate,” Lulu says. “That’s a good word.” She feels self-conscious. Maybe Cass is super smart. Maybe she’s about to discover that Lulu’s not. St. Amelia’s is a good school and everything, but Lowell kids can be kind of on another level.
Cass doesn’t dwell on her vocabulary, though. “You have a brother, you learn how to describe all kinds of gross shit,” she agrees. “Anyway, Ryan is—I mean, we’re not anything. But he can, I guess he can be a little possessive. I understand why people get the wrong idea about us.”
“He does seem . . . intense.”
“He is,” Cass says. “About everything, actually. Not just me. But it’s a whole thing with him. His family . . . if I’d grown up with his parents, I’d be intense too.”
“What are they like?”
“Ryan’s dad was almost kidnapped when he was a kid. You know that story?”
It’s one of the things that came up when Lulu was googling the Riggses, Roman Senior’s near abduction. He was ten when it happened, old enough to understand, and to have been terrorized by the fear of it happening again ever since.
“It fucked up his whole life,” Cass continues. “That’s why Ry was homeschooled until he was fifteen. They raised him to believe that he had to always be on the lookout for people who were trying to take things from him. Who were only interested in him because his last name is on a lot of buildings.”
It’s funny. Lulu has lived her whole life around rich people; she is rich people, technically, she’s pretty sure. But she’s not the kind of rich that Ryan is, or even Owen—lasts-you-generations-type money. Famous-last-name-type money.
Growing up around kids like Owen and Ryan has taught her a very particular type of lesson: Lulu has known since she was a child that there are some worlds she can walk into, where she’ll look like she belongs, but where she doesn’t actually live. She knows the language and she can fake the dress codes, but she’s not a native, and her passport might be revoked at any moment. There’s no trust fund waiting for her; her parents have taken excellent care of her so far, but eventually, it will be up to her to take care of herself, and she needs to figure out how to be up to that task.
So she understands what Cass means, and at the same time, she doesn’t.
Just because your problems are clichés doesn’t mean they aren’t your problems. But she still wants to say, Yeah, you know he’s not the first rich kid I’ve ever met, and My dad’s kind of a whack job too, and Maybe Ryan should go out more, and be nicer when he does, if he wants to have real friends. But then she doesn’t want to argue with Cass. Don’t get too personal, don’t be too prickly: easy rules. Lulu learned them early.
“You definitely don’t have to answer this,” Lulu says. “But—do you want to dat
e him?”
“No,” Cass says. “Yeah. No.”
She’s switched something off; she’s hedging again. One of the things Lulu likes about Cass, she thinks, is that Cass isn’t opaque on purpose. She’s not playing a game. She’s just being private. And she’s good at it—maintaining a distance between herself and the rest of the world. Not keeping anything out, but not letting much in either.
“It’s not the same thing, obviously, but I’m always down for girl talk,” Lulu says. “Or, I mean, boy talk, I guess? Whatever. You know what I mean.”
“Really?” Cass asks.
Lulu doesn’t know what to say. It seemed like such a normal offer—the next thing you say in a conversation like this. But then the whole point of Cass is that she’s someone outside of Lulu’s so-called normal life: a late-night escape hatch, a secret Flash message, an abandoned hotel and a bunch of projects and everything Lulu usually doesn’t let herself think, or want, or say.
“If you want to,” Lulu says again, but even she can hear how unsure of herself she sounds. “Isn’t that what girls do?”
“Some of them,” Cass says. “It’s not really my thing.”
Lulu thinks of sitting with Bea in her kitchen, gossiping about Rich and Owen. She thinks about the hundreds of hours she’s spent poring over screenshots of digital conversations or trying to reconstruct half-remembered Flashes, close-reading much more thoroughly than she’s ever done with her English assignments. It’s hard for her to imagine a life that doesn’t include that. She wasn’t being facetious with Cass—isn’t that what girls do with each other?
But then, some of the things she wants from Cass aren’t things she wants from Bea.
It’s too much to think about the idea that Cass might want those kinds of things from Lulu too.
“Let’s talk about something else, then,” Lulu says.
Cass grins sideways at her and then leans back on her elbows, tilting her face up to the sky.
Lulu can’t help thinking about what it would feel like to be allowed to kiss the line of her throat.
* * *
The afternoon disappears too fast. Lulu’s stomach rumbles; she hasn’t eaten anything since the green smoothie Deirdre made her as a special pre-final treat this morning. Cass reaches over and taps her fingers lightly against Lulu’s side. “Hungry?”
Lulu doesn’t want to disturb the funny little world they’ve created for themselves, but she really, really is. “Yeah,” she admits.
“There’s a place across the street,” Cass says. “Ryan introduced me to one of the bartenders once. We can probably get in as long as we don’t try to order any alcohol—” But as she’s saying it she’s fumbling her phone out of her pocket.
Lulu feels the first clench of disappointment at its return, and then another, deeper pull when Cass says, “Or actually forget that. Ry’s at The Hotel if we want to head there. He won’t have food, but he will definitely have weed, and we can get takeout on the way or something.”
“Sure,” Lulu says. “Totally. Sounds good.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
LULU BEATS CASS to The Hotel. The gate is already unlocked, so she cruises through it and finds Ryan waiting for them at the building’s entrance, camera in one hand.
Standing in line at In-N-Out with Cass, it seemed reckless and bold to order a burger animal style, French fries, and a vanilla shake. Now, holding the paper bag, her fingers slippery with grease from the fries she ate while she drove, Lulu feels exposed and stupid, like she’s showing too much of her belly. Here she is, just another hungry girl.
It gets worse when Ryan nods a greeting and turns the camera on her. He doesn’t say anything, so Lulu doesn’t say anything either. Instead, she takes a defiant sip of her shake. The sugar seems to crystallize in her mouth, and her throat feels full with the slick of the milk fat.
“I thought you said taking pictures of people was cheap,” she says when she’s swallowed.
“I said hot girls.” Ryan smirks. “And anyway, you looked so fucking pissed, I had to. I was just shooting these guys.” He gestures to the lounge chairs that have been assembled out in front of The Hotel’s doors. They make the driveway look like an ersatz pool deck. “They just got delivered.”
“So they won’t stay here?” Lulu sits down on one and stretches her legs out in front of her.
Ryan, mercifully, puts his camera down.
“Nah, I just haven’t gotten them moved yet. I’m kind of into it, though, right? The surreality of it.”
Lulu stifles a groan. She knows so many dudes like Ryan. They take one art history class and think it makes them deep.
“I bet you’ll be pretty bummed when this place opens for real,” Lulu says. “And it isn’t yours to play around with anymore.”
“If it does,” Ryan says. “Cass didn’t tell you about the curse?”
Lulu laughs.
Ryan shrugs.
“A curse? For real?”
“I mean, it’s not like my ancestors killed a Gypsy woman’s child or anything,” Ryan says. “But you know, this place has kind of a history.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to use that word anymore,” Lulu says. “Gypsies.” It’s one of those things her sister Naomi is always on about.
“Well, listen, don’t tell any Gypsies I said it, okay?”
“I don’t really think that’s the point,” Lulu says.
“What’s the point?”
“Why not call people what they want to be called?”
“Why should I have to?”
The answer to that is Because it would at least make you look like less of a dick, but she can’t say that to Ryan, not and have it come out right. Instead, Lulu says, “Maybe if you did, your family wouldn’t be cursed.”
Ryan laughs. “There are people who actually believe that,” he says. “I mean, the people who believe in the curse believe it’s our fault. My great-great-grandmother was an actress.” Right. Lulu read about Constance Wilmott. “And she was only in one film, and then she stopped acting. Probably because she was busy having kids, but some old conspiracy theorists got obsessed with the idea that it was her husband who made her stop which could be true too. Apparently he was mad possessive.”
Lulu does not make fun of him for saying “mad possessive.” She hopes Cass shows up soon, before she runs out of self-control.
Ryan gestures to The Hotel. “He took the money she made and bought this place. Feminists always think her ghost is pissed because she had to stop acting, and then he got rich and famous. But”—he looks around, like The Hotel itself is evidence of what he’s about to say—“she lived in style. I don’t think she gave a shit about a career.”
“Why are you rebuilding it, then? If it has all this weird history. Why not demolish it, or sell it off or something? The land’s gotta be worth—”
“That’s what my dad wanted,” Ryan says. “And he would have, but I chose it for my project.”
“Project?”
“Riggs family tradition,” Ryan explains. He picks up the camera again and starts scrolling through the photos he’s taken, like he’s bored by his own story. “When we turn eighteen we get a little bit of our trust on the condition that we don’t spend it on ourselves. It has to go toward making something. For a while that was improving land, mostly, but recently there have been a lot of nightclub and restaurant investments. You can imagine.”
“Oh.”
“That’s how Roman started Flash—that was his. They want us to learn how our money can work for us,” Ryan says. “And how fast it can disappear. Avery—my great-great-grandfather, the guy who built this place—his dad spent a literal fortune gambling. He wanted to make sure we wouldn’t be that dumb.”
Cass’s car appears at the mouth of the driveway.
“So you chose this place?” Lulu asks. “Even though it�
�s maybe-cursed?”
Ryan smiles. This is the face Lulu knows best on him: certain, and pleased with himself about it. “Yeah,” he says.
“You believe you can—what, break it?”
Cass parks and gets out of her car.
Ryan says, “I’m not scared of it. I figure, fuck a curse, you know?”
He’s all princely arrogance and rich-boy bluster. Ryan is so used to the idea that the rules don’t apply to him that even a supernatural one doesn’t faze him. Of course he doesn’t believe in curses. He probably doesn’t even believe in luck. Ryan has a thousand-dollar cell phone in his pocket and a brand-new car in the driveway. He’s been given money that could feed a family for years and told to use it to teach himself some lessons. So what if it is all a waste? He’ll still have the idle afternoons he spent here, king of his castle, high on a hill.
He’ll have the pictures too, Lulu thinks. Whatever he says about hot girls and easy subjects, he has them if he wants them. Which means he has the power to make the world think his life is beautiful and enviable and interesting even when all he’s doing is wasting it away.
* * *
They go down to the tent, which is still in the pool. Cass gets stoned, stretches out on her back, and zones out, rubbing the corner of a thin, gauzy blanket carefully against her cheek.
It turns to the golden hour. Light spills through the canvas, turning her into a creature made of shadow and cream. She’s dappled with shocks of color, streaks and splotches of pink and red and yellow. A breeze blows through the tent’s unzipped flap. The air is thin and dry, soft with the scent of sage that grows wild around the property, at least where Ryan’s gardeners haven’t cut it back.
Lulu didn’t see Ryan bring the camera in with them, but then he lifts it to his eye. Because it’s digital, there’s no sound when he takes a picture. Cass doesn’t even seem to notice he’s doing it. He said he was documenting The Hotel, but Lulu has only ever really seen him take pictures of girls.