Look

by Zan Romanoff

  “Ryan says there’s a curse on this place,” she says, mostly to get Cass’s attention.

  But Cass keeps her eyes closed. “Yeah,” she agrees. “He says that.”

  “You don’t believe in it either?”

  “No one should believe in it,” Cass says. “But Ryan likes talking about it because it makes him sound fearless. As if it’s anything to be afraid of. It isn’t. It’s just— You know how it is.”

  “I don’t,” Lulu says.

  “Beautiful women and their faces. What aren’t they responsible for?”

  “I’ve never said it was anyone’s fault,” Ryan says.

  “If there is a curse, she’s the one who cursed it. Connie.”

  “Okay, Cass, fine. Sorry for being the patriarchy.”

  Lulu bristles on Cass’s behalf at Ryan’s tone, which has the hint of a sneer. But Cass doesn’t seem to hear that, or if she does, it doesn’t bother her.

  “It’s not your fault,” she says. “It’s just how it is when people tell stories about girls. Like they’re unnatural forces or something. Witches. If she was beautiful, of course she had to end up cursed.”

  Lulu feels like she’s lost track of the conversation. She turns to Ryan to see what he’s making of it, and catches him in the act of taking a picture of her. Which means that he’s noticed it, probably, that she isn’t hiding it the way she wanted to—the way Lulu’s face looks when she looks at Cass.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “YOU’RE STILL COMING on Friday, right?”

  Lulu was already halfway home from her second final before she realized she’d just ditched Bea again. She sent a Flash apology filmed while driving, her saying “B, I’m risking life and limb and the world’s most expensive ticket to apologize, I feel like shit, I’m so sorry,” and didn’t get anything back.

  So she’s extra-glad to hear Bea calling for her as they leave their calc final on Wednesday. “Of course!” she says, before she even really registers what the question was. “Yeah, definitely,” she adds, reinforcing it for herself.

  Bea has a perfect party house—a side entrance that leads onto a huge-ass backyard with high, thick hedges that block any nosy neighbors. Unfortunately, she also usually has parents around who keep them from taking advantage of it. But they headed to Gstaad early this year, trying to beat some of the jet lag, and so on Friday, Bea is throwing her first ever blowout.

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” Lulu says. She and Bea fall into step with each other, heading toward the parking lot. “So, like, ice cream?”

  “I’m the one with plans now,” Bea says. “Rich.” She gestures to where he and Jules are standing, waiting for her to catch up to them.

  “Oh.” This is pretty standard—Lulu ditched Bea plenty too when she and Owen first got together—but it’s been a while since she’s been on this end of it, and even longer since Bea had a boyfriend and Lulu didn’t. It’s one hundred percent Lulu’s fault that this is happening right now, but it still sucks.

  “Well. Cool,” Lulu says. They’re still walking; they’re closing in on the boys. This conversation is about to end. Lulu doesn’t think it’s ending on a good note.

  Bea says, “I was thinking you should invite your friend Cass to the party.”

  She doesn’t say the word friend with any particular inflection, or irony.

  “Oh, yeah, totally,” Lulu says. “You’ll like her. She’s great.”

  “I’m sure,” Bea says. “Later, yeah?” She holds out a hand and Lulu fist-bumps her. Then she’s gone.

  Lulu pulls her phone out of her bag, in a hurry to make it look like she didn’t just get ditched. She doesn’t even know if anyone is watching; it is, she knows, a ridiculous reflex. But as long as she’s just doing things, she messages Cass about the party.

  Thinking about Cass reminds Lulu that she has something she’s been meaning to do while she’s on campus. If she’s going to be in the middle of someone’s curse, or myth, or—whatever, she wants to know more about Avery Riggs, and she doesn’t want to have to comb through the library to do it.

  She goes to Mr. Winters’s office. He’s the Cinema Studies teacher; he should be able to point her in the right direction.

  “I’m so glad you’re taking an active interest in film history,” Mr. Winters says. “Especially this part of it. A lot of students aren’t as serious as you are, Lulu. They just want to watch the fun stuff. Not that this isn’t fun. It’s just not as obvious, I guess, why it’s fun.”

  He’s always doing this—giving you compliments, like you should be really thrilled that he’s noticing you. It gives Lulu a slight but definite case of the creeps.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Thanks.”

  “Any particular reason you’re interested in the Wilmott story?” he asks. “Do you know Ryan?”

  “Do you know Ryan?”

  “His family,” Mr. Winters says. “His older brother, Roman—maybe five years older than you? He was one of my students my first year here. I met his mother at a parent-teacher conference, and we hit it off. They actually hadn’t ever seen the Riggs version of Bluebeard, and I got to introduce them to it. That was fun. We’ve been friends ever since. I do Thanksgiving at their house when I don’t want to go back home to my parents’. Always a glamorous evening. I love eavesdropping on their other guests.”

  It’s weird hearing a teacher talk about having parents. Lulu knows he wants her to ask who the other guests are and what he’s heard, and she should, probably—ingratiate herself with him, why not—but she really doesn’t have the patience for it today.

  “I don’t really know Ryan,” she says, which is true as far as it goes. She doesn’t, like, know him. “I met him the other night. I’m thinking about my midterm project for class, mostly.”

  “Are you planning on writing a paper? I assumed you’d take the creative project option.”

  Lulu shrugs and smiles. “We’ll see, I guess,” she says. “I should get back to studying, but—”

  “If you want to learn more about Connie, there’s a podcast you should check out,” Mr. Winters says. “It’s called Beauty, Power, Danger, and it’s about women in the arts. Have you heard of it?”

  Lulu shakes her head.

  “They did an episode on Connie and Bluebeard at some point. I know the woman who hosts it a little bit—I wrote for her sometimes when she was an editor at the Weekly. Christine is . . .”

  Lulu taps beauty, power, danger into the Notes app on her phone, and tunes out the rest.

  * * *

  Lulu has actually been pretty lazy about updating her Flash story lately, so lazy that she got a couple of messages yesterday asking her what was up. She feels self-conscious and then self-conscious about being self-conscious. She knows she shouldn’t care what these people think of her. She doesn’t even know most of them.

  She can’t help it, though. She does care. At first, right after Sloane, it was a reflex to keep doing what she’d always done, to pretend that nothing had changed and everything was fine. Lately she’s not sure, but she keeps at it. Treading water. Staying afloat.

  So before she gets in her car, Lulu texts Tae Young, who’s in her English class, to ask her if she’s studying for the final tomorrow. Tae Young invites her over to her house, where she and her friends and Lulu spend the afternoon googling themes and quizzing each other on quotations.

  At the end of the afternoon Lulu convinces everyone to jump in the pool fully dressed. She goes with them, and then gets out to film the girls, their hair and their clothes billowing around them like soft flowers in the water. It makes her feel better about everything in her life right now, to know that at least it still looks like she’s living the way she always has.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BEA IS SITTING on Rich’s lap, her knees curled to her chest and her head flopped lazily against his shoulder. Jules is sitting n
ext to Rich, and Patrick is sitting next to him. Patrick’s girlfriend, Taylor, is perched on the couch’s armrest with her feet in Patrick’s lap.

  They look like a puzzle, Lulu thinks, neatly put together so that everything fits. She’s sitting on the floor with the rest of the odds and ends: Emily Williams, who’s Bea’s best friend from elementary school, and Jason Aguilar, a junior on the baseball team who one of the dudes must have invited.

  Lulu never knows what to call the thing that happens before the party—the part where whoever’s closest and most in comes over to hide valuables and lock bedroom doors and take shots together, to assert their ownership over the house and the night and one another before anyone else is allowed to come inside. Like so many things in her life, it’s a ritual she has no language for, because no one ever talks about it. It’s just—you get the Flash that says Come over at 8, or you’re relegated to some outside circle, and what you hear from a friend of a friend, that the party starts at like 9ish.

  This hour used to be her favorite part of the night. It was the part that made her feel sure of herself—that she was wanted, that she was okay, that she still knew how to say and not say the passwords that guarded all the doors of her life. Now Bea won’t quite look at her and no one wants to talk to her and any minute now, Owen and Kiley are going to walk in, fresh from the dinner they had before coming over, and Lulu’s not entirely sure she’ll be able to stop herself from crying.

  Jules slides off the couch so that he’s sitting on the floor too. “Emily,” he says. “You go to Beverly, right?”

  “Yeah,” Emily says. “A real-life public school girl. Have you ever met one before?”

  Jules grins. Lulu can tell that he thinks he looks charming. “No,” he says. “Is it dangerous? Are there gangs?”

  Emily laughs. “Persian mafia, maybe,” she says.

  “I bet you can take ’em. You look tough.”

  Emily makes a fist and flexes a skinny biceps. Jules reaches out to touch it, and she lets him, flexing even harder before dissolving into giggles under his touch.

  That’s how it starts. Lulu knows this dance down to her bones: You sit still, and see who’s looking at you. If you like it—the way he looks, and the way he looks at you—you make yourself available to be touched, which involves a certain amount of holding still too.

  Boys think they’re predators. They think they make the moves and the plans. They have no idea how much patience it takes to communicate to them: Hey, it’s safe. Hey, come over here. You hold still and you let them approach, and you smile when they hold out a hand for you to sniff at. Lick it delicately, maybe; touch your tongue, and let him know you aren’t opposed to the taste. Let him touch your arm, and then your back. Hold still while he works up the nerve to come in close, to find out where your teeth are. Wait, and wait, and wait, and then give in.

  Lulu has a Solo cup with rum and Coke in it. It’s too sweet, but that’s what there is to drink. She sits still and watches Bea and Rich, and Patrick and Taylor, and Jules and Emily. Jason glances at her and glances away. She doesn’t know if he isn’t interested, or if he doesn’t even think he could be. She’s an older girl. That’s not how it happens.

  Lulu holds still out of habit, even though no one is looking at her.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE RUM DOES its work. Hours later, Lulu is drunk and losing at beer pong. Emily is playing extra-hard to get, or maybe she just really hates pong. Either way, Jules is stuck with Lulu for a partner, and he’s pissed about it.

  “Keep it together, Shapiro,” Jules warns her as Lulu lines up a shot.

  “I’ve got it,” Lulu says, and promptly misses. The ball arcs over Jenny Price’s head and into the darkness beyond.

  “You can go get it,” Jenny suggests.

  Lulu grumbles, but she sets off toward where the ball seems to have disappeared, a loosely populated patch of grass where a group of guys is standing around in a circle talking.

  “Lulu,” one of them says, and holds up a hand for a high five.

  “Hi Oliver,” Lulu says.

  “You’re hittin’ ’em wild tonight,” Oliver says.

  “Mmmhmmm.”

  “Is it going to get wilder?” he asks.

  “Might.”

  “Hell yeah.” Oliver turns to high-five Jason, who’s standing next to him. “Don’t you wish more girls were like Lulu?” he asks.

  Lulu imagines the small white ball smacking Oliver right between his wide-set blue eyes.

  “What’s Lulu like?”

  Lulu turns to see Ryan standing at the edge of their circle. He’s holding the ball she came to retrieve. Cass is standing slightly behind him. Lulu doesn’t know that she’s ever seen Cass look so small before, or so uncertain.

  Oliver is delighted to see Ryan. “Ryan Riggs!” he exclaims. They give each other a bro-y, backslapping hug. “Dude, in the fucking flesh.” He looks between Ryan and Lulu and says, “Oh damn, wait, did you come with Shapiro? Are you guys, like, happening?”

  “Nah,” Ryan says at the same time Lulu says “No.”

  “We’re just friends,” Lulu says. She reaches out a hand and Ryan drops the ball into it. “Sorry, I gotta finish this game.”

  “Riggs, stay and drink with us,” Oliver orders. He starts introducing Ryan to his friends. They did AYSO together, apparently. So someone does know Ryan, but of course they do; when it comes down to it, someone always knows you in this world.

  “Hey,” Lulu says to Cass. “I’m almost done if you want to come hang out for a minute?”

  “Sure,” Cass says, and falls into step with her. “I mean, you don’t have to babysit me. I saw Owen on the porch, I can—”

  Owen and Kiley have been all over each other all night. Lulu doesn’t know why she hates the idea of Cass being a part of that, only that she does. “It’s not babysitting,” she says. “I invited you to a party where you don’t really know anyone. It’s my job to be your guide.”

  “Okay.” Cass gives Lulu a small smile. She looks around, taking in the scenery. “Thanks for inviting me, also. This place is kind of amazing.”

  “I know, right? God, I love Bea’s backyard. It’s paradise, basically. Or it would be if they had a hot tub.”

  “Very picky,” Cass says.

  “We’re talking about paradise,” Lulu reminds her.

  * * *

  When Lulu and Jules have officially lost, she takes Cass to find Bea. That was the whole point of Cass being here, after all. But also, Lulu is curious. She wants to know if they like each other; if they can even get along. She doesn’t think Cass will really love anyone else at this party, but she’s proud of Bea. She wants Cass to know that if there’s anyone worth hanging out with here, it’s the girl Lulu has claimed for her best friend.

  Bea is, after all, the first person who showed Lulu that you could make your own kinds of rules—that, once you understood how it functioned, you could adjust the optics and control a scene instead of just starring in it.

  They were both in ninth grade when they started hanging out together. At first it was convenient: Lulu was dating King, and Bea was with his best friend, Seb. It was at a party like this one where they decided they actually liked each other. Seb was wasted and puking; King was taking care of him; the rest of the boys were ignoring them as off-limits, and the other girls were ignoring them as upstarts and usurpers.

  Lulu had been angling for those girls, trying to convince them to take her in—she had a feeling the thing with King wasn’t going to last the year, and she didn’t want to lose her access to his friends and his parties and the aura of sophistication they lent her, which kept anyone from looking too close and seeing that she wasn’t nearly as cool as she was pretending to be.

  So she didn’t want to be associated too closely with the other freshman at the party. She probably would have ignored Bea if they hadn’t
ended up in the empty kitchen at the same time, refilling their drinks.

  They were at a girl named Jordan Epstein’s house; her father was a famous director, and the kitchen windows looked out onto a terraced backyard, a hot tub spilling steaming water into the gleaming aqua of the pool below. It was December then too, another chilly night. In the living room they could both hear the party going on without them. Bea looked at the yard, and down at her cup. Then she cut a glance at Lulu.

  “Fuck this,” she said, sudden and decisive. “Do you want to go swimming?”

  “Now?” Lulu asked.

  “Yeah,” Bea said. “Seb’s going to puke until he passes out; King’s going to be with him until that happens. And I can’t spend another hour being ignored in there. Why don’t we do something fun?”

  At first Lulu thought of Jordan coming out and seeing them and thinking, how childish, that they couldn’t get along at the party, that they’d snuck off to splash around like babies.

  Then, though, another thought occurred to her: one of the boys coming and seeing two girls in their underwear, wet and laughing. What that would look like to him.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

  That was the night she started paying attention to Bea. Bea hadn’t snared Seb just because she was pretty; Bea would never say so out loud, but she was playing the game just as carefully and strategically as Lulu herself. It was comforting to see that: to know that someone who seemed so natural, so sophisticated and easy, was trying just as hard as Lulu was to stay afloat.

  Lulu finds Bea caught up in a thicket of girls dancing in the grass. Her hair is sweat-matted, and her face is flushed pink. She tries to pull Lulu into the dancing with her, but Lulu pulls her back. “Wait,” she says. “I want you to meet Cass.”