by Zan Romanoff
Bea stops moving. She cocks her head and takes Cass in. “Cass,” she repeats. “Shit! Nice to meet you.”
“Hi,” Cass says.
“I sort of bailed on B when we went to the beach the other day,” Lulu explains, trying to make the intensity of Bea’s interest seem less weird to Cass. “She got curious.”
“Everyone’s curious about Cass,” Bea says. “I mentioned to Isabel that she was coming, and she like, she didn’t seem like she believed me. She said you and your—Ryan, that you guys never come to parties. So, what, you guys are, like, too cool?”
“God, not at all,” Cass says. “We just don’t really love it, so we don’t do it. And then people treat it like it’s a crime, not liking what they like.”
“Well,” Bea says. “I hope this party isn’t too painful, then.”
Lulu watches the two of them misunderstand each other like a car crash in slow-motion. Bea is trying to be arch, and Cass is trying to be honest, and they’re missing each other’s points entirely. Lulu wishes she were allowed to set the terms of the conversation, to explain to them, no, you’ll like each other if you do it like this.
“Um,” Cass says. “I— It seems nice. Should we, like, get drinks or something?”
“Sure,” Bea says.
So Cass has learned this survival technique, at least: Drink till it stops being awkward. Which tonight may be never.
When they get to the porch, Ryan, Oliver, and Jason are at the table, refilling their cups. Oliver offers the bottle he’s been pouring from to Lulu. “Want some?”
“I’m good,” Lulu says.
“Shapiro turns down a drink,” Jason crows. “When was the last time that happened?”
Lulu gives him dagger eyes.
“Have you and Lulu been to a lot of parties together, Jason?” Bea asks sweetly. God, even when she’s being a pain, Lulu loves her. What an exquisite bitch.
But Oliver isn’t a junior who can be cowed by Bea’s candy-coated rudeness. “Please. Everyone knows the girl is thirsty,” he says. “Everyone knows this girl has got the thirst. Speaking of which. Ryan. Is this one your lady?”
“This one’s not anyone’s anything,” Cass says, ducking out from where Oliver is trying to throw an arm around her shoulders.
Don’t do that, Lulu wants to tell her. Don’t let them know they’re making you uncomfortable, but it’s too late. She understands better than ever why Cass avoids parties: She’s sharp enough to understand so much of what’s going on at them—and she can’t hide the look on her face that broadcasts how dumb she thinks all of it is.
“Oh damn, an independent woman,” Oliver says. “A free agent. Got a lot of single women at this party, actually.” Lulu sees him realize it, but there’s no time for her to stop what comes out of his mouth next. “Got a lot of options for you, Lulu, huh.”
Lulu freezes. She and Bea have never talked about the Sloane snap, certainly not in terms of what it meant about her, and she doesn’t think Cass or Ryan knows about it at all. So she could just write his comment off as drunk nonsense. If she ignores it, maybe everyone else will too? Or is Oliver going to try to press the point? Will they even really get what he means if he does?
Bea steps up easily. She isn’t afraid of them, probably because she knows the boys are too distracted by the girl they think is their prey to see her best friend coming. “Sounds like you’re looking,” she says to Oliver. She actually physically puts herself between Jason and Oliver and Lulu, making her body available to them as a distraction. “Show me who you’ve got your eye on.”
“Who don’t I have my eye on, more like,” Oliver says, turning away from Lulu and Cass to survey the party. “Okay, see that girl there, in the pink?”
Bea nods.
Thank you, Lulu thinks at her back, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
While Lulu was distracted, Cass was conferring with Ryan. Now she steps in close and says, “Hey, um, I think we’re gonna take off.”
“Shit, really?”
“Yeah.” Cass shrugs.
“I’m sorry if Bea—”
“No, no, it’s not her fault I can’t hang,” Cass says. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have even come, probably. I don’t do well in these situations.”
“You didn’t have to come.”
“Oh,” Cass says, and Lulu knows she said the wrong thing.
“No,” she says. “I didn’t mean—I just—I’m sorry if you didn’t have fun.”
“It was fine,” Cass says. “It’s fun to see you in your natural habitat.”
Lulu looks around. Is this her natural habitat? She’s certainly spent a lot of time at parties like this one. It’s sort of funny, then, that she still feels so uncomfortable. That it feels like a relief to be invited every time. What has she done tonight except worry that she’s screwing everything up?
The answer is, drink to forget that she’s screwing everything up.
“You know me,” Lulu says. “I’m great at parties.”
“You are!” Cass says. She throws up her hands, and somehow Lulu finds herself stepping in toward Cass’s body, taking advantage of the movement to wrap herself around Cass in a funny, too-tight hug.
As soon as she does it she realizes they’ve never touched like this before. Lulu is shorter than Cass, and her head fits against her shoulder, and if she turned her head—casually, it wouldn’t even be a thing, really—she could touch her face to the skin of Cass’s neck.
Cass, for all she’s thin and spare, is also warm and solid. Her arm comes around Lulu’s shoulders and Lulu allows herself to stay there, laughing, feeling Cass laugh with her.
“Cass,” Ryan says. “You ready? The car’s going to be here in, like, two minutes, and I think if I miss another they’re going to kick me off of Ryde permanently.”
“Yeah.”
For a wild moment, Lulu wants to beg her: Take me with you. Get me out of here. This party—which she wouldn’t have questioned six months ago, which she’s spent her whole high school career working to keep getting invited to—is the last place in the world she wants to be.
But instinct holds her back. Don’t ask to go where you haven’t been invited. Act like you have somewhere to be even—especially—when you don’t. Hold still, hold still, hold still.
“Bye, Lulu,” Cass says.
“Yeah, okay, bye,” Lulu says.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
LULU WAKES UP in the wrong bed. It takes her several long minutes to sort that out: wrong. It’s not unfamiliar, it’s just not—But it is hers. It’s her bed at her mom’s apartment, because she’s on winter break now, and that means she’s staying with her mom.
Lulu allows herself a self-indulgent groan while one hand gropes for her phone.
Her mom’s place is fine, obviously. It’s not a hovel or anything, and Lulu’s not so spoiled that she can’t recognize that having not just one but two places she can live in is nothing to complain about.
It’s just that this one has somehow never felt like home. It has a castle vibe, and not in a luxe, royal way—there’s something very haunted fairy tale about it. Lulu’s mom moved in after the divorce and turned the place into a princess palace, with fresh flowers in the bedrooms and clusters of candles on every side table. Lulu and her elementary school friends loved to hold séances here during sleepovers.
It sometimes feels like they succeeded in bringing down bad luck on the place, or else they sensed that it was destined for a pall of sadness—because ten years later, Lulu’s mom is still here, and single, waking up in a canopy bed and cursing her lonely princess fate. A row of her headshots hangs in the hallway where a different type of mother might have family photos.
Her mom’s asleep now, and she probably will be for another hour. Lulu has the kitchen to herself as she rifles through the cabinets, trying to find something to ea
t that isn’t some kind of nut or seed. Usually she doesn’t mind being on whatever weird diet her mother’s gotten obsessed with while she’s here, but just now Lulu really, really wants toast with butter on it, or at least real coffee. Fuck.
Instead she makes green tea that smells like old moss; there’s some dubious-looking gluten-free “bread” in the fridge that, toasted, tastes like warm cardboard. Lulu nibbles it very miserably. With her free hand, she fumbles for her phone and searches for the podcast Mr. Winters mentioned. She scrolls back to the first episode and presses PLAY, the volume on low.
A woman’s voice issues from her phone’s speakers. “Every woman owns her own beauty,” she intones. “And yet somehow, when it is put up for sale, it is almost always men who see the bulk of the profit. Artist and muse, studio head and actress, prostitute and pimp: All of these relationships function with varying degrees of consent and autonomy. But they all also uphold the same underlying economic structure, which holds that a literal middleman should be the person presenting a woman to the world—and taking a hefty cut of the profits in the process.
“If a man paints or photographs a woman, it’s art; if a woman paints or photographs herself, it’s an act of narcissistic self-indulgence. Women are assumed to be artless until they are put in someone’s art; it’s only the approval of someone else’s eye that makes them worthy of serious consideration.
“Men recognize the power of women’s beauty—and the danger in allowing them to harness it for themselves, without permission or intermediary. Beauty, Power, Danger is a podcast about the history of beautiful women in the arts, and an examination of the ways the men in their lives have sought to control their bodies, lives, and legacies for their own ends. I’m Christine L. Tompkins, and this is Beauty, Power, Danger.”
Lulu hits PAUSE. This seems like a lot for nine a.m., and especially for nine a.m. with a hangover. She’s not even sure how much it applies to her: No one is selling Lulu’s image but Lulu herself. Or does Flash technically own what she posts? She always forgets to check up on that. Either way, it’s not a problem she’s going to solve this morning.
She throws away the rest of her breakfast and goes back to sleep.
* * *
When she wakes up again, it’s early afternoon and someone is hovering uncertainly at the foot of her bed. Naomi looks like she was about to either sit down or sneak out, and Lulu happened to wake up in the middle of it.
So Nao is home from college for winter break.
Lulu’s head is so muddled that when she opens her mouth, what comes out is “No.”
“That’s how you greet your sister after months of separation?” Naomi asks. “No?”
“I’m tired!”
“That’s not surprising. This room smells like a distillery,” Naomi reports. “It smells like—a grow room. It smells like skunk, and feet, and death, Lu.”
“You know what a grow room smells like?”
Naomi ignores her. “I tried to stay up to see you last night. When the hell did you get in?”
Lulu groans and rolls onto her back. “Like, three?” she says. She’s really not in the mood for a lecture from her sister. “I’m very tired,” she says. “And hungover. And I want to be left alone.”
Usually being rude works on Naomi, but today she seems determined. “I bet you’re also hungry,” she says. “If you get up and take a shower, I can drive us to Nate and Al’s for brunch.”
Lulu’s stomach grumbles, and she remembers her gross, aborted breakfast. How likely is it that the house has grown new food in its cabinets while she was sleeping?
And what are the chances her mom will make anything remotely palatable for dinner?
Lulu sits up. “We should go grocery shopping, after, too,” she says.
“Already planning on it.”
* * *
Naomi is halfway through her junior year at Georgetown; her international relations major is a disappointment to their mother because it’s boring (“Like so you can be a diplomat?” she asked, when Nao announced it as a sophomore. “Like because a Jew who cares about the human rights of Palestinians should help negotiate peace in the Middle East,” she replied) and to their father because it’s unlikely to make her rich.
Lulu doesn’t understand it either—it’s way less sexy than the international-travel-and-intrigue thing she first imagined—but that makes sense: Her sister has never in her life chosen the sexy option. She’s steady and straightforward, well suited to the patient unknotting of delicate, complicated problems.
“You’re interested in the same things,” Bea told Lulu once, in a rare moment of extreme earnestness. “Isn’t diplomacy just like high-level social management, when you think about it? Knowing the gossip on everyone? Knowing who you can ask for what?”
“I guess,” Lulu said then. She remembers it now, listening to Nao talk through the politics of the office where she’s interning this semester. Maybe Bea had a point.
When Naomi goes to the bathroom, Lulu does what she always does: takes out her phone and snaps a Flash of her face washed out by the window’s light. You can’t see much of anything, but it’s kind of cool looking. She’s trying to figure out whether she wants to filter it when Naomi slides back into her seat at the table. Lulu automatically clicks her screen dark and puts her phone down.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” Naomi says.
“No, it’s fine, I’m done.”
“Are you, um, were you Flashing?”
“Oh my god, no.”
“You’re not?”
“I mean, I was on Flash, but no one—no one says that, Naomi.”
“I don’t know.” There’s something in Naomi’s tone that sets off warning bells in Lulu’s head. “I don’t really know anything about it.”
“It’s not that interesting.”
“It is sometimes, though.” Naomi has been looking down at her hands in her lap, but when she says this she looks up. She looks Lulu in the eye.
Fuck.
“One of my friends was writing this paper for a feminist studies class,” Naomi says. “About the narrative possibilities of young women— Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Anyway. She was doing some research. She found this video.”
Lulu buries her face in her hands. “Nooooooo,” she says.
“I’m not—we don’t have to talk about the video itself,” Naomi says. Lulu imagines forcing her prim, reserved older sister to discuss sex with her, and feels only marginally better. “I just wanted to check in with you about it. First of all—do Mom and Dad know?”
“Know about what?”
“That there’s a sex tape of you on the internet.”
“It’s not a sex tape, Naomi, Jesus.”
“A make-out tape.”
“They don’t know that there are any . . . sexual . . . images of me on the internet.”
“Not even Deirdre knows?”
“Deirdre isn’t that young,” Lulu says. “Besides, you know her: She’s too cool of a stepmom to go looking for dirt on me.”
Naomi makes a face. “Soooooo cool,” she says. “What an awesome parenting trend: neglect.”
“I’m hardly neglected.”
“Are you?”
“I’m not making porn, Naomi. It was a mistake.”
Naomi nods.
“Oh my god, did you think it was like . . . revenge porn? You think Owen would do that?”
“I’ve only met Owen once,” Naomi says. “And I never pretend to have any sense of what the hell a man might do if he got his feelings hurt.”
“A man.” Now it’s Lulu’s turn to roll her eyes.
“Seriously, Lu. Can you just—can you tell me, I don’t know. Are you okay?”
Lulu hates that question. It’s the one she’s been trying to avoid by staying home and standing in corners at parties, by plastering a smil
e on her face and keeping her grades up.
Is she okay? She doesn’t know.
She’d like to be okay, because then no one would have to worry about her. But if she’s okay about that whole—thing—it seems like no one thinks she should be okay, so maybe that’s a mistake. She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to feel about having exposed herself, or having hurt Owen, or having that video of her out there forever.
There are no rules for this situation, because this is a situation you don’t find yourself in if you actually remember to play by the fucking rules.
“It was a mistake,” Lulu says. “But I posted it myself, okay?” It was her own fault. Lulu knows that much. “And I promise, honestly, I’m totally fine. You can check my grades if you want to. You just watched me house this food, so you know I’m eating. You saw me sleeping.” She smiles. “Right?”
Naomi smiles thinly. “Right,” she says. “After staying out all night getting drunk.”
“It was the end of the semester. There was a party. I’m going to parties. I’m still a regular girl.” Naomi seems unconvinced. “We should get the check.”
“I want to be here for you,” Naomi says. “I want to be a part of your life, Lulu.”
So much for getting out of here quickly. “You are,” she says. “See? Brunch.”
“I want you to be able to call me, if you want to.”
“I will, I swear, but this really wasn’t—”
“I remember what it was like, you know. The first time I drove down the block, and I made a turn, and I couldn’t see the house anymore. And I realized: I could do whatever I wanted.”
“You’re complaining about that?”
“It was fun,” Naomi says. “Don’t get me wrong. But it was scary sometimes too. There were nights—” She looks at Lulu, shakes her head, and looks away.
“Nights when what?”
“Bad nights.”
Lulu honestly can’t imagine what Naomi would consider a “bad night.” Did she drink three beers and feel the room spin around her? Get ignored by a guy who she wanted to pay attention to her? Have him pay so much attention to her that all she could think about was escape? Has Naomi ever stood in line for the bathroom and listened to someone retching, helplessly, miserably sick, on the other side of a door? What are the odds that she’s ever been that person?