by Zan Romanoff
“That’s the spirit,” Ryan tells her.
And then Lulu is standing alone in an empty hotel room, surrounded by pink light and paint fumes. Feelings rush over her in waves: happiness and restlessness, and hope, and fear. It’s too much and there’s nothing she can do about it. She closes her eyes and holds her breath. It doesn’t help. Her body is still buzzing, thrumming. When she opens her eyes again, she realizes she was standing alone in the room and smiling.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE NEXT TIME Cass and Lulu come to The Hotel, there’s a new car in the driveway: a little navy BMW 3 series parked neatly between two lines.
“Who’s the company?” Lulu asks Cass.
Cass shrugs. “Ryan didn’t tell me anything. Maybe he had a girl here last night or something. Gross.” She mock-shivers. “I hate dealing with strangers.”
“You brought me here,” Lulu reminds her.
“You seemed like an okay stranger. You’d intrigued me, remember? And anyway, that was different.”
“Different how?”
Instead of answering her question, Cass shoves something into Lulu’s hands. “Don’t you want to open your present?” she asks.
“I always want to open a present.”
“I mean, it’s not a big deal or anything. I was just at this bookstore the other day and they had a recommended shelf with a bunch of, like, feminist theorists and stuff on it, and I recognized one of the names you mentioned when we were talking the other day. I grabbed you something. I haven’t read it. I don’t know if it’s good.”
This is so cute Lulu wants to die. Instead she looks down at the book in her hands to give Cass a moment to recover. The Argonauts, it’s called. A pull quote across the cover reads: A meditation on the seductions, contradictions, limitations, and beauties of being normal.
“I see,” Lulu says. “You’re trying to reading-list me out of being a JAP?”
“I want it on record that I have never called you that,” Cass says. “That’s all you, Lulu.”
“I’m reclaiming my slurs,” Lulu says. That’s a phrase Naomi taught her, reclaiming my slurs, when she and Lulu got into a heated argument about whether or not Lulu could call someone a bitch.
Cass rolls her eyes. “C’mon,” she says. “Speaking of slurs, let’s go find Ryan and his random skank.”
Only they don’t find Ryan, or a skank. Instead, they run into Owen.
“Whoa,” Lulu says. “I mean. Hi.”
“Hi,” Owen says. “Ryan texted me this morning to invite me over. Which was nice, I thought, since clearly you weren’t going to.”
Oh god. Lulu can’t believe she forgot about her promise to Owen that she would bring him back here next time she came. In that moment, she assumed that he’d be on her mind, and that she’d want to hang out with him. It’s a surprise to realize that, in fact, that hasn’t been the case. And now she’s mostly annoyed that he’s here, interrupting her conversation with Cass.
“I’m sorry,” Lulu says. “Um. Owen, you remember Cass?”
“Of course,” Owen says. “And Cass, I don’t know if you’ve met Kiley?”
Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.
“Hey guys,” Kiley calls up from the bottom of the swimming pool. “Ryan’s teaching me how to skateboard!”
“Fun for Ryan,” Cass says. She sits down at the edge of the pool, feet and legs dangling into the emptiness below. Lulu joins her.
“This is quite a development,” Cass says.
“Yeah,” Lulu says. “There are five of us now.”
“This is the first time Ryan’s ever invited anyone over to hang out,” Cass says. “Anyone but me, I mean. He’ll bring girls back here sometimes, for the night, but they’re usually gone in the morning.”
Lulu takes this in. “Does that mean when you brought me—” she starts. She can’t bring herself to say: that was the first time you’d done that. The night takes on a whole new cast. That Cass just brought her. And then let her bring Owen the next time.
“Like I said,” Cass says. “You seemed like an okay stranger.”
Owen settles himself next to them. Next to Cass, that is. Not Lulu.
“Are you going to learn to skate, Owen?” Cass asks.
“Nah.”
“Owen broke his arm skateboarding when he was ten,” Lulu reports. She still knows him so stupid well.
“Eleven,” Owen corrects.
“Ten,” she says. She wasn’t there, but this is one of the first stories Owen’s dad ever told her. “At your tenth birthday, when Gumball Eyeball came to play a backyard set and you fell in front of—”
“Ten,” Owen agrees. “And don’t make me relive it, god.”
He puts a hand over his face, dramatic. Lulu laughs. She can’t remember the last time they joked around this easily.
Cass can’t handle this news. “You had Gumball Eyeball play your birthday party?” she says. “My god, I would have died. I was so obsessed with them in elementary school.”
“I almost did die,” Owen says. “Kind of literally. I was lucky that the arm was the only actual casualty. I was so excited when they showed I just straight-up forgot I was on a skateboard. Gravity did not.”
“You must have some parents,” Cass says. Lulu wonders if she doesn’t remember Owen and Ryan meeting, talking about their dads. Or maybe she didn’t know to notice that type of thing—what someone might be sensitive about. Every little nuance of every conversation.
“My dad knows people,” Owen says.
“Hey!” Ryan calls from the pool’s belly. “I almost forgot. New rule. No parents at The Hotel.”
Cass looks around in mock confusion. “I don’t see any parents, Ry,” she says.
“You know what I mean. This place is going to be overrun with Riggses pretty soon, and until that happens, I want to be an orphan when I’m here. No parents. No family. None of that bullshit.”
Kiley leaps off the skateboard and does a spin. She lands on the balls of her feet, silent, like a cat. She raises her arms above her head, an easy stretch, and Lulu’s heart throbs and contracts at the idea of Owen and Cass watching her move right now. How beautiful she is; how easy she looks in the length of her body. Lulu has always wanted to be lanky like that, long and lean. It hurts to think about how much thinner she could be, if—if. She doesn’t want to do any of the ugly stuff that would get her there, but that doesn’t stop her from wanting the thinness itself.
“Like you’re a Lost Boy,” Kiley says. “Peter Pan, you know? I played Wendy once, in the musical. They tried to cast me as Tiger Lily, but I rebelled.”
“Racism,” Owen says wisely.
“Racism,” Kiley agrees. Lulu recognizes the tone in her voice, a very slight warning, and it takes her a second to remember from where: When Mr. Winters screened a clip of Birth of a Nation and asked them to debate whether it was appropriate to interact with racist art, or if he should have left it off the syllabus entirely. Kiley sounded exactly as wary as she responded to his questions then as she does talking to Owen now.
“Whatever,” she continues. “The joke was on them. It turned out that director had been doing all sorts of other, um, inappropriate stuff, and my complaint was just the thing that broke the camel’s back, or whatever. He was a full-time creep. Children’s theater is full of ’em.”
“Is that why you quit acting?” Owen asks. “Because of the casting thing?”
Kiley does another spin. “I wasn’t a very good actress,” she says. “And at the time I was super serious about ballet, so it made sense to focus on that.”
Ryan kicks the skateboard up to his hand like he thinks the conversation is done.
“Must have sucked,” Owen says.
“The joke was also on me,” Kiley says. “As it turned out, I hated playing Wendy. The whole play is fucked up, but Wendy’s the worst part. Everybody else gets to b
e a Lost Boy, and in Neverland Wendy has to be everyone’s mother?”
That’s not really what Owen was asking, Lulu knows, but it’s interesting to see how adept Kiley is at shifting a conversation without seeming to have taken offense. He wasn’t going to change the subject, so she changed it for him.
Under other circumstances, Lulu might be trying to learn her secrets.
Owen hops down into the pool and goes to stand by Kiley’s side. She takes her cue, and butts her head against his shoulder before sliding into his embrace.
“I think we’re all Lost Boys here,” Owen says.
“Lost boys and girls,” Cass adds.
“Lost people,” Lulu chimes in.
“Lost weekends,” Ryan says. “Hey, Owen, when you showed up, you said you brought beer?”
* * *
In fact, Owen brought a six-pack, so Ryan and Lulu and Cass and him have a beer. When Ryan offers Kiley one, like they’re his to offer, Kiley says, “I don’t drink beer.”
“Then why did you bring it?”
“It was Owen’s call.”
Owen says, “I’m the one with the ID.”
Lulu is sort of annoyed that he’s not more annoyed about Kiley hanging out with Ryan—does he really think he doesn’t have anything to worry about with that? Lulu doesn’t like Ryan, but he’s cute, and he’s rich, and he looks like if he saw a sliver of an opening with you, if that was something he wanted, he wouldn’t hesitate to take it.
“I have whiskey in my room,” Ryan offers. “Do you drink that?”
“I do.”
“Okay,” Ryan says.
Kiley grins. “Are you going to go get me some?” she asks.
She sits next to Owen, where he’s spread out a blanket to lie on. He reaches up a lazy arm to pull her down next him. “You’re a very rude guest,” he tells her. “Extremely rude, Kileyrath.”
“Go get it please?” Kiley beams up at Ryan.
“Very rude,” Ryan agrees, but he’s already turning toward The Hotel. “Should I bring cups for everyone?”
“I could level up,” Cass says. She’s been a little more than usually quiet all afternoon; Lulu hopes this means she’s just being shy, that she doesn’t want to, like, leave or anything. She hates the idea that she brought Owen and ruined The Hotel for Cass, even if it was Ryan who invited him this time.
“Me too,” Lulu agrees.
“In that case, want to help me carry?”
It takes Lulu a second to realize that Ryan is talking to her.
“Sure,” she says.
It isn’t until they’re inside the lobby, the heavy glass door swinging solidly closed behind them, that he says, “I’m sorry if this is weird for you.”
“It’s fine,” Lulu says automatically.
“I guess you and Cass have kind of had your, like, girls’ thing lately. I didn’t think you would mind.”
Do I look like I mind? Lulu wonders. Can Owen tell? Can Kiley?
“I don’t.”
“I mean, I invited him because I wanted another dude around, and then he brought Kiley. So actually it backfired on both of us, if that helps.”
“I said it was fine.” Lulu doesn’t like Ryan’s tone—the way he’s insisting on talking about her unhappiness like it’s something she wants to admit to, like it’s something she’s agreed to discuss.
“Sure it is.” Ryan pauses at the top of the stairs and holds up both hands, like Lulu’s got him at gunpoint or something. “It would be fine if it wasn’t, though, also. You’re only human. You guys broke up—what, a couple of months ago? If it helps, I’ll admit it: I wasn’t thrilled when Cass showed up with you that first night. I knew she was interested in girls, but I had sort of—”
“You knew what?”
The look on Ryan’s face is awful. It’s like the sheen of oil spreading across water, slick and shimmering. He says, “She hasn’t told you? That’s interesting. I just assumed— Anyway. Cass is gay. Or she says she is, anyway. She hasn’t ever kissed a girl, so, you know, I hold out hope for my gender. Well. To be honest, I hold out hope for myself.” He shrugs. “But the two of you experimenting together—I don’t know. It makes sense.”
Lulu is too stunned to say anything except “I hate that word. Experimenting.”
“Oh?”
“It’s not a fucking science project.”
“I guess you would know.”
Lulu hates Ryan completely. She doesn’t know anything. Her whole life has been shadowed by this inconvenient desire, a thing she doesn’t want to want and has never been able to help. Kissing Sloane wasn’t anything like pipetting in a lab; there was no science, no method. It was dropping a lit match into a pool of gasoline, the way her body leaped helplessly toward the flames.
And now the idea that Cass really would—that they really, really could— Her brain overheats at the idea of it. The thought that she could stop messing around in the shallow end of her own desires and find out what happens when she swims all the way out is dizzying, disorienting.
Ryan is still talking, somehow. “She hasn’t said anything about you either way, exactly,” he continues. “But I thought it was obvious. I just assumed you had figured it out, Lulu. I’m sorry if I was wrong.”
Not sorry for outing Cass, though, for spilling her secrets and acting like he’s handing her off to Lulu, a temporary loan, till they can get their girl-kissing out of their systems and go back to the boys they probably really wanted all along.
They’re in Ryan’s room now, and he’s handing Lulu a bottle of whiskey, a stack of cups.
She looks at the floor under their feet, the bottle in her hand, the view out the window, and thinks, Ryan owns all of this. It makes sense of him, she thinks: The possessive streak Cass mentioned on the beach is coming clear now, his selfishness matched, apparently, by a deeper vein of cruelty.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE REST OF the day is haunted by questions. Lulu keeps looking at Cass and wondering: Did you bring me here because you wanted me?
Did you bring me here because you knew?
Maybe it’s because Lulu is distracted, but it feels like night falls fast and sudden. Shadows slip across the concrete until they’ve swallowed the whole day.
Kiley looks it up on her phone; Ryan isn’t paying attention, and by the time he notices, she’s already putting it away. Lulu can’t help being annoyed at watching her skirt the rules.
“It’s the fucking solstice,” she tells them. “Shortest day of the year. Poof! Gone. Whoops!” She gestures with the cup in her other hand and splashes whiskey and ginger ale onto the floor. They’re sitting inside now, in the lobby, in the tent, wrapped in blankets. The Hotel’s heat hasn’t been turned on yet.
“That means it’s the longest night,” Cass observes. She’s sitting next to Lulu. They’re wrapped up separately and Cass is very drunk, leaning heavily against Lulu’s side. The silk of her hair brushes Lulu’s collarbone, tickles her cheek. Lulu thinks she must be imagining that she can feel some warmth radiating from Cass’s body to hers through so many layers of fabric.
Ryan’s voice keeps echoing in her head: the idea that Cass feels something the same way she feels something. Even if she’s just an experiment, a convenience, the only girl in their private school web who’s stupid enough to have basically sent a coming-out announcement to the whole damn internet. Even if it’s nothing more than that. It’s like someone’s opened a door just a crack—not enough to walk through, but enough to spill light into a very dark room.
Cass likes girls.
Cass could like Lulu.
“What are we going to do with it?” Owen asks.
“You’ve been here, man, this is what we do,” Ryan says. “This is pretty much—this is pretty much it.”
“We should play a game or something,” Kiley says. “You guys kn
ow kings?”
“Too complicated,” Owen says. “And anyway, kings is just an excuse to play truth or dare. Why don’t we just play truth or dare?”
“God, Owen, how old are you?” Kiley pokes him. “Do you think this is a middle school sleepover or something?”
“Fuck yes. And I say we play spin the bottle,” Owen says. “Seven minutes in heaven.”
“The ratio here isn’t right for any of that,” Kiley says. “Two boys, three girls. Although—I guess Lulu wouldn’t mind.”
Lulu blanches.
Cass says, “What?”
Kiley laughs. “Oh, sorry,” she says. “But, like, do you not even know what Lulu’s really famous for?”
Cass sounds very uncertain when she says “No?”
“Luckily for you, the internet never forgets.” Kiley taps at her screen and then hands her phone to Cass. “Here,” she says. “Look. You can see.”
The volume must be all the way up. Lulu watches the screen’s blue glow playing on Cass’s face, that inhuman light, and hears the soft slur of her own giggle, the way it trips into a hitch in her breath. She looks down. She clenches her fists.
She doesn’t even think of Owen until she realizes Kiley is tripping over herself as she hurries to stand up, saying, “Wait, shit, O—” and she understands that the clatter she’s hearing isn’t her own heartbeat in her ears. It’s his feet on the stairs.
Ryan grabs Kiley’s shoulder to stop her. “Give him a sec,” he says. “He’s fine, I’m sure he’s fine. Just give him a minute.”
“Fuck!” Lulu didn’t realize how drunk Kiley was until she starts crying, all of a sudden, like a switch got flipped. Her tears are sooty with mascara and eyeliner. “Fuck!” she says again.
Lulu is glad she didn’t see Owen’s face before he left. She’s always been spared that one small thing. She didn’t have to see it when he realized that what he’d thought was a private message from her had actually been broadcast to her followers and, soon after that, halfway across the internet.