by Zan Romanoff
“I love this,” Owen says. “You hear that, Kiley? Next time you refuse to eat a croissant, I’m not gonna try to talk you out of it. And then you won’t have any delicious pastry, and you’ll be sad, but I’ll have more, so I’ll be very happy. I love this plan, Cass. Very smart.”
Lulu doesn’t know what to say. She knows she isn’t— technically, she’s not fat. That’s just a numbers thing. But that’s the word she knows to express that she’s unhappy with her body, that she’s always been unhappy with it, in a white-noise kind of way, a mantra that’s been playing so long she almost never remembers to hear it properly anymore. She remembers Kiley asking her about what she ate at temple a few weeks ago. Who doesn’t think about that stuff? What would it even be like to live in your body and not worry about its size?
“Girls thinking they’re fat is so exhausting,” Ryan says over her shoulder. Lulu turns and finds that at some point while she was distracted, he pulled out a camera. He’s snapping a picture of them, all of them, together like this.
Lulu is helpless against imagining how it will look: her body, unposed. She straightens up, tries to make herself longer and more elegant. She realizes after she’s done it that it might look to Cass like she’s pulling away from her, like once she knew she was going to be photographed, she didn’t want Cass in the same frame.
“Girls. Really, Ryan?” Cass asks. She turns away from Lulu and Lulu doesn’t know if that means anything or not.
“Hashtag notallgirls,” Kiley says, holding up her fingers to make the crosses of the hash.
“And anyway, there’s nothing wrong with being fat,” Cass says. “Which I have also—”
“Yes, yes, you’ve told me, you’ve told me.” Ryan squats down to ruffle Cass’s hair. She reaches up for him, and the two of them unbalance each other, tip to the side, and go sprawling to the floor. Ryan squawks, “My camera!” rolling away from Cass, hunched over the thing with panicked urgency.
“So-orry,” Cass says. “You started it, though.”
Ryan doesn’t say anything.
“Hey,” Cass tries again, softer this time. “Is the camera okay?”
“I think so.”
“Good.” Cass smiles and reaches out an arm for Ryan. He goes to curl up at her side, but before he does, he unloops the camera from his neck and puts it carefully out of everyone’s way. Lulu gets up to go pour herself some water, and the least mature part of her wants to step on it—to see what he would do if something in his life ever actually went wrong.
CHAPTER THIRTY
LULU SNEAKS INTO Cass’s room this time. It hasn’t been that long since everyone trooped off to bed, but Cass is already asleep, curled around her pillow. Her face is surrounded by waves of her hair, the gold and crimson of them turned pale by the moonlight. Lulu is about to leave again when Cass stirs. She blinks one eye open, sees Lulu, and then closes it again. She makes a noise that sounds like an invitation.
Still, Lulu is careful when she climbs into bed. Cass reaches one arm out across their bodies. She rests her hand on Lulu’s belly.
“Do you like my body?” Lulu hates herself for asking the question. “You know. The way it is now.” She knows that Cass will say yes no matter what she actually believes, and that even when she says it, it won’t make Lulu feel any better. People have been telling her that she’s thin her whole life and it’s never made her feel like what she imagines a thin person feels like. Which is mostly: someone who doesn’t have to ask this question.
“I was asleep,” Cass responds. And then, a little less harshly, “I think you’re so beautiful.”
“Oh—” Lulu says. She feels guilty. Stop being too much, she commands herself, but she doesn’t know how to do that. She never, ever has. “I—I’ll leave before everyone wakes up.”
“S’not what I said at all,” Cass mumbles.
“I know. But still. I will.”
Cass is half submerged in sleep again. She nudges her nose impatiently against Lulu’s collarbone. “Don’t—hiding,” she says. “Silly. Unless you’re ashamed of me. Are you, Lu?”
“Not you,” Lulu says. She kisses the top of Cass’s head. “Not—no.”
“Very beautiful, asshole,” Cass mumbles, and breathes out a long sigh that fades into the slow, even rhythm of her sleeping breath.
Lulu lies in the dark and stares at the ceiling.
She’s out. Technically, she’s been out. Cass is the only person she’s ever said bisexual out loud to, but the Sloane thing happened, and she didn’t, like, deny it, or do any damage control. She knew what people assumed and she let them assume it; she let those assumptions harden into things people repeated like a fact. Which it is. It’s a true fact about her.
So she shouldn’t mind now, the idea that she’s just confirming what everyone already knows. And having a girlfriend is cool, right? Sexy, kind of. She knows that’s what her friends at school would say if she asked them. It’s 2020, Lulu. You should date whoever you want, duh. Get it, girl.
Instead she feels terrified. Liking Owen was so easy. There was nothing to explain about her sweet, handsome boyfriend. What more normal thing could a teenage girl do with herself than have a crush on a boy?
Liking Cass asks Lulu to expose something about herself that people might not guess just by looking at her. It also exposes Cass, because if this is real, Lulu has to think about how to integrate Cass into Lulu’s aestheticized, structured, constantly captured real life. And she’s not sure she wants that—that she’s ready for Cass to be public property any more than she’s ready for The Hotel to open up and become a place anyone can visit.
Does that mean she’s ashamed of her? That she’s fetishizing her? That she’s protecting her?
The questions swirl around Lulu so persistently that she can almost imagine them taking on weight in the air around her, thickening the darkness with their presence. Once again, something is happening that she doesn’t have a strategy for. She doesn’t know how to navigate it and keep herself and the person she cares about safe.
The difference is that this time she wants to let it happen anyway.
All she knows is that no matter how long she lies there driving herself crazy about what she wants, what Cass wants, what would be best for either or both of them, she stays anchored by the weight of Cass’s hand on her belly.
And she doesn’t set an alarm. She doesn’t sneak off, she doesn’t take her questions with her and disappear, even though she wants to. She falls asleep eventually. When she wakes up her cheek is pillowed on the tangle of Cass’s hair. Here they are, in bed together, she thinks. Here they are, in the light of morning.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE NEXT DAY Lulu gets an email from [email protected]. She opens it to find one of the fanciest email invites she’s ever seen. Even the gold edging on the graphic looks luxe, somehow; gilt-flecked instead of cheap and cheesy. Ryan is throwing a New Year’s Eve party at The Hotel.
She texts Cass a screenshot with the message, Does this mean it’s open
I wish I knew, Cass responds.
He didn’t tell you? that’s shitty
He didn’t tell me about the party at all
Which
I’m sure seems like not a big deal but again we used to tell each other everything
Have you told him about us?
It’s fine if you did I’m just wondering if maybe like
He feels like you have secrets so now he does too
I didn’t
Tell him
I didn’t know what to say tbh
Lulu doesn’t know how to respond to that. She types and deletes, types and deletes. Then she FaceTimes Cass.
When she answers, Cass is sitting in her backyard, under a tree that dapples her face with leafy shadows and makes her expression hard to read. “Hey,” she says. “What’s up?”
“I didn’
t know what to say.”
“You called . . . to say you didn’t know what to say.”
“Yes. No. I called— Usually when I don’t know what to say, I don’t say anything.”
“That doesn’t seem like such a crazy strategy.”
“It isn’t. But it can be. Sometimes I don’t know what to say, but that doesn’t mean I—” Lulu comes up short. For all the language she’s learned in the last few months, she still doesn’t know the words for this.
“It doesn’t mean you don’t—” Cass says.
“It doesn’t mean I don’t want to say something.”
There’s a long pause. “I think I get it,” Cass says.
“Whatever you told him would be fine with me.”
“You sure about that? What if I told him you were the curse incarnate, come to seduce me and kill me and make me The Hotel’s most gruesome legacy?”
Lulu laughs. “Ryan doesn’t really believe in curses,” she reminds Cass.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
ON NEW YEAR’S Eve, Lulu tries on approximately a zillion outfits. It takes her two hours to get dressed, in part because she has to run back and forth between the half mirror in her bedroom and the full-length one in the bathroom down the hall. Then she has to do her makeup.
Naomi kicks her out of the bathroom twice to pee during this process. “This seems very exhausting,” she says on her way out the second time.
Usually Lulu would take this for a veiled insult and make a rude, dismissive face at Naomi, but if Naomi wants to hear about what’s going on in Lulu’s life, she’s going to have to get used to hearing about makeup.
“I actually enjoy it,” Lulu says.
“You enjoy it.”
Naomi stands in the bathroom door. She looks uncertain, actually, like she isn’t sure of her welcome in Lulu’s space.
“I like looking nice,” Lulu says. “I like figuring out how to look nice.”
“There isn’t one way?”
“How to make myself feel nice, maybe. Or how I want to feel. Which changes.”
Lulu’s finally picked an outfit: a pale pink dress that she usually wouldn’t pull out during the winter, but feels right, somehow, for tonight. She’s accessorized it with a bunch of gold rings, and her plan is to dust her eyelids and cheekbones with loose shimmering gold powder, to make herself look as soft and glowing as she feels all over. This will probably be something like her and Cass’s public debut. She wants Cass to be proud of her. She wants to be as beautiful as Cass, unaccountably, believes she is.
Lulu looks at the makeup bag on the counter, pens and brushes and pots spilling out of it, and at Naomi’s face, reflected in the mirror in front of her.
“You don’t just hang out with your friends like this? Do your makeup, get ready to go out?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Lulu, but I do not wear makeup.”
“I know you don’t at home. But at school? When you’re going to parties?” Lulu twists her head around to look at her sister. “Truly never?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Nao, it’s not hard.”
“You think that because you know how to do it.”
“The dumbest girls in the world know how to do makeup. Don’t you hardcore feminists think makeup was invented to keep women stupid and distracted or something?”
“Feminists think a lot of things about makeup,” Naomi says. “I think it’s okay to be interested in whatever you’re interested in.” She’s such a goody-goody, it’s truly incredible. “And,” she adds, “I think yours usually looks really nice.”
“Okay, well, if you want to see a master at work, watch and learn.”
Lulu showered earlier, so her face is bare. She puts on primer and dusts herself with a mineral powder foundation, which she can get away with because her skin has been behaving itself, mostly, recently. She blushes the apples of her cheeks pink and streaks the lines of her face with highlighter.
“See?”
“It’s like a magic trick,” Naomi says. “Watching you do it doesn’t mean I understand how it works.”
“It’s just angles,” Lulu says. “Colors.”
“Hmmmm.”
Naomi comes into the bathroom and leans against the closed shower door. There’s not a ton of room in here, but they both fit.
“Who’s going to be at the party tonight?” she asks.
“It’s at this hotel this guy Ryan is opening,” Lulu explains. “He knows Owen, actually, so he’ll be there.”
“How’s that gonna be?”
“Fine,” Lulu declares optimistically. “And I—my—Cass will be there too.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah.”
Lulu is working on her eyeliner now, always her least favorite part of this routine. Her hand isn’t as steady as she wants it to be, and she never knows how dramatic to make her wings.
“Bea?”
“Oh,” Lulu says. “No, not Bea.”
B’s back in town—she messaged Lulu yesterday, and Lulu didn’t respond. She saw the notification and wanted to wait a few minutes so she didn’t look like she’d been sitting around waiting for Bea to get in touch with her, and then she got distracted and forgot, like an idiot. She pauses what she’s doing to send: Hey babe happy almost!!!! Have a good night see you soon? And then goes back to work.
“I was wondering,” Naomi says. “I haven’t heard much about her this break.”
“We’re fine.” As soon as she says it, Lulu knows it’s a lie.
“Okay.”
Naomi doesn’t say anything else, and Lulu is grateful for the silence, which gives her the concentration she needs to make her eyes look right. She finishes the liner, adds mascara. Now there’s nothing left but gold.
“Where are you going tonight?” she asks Naomi.
“Over to Kevin’s,” she says. “Remember him?”
One of Naomi’s high school friends.
“Just a house party?”
“Mmmhmmm.”
“Want me to do your makeup?”
“Oh,” Naomi says. “I don’t, I mean—”
“Subtle,” Lulu says. “Like, we could do just the eyes, or a bold lip. For fun. For something new.”
“That would be really nice, actually,” Naomi says. “If you don’t mind. If you have time.”
“I told you,” Lulu says. “For me, this is the fun part.”
She doesn’t tell Naomi, but it’s the first time she’s felt completely like herself since the Sloane Flash. Just a girl getting prettied up, getting ready to meet her friends at a party, to kiss someone she’s dying to kiss, to allow herself fizz and pleasure and beauty and fun.
* * *
Bea doesn’t write Lulu back. Instead, Lulu watches Bea’s Flashes of herself preparing for the night—she’s spending it in, with Rich, while her parents are out at some party.
* * *
What are you wearing, Lulu asks Cass, and Cass responds with, No, no peeking.
Will I like it?
I hope so.
I think I will.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THE HOTEL IS dressed up for the occasion. There are lights in the trees that line the driveway and all of the cars are parked, neat and gleaming, in their spots. Uniformed valet attendants usher Lulu from her Ryde into the lobby. A waiter hands her a glass of champagne as soon as she walks in the door.
Lulu doesn’t know what she was expecting, but this is a grown-up party. Roman Sr. is holding court in one corner, and she recognizes a handful of minor celebrities milling around too: a girl who makes a living doing sponsored content on her Flash; a guy who turned his YouTube channel’s hyper-physical pranks into a career in action blockbusters.
There’s something slippery in the air tonight. It’s unnerving to watc
h a place that was a private hideaway become just another part of the adult world, a place you can transact your way into.
Lulu wishes she didn’t feel so weird about it. Isn’t she supposed to want to belong here? Shouldn’t she feel special and sophisticated, to be drinking expensive champagne among all of these glittery, wealthy, well-known people?
She doesn’t, though. She misses the raw quality that The Hotel had before it was finished, when it was still a secret. When it was just her and her friends, and no one could see them, or find them, or make them behave.
This place used to be so uncivilized.
She wonders how Cass is handling the end of her secret garden. She can’t find her right away. Instead, Lulu spots Ryan talking to the girl from Flash. He’s wearing a black button-down and skinny black jeans. He looks remote, slightly, like he’s one layer removed from everyone else in the room.
Cass is, predictably, trying to hide in a corner. She can’t camouflage herself tonight, though, because she looks too beautiful: She’s wearing a deep crimson dress cut low down the pale expanse of her back, revealing the line of her spine, the wings of her shoulder blades.
She looks like cream and blood, a breathing swirl of beauty and danger.
Lulu walks across the room to her. Cass has a champagne flute of her own. When Lulu kisses her, their mouths are made of sharpness and air. Cass smiles into the kiss. It only lasts a second. It sets Lulu’s blood on fire.
“You excited for this?” Cass asks quietly.
“What, the new year? Of course I am. I like a fresh start.”
“No,” Cass says. “Didn’t Ryan—he didn’t tell you about the surprise?”
“There’s another surprise? Is it going to be as cold as the pool was?”
Cass frowns. “He said he was gonna tell you,” she repeats. “But I guess he’s been busy. He probably forgot.” She looks around for him. “I guess it’s okay if I— So Ry printed a bunch of the pictures he took from the process, and he says the upstairs is all decorated in them. It’s like an art show.”