Look

by Zan Romanoff

  “No,” Lulu says. But when has Ryan ever listened to no?

  She already knows what this will be. If the cameras were on that night, they were on in the morning. The light would have been better. They would have gotten a clear view of Cass and Lulu waking up, and what happened after.

  She doesn’t know what’s crueler: Ryan letting her know that he saw it, or Ryan making sure she knows he kept it to himself. It’s the most violent tenderness she’s ever experienced, the way he assures her that he was careful when he was carving them up. He exposed them, but not the way he could have.

  Lulu understands that she’s supposed to be grateful.

  “This is what’s disgusting,” Ryan says. “You two sneaking around my property, getting each other off, pretending you were just friends, like nothing had changed. Like I couldn’t tell! I’m not stupid, Lulu!”

  He unplugs the hard drive from the computer and tosses it in her direction. Lulu is so surprised that she catches it.

  “You’re the one who releases revenge porn,” he says. “Poor Owen. You’re the one who’s always making herself the goddamn center of attention. Well, if you need some more footage to release, go right ahead. That should make you the center of attention for the next six months at least.”

  “Fuck you. Fuck you, Ryan.”

  “I’m done now. Get out of here. I want you to leave.”

  Lulu tosses the drive back at Ryan. “Keep it.”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about what you’d do.”

  “Still. That’s the only copy. You really want to let me have it? You trust me with that power?”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Ryan shrugs. “Good news for me: I don’t have to care.”

  He might be lying, but why take the chance? If there are more copies, it doesn’t matter what she does. If there aren’t—she should do this. She should just take the stupid thing.

  Mutely, Lulu reaches out a hand. The weight of giving in settles on her shoulders. She’s done lots of things that people told her were dirty, but she’s never felt stained by anything until right now. Making any kind of deal with Ryan feels like a bargain with the devil himself.

  “Cass will forgive me eventually,” Ryan says.

  “I don’t think she will.”

  “Oh please.” Ryan says. “You think you love her or something? That she loves you? You barely know her. You give yourself away for nothing, Lulu. I went ahead and made something, at least. God, it’s so sad. I know so many girls like you.”

  “Girls like me.”

  “Empty,” Ryan says.

  Lulu stands still and feels her beating heart, the pressure of air in her lungs and blood in her veins. She’s purple-bruised and incandescent with rage.

  He doesn’t deserve a response, so Lulu doesn’t give him one. “Thanks for this,” she says, and then she leaves.

  * * *

  When she gets home, she texts Cass. I’m sorry about everything.

  Cass doesn’t write back.

  * * *

  Lulu remembers this. She remembers how to be this person, scared and blank and numb. She knows how to hold still until it’s safe to feel something again. It’s like slipping into a second skin to crawl into bed, and sleep, and sleep, and sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  NAOMI WOULD HAVE questions about Lulu’s disappearing act, but luckily for Lulu, Naomi has to leave on the second. Once she’s gone, their mom leaves Lulu alone, letting her drowse away the days with Netflix on autoplay in the background.

  On Saturday night, Lulu sees her mother standing tentatively in the doorway of her bedroom. “I was going to make some dinner. I was wondering if you wanted some,” she says.

  Lulu’s been surviving on Postmates and misery for like thirty-six hours, which is the only reason she says yes. Probably she should eat a vegetable before she has to go back to school with sodium bloat testifying to just how badly she’s been handling this.

  Her mother’s not one to let that kind of thing go either. When Lulu appears in the kitchen to help set the table, her mom pauses her and takes Lulu’s face in her hands. “You don’t look good,” she says. “All this staying inside. You got pale.”

  “I am pale, Mom. We’re white, remember?”

  Her mother shakes her head. “You should have gone away for break. At least for a week, to get some sun. You’re like me—you look better with a tan.”

  “Sorry about that,” Lulu mutters.

  Her mother has the audacity to look hurt by Lulu’s tone.

  Dinner is awkward. Lulu listens to her fork tines scrape across the plate and the sound of water in her mouth, gulped down her throat. Her mother asks desultory questions: What time will you head back to your dad’s tomorrow? Are you excited about the new semester? Any news about college?

  When Lulu’s exhausted her answers (The afternoon, at some point; Sure, yeah; No, Mom), the quiet stretches out, thick and heavy between them.

  “Did you—” her mom starts. “It seems like maybe you and Owen broke up again.”

  “No. Just once.”

  “Okay.”

  When Lulu looks up, her mother is looking at her plate. She’s taken off the day’s makeup, and her long, dark hair is pulled back from her face, and just for a moment, Lulu can see her sister in her mother’s features—not a vision, but an echo or a ripple, knowable only in motion. If Lulu spent years thinking Naomi was a stranger, she’s never even bothered to wonder about her mom.

  “I got dumped by someone else,” Lulu says.

  “Who was he?”

  Lulu says, “She.”

  “She,” her mother agrees.

  Lulu takes a deep breath. So that’s it, huh.

  She’s glad her mother isn’t going to make a big deal out of it or anything.

  She allows herself a moment to wish it hadn’t felt like a big deal to her to say it.

  She tries to imagine what it would be like to live somewhere—to know someone—she wouldn’t have to tell. Who would expect it. Who would have seen it coming, because they’d been there themselves.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lulu says.

  “Okay,” her mother says again.

  Lulu takes a last bite of her dinner. She chews and swallows it. “Have you ever thought about doing anything other than acting?” she asks.

  “What, sweetheart?”

  “I was just wondering.” Lulu shrugs.

  “Not really.” Her mother touches her napkin to the corners of her lips, even though she’s not wearing any lipstick. “Even if it’s not what you’d call fulfilling these days, it certainly pays the bills.”

  “Yeah. No. It just seems like it could get exhausting, being looked at that much.”

  Her mother gives her a mock-demure smile. “Who doesn’t love attention?” she purrs. She tosses her ponytail over her shoulder. She looks past Lulu, into space. “Some days it can be a little much,” she says. “Some days—but then, it used to bother me more when I was younger. Now if I’m not on set, no one looks at me at all. I’m too old for that.” Her gaze shifts back to Lulu, frank and certain. “So no. I don’t think about stopping. At least not for that reason. I could do without the hours. And some of these directors—well, you know how it is. This town.”

  Lulu relaxes into the familiarity of her mother’s monologue on how disgusting the men are in Hollywood. She’s heard it all her life, and she’s always thought of it as a brag: her mom’s way of reminding everyone that she’s still hot enough to get hit on every time she goes to work.

  Tonight, though, for the first time, she can hear the nerves in her mother’s voice as she delivers it. This apartment, this dinner, all the things she can give Lulu, which she worries aren’t enough—they all depend on money, which depends on those men still
wanting to look at her.

  FLASH POST BY CLAIRE SAWYER, JANUARY 4, 11:00 A.M.

  “So like . . . can we talk about Lulu Shapiro, you guys? Is she trying to make some kind of move to be an actual model or something? I didn’t think the lesbian thing in the fall was a stunt—I have friends who go to school with her and they said she didn’t, like, talk about it, so it seemed like maybe it really was a mistake. But now Ryan Riggs is posting all of these pictures of her on his Flash, and there’s rumors that there’s another picture of her kissing a girl in his show, and it’s juuuuust a little sketchy if you ask me.”

  FLASH PHOTO POST BY FIONA VERACRUZ, JANUARY 4, 12:27 P.M.

  [Photograph of Lulu in her bathing suit from Ryan’s show]

  Fuuuuck why is @lulululu always so #goals

  FLASH VIDEO POST BY JULIET HILLIER, JANUARY 4, 2:13 A.M.

  “I guess I had to be drunk to talk about this, but I just wanted to say fuck the way Lulu Shapiro uses her sexuality for attention. Okay great. Bye!!!!!”

  FLASH PHOTO POST BY BRENDAN POWELL, JANUARY 4, 4:44 P.M.

  [Photograph of a shirtless teenage boy, flexing in the mirror]

  @Lulululu listen if you still like dudes you know where to slide

  THREE IDENTICAL POSTS FROM TAE YOUNG KIM, ASHLEY GUINESS, AND MOLLY KETCHUM

  [A selfie of each girl, standing against a neutral background, with the text #DEFENDLULU posted over their eyes and mouths.]

  DIRECT MESSAGE FROM SIERRA CARPENTER TO LULU SHAPIRO, JANUARY 4, 10:49 P.M.

  Heyyyyyy sorry if this is weird because we don’t know each other but I just wanted to say I’ve always thought you were hot and if you’re not dating that girl from the pictures maybe, like, let me know?

  DIRECT MESSAGE FROM JAMES BRONSON TO LULU SHAPIRO, JANUARY 4, 10:44 A.M.

  Keep posting those pix

  DIRECT MESSAGE FROM FRANK WALKER TO LULU SHAPIRO, JANUARY 4, 11:03 P.M.

  [Explicit photograph]

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  LULU DRAGS HER corpse out of bed on the last day of break in order to go to Sephora. She doesn’t need anything—she doesn’t even want anything. But after days of lying around, she’s actually starting to feel kind of antsy, and the mall seems like a place she can just, like, go, without needing a companion, or more of a reason than I want to try on lipstick.

  Century City is nightmarishly busy, and it takes her so long to park that she thinks about just leaving, but then a spot opens up, and the inertia of already being there—of not wanting to have to go home again, or anywhere, really—tugs her into it.

  The only nice thing about the crowds is that the salespeople in the store are too busy to bother her while Lulu swipes a thick fingerful of La Mer from one of the sample jars she normally doesn’t touch—all those germs. She taps on Tom Ford bronzer to give her the glow her mom was looking for, and makes her eyelashes thick and full with Dior mascara. Lulu builds her face into something pretty and expensive in a series of tiny, hot-lit mirrors.

  She expected some sort of hunger to come over her once she was here—usually she loves to shop—but there’s no magic in the bottles and brushes today: just her sad face and its bright mask. Lulu rubs it all off again before she leaves the store.

  She heads upstairs to the food court to get a snack before she goes, in the hope that she’ll honestly be able to tell her mom that she isn’t hungry for dinner later.

  “Lulu!”

  Lulu hears her own name and whirls around, too surprised to pretend she’s not startled. Before she even really understands what’s happening, Molly Ketchum is flying at her, a blur of blond hair and enthusiasm, yelping, “Oh my god I was just talking about you! How are you? It’s been so much drama!”

  “Hey,” Lulu says. “Yeah, huh. Drama.”

  Molly lets Lulu go, but she stays close and tilts their heads together conspiratorially. “Kiley won’t say anything,” she reports. “I have questions, and she’s being all secretive, and I’m like, Kiley, Lulu and I have been friends forever, I think I can know what’s up.” She rolls her eyes.

  Molly and Lulu have known each other forever—their moms met in some parent-and-me singalong group when they were babies. And they are friends, technically, though sometimes Lulu feels like that’s mostly so Molly can keep pumping Lulu for gossip.

  “What do you want to know?” Lulu asks.

  “Everything! You’ve been so mysterious. Are you and Ryan planning another show? Is that why you took your Flash down? Are you and that girl dating now? Or are you dating Ryan? Because I’ve heard it both ways.”

  “I’m not dating anyone,” Lulu says.

  “Oh my god, this is why you can’t listen to gossip. KILEY!” Molly calls to a group of girls who are sitting on a bench eating froyo. Kiley separates herself from the pack and comes over to them. Has she possibly gotten taller since the last time Lulu saw her? She looks lankier than ever, just, like, miles and miles of limbs.

  “Lulu says she isn’t dating anyone. Which doesn’t seem like that big of a secret to me. So can you please tell Kiley there’s no need to be Fort Knox?” Molly asks.

  “Actually,” Kiley says. “Can I talk to Lulu for a second?”

  “Soooooo mysterious,” Molly sighs. “Whatever. Go ahead.” She skips back to the bench where her friends are waiting.

  Lulu looks at Kiley expectantly.

  “I don’t even know the answers to most of her questions,” Kiley says. “I don’t know why she keeps asking.”

  Lulu shrugs. “Tell her whatever you want,” she says.

  “Look, Lulu, I apologized—”

  “I’m not mad at you anymore.” At least Kiley did what she did on impulse. She didn’t spend weeks plotting and planning to fuck Lulu over as thoroughly as possible. And anyway, that video was already out there. Lulu put it out there herself.

  Lulu glances over and sees that Molly is still watching them. “Can we walk?” she asks.

  “Sure.” Kiley falls into step with her as they turn away from the girls and the food court and head off in a random direction.

  “What did you want to say?” Lulu asks.

  “Oh, nothing,” Kiley says. “I just figured you didn’t want to talk to Molly.”

  “How did you guess?” Lulu catches Kiley’s eye, and they both laugh, and then look away. “I didn’t know you two were friends,” she says after a minute.

  “Same ballet studio,” Kiley says. “When we did ballet. She quit before I did.”

  “Right. When did you stop?”

  “Last spring.”

  Lulu had forgotten what it meant to be out in the world. She had imagined having to talk to people, but instead, she can ask Kiley to talk to her, and that means not having to listen to the inside of her own head.

  “Why?” she asks.

  “Do you really care?”

  “I don’t want to talk to myself any more than I want to talk to Molly.”

  “In that case. Um, I guess the short version of the story is that I had basically never not done it, and I wanted to know what it would be like to stop.”

  “Can you start again if you want to?”

  “In theory. I’ve already lost a lot of time.”

  “Did that scare you? Giving it up?”

  They pause in front of a store that appears to sell an array of shapeless, colorless garments. Lulu doesn’t even know what they are: dresses? Tops? The salesgirl inside is almost inhumanly beautiful. Kiley examines her reflection in the plate glass window.

  “Of course it did,” she says.

  They move on, walking in silence. Then Lulu says, “You said, before. You said that sometimes, you just felt like being mean.”

  Kiley sighs. “Yeah. Especially if—when I get tired of being the different one. The youngest at these parties, the only black girl, the one who has to explain—see. Just like thi
s. I try to be nice. Sometimes I’m not.”

  “I feel horrible,” Lulu says. She thought she could get away with saying it out loud and sounding—something, okay, maybe, but her voice betrays her and comes out harsh, broken and raw. “I feel fucking horrible all the time.”

  “Why are you telling me?” Kiley asks. There’s no malice in her question.

  “I don’t know.” Lulu scrubs a hand across her cheeks to make sure her eyes aren’t leaking traitor tears.

  “We’re never gonna be friends, are we,” Kiley says.

  “No,” Lulu agrees. “Probably not.” They’ve wandered themselves near the parking garage entrance; she has to leave soon if she doesn’t want to have to pay for her spot. “I should go,” she says. “Thank you for talking to me.” And, after a pause, “Thanks for listening. Thanks for saving me from Molly. I owe you one.”

  Kiley nods. “Sure,” she says. “I’ll remember that.” She pulls her phone out of her pocket and glances at it. “Oh,” she says. “Bea just got out of a movie, if you want to say hi to her before you go.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  BEA GREETS LULU like nothing is wrong, like the last time they saw each other it wasn’t midnight on New Year’s Eve and Lulu wasn’t in the middle of a minor mental breakdown. “Hey,” she says, slinging an arm around Lulu’s shoulders before resuming the story she was telling Molly. “—Anyway, it was like, the nastiest on-screen kiss I’ve ever seen,” she says with a shuddering flourish.

  “Ugh.” Molly shudders. “I’m so glad we decided not to go. Wanna see what we got at Madewell while you were suffering?”

  “I would, but I’m, like, starving,” Bea says. “Lulu, you hungry?”

  “I was thinking about eating,” Lulu says, and it isn’t even a lie.

  “Wear it all on Monday!” Bea advises Molly. She blows kisses at Kiley and the rest of the group, and hustles herself and Lulu out of there so neatly that even Lulu, who’s watched Bea work for years now, is impressed.