Look

by Zan Romanoff

  “Cass rescued me.”

  “Hmmm,” Cass says, not quite affirmative.

  “It was a boring party.”

  “All parties are boring.”

  “I know that now.”

  * * *

  Finally, finally, the meal ends. Lulu and Cass help clear the dishes. The two of them are alone in the kitchen. It’s the first time they’ve been alone in a room in a while, Lulu thinks.

  “We should escape,” she says. “Now, before Deirdre puts on music and turns this into family kitchen cleanup time. She hasn’t had all four of us around a table in years, I think. She’s going to milk it for all it’s worth.”

  “I’m down,” Cass says. “Lead the way.”

  Lulu looks around the kitchen and realizes they’re trapped. The only way to get up to her room—to any other room in the house, from here—is to go back through the dining room, which will give Deirdre another opportunity to waylay them. The studying for a test excuse hasn’t worked so far. The only thing they can do is go out the side door into the yard, which isn’t perfect, but seems like a better option than the rumble of enforced fun she can hear coming from the dining room.

  She motions for Cass to follow her, and Cass does. Outside, the night is sharply cold and black, the sky lit by the city’s muggy glow and a bare sliver of moon. Lulu wishes she knew if it was waxing or waning—it feels like it would mean something either way. But if the sky has signs for her, she doesn’t know how to read them.

  Instead she turns to Cass. “Want to see my favorite place on the property?” she says.

  “The property,” Cass says. Before Lulu can defend herself, she says, “Of course.”

  Lulu walks them down the hill to the orange grove. Deirdre had some gleaning organization come through last week, and the branches have been stripped of their fruit, but you can still smell the scent of them, soft sweet and sharp citrus, in the air.

  “Here,” Lulu says.

  Cass sits on one of the benches. “I remember you telling me about this place,” she says. “It surprised me then, and it’s surprising me now.”

  “Why? What did you expect?”

  “I don’t think of you as an outdoors girl.”

  Lulu laughs. She sits next to Cass on the bench, and Cass lets her.

  “I’m not,” she says. “But like, my backyard is hardly the outdoors, you know?”

  “What do you like about it?”

  Lulu closes her eyes. She feels her answers well up in her—a mass of feeling so tangled and private she barely has words for it. “Do you remember the night we met?”

  “Um,” Cass says. “It was like two months ago. So yes.”

  “I said something stupid to you about walls.”

  “I don’t remember that, I have to admit.”

  “About how I have a bad sense of direction, but I know how to navigate houses because they have walls.”

  “That sounds . . . vaguely familiar. And only kind of dumb.”

  Lulu shoves Cass with her shoulder. Cass presses back against her. Lulu doesn’t move away. Neither does Cass.

  “I like things I can understand, most of the time,” Lulu says. “Borders. Boundaries. Rules. How to behave myself for everyone else.”

  “I get that.”

  “I like it out here too, though.”

  “Limited wilderness.”

  Lulu laughs. “Limited wilderness.” She leans a little more heavily against Cass’s side. “I don’t know. It’s not that deep, probably. Just like, it’s pretty out here. And quiet. My dad doesn’t hang out here. Neither does Deirdre. It’s just my spot. It kind of always has been. Where I can be actually all the way alone.”

  “What am I doing here, then?”

  “Why did you bring me to The Hotel?”

  “I wanted to be alone with you,” Cass says.

  “Yeah. Well. Same.” Lulu leans away from Cass. She wants to give her space if she needs it. “Do you still want that? Do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lulu nods. She’s not sure Cass can really see her in the darkness.

  Cass says, “I just. Yeah. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I still like you,” Cass says. “I just— It’s been a lot.”

  “It’s been really a lot.”

  Silence falls between them. Lulu sits in it for a little while. It feels okay, being here with Cass, she thinks, not looking at her, not listening for her. Just sitting still together. Knowing that she’s there.

  “The thing is,” Cass says at last, “I’m here. And I don’t think I’m going anywhere.”

  “Me neither, then.”

  Lulu’s hand finds Cass’s. The weight of her, the strength, the bony squeeze of her fingers and the soft skin of her palm. Lulu knows Cass’s body by touch, with the answering weight and strength of her own.

  Lulu knows that Cass is going to kiss her in a minute. And she finds that she isn’t afraid to close her eyes and sit in darkness before that happens. She isn’t afraid to let her.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANK YOU TO Sarah Burnes for loving this little feminist book from the first draft, and Jessica Dandino Garrison, Ellen Cormier, Nancy Mercado, Lauri Hornik, Regina Castillo, and everyone else at Dial for getting it from that draft to this one.

  Then Theresa Evangelista designed the (stunning!!!) cover, Cerise Steel did the gorgeous interior, and Lindsay Boggs, Elyse Marshall, Shanta Newlin, Elise Gibbs, and everyone at Penguin helped make sure people would eventually read it.

  I am deeply grateful to all of you for your work in transforming this thing from a word document into an actual book.

  This is the second novel I’ve written almost entirely at Dinosaur Coffee; thanks for the ginger tonics and all the company, dudes.

  Thank you to the women of Strong Sports Gym, and even some of the men. #YALi(f)t, bro?

  Mushanto: As always, mushanto.

  Mom, Dad, Tiny: I love you.

  My tireless, tireless friends, my extended & chosen family: I love you too.

  Thank you to the people who gave me some perspective on the perspectives in this book that aren’t mine: Gina Delvac, Catie Disabato, Sharifa Love, Maura Milan, and Amy Spalding. For early reads, thank you to Amada Chicago Lewis, Miranda Popkey, and Darcy Vebber. Writing is best done in and with community, and I’m infinitely lucky to have you all as part of mine.

  Karina Longworth’s book Seduction: Sex, Lies and Stardom in Howard Hughes’ Hollywood came along at exactly the moment I needed some historical perspective on how silent-era Hollywood had operated. Beauty, Power, Danger doesn’t exist, but You Must Remember This does, and it’s excellent.

  This book was also inspired and informed by other women’s tellings of the Bluebeard story, in particular Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, Helen Oyeyemi’s Mr. Fox, and Francesca Lia Block’s story “Bones,” which you can read in her collection Roses and Bones. They helped me think through why I wanted such an old fairy tale wound through a book about Snapchat.

  And last but never least: Thank you for reading it.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ZAN ROMANOFF was born in Los Angeles and raised in its private schools. She is the author of the novels A Song to Take the World Apart and Grace and the Fever. Her nonfiction has appeared in Buzzfeed, Elle, GQ, LitHub, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and The Washington Post, among others. Zan lives, writes, and watches a lot of reality television in LA. Connect with her online @zanopticon.

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