Ryan doesn’t flick on the lights when they come in. Instead he goes out to the balcony, brings in an armful of candles, sets them on the table, and lights them.
“You’re getting very witchy, Ry,” Cass says.
“I’m learning about atmosphere,” he returns.
Cass sits on the floor like she did in the bathroom, this time with her back against the bed frame. Ryan settles himself next to her. He doesn’t touch her, but he could.
Lulu knows that distance well. It’s a suggestive positioning of bodies—close enough for warmth, but far enough that contact has to be intentional. It occurs to her that she’s definitely the third wheel in this extremely weird situation.
She sits facing them, cross-legged on the floor. Lulu is relieved when Cass pulls the vape off the table and charges it up before taking a hit. She inhales deeply, and exhales a curtain of white that obscures her face as it drifts toward the ceiling.
Lulu’s not usually much of a smoker—doesn’t like the heady, uncertain way it makes her feel, the unpredictable nature of her own self when she’s high—but at least soon they’ll all be messed up, and she can stop wondering if she should have left before they came up the stairs.
“I told you that party was going to suck,” Ryan says to Cass. Then, to Lulu, he says, “Oh, I mean, sorry, it was your friend’s thing, yeah?” In the candles’ flickering, forgiving light, Ryan looks searingly romantic. He’s dark haired and handsome, with high, finely cut cheekbones and a wide slash of a mouth.
“I thought it sucked too,” Lulu says. She reaches across the table and plucks the pen from Cass’s hand. She may not exactly know what’s going on here, but that doesn’t mean she can’t act like she does. That’s one of the rules: Behave like you belong. “And he’s not really my friend.”
“Why did you go, then?” Cass asks.
They’ve only known each other for half an hour, and once again, Lulu can’t seem to keep herself from telling Cass the truth. “Saturday night,” she says. “I don’t know, it was something to do.”
“Why did you go, Cass?” Ryan asks. “Because as I recall, you don’t think much of Paisley—”
“Patrick,” she corrects.
“Or parties in general.”
“Broadening my horizons,” Cass says. “And hey, look, I made a friend.”
Lulu’s phone buzzes in her bag. She pulls it out and finds that her message to Bea still hasn’t gone through. Instead, Bea sent her: not funny srsly where the hell are you.
Left on an adventure but got a little stranded. Can you come get me? Lulu writes back, relieved to see the delivery confirmation pop up almost as soon as she’s hit SEND.
“Hey,” Ryan says. “No phones up here. There’s only one rule at The Hotel—”
“I didn’t tell her,” Cass says apologetically. “Sorry, Lulu, this is Ryan’s, like, thing.”
“My friend was just saying she’s leaving the party,” Lulu explains. “I think she’s going to come get me. Give me a ride home.”
“You sure?” Cass says. “I got you here. I mean, I can—”
“Thanks,” Lulu says. “But I’m good, really. Can you give me the address to give to her?”
* * *
“What the hell was that?” Bea asks. Lulu watches Cass disappear as the gate slides closed behind them. Cass is so pale she looks like a ghost against the driveway’s dim. “Did you get a good Flash or two out of it, at least?”
Lulu blinks at her own reflection where it appears in the windowpane, shimmering under a passing streetlight. She realizes that The Hotel is the first place she’s been in a year, at least, where she didn’t take a picture or a video. Even before Ryan told her she couldn’t use her phone, it didn’t even occur to her to try.
“Wasn’t anything worth seeing,” she says to Bea. She doesn’t feel like getting into it right now—even though if anyone has gossip on Ryan and Cass, it would be Bea, who has gossip on everyone. Everyone who matters, anyway.
“Oh, you know you’re always worth seeing, baby,” Bea says. She reaches out a hand across the space between them, and Lulu leans gratefully into her touch.
CHAPTER THREE
BEA MAKES THEM both breakfast in the morning. It’s nothing complicated: scrambled egg whites, avocado toast. Lulu squeezes juice from oranges from one of the trees in the backyard. They eat at the little table in the kitchen, where the light is good.
“You look like a religious figure,” Bea says, her eyes fixed on Lulu’s image in her phone. “Like the Madonna bathed in God’s holiness or something. I think my aunt has this photo as a painting in her bathroom, actually.”
Bea’s parents emigrated from the Philippines; they’re pretty agnostic, but her extended family includes some of the most Catholic people Lulu has ever met. Which isn’t saying that much, but still. Lulu secretly loves the art in Bea’s family’s houses—she’s probably talking about her aunt Tereza, who lives in the Valley, in a sea of gold-leafed crosses—but Bea thinks it’s tacky.
“You would know, Beatriz,” Lulu says. “And, I mean, Jesus’ mom was a Jew too, right?” She tilts her head. “Wait, are you filming?”
“I was,” Bea says. She tap, tap, taps at the screen and puts the phone down. “Now I’m not.”
“Can I see?”
Bea rolls her eyes. “I muted the audio,” she says. “And you look great. You know I wouldn’t put up anything that made you look bad.”
“We don’t always agree on what that is, though.”
Bea scoots her phone across the table to Lulu. “You can delete it if you really want.”
Lulu flicks it back. She knows she’s been a little too sensitive about stuff like this lately. Who cares if there’s another unflattering video of her on the internet for a day? Wouldn’t be the first time. And Bea doesn’t even have as many followers as she does, which is sort of a shitty thing to think about, maybe, but it’s also true.
When she looks up, Bea is touching her fingertips to the faint violet of a bruise blooming just above her collarbone. Apparently the reason it took her so long to notice that Lulu had actually disappeared last night was that she and Rich, her on-again, off-again, were getting it on. Again.
Gross.
“Has he texted you?” Lulu asks.
“Not yet,” Bea says. “But I’d bet I hear something about that Flash in, like, the next five—”