Look - Zan Romanoff Page 0,16

crimson and gold. Lulu looks at the camera in Ryan’s hand and understands the instinct to capture her, and all of this: to pin down the strangeness of this space, and the impossibly beautiful girl in it.

Lulu doesn’t think of herself as a photographer. She loves taking pictures for her Flash, but that’s different. It’s not art; it’s just easy. She found out the difference when she tried to take a photo class last year and wound up hating it—all the technical talk, f-stops and exposure length and blah blah blah. But she recognizes Ryan’s instinct: She knows exactly what it’s like to see a moment and want very badly to figure out how to keep it for yourself.

“Cass and I were just talking,” Ryan says. He barely looks at the camera as he turns it on and focuses it on Cass. “She says you’re big on—”

“I thought we covered that,” Lulu says. She tries to sound polite. What planets have fallen into alignment? Why does the universe insist on reminding her, over and over again, of Flash, and then, inevitably, of Sloane, and that night?

“I fucking hate Flash,” Ryan says. “Roman was smart to make it, but it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Another platform where all anyone does is make themselves look good.”

Lulu wants to ask more about Roman, but she knows better than to pry. She remembers the way Ryan and Owen assessed each other last night: the way Ryan said my dad, your dad, and that put them on the same terrain. No one here knows who Lulu’s dad is, or cares.

“Are you making me look bad?” Cass asks.

Ryan doesn’t answer her. He’s holding the camera casually, but Lulu can see, in its tiny screen, that he has Cass neatly framed. He says, “No one ever records their hangovers. Their actual first-thing-in-the-morning selves. I woke up like this is total fucking bullshit. It’s all just, like, filters, and the best fifteen seconds of the party.”

“That’s not exactly—” Lulu starts, and then stops herself. Does she really want to defend Flash? She likes it, but Ryan’s not wrong about how she uses it, especially lately: to make her life look beautiful and interesting, especially when she’s lonely, or uncertain, or bored. “So you’re doing something different?”

“I don’t photograph people, mostly,” Ryan says. “That’s not what I’m interested in, as subjects. It just feels cheap, you know? It’s not hard to take good pictures of hot girls.”

“What’s this, then?”

Ryan gives Lulu a look she doesn’t understand. “Mostly what I’m doing is process shots,” he says. “The Hotel as it’s being rebuilt. I’m documenting the whole thing so I can have a record of it.”

“It’s one of our projects,” Cass says. “While the space is being made, we make things in it.”

Ryan holds the camera up a bit, and it draws Cass’s focus. Lulu watches him watch Cass smile.

“You want to come sit with me, Lu?” Cass asks.

Lulu is glad she hasn’t seen a mirror this morning. That’s probably the reason she’s bold enough to do it, she tells herself: to sit down next to Cass, cross-legged, on the bed.

“You want some real morning-after shit, this is it,” she says to Ryan. “I bet you let Cass brush her teeth first.”

“Nah,” Ryan says.

Cass bares them in a grin. “See?”

Lulu leans forward as if to examine Cass’s mouth. It’s all a joke, just part of the weird elongated prank she’s playing on herself by being here, except she’s been thinking about Sloane too much, and here she is again, on a bed with a girl, her body inclined forward. She feels the world shifting around her, gravity rearranging itself. Ryan’s camera doesn’t make noise when the shutter blinks, or maybe he’s not even bothering to take pictures.

Lulu thinks, This is definitely not, and then nothing else because, thank god, Owen is standing in the doorway, looking pained.

“If I was going to puke somewhere,” he says, “do you have a preference about where I do it?”

* * *

Once Owen’s stomach is empty he feels much better, so Cass takes him and Lulu back to the cars they left outside of Rich’s house, their first stop last night. “See you soon,” she says, and drives off fast.

Lulu turns to Owen. “So that was . . .” she starts.

“Yeah,” Owen says. “That was awesome. I’ve never done anything like it before. I didn’t even know we could do that. How long have you been holding out on me, Lu?”

“Cass and I met