Look - Zan Romanoff Page 0,24

says. “That makes a lot of sense, actually.” She’s been leaning back, but now she tilts her body forward and wraps her arms around her knees.

“Can I ask about you and Ryan?” As soon as she’s said it, Lulu understands just how much she doesn’t want to hear the answer.

“We’re,” Cass says, and then stops. “He’s my best friend.”

“Just a friend?”

“Nothing just about it.”

You’re hedging, Lulu thinks, but she doesn’t want to push the conversation out of the casual zone. She doesn’t know Cass well enough for that yet.

“That seems nice,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to have a guy friend who was just—who was only that. Or maybe an older brother, I guess? Best of both worlds, right? Someone who can tell you what the hell dudes are thinking, and also, you can date his friends.”

“You clearly don’t have an older brother.”

“You do?”

“This is his, actually.” Cass tugs the sleeve of the oversized plaid flannel she’s wearing. “So he is good for that. He would rather eviscerate himself than talk to me about dating, though, and he’d certainly eviscerate his friends for looking at me twice.”

“Eviscerate,” Lulu says. “That’s a good word.” She feels self-conscious. Maybe Cass is super smart. Maybe she’s about to discover that Lulu’s not. St. Amelia’s is a good school and everything, but Lowell kids can be kind of on another level.

Cass doesn’t dwell on her vocabulary, though. “You have a brother, you learn how to describe all kinds of gross shit,” she agrees. “Anyway, Ryan is—I mean, we’re not anything. But he can, I guess he can be a little possessive. I understand why people get the wrong idea about us.”

“He does seem . . . intense.”

“He is,” Cass says. “About everything, actually. Not just me. But it’s a whole thing with him. His family . . . if I’d grown up with his parents, I’d be intense too.”

“What are they like?”

“Ryan’s dad was almost kidnapped when he was a kid. You know that story?”

It’s one of the things that came up when Lulu was googling the Riggses, Roman Senior’s near abduction. He was ten when it happened, old enough to understand, and to have been terrorized by the fear of it happening again ever since.

“It fucked up his whole life,” Cass continues. “That’s why Ry was homeschooled until he was fifteen. They raised him to believe that he had to always be on the lookout for people who were trying to take things from him. Who were only interested in him because his last name is on a lot of buildings.”

It’s funny. Lulu has lived her whole life around rich people; she is rich people, technically, she’s pretty sure. But she’s not the kind of rich that Ryan is, or even Owen—lasts-you-generations-type money. Famous-last-name-type money.

Growing up around kids like Owen and Ryan has taught her a very particular type of lesson: Lulu has known since she was a child that there are some worlds she can walk into, where she’ll look like she belongs, but where she doesn’t actually live. She knows the language and she can fake the dress codes, but she’s not a native, and her passport might be revoked at any moment. There’s no trust fund waiting for her; her parents have taken excellent care of her so far, but eventually, it will be up to her to take care of herself, and she needs to figure out how to be up to that task.

So she understands what Cass means, and at the same time, she doesn’t.

Just because your problems are clichés doesn’t mean they aren’t your problems. But she still wants to say, Yeah, you know he’s not the first rich kid I’ve ever met, and My dad’s kind of a whack job too, and Maybe Ryan should go out more, and be nicer when he does, if he wants to have real friends. But then she doesn’t want to argue with Cass. Don’t get too personal, don’t be too prickly: easy rules. Lulu learned them early.

“You definitely don’t have to answer this,” Lulu says. “But—do you want to date him?”

“No,” Cass says. “Yeah. No.”

She’s switched something off; she’s hedging again. One of the things Lulu likes about Cass, she thinks, is that Cass isn’t opaque on purpose. She’s not playing a game. She’s just being private. And she’s good at it—maintaining a distance between herself and the rest of the world. Not keeping anything out, but not letting much in either.

“It’s not the same thing, obviously, but I’m