Look - Zan Romanoff Page 0,49
mean enough that she writes back for what. Then she drifts off to sleep again.
The next time she looks at her phone, Kiley has sent her a picture of herself with the text I am sorry, Lulu written underneath it.
Lulu’s first instinct is to roll her eyes. Why does Kiley think a selfie, of all things, is the right thing to do right now?
But she presses her thumb to the screen to stay the image anyway. Kiley clearly isn’t all the way up yet; she’s not even wearing her usual no-makeup makeup. She’s just . . . there. Looking at Lulu. Letting Lulu look back.
Another message comes in. you’ve been nothing but decent to me. you didn’t deserve it.
Has she been decent? Lulu knows she hasn’t been cruel to Kiley—not outwardly, anyway. But she hasn’t liked her. Hasn’t made space for her. Hasn’t been nice to her either.
Now she has an excuse to be horrible if she feels like it. She could talk shit about Kiley forever and Kiley would probably just take it. She would keep saying I’m sorry over and over again.
Lulu probes at the edges of her own feelings, delicate. She’s expecting to find anger, hot and fierce. Instead she finds blankness. She feels tender and tired. Lulu made the video. She posted it. Other people decided to make sure it would stay posted. It’s not like Kiley told anyone a well-kept secret. She just pointed Cass toward something she was always going to end up seeing, one way or the other.
I don’t know how I feel, Lulu sends.
Fair enough, Kiley says. I just wanted you to know.
Why did you do it? Lulu asks.
A long silence. Lulu gets up, brushes her teeth, washes her face, and gets back in bed with her laptop. Today seems like a Netflix-binge-type day.
Kiley messages her back just as Lulu is pressing SKIP on the title sequence of Friends. I hate seeing you and Owen together sometimes, she says. You look like you belong together. I was drunk. I shouldn’t have.
She asks, do you ever just feel mean?
Lulu doesn’t. She wants to be nice so badly it feels like it’s eating her up sometimes.
But underneath that, inconvenient and irrepressible, she has felt things that were wild and impulsive and impossible to ignore, things that sang under her skin until she had to find a way to let them out.
I feel a lot of dumb things, Lulu says.
I wish I didn’t, Kiley says.
Lulu says, Me too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
LULU IS FOUR episodes deep into Ross and Rachel’s breakup when Cass messages her, Have you ever seen the Connie Wilmott Bluebeard?
No, Lulu sends back. I keep meaning to watch it.
My brother is doing a backyard screening thing here tonight, Cass says. If you want to come over for it.
Here? Lulu asks.
My house, she says.
Lulu has never been to Cass’s house before. It’s on the other side of town; there’s been no reason to drive all the way east when they’ve got The Hotel to themselves.
Last night, Lulu found out Cass had never kissed a girl before, but that she thinks she wants to. Cass found out that Lulu has kissed a girl and told the entire internet about it.
Now she’s inviting Lulu over.
Don’t freak out, she commands herself. It may just as well be an elaborate no-homo-even-though-we’re-both-kind-of-homos gesture. She should act like it is. That’s the safest move, for her pride and her sanity.
Sounds dope
Dope, really, Lulu?
Dope AFFFFF
You’re a dweeb
Lulu sends back a picture of herself sitting in bed. She showered last night after her conversation with Bea, trying to wash the discomfort off her body, and then fell asleep while her hair was still wet. Usually this would mean waking up to some kind of rat’s nest nightmare, but instead for once it just looks tousled, like magazine bedhead and not the actual messy thing. She wrinkles her nose and sticks her tongue out at the camera.
Exactly, Cass says. She sends Lulu her address. Movie starts around 8, she says. But if you want to come over earlier we can get dinner or something.
Cool, Lulu says. I’m in.
* * *
Cass’s older brother, Dylan, looks so much like Cass that Lulu sort of can’t figure out whether it’s weirder to be into him or not. They have the same angular faces and slightly suspicious gazes, the same slender, lanky limbs and flame-red hair. He lets Lulu in, and then balks when Cass appears wearing his plaid flannel, the same one she had on at the