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Look

Zan Romanoff
Chapters (57)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. CHAPTER ONE
  5. CHAPTER TWO
  6. CHAPTER THREE
  7. CHAPTER FOUR
  8. CHAPTER FIVE
  9. CHAPTER SIX
  10. CHAPTER SEVEN
  11. CHAPTER EIGHT
  12. CHAPTER NINE
  13. CHAPTER TEN
  14. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  15. CHAPTER TWELVE
  16. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  17. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  18. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  19. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  20. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  21. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  22. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  23. CHAPTER TWENTY
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  33. CHAPTER THIRTY
  34. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  41. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  42. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  43. CHAPTER FORTY
  44. CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
  45. CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
  46. CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
  47. CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
  48. CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
  49. CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
  50. CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
  51. CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
  52. CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
  53. CHAPTER FIFTY
  54. CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
  55. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  56. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  57. What’s next onyour reading list?

Cover

Cover for Look

Dedication

FOR THE WOMEN WHOSE WRITING GOT ME HERE

Epigraph

Beauty is always something you can lose. Women’s beauty is seen as something separate from us, something we owe but never own . . . We tend it like a garden where we do not live.

—Jess Zimmerman, “What If We Cultivated Our Ugliness?”

Pretty girls don’t know the things that I know.

—“Magnets,” Disclosure, ft. Lorde

CHAPTER ONE

LULU ARRANGES THE image before she turns the camera on herself. Patrick’s mother is kind of a monster, but at least she’s the kind who makes sure all of the lighting in her house is flattering, even in rarely used guest bathrooms. You have to give her credit for that, Lulu thinks.

The light in here is so even that it almost seems sourceless. The shell pink of the wall is suede-soft, and it makes Lulu’s hard-earned winter tan glow golden in contrast. Everyone who’s not at the party will wonder where the hell she is when they see this.

So will the people who are here, actually. She didn’t tell anyone that she was going upstairs, and most of them don’t know the house well enough to recognize this room without context. The image will pop up on their screens at some point tonight, and they won’t be able to identify where she was when she took it.

They won’t ask. That’s a thirsty move, and they’re all supposed to be better than that. The idea of parties like this one is that you only get invited if you act like the invitation doesn’t matter to you.

Lulu explained this to her older sister once.

“Doesn’t it gross you out?” Naomi asked. “Treating your life like it’s a game?”

“Don’t you like to know the rules?” Lulu asked her in return.

Lulu was fifteen then, spending her afternoons riding around in Kingsley Adams’s BMW, learning how to smoke weed and how to drive stick, and how to tell if a boy liked you or just liked the way you looked next to him, stoned and pliant, riding shotgun.

She was wrong about how much King liked her, as it turned out, but right about the rules in general. There were rewards for knowing what they were and following them carefully. Rewards like when Lulu leaves a party to be alone for a little while, people assume that it’s because there’s something wrong with the party, instead of thinking there’s something wrong with her.