“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—”

As if on cue, her phone vibrates on the table. She and Lulu both break into peals of laughter.

“He’s so predictable,” Lulu says.