Lulu puts her head on the table. Its surface is hard and cold. She likes that. She likes that it’s exactly and only what it is.

“Okay,” Lulu says. “I already told you: I’m bad. I’m the worst one. What do you want from me, Cass?”

Cass doesn’t say anything for a while. She drinks her coffee. Lulu thinks this is the longest she’s sat with someone in—she can’t remember how long, where neither of them is saying anything, or looking at her phone.

“I read the book you got me,” Cass says, finally. “For Christmas. Have you read it?”

“No,” Lulu says, and thinks, Another strike against me.

“It’s beautiful,” Cass says. “But mostly it got me thinking. Do you know how many adaptations of the Bluebeard story there are?”

“No.” And another.

“A lot. There are . . . a lot. Just like, all of these retellings of this story about a man who compulsively kills women. Who murders them. That’s what we watch for fun. That’s the story we’ve been telling each other as entertainment for hundreds and hundreds of years.”

“She gets away in the end,” Lulu says. “Slays the monster. Lives happily ever after in the castle.”

“First, though, she has to escape.”

“I don’t know what you want from me, Cass.”

“I don’t want anything,” Cass says. “From anyone. Or I just—god. I just want it to stop.”

She puts a ten down on the table and leaves.

Back in her car, Lulu does what she always does when she feels like she’s dissolving. She flips the camera in her phone on and takes a selfie. It looks like all her other selfies: She knows exactly how to angle her chin to catch light on her cheekbones, to make her mouth look full and her eyes look wide. Usually it helps make her feel solid again: taking a photo, and posting it, and knowing exactly how everyone else is seeing her. Being able to look at herself the way everyone else in the world does.

But today the image on the screen doesn’t make her feel any better. Lulu recognizes the girl in the picture, but not the one sliced into pieces by the rear- and side-view mirrors, reflecting off the windshield’s glass. She doesn’t understand what she’s feeling, sitting here, coming and coming apart. The girl in the pictures has nothing to do with her today. She’s untouchable, and Lulu—everyone’s had their hands all over Lulu, haven’t they.

Lulu puts the car in gear and starts driving.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

THE HOTEL BEARS all the signs of a long, late party. The catering company took the glassware and the linens, but the lobby is still forested with bare tables, and the walls are lined with empty bottles and abandoned jackets and wraps. The front steps are covered in cigarette butts.