The big declarations are over. Lulu feels better, and also like that doesn’t mean that everything is better yet.

“I’m sad about that mozzarella,” Bea says, after a minute. “It looked really good.”

“It did,” Lulu agrees.

They both laugh, and then stop laughing.

Lulu asks, “What happens next?”

Bea says, “I don’t know.”

“Do you have anything else you want to say to me? Before we stop acting like we’re on a CW show or something?”

Bea smiles, and then sighs. “I do,” she says. “I feel like—like you have this idea that you need to take up less space. That it’s easier for me, and for other people, if you’re just this, like, boilerplate teen dream thing. But if you’re unhappy, and you’re hiding, it doesn’t make it easier. It makes it harder. I know you thought—I know that a lot of people thought your life looked good lately. But for me, up close, it was hard to watch.”

“I’m sorry,” Lulu says. This time she doesn’t explain for what. She’s sorry for whatever’s making Bea look at her like that—like she’s afraid of Lulu, or for her. “And thanks for sticking around anyway,” she adds. “It means a lot to me.”

“Thanks for letting me.”

It occurs to Lulu that maybe Bea has been just as scared to be there for Lulu—no questions asked, no rules, just there—as Lulu is to let herself be loved when she doesn’t understand why anyone would want to.

Bea nudges Lulu with the point of her elbow. “I mean, someone’s got to keep an eye on you,” she says. “And usually I’m good at it, so I figure, you know. Might as well be me.”

CHAPTER FORTY

BEA DRIVES THEM both to school in the morning. Lulu is wearing a short black dress her mother gave her for Hanukkah with a quilted black bomber jacket, black tights, and black boots. The sun is so bright when she walks down the driveway that she has to put her sunglasses on.

“Jesus, Lu, that’s a statement,” Bea says when she gets into the car.

“It’s just black.”

“You look like you’re going to a high-class funeral.”

“Yeah well,” Lulu agrees. “My own.”

The first two periods pass uneventfully; Lulu gets her midterms back and can barely remember taking them. Her grades are fine. Of course they are. You always look fine, Bea had said, and it’s true.