“Yeah,” Sloane says when she’s finished. “That’s—Jesus. He’s a nightmare. But I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“What, because I deserved it?”

“No. Fuck. Has anyone said that to you? That this was your fault?”

No one but Lulu herself. She shakes her head.

“You know this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this, right?”

“What?”

“Do you know Emma Kushner?”

“No.”

“She’s our year at Sanderson. I think she went to the Center. I know her because—never mind. It doesn’t matter. It’s just that they dated for a little while when we were freshmen, and, you know, she sent him some pictures. He said he deleted them after they broke up, but it turned out he didn’t. Instead he was selling them to dudes he knew. Twenty dollars per image, fifty for the set. Emma’s dad went to Ryan’s dad and Ryan’s dad said Emma was a slut, and Ryan had good entrepreneurial instincts.”

Lulu remembers sitting next to Cass on the couch in her backyard, huddled next to her, pretending it was for warmth. Watching Connie Wilmott on screen as she opened a door and saw all of the bodies that had come before hers. How she knew, in that moment, that she was going to be next.

Lulu can’t save herself or Cass, but what if she could spare whoever Ryan falls in love with next.

“Now I’m sorry,” Sloane says. “If I’d known you were hanging out with him, I would have warned you. Emma bought the pictures back from all the guys who had them and got one of them kicked out of school for other stuff—he was selling amphetamines to freshmen on campus like some kind of criminal idiot—so people don’t talk about it, and I don’t like to spread the story. But I wish more people knew about Ryan.”

“Me too,” Lulu says. “Me fucking too.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

JUST TYPING CASS’S name into the to field of a text makes Lulu feel like she needs to lie down and take a nap. They almost always messaged each other on Flash, so at least she doesn’t have to have the app reminding her how long it’s been since they spoke. Still, though, her pulse picks up with each letter she types. C-A-S-S. Lulu has never made a fool of herself for anyone before, not on purpose, anyway. She’s always figured out how to do the flattering thing.

Fuck flattering, she thinks, and writes: