They look up when she comes through the pool gate. They’re both crying, Cass quietly and Ryan miserably, determinedly, like even still he needs them both to see, to know, to witness him. Like they’ve done something to him. Like any of this is either of their faults.

“Go away,” he says.

“Cass,” Lulu says quietly. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” Cass says. “I’m ready.”

Ryan’s temper flares. “Do you want to make me your enemy?” he asks. “Do you really think that’s smart?”

“I don’t care if it’s smart or not,” Cass says. “Fuck you, Ryan.”

“You were always our enemy,” Lulu says. “I guess I should say thank you for making sure we’d never forget it.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

LULU DRIVES THEM home. She doesn’t put on her GPS or ask Cass for directions. She just drives: down the hill, into the hum of the city, through sleepy weekend traffic. Cass stares blankly out the passenger-side window.

Lulu feels like a kid again, like she’s in her dad’s car on her way to the airport on the first day of vacation. Like the rest of the world is still cogging its way along, and she alone has been cut free—suspended, dangling. Suddenly loose and light.

She has power now. Not much—not enough—not anything that will make any big, real difference in the world. She can’t make Ryan take back what he did. But she can make it harder for him to do it to another girl.

She knows what she wants to do. For herself. For everyone else.

Lulu drives them to her house, where Cass picked her up just a few hours ago. It feels like it’s been days. She turns the car off but can’t make herself get out.

“You can come in, if you want to,” she says.

Silence.

“Not like—I’m not trying to start anything,” she clarifies. “Like, if you want to drink a glass of water before you head back. Take a nap. I won’t even walk you up to my room.”

Cass says, “I should probably go. I’m kind of exhausted.”

Lulu remembers the last time Cass came over to see her, at her mom’s apartment, the first day after they’d kissed. What happened; what it meant to her. To both of them. That first night at Cass’s they’d opened a door together; at Lulu’s the next day it was like they stepped through it and into the same room. Oh, Lulu remembers thinking, this is happening.