Then he asks: “What are you saying? That I’m not a part of your life anymore?”

“I’m saying that you’re asking me to make room for you right now. To give you some of my feelings. I didn’t ask for that, O. For you to do that.”

“You never ask,” he says. “You have never in your life asked me for help when you wanted it, Lulu. How am I supposed to know the difference?”

Bea said kind of the same thing. Lulu looks down at her shoes. “You’re not supposed to be a person I ask for help from anymore,” she says.

Owen sighs. “I know that,” he says. “I do. But this is an extreme circumstance. This is—god, Lulu, I hate this. I hate Ryan. I hate that someone so small, so nothing, could do this to you. He doesn’t deserve to get to hurt you. You know?”

“I very much do.”

“I wish I could change that.”

“I wish you could too.”

Lulu wishes she could give Owen more, but she can’t. There’s nothing there to offer. Her feelings are still too tender, and tangled, and private. He used to be the one person she would turn herself inside out for, but she can’t do that anymore. Even though he’s sweet to be asking. That doesn’t mean she’s wrong to refuse.

“Listen,” Lulu says. “I don’t like anything I’m feeling right now, for the record. The last thing I want is to give Ryan Riggs any power over me or my life. But like, the whole point is, this is not about what I want or deserve. Sometimes people just take things from you. They just take them! Whether you like it or not! Whether you asked for it or not!”

She pauses. Takes a deep breath. “I could pretend I didn’t hate it, but that would be a lie. And I think it would be a worse lie, honestly. I think it would be way more fucked up to sit here and pretend that I was fine so that you felt fine, and I felt fine, and tough, and brave, or whatever. There’s nothing either of us can do about it right now. I’m fucked up about it. I just am.”

Lulu turns away from him, faces out over the canyon, the houses and the roads, the cars, the school, the brush and the trees and lawns below. “I’m! Really! Fucked! Up! About! This!” she yells. She half expects her voice to echo, but it doesn’t. There’s just the sound of it in the moment, and then the quiet that comes after.