I can do that, Cass says. This weekend?

“We don’t actually have to talk about them,” Lulu says as soon as Cass sits down.

“I haven’t even said anything yet.”

“Sorry.” Lulu ducks her head. “I’m just. I think I’m really nervous?”

“What, am I suddenly going to decide I don’t like you?”

“I don’t know!”

Cass gives Lulu an assessing look.

“Don’t do that!”

“I mean. It’s not why I came.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

Someone at the counter calls Lulu’s name, so she busies herself picking up their drinks, making a show of tipping a splash of almond milk into Cass’s coffee, the way she knows she likes it. She delivers them to the table with a flourish.

“I am kind of curious about them, though,” Cass says. “The videos. If you don’t mind talking about them.”

“Did I tell you about Mr. Winters?”

“No. I don’t think so?”

“My Cinema Studies teacher.”

“I can honestly say I don’t think you ever told me you were taking Cinema Studies.”

“Oh. Well. I am.”

“Makes sense.”

“Yeah. Anyway, our midterm project can be a creative submission. And he knows Ryan—his family. He’d said something about liking me as Ryan’s model. So I sent him the thing I made, the first one, for a grade.”

“Daaaaang.”

“I know, right? I’m a whole new Lulu.”

“What did he say about it?’

“He’s not that stupid. He gave me an A and moved on.” Lulu shrugs. “But then it started to seem kind of cheap to me, because, like, that was not actually a movie, or a thing about movies. And so it got me thinking: What would it mean to do my own work? Really do it? In a way that was deliberate, and intentional. Not, like, fooling around on Flash and being dumb.”

“Those weren’t—”

“I wasn’t serious about them,” Lulu says. “I’m, um. I think I’m being serious about this.”

“You seem serious. Or at least productive.”

“They’re boring, right?”

“I don’t know what they are,” Cass says. “Honestly. It’s hard for me to imagine what it would be like to watch them if I didn’t know you. If I couldn’t picture you just outside of the frame.”

“That’s sort of the point, I think,” Lulu says. “To look at how many places in the world my body has made an impression. Just an ordinary one. How many places it was, and isn’t anymore. It’s like—sorry, this is so pretentious—but it’s like, how can I construct a self-portrait that I’m not in, if that makes sense.”

Cass mulls this over. “It almost sounds like you’re trying to pull some disappearing trick,” she says. “To be in a place, and also not be, at the same time.”