Lulu is pleased when her image blinks onto the screen. It looks like she imagined it: Her long dark hair is caught up in a messy topknot, pinned in place by a slash of gold. Bea made her laugh so hard she cried earlier, when the sun was still up and the world still seemed interesting, so her eye makeup is a little smudged in a way that suggests she’s been having too much fun to bother fixing it. She gave Owen his ring back but kept the chain she wore it on. Its empty curve dangles below the frame, where it won’t give too much away.

Lulu closes her eyes, opens them, and snaps herself in the act of looking up, so that the picture looks like it’s been taken by someone standing over her, catching the edge of her attention. Then she takes a movie: her looking at the camera, and then laughing, and then looking away. She thinks maybe she should be embarrassed—it’s kind of cheap, just her flirting with herself—but whatever, because it will also work.

She posts the files and then settles on the stool at the edge of the bathtub to thumb through the rest of her Flash timeline. She can probably kill at least another fifteen minutes before anyone thinks to come looking for her, and hopefully that someone will be Owen or Bea. If it’s Bea, she can talk her into leaving—going home and going to sleep.

If it’s Owen, she won’t have to work very hard to give everyone something new to wonder about.

When the bathroom door opens, though, Lulu doesn’t recognize the girl who walks through it.

“Shit,” the girl says, even though Lulu is fully clothed and sitting like four feet from the toilet. “I’m so sorry. Shit, shit, shit, sorry.”

Her hair is curly and copper red, and she’s milk pale, freckle-sprinkled, very thin. She flushes pink and takes a step backward, knocking into the open door. “Ow,” she says, and then, again, “Sorry.”

Lulu can’t help but be charmed. “It’s fine,” she says. “I mean, I’m not, like, using it. The room. I’m just taking a break. You can—” She starts to stand.

“No!” the girl says. “No, honestly, I’m—I was going to do the same thing.”

She’s still flushed, but smiling now too. Lulu, who endured years of middle school orthodontia, admires the almost aggressive evenness of her teeth.

“Kind of sucks down there, huh,” Lulu says. She sits again. “But Patrick’s parties are always like this, don’t you think? He likes getting shit-faced so much that he forgets there are other things we could be doing. Like, anything else. I’d play cards right now. Boggle. Anything but sitting around doing shots.”

“This is my first,” the girl says. “Party. Here, I mean. Not, like, my first party ever.”