Lulu and Bea did Grey Goose shots in Isabel’s room, and they went to Lulu’s head too fast. Now she’s in the middle of the kind of expansive, tipsy feeling that makes everything in the world seem like a good idea. Lulu sends Cass a picture of herself standing still, surrounded by her friends dancing. I keep expecting someone to show up and rescue me, it says.

In the seconds after the message goes she feels incredibly, supremely dumb. She shouldn’t have gotten so fancy about it, all #aesthetic and stupid. Simpler would have been better. She should have just—

Cass breaks every messaging protocol Lulu has ever known and chats her back right away. I was just thinking about heading to The Hotel, she says. The picture shows her sitting in a room so dark that her body is mostly just a shadow on the screen.

And then: Come with?

Lulu slips out of the room before anyone can see her typing and ask who she’s talking to. She finds a couch to sit on and writes back

I’m in Brentwood
I don’t have my car here

I’ll pick you up

You sure?

I’m coming from Silver Lake.
Technically, all of this is out of my way.

Silver Lake. That makes sense, Lulu thinks, or she thinks it makes sense—she doesn’t know Cass or the neighborhood very well at all.

If you don’t mind, she says, and sends Cass a pin of the house’s location.

She’s concentrating so hard on not making any typos that she doesn’t notice Owen coming to sit down next to her.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi.”

“Are you causing trouble?” he asks, gesturing at her phone.

Lulu blanches.

Owen catches himself. “That’s not—you know that’s not what I meant,” he says.

It probably wasn’t, really. That stupid Sloane Flash. Lulu hates that she can’t think of it without feeling two distinct, unbearable sensations: the warm, thrilled moment of taking it, and the sharp, hot shame when she realized who she’d sent it to.

“Sorry,” Owen says.

They’re definitely not going to talk about this now. Or ever, hopefully, but especially not now, on a night when Owen has some new girl hanging around, on which Lulu is drunk, on which Lulu is leaving, anyway, so—

“I’m heading out in a bit, I think,” she says.

“Is it because of me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, O.”

“Sorry,” he says again. He means it. This is the problem with Owen, the reason she can’t—that no one can—stay mad at him for too long.

“I know you are.”

A cry goes up from another room, and Lulu hears the distinctive rumble of Jules bellowing “Party fouuuuul!”

“How can you leave such a super-cool party?” Owen asks. “So sophisticated. So mature.”

“I know, right?”