Ryan takes them up to his room and instructs them to gather supplies: blankets and pillows and candles, plus a big canvas bag and a bottle of vodka. The space doesn’t look much more fully inhabited than last time Lulu was here. She wonders where Ryan actually lives.

She doesn’t ask, though, out of habit. She’s so used to pretending to know more than she does that she’s almost forgotten how to let someone know she’s curious. Plus, Ryan and Owen are deep in a conversation she doesn’t want to join or interrupt. Something about the Dodgers’ spring training prospects.

Instead, she grabs the bag—it’s annoyingly heavy—and drapes herself in a blanket. She follows Cass back down the stairs. “You guys do this often?” she asks.

“Sort of,” Cass says.

“Usually without two randos along for the ride?”

“The Hotel is always changing,” Cass explains. “A year ago it was too dangerous to go inside any of the buildings, and six months ago it wasn’t wired for electricity yet. We got running water last week.”

“The parking spaces,” Lulu says.

“What you can do with it changes,” Cass says. “Every week it’s a different adventure. A different project.”

Lulu thinks of sneaking around that house with Bea, taking their dumb, funny Flashes, making each other laugh. She thinks of the way they find fun together wherever they go, and she thinks she understands.

Lulu and Cass walk out past the cars and through a small gate to a flat stretch of patio, which surrounds a gigantic empty pool. Cass picks her way around the perimeter to the shallowest point and descends the steps there, her footfalls echoing as she heads toward the deep end. Watching her walk is surreal: Lulu can’t help imagining the water that’s supposed to surround her, and how quiet it would be as she disappeared underneath it.

She half expects the air to feel different on her skin when she follows.

It doesn’t, though. It’s a little darker with the building’s lights blocked by the pool’s rim, but otherwise the same. Cass takes the bag from Lulu and unzips it to reveal a bunch of poles and more canvas. “Can I . . . help?” Lulu asks. She has no idea what Cass is doing.

“Nah,” Cass says. “Ryan and I have a two-man tent setup pretty figured out.” She starts piling the poles up by size.

Lulu makes herself useful by taking a swig of vodka. Her buzz from earlier dissipated on the drive, and now she’s just feeling anxious. She tries to drown the butterflies in her stomach with booze.

“From the bottle,” Cass says. “Bold.”

“I can handle myself,” Lulu says.

“I can see that.”