Kiley looks mortified. “I mean it’s not like—I don’t—I’m not creeping on you,” she says. “It’s a bad habit from ballet. The monitoring. And I do, you know, see you around, like on the quad, at lunch and stuff. And on Flash, when you post, there’s usually, like, not food? I guess it’s still weird that I notice.”

She let the door close behind her when she came in; Lulu watches her glance back at it, assessing the cost of leaving now, and admitting that she doesn’t belong here, versus what she can gain if she stays.

Lulu shouldn’t be surprised that Kiley collects herself. She laughs, shrugs, sits. “You know how it is,” Kiley says. “I mean, you’d be lying if you said you weren’t watching too, right?”

Lulu doesn’t know what to say to that. Of course she’s watching: what she eats and what everyone else eats. She does it so instinctually that she doesn’t even think of it as a thing she does, any more than she would think of breathing as, like, a hobby, or a pursuit.

But she doesn’t want to find common ground with Kiley. She doesn’t want to let Kiley put the two of them on the same level. If Kiley is dumb enough to admit that she’s trying—and exactly how—that doesn’t obligate Lulu to do the same for her.

It’s a good reminder, actually, that Kiley is young; Lulu has been playing this game longer than she has. All Kiley knows is that Lulu disappeared last night and took Owen with her. She probably thinks Lulu has the upper hand. The trick is to act like she’s right.

“My mom is gluten-intolerant,” Lulu says. Her mom is intolerant of anything that anyone has ever said might make her fat, but Kiley doesn’t need that level of detail. “Usually I figure it’s better to avoid it too, but, you know. Desperate times.” She gestures to herself and laughs, like her hangover is funny, like she doesn’t care if she looks like shit.

Kiley will figure it out for herself, if she hasn’t already: Acting like you take your own good looks for granted is the easiest way to fool people into thinking you’re pretty when you aren’t. Or maybe that’s a trick you only need to know if you aren’t that pretty. Lulu has never been entirely sure how much she’s faking it in comparison to everyone else. Maybe Kiley never has to think like this.

“Late night?” Kiley asks.

Lulu thinks, Wouldn’t you like to know.

“Yeah.” To be polite, she asks, “How was yours?”

Kiley shrugs. “I don’t think we hung around for too long after you peaced,” she says. “Wasn’t that good of a party.”

“Are they ever really that good, though?”