Growing up around kids like Owen and Ryan has taught her a very particular type of lesson: Lulu has known since she was a child that there are some worlds she can walk into, where she’ll look like she belongs, but where she doesn’t actually live. She knows the language and she can fake the dress codes, but she’s not a native, and her passport might be revoked at any moment. There’s no trust fund waiting for her; her parents have taken excellent care of her so far, but eventually, it will be up to her to take care of herself, and she needs to figure out how to be up to that task.

So she understands what Cass means, and at the same time, she doesn’t.

Just because your problems are clichés doesn’t mean they aren’t your problems. But she still wants to say, Yeah, you know he’s not the first rich kid I’ve ever met, and My dad’s kind of a whack job too, and Maybe Ryan should go out more, and be nicer when he does, if he wants to have real friends. But then she doesn’t want to argue with Cass. Don’t get too personal, don’t be too prickly: easy rules. Lulu learned them early.

“You definitely don’t have to answer this,” Lulu says. “But—do you want to date him?”

“No,” Cass says. “Yeah. No.”

She’s switched something off; she’s hedging again. One of the things Lulu likes about Cass, she thinks, is that Cass isn’t opaque on purpose. She’s not playing a game. She’s just being private. And she’s good at it—maintaining a distance between herself and the rest of the world. Not keeping anything out, but not letting much in either.

“It’s not the same thing, obviously, but I’m always down for girl talk,” Lulu says. “Or, I mean, boy talk, I guess? Whatever. You know what I mean.”

“Really?” Cass asks.

Lulu doesn’t know what to say. It seemed like such a normal offer—the next thing you say in a conversation like this. But then the whole point of Cass is that she’s someone outside of Lulu’s so-called normal life: a late-night escape hatch, a secret Flash message, an abandoned hotel and a bunch of projects and everything Lulu usually doesn’t let herself think, or want, or say.

“If you want to,” Lulu says again, but even she can hear how unsure of herself she sounds. “Isn’t that what girls do?”

“Some of them,” Cass says. “It’s not really my thing.”