So she’s extra-glad to hear Bea calling for her as they leave their calc final on Wednesday. “Of course!” she says, before she even really registers what the question was. “Yeah, definitely,” she adds, reinforcing it for herself.

Bea has a perfect party house—a side entrance that leads onto a huge-ass backyard with high, thick hedges that block any nosy neighbors. Unfortunately, she also usually has parents around who keep them from taking advantage of it. But they headed to Gstaad early this year, trying to beat some of the jet lag, and so on Friday, Bea is throwing her first ever blowout.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Lulu says. She and Bea fall into step with each other, heading toward the parking lot. “So, like, ice cream?”

“I’m the one with plans now,” Bea says. “Rich.” She gestures to where he and Jules are standing, waiting for her to catch up to them.

“Oh.” This is pretty standard—Lulu ditched Bea plenty too when she and Owen first got together—but it’s been a while since she’s been on this end of it, and even longer since Bea had a boyfriend and Lulu didn’t. It’s one hundred percent Lulu’s fault that this is happening right now, but it still sucks.

“Well. Cool,” Lulu says. They’re still walking; they’re closing in on the boys. This conversation is about to end. Lulu doesn’t think it’s ending on a good note.

Bea says, “I was thinking you should invite your friend Cass to the party.”

She doesn’t say the word friend with any particular inflection, or irony.

“Oh, yeah, totally,” Lulu says. “You’ll like her. She’s great.”

“I’m sure,” Bea says. “Later, yeah?” She holds out a hand and Lulu fist-bumps her. Then she’s gone.

Lulu pulls her phone out of her bag, in a hurry to make it look like she didn’t just get ditched. She doesn’t even know if anyone is watching; it is, she knows, a ridiculous reflex. But as long as she’s just doing things, she messages Cass about the party.

Thinking about Cass reminds Lulu that she has something she’s been meaning to do while she’s on campus. If she’s going to be in the middle of someone’s curse, or myth, or—whatever, she wants to know more about Avery Riggs, and she doesn’t want to have to comb through the library to do it.

She goes to Mr. Winters’s office. He’s the Cinema Studies teacher; he should be able to point her in the right direction.