“No,” she says. “I didn’t mean—I just—I’m sorry if you didn’t have fun.”

“It was fine,” Cass says. “It’s fun to see you in your natural habitat.”

Lulu looks around. Is this her natural habitat? She’s certainly spent a lot of time at parties like this one. It’s sort of funny, then, that she still feels so uncomfortable. That it feels like a relief to be invited every time. What has she done tonight except worry that she’s screwing everything up?

The answer is, drink to forget that she’s screwing everything up.

“You know me,” Lulu says. “I’m great at parties.”

“You are!” Cass says. She throws up her hands, and somehow Lulu finds herself stepping in toward Cass’s body, taking advantage of the movement to wrap herself around Cass in a funny, too-tight hug.

As soon as she does it she realizes they’ve never touched like this before. Lulu is shorter than Cass, and her head fits against her shoulder, and if she turned her head—casually, it wouldn’t even be a thing, really—she could touch her face to the skin of Cass’s neck.

Cass, for all she’s thin and spare, is also warm and solid. Her arm comes around Lulu’s shoulders and Lulu allows herself to stay there, laughing, feeling Cass laugh with her.

“Cass,” Ryan says. “You ready? The car’s going to be here in, like, two minutes, and I think if I miss another they’re going to kick me off of Ryde permanently.”

“Yeah.”

For a wild moment, Lulu wants to beg her: Take me with you. Get me out of here. This party—which she wouldn’t have questioned six months ago, which she’s spent her whole high school career working to keep getting invited to—is the last place in the world she wants to be.

But instinct holds her back. Don’t ask to go where you haven’t been invited. Act like you have somewhere to be even—especially—when you don’t. Hold still, hold still, hold still.

“Bye, Lulu,” Cass says.

“Yeah, okay, bye,” Lulu says.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

LULU WAKES UP in the wrong bed. It takes her several long minutes to sort that out: wrong. It’s not unfamiliar, it’s just not—But it is hers. It’s her bed at her mom’s apartment, because she’s on winter break now, and that means she’s staying with her mom.

Lulu allows herself a self-indulgent groan while one hand gropes for her phone.

Her mom’s place is fine, obviously. It’s not a hovel or anything, and Lulu’s not so spoiled that she can’t recognize that having not just one but two places she can live in is nothing to complain about.