“Let’s be honest. That first time you saw me, what did you think?” Lulu gestures to encompass the space she inhabits: the pale lavender of her sweater, the tangle of thin gold chains around her neck, and the stack of rings on her fingers. Her pink manicure and pink mouth. She’s demanding something, and she’s not entirely sure what it is. It just seems important to press Cass. To be sure of her. To know.

Lulu says, “It’s okay. Scary party girl, right? You thought I was just some JAP bitch.”

“No.”

Lulu sighs and slumps down against the greenhouse wall. A puff of dust rises and then settles around her.

Cass comes to sit next to her. “We don’t have to talk about this,” she says. “I don’t even know how we got into this conversation.”

Lulu doesn’t look at her, because if she looked, she would see how close Cass is to her. Instead, she leans her shoulder against Cass’s, just the tiniest bit. Cass leans back.

“You were telling me about being into gardens when you were little,” Lulu reminds her.

“I’ve always loved a hideout,” Cass says. “That was really what I loved about it—not the garden but the secret. A place where no one was looking at me, and I could be whatever I wanted.”

“You could be nothing,” Lulu says.

“I could be anything,” Cass corrects.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

HER CONVERSATION WITH Cass shakes something loose in Lulu. All afternoon it buzzes against her bones, and that night, she can’t fall asleep for its persistent, percussive force inside of her skull and against the backs of her teeth.

I could be anything, Cass had said.

Lulu has a lot of ideas about who she isn’t and doesn’t want to be: She doesn’t want to be like her mother, whose life stalled out when her looks started to go, and has never been able to figure out what else about her might be interesting. She isn’t like Naomi, who never cared about having looks in the first place. She isn’t like Bea, who’s smart and determined and knows, at least, that she wants to be someone, even if she isn’t sure who she is yet.

Eventually, Lulu grabs her phone from where it’s charging on her bedside table and jams her earbuds into her ears. She knows blue light isn’t helpful when you’re trying to sleep, but she’s only looking at it for long enough to find the Connie Wilmott episode of the Beauty, Power, Danger podcast. Once it’s playing, she turns her phone over so it can’t glow at her, and stares up into the darkness, listening.