Silver Lake isn’t Beverly Hills, but she’s pretty sure it’s not a cheap neighborhood. She’s pretty sure there are no cheap neighborhoods left in LA, or that’s what Naomi says, anyway.

“You’re right,” Cass says. “We’re not broke. Probably we’re rich people now, actually. We weren’t always, and I’m just not used to it yet, somehow.”

One of the most important rules of all: Don’t talk about money. It isn’t nice. Lulu says, “I didn’t mean to call you out or anything. We don’t have to talk about it.”

“No,” Cass says. “I would like it, actually, if we could.”

Lulu nods cautiously.

“Things just changed really fast,” Cass explains. “Growing up, like, we were fine, we had a place to live, food, all that stuff—but then my dad got this new job and we moved to LA, and what had been just fine in Santa Cruz didn’t feel like as much out here. But then the company he was working for got bought, and all of a sudden, you know. There was all of this money. I’m just—”

She shakes her head before repeating herself. “I’m still not used to it. The way people see me. I don’t know how to look at myself anymore. Because also, when we had less, we hung out with people who had less too. And now we have more, but everyone I go to school with has so much more than that. It’s almost like the more money we have, the more broke I feel, which is just . . . so dumb.”

Lulu nods. “My first year at St. Amelia’s, I complained to my mom that we didn’t have anywhere to go for the summer, like a house or something. I think it was the angriest she’s ever been with me. I didn’t know. I thought maybe she just didn’t know that’s what we were supposed to do.”

“She got mad about it?”

“Yeah. Well.” Lulu watches the streets slip by as she tries to decide what to say. “I think in part she felt bad—like she was ashamed that we didn’t have a summer house, and that I had finally figured that out.”

She’s never said these words out loud before. She’s never put the thought all the way together—that maybe part of her mother’s deal is that she’s embarrassed that she can’t give Lulu and Naomi everything their dad can give them, or that their friends’ parents can give them. Maybe she wonders if they’re embarrassed by her.

Lulu wishes she could figure out how to tell her that money is not why she’s embarrassing.

“What a fucking world,” Cass says. “You’ve always gone to private school, right?”

“Yep.”

“You know, I remember the first time I was with Ryan and he valeted a car.”