All About Lulu by Jonathan Evison Page A

then … God, I don’t even know exactly what happened. I turned my back, just for a second, and the next thing I know she’s got one of those nail fi le things, and she’s carving up her cheek with it, and she’s bleeding pretty hard. And I go for the towel, and she runs out in the hallway, and she won’t let anybody stop the bleeding. Finally, I got her to take the towel from me and hold it over the cut.”
    “Why didn’t you take her to the hospital?”
    “She wouldn’t go! She wouldn’t even let me get near her. She ran down the stairs and through the kitchen and locked herself in the garage.”
    “Is she okay?”
    “I don’t know, but yeah, I think. She wouldn’t talk to me. Chad got her to sit down for a while, but all she kept saying was William.
    I want to talk to William. Only William . And that’s when I came for you. I knew you’d be at that lame party.”
    “Gun it,” I said, at the next yellow light.
    Chad had managed to forcibly gain entrance to the garage. Having exhausted all attempts at communication, he sat silent watch over Lulu from across the garage. He was still sitting there silently when Troy and I arrived.
    Lulu was balled up in the far corner, in the shadow of a storage freezer, where the sickly light of the overhead fi xture could not quite reach her. She sat motionless, back to the wall, head bowed, arms wrapped around her knees. There was a bloody towel crumpled at her feet. Troy gave my shoulder a little squeeze, and Chad patted my back, and when they opened the door to take leave, the cacophony of the party fl ooded into the garage, but only for an instant.
    Skirting a stack of boxes, two bicycles, and a surfboard, I crept carefully over to Lulu and sat beside her, not quite shoulder to shoulder.
    She didn’t lift her head. Her body convulsed with tiny sobs. I reached out to set an awkward hand on the back of her neck, and when she didn’t recoil, I began to run my fi ngers soothingly through her mess of hair. When she didn’t object to that, I sidled closer until our shoulders were touching, just barely, and there was no sound except her muf fl ed sobs, and the hum of the refrigerator, and the faint echoes of a party. In this manner we sat for a minute, or an hour. I could’ve sat there forever, grazing shoulders, touching her hair, getting drunk on her anguish. When she fi nally leaned into me, I felt like a giant, a benevolent God.
    Eventually Lulu lifted her head just a little, and I placed two fi ngers beneath her chin and tilted her face up into the sickly light. I saw the gash on her face, running from her nostril to her cheekbone like a bloody zipper, and I could have kissed it.
    Lulu turned her face away. “Don’t.”
    I tried to turn her face back, but she wouldn’t let me. I tried to touch her hair again.
    “Stop.”
    But I persisted.
    Lulu pulled away and slid over, so that our shoulders were no longer touching.
    A cold hand gripped my heart. “I’m trying to help, you crazy bitch,” I said.
    She didn’t say anything. Neither of us said anything for a while.
    She crossed and uncrossed her arms, and wouldn’t look at me.
    “You’ve got the wrong idea about me,” Lulu said, at last.
    “Is this about kissing Kathleen? Because if this is about kissing Kathleen, seriously, I couldn’t—”
    “No. It’s not. It doesn’t matter what it’s about. That’s not why I—I just wanted to see you.”
    I slid over, bit by in fi nitesimal bit, until our shoulders were grazing once more. “Are you okay?”
    Lulu smiled faintly. “Am I ever okay?”
    “You used to be okay, Lu.”
    “Don’t,” she said.
    “But, what about—?”
    “Stop,” she said, placing a fi nger on my lips. “Let’s not.”
    I knew I had to let it go or I risked losing the delicious graze of her shoulder, the ecstasy of being wanted.
    “So, are you okay?”
    “I’ve behaved badly, William. Very badly.”
    “It’s all right.”
    “It’s not. I was awful to Troy. I was awful