All About Lulu by Jonathan Evison Page B

to all of them. You’re right, I’m a crazy bitch.”
    “Why do you do it to yourself, Lu?”
    She turned from me. “Because I get angry.”
    “At yourself ?”
    “Yes. No. I don’t know.” Absently, she traced a sideways fi gure eight in the oily dust on the side of the cooler, and promptly oblit erated it with the sleeve of her dress. “At everything, I guess. At the way everything works. At all the things I can’t control, all the things I wish I could make different, all the things that are gone forever that I can’t bring back.”
    “I know how that feels.”
    “Maybe you do.”
    But Lulu didn’t believe me, and I resented it.
    “You know what Harry Pitts would say?”
    “Of course I know what he’d say, he’d say the same thing my mom would say. He’d say that I do it to get attention, that it’s some kind of stupid cry for help.”
    “Well?”
    “Well, it’s not true. I don’t want attention. I’d rather be invisible.”
    “I’m sure glad you’re not,” I said.
    Lulu turned away from me again, toward the dusty cooler with her scratched-out fi gure eight.
    “We should clean that cut up, Lu. It’s probably not so bad, really.”
    “It’s not.”
    I took her hand in mine, and she didn’t pull it away. I gave it a little squeeze, and my blood went all bubbly like champagne.
    “Thanks for coming,” she said.
    “Of course.”
    Ever so gently, with the pad of my thumb, I traced the incision on her cheek until Lulu said it tickled. Then she rested her head on my shoulder, and my heart beat triplets, and the smell of her hair fi lled my lungs like alder smoke and lilies and newly mown grass.
    When I nestled my nose into the crook of her neck and gave her a little nibble, she let go a sigh that turned into a groan, like she’d been holding it in her whole life.
    “What’s going to happen to me when you go away?” I said.
    “Good things, William Miller. The things you deserve.”
    “What about you? What’s going to happen to you?”
    “I don’t know. I guess we’ll fi nd out.”
    I leaned into the crook of her neck once more, but this time she pulled away, and released my hand, and rose to her feet.
    “Let’s go,” she said.
    “What’re you gonna tell Big Bill and Willow?”
    “The truth.”
    But Lulu never told Big Bill and Willow the truth about her cheek.
    And knowing what I know now, I don’t see why she would have, or should have. She showed them the truth, again and again. She was the truth. That should have been enough.
     

     

 

     
     

    The Big Fat Deal
     
     
    The day Lulu left for college, we all helped her load up the old van, cramming its fuzzy orange con fi nes full of beanbags and boxes of books, baskets of paper, Hefty bags bursting with clothing, and, of course, her yellow, daisy-dappled footlocker, a little dented but otherwise none the worse for wear than the day that Big Bill fi rst carried it up the stairs of the Pico house.
    “Watch your speed,” cautioned Big Bill. “I don’t know how much that old van can take.”
    “I will.”
    “Honey, call when you get there, promise?”
    “I will.”
    “If you get tired on the road, pull over,” instructed Big Bill.
    “Okay, I will.”
    “And don’t you dare drive straight through.”
    “I won’t.”
    “Stop in Redding,” said Big Bill.
    “Okay,” said Lulu.
    “Redding sucks,” said Doug.
    “You suck,” said Ross.
    “Shut up, ass-face.”
    “You shut up, you musclehead!”
    “Faggot.”
    “Throwback.”
    “You two, enough!” said Big Bill.
    “We love you, Sweetie. Please be careful,” said Willow.
    “I love you guys, too.”
    And then everybody stood around a little awkwardly for a half minute or so, until Big Bill, sensing my need, it seemed, for the fi rst time in his life, mobilized the troops.
    “Well, let’s let these two say their good-byes.”
    And so they dispersed. Ross headed straight for Santa Monica Boulevard, presumably to smoke cloves and fraternize with his