Cartwheel by Jennifer Dubois

going to tell her anything.”
    “What about the picture?”
    “What about it?”
    “Should we try to fix it, or what?”
    “Just leave it.”
    They went back downstairs, the crashing continuing above them. Lily felt a minor, untraceable thrill with every bang, but Katy seemed not to want to listen. Instead, she pulled out her iPod and sanctimoniously turned up the volume until the bass lines began rattling around the room, like the skeletons of songs. Lily, who could never bear to tell anyone to turn down music, said nothing.
    After a while, the sounds stopped, and Katy got up and produced some Neutrogena from her bag, even though Lily could have sworn she’d already washed her face. “You need to remember to lock that door,” she said on her way out of the room. Lily stared at her: She was standing in a bedroom doorway, holding a domestic object, and issuing a directive. Did she not realize how weirdly old, how fussily maternal, she seemed?
    “It was only Carlos!” said Lily. “He lives here!”
    The next day over breakfast, Carlos was swollen-eyed and chagrined; Katy chattered about her classes, her voice a half an octave higher than normal, until he went to work early. Beatriz had not emerged by the time Lily left for class. But when Lily came back to the house at lunch, she was standing in the kitchen, as though she’d been lying in wait.
    “Lily,” said Beatriz. She looked serious, but then she always looked serious. “I want to talk to you about last night.”
    “It’s okay.” Lily laughed—an indulgent, knowing sort of chuckle—to show Beatriz that it was not a big deal. “Don’t worry about it at all.”
    “Lily,” said Beatriz. She wasn’t smiling. “Do you understand the word ‘depressed’?”
    Lily felt a sliver of cold in her sternum. She was doing the wrongthing, the exact wrong thing, by laughing. “Oh. Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry. Yes.”
    “Do you understand?”
    “I’m sorry. I do understand. Yes.”
    Beatriz nodded as though an agreement had been reached, then bent and began unloading the dishwasher. “We’d like to have a dinner Friday night,” she said. “To welcome you girls properly. We thought maybe you’d like to invite the boy next door? Katy was asking about him.”
    “Oh,” said Lily. “I suppose so, sure.”
    Beatriz frowned. “We’ve been meaning to ask him around since we moved here. But it’ll be more fun for him, anyway, now that we’ve got young people around.”
    Later, in the bunk beds, Lily asked Katy if she thought the dinner offer was an attempt to get them not to tell the program about Carlos’s drunkenness. Katy was reading some punishing textbook by flashlight; outside, Lily could hear people laughing on the street. They were probably headed out to dinner. It was only eleven o’clock.
    “Like a bribe,” said Lily. “Maybe.”
    “No,” said Katy. “I think they’re probably just trying to be nice.”
    “It’s odd timing, though, don’t you think?”
    “You’re so conspiracy minded.”
    A bar of weak light flashed up the wall and onto Lily’s comforter. She could hear the whisk of Katy’s pages, the efficient squeak of her pen.
    “I had no idea this was going on with Carlos,” said Lily a little while later. “I mean, they seemed so happy. Their lives seemed really perfect.”
    “Well,” said Katy. “I guess we don’t really know that much about them.”
    Lily went over to the mansion the next afternoon, right after classes ended. The path to the house was overgrown with some kind ofscrubby grass that looked potentially poisonous. The knocker was heavy and shaped like the head of a mythical beast that Lily couldn’t identify. She stood back a few feet away from the door and waited for the rich boy, he of the perpetual darkness, to emerge.
    The door opened, and an implausibly young-looking person appeared. His eyes were beautiful in an obnoxious sort of way, and he had freckles, which made him seem tremendously