Bliss thought back on that fateful night. She'd ended up talking to Dylan for what seemed like ages in that back alley. When they'd smoked every last cigarette they had between the two of them, he'd finally gone back to The Bank, and she'd reluctantly returned to Block 122 and Mimi's demands. Aggie wasn't at the table when she got back, and Bliss hadn't seen her for the rest of the evening.
From the Force twins, Bliss knew the basics—they'd found Aggie in "the Land of Nod" — the back room where the club hid druggies who'd passed out—a dirty little secret that Block 122 had successfully kept out of the tabloids, with hefty bribes to cops and gossip columnists alike. Most of the time patrons who passed out woke up hours later just a little worse for wear, with a great anecdote to tell their friends— "And I woke up in this closet, man! What a long strange trip, right?" and were sent home (mostly) intact.
But something had gone wrong on Friday night. They hadn't been able to revive Aggie. And when "the ambulance" (the owner's SUV) had deposited her at the St. Vincent's ER—Aggie was already dead. Drug overdose, everyone assumed. She'd been found in the closet, after all. What did you expect? Except Bliss knew that Aggie didn't touch drugs. Like Mimi's, her vices of choice were tanning salons and cigarettes. Drugs were looked down upon in Mimi's circle. "I don't need anything to get high. I'm high on life," Mimi liked to crow.
"She was … sweet," Bliss offered. "She really loved her little dog."
"I had a parrot once." A red-eyed sophomore nodded. She'd been the one who'd handed Mimi tissues in the hallway. "When she died, it was like losing a part of myself."
And just like that, Augusta «Aggie» Carondolet's death went from a tragedy to a mere springboard for an earnest discussion about how pets were people too, where to find pet cemeteries in the city, and whether cloning your pet was the right ethical choice.
Schuyler could barely disguise her contempt. She liked Mr. Orion, liked his shaggy-dog laid-back approach to life, but she was disgusted by the way he let her peers turn something real—the death of someone they knew, someone hardly sixteen years old—a girl they'd all seen sunbathing in the cortile, powering squash returns in the lower court gyms, or hoovering brownies at the bake sale (like all popular Duchesne girls, Aggie had a love affair with food that was out of proportion to her super-skinny appearance)—into a trivial matter, a stepping-stone to talk about everyone else's neuroses.
The door opened, and everyone looked up to see a red-faced Jack Force enter the room. He passed his late form to Mr. Orion, who waved it away. "Sit down, Jack."
Jack walked purposefully across the room to the only remaining empty seat in the classroom—next to Schuyler. He looked tired, and a little rumpled in his creased polo with the shirttails hanging out and baggy wool pants. A slight electric charge went through Schuyler's body, a prickly and not unpleasant sensation. What had changed? She'd sat next to him before, and he was always invisible to her, until now. He didn't meet her eye, and she was too frightened and self-conscious to look at him. It was odd to think they were both there that evening. So close to where Aggie had died.
But now another Mimi disciple was prattling about her hamster, who'd starved to death when they went on vacation. "I just loved Bobo so much," she sobbed into a handkerchief as the rest of the class voiced their sympathy. Tales of the demise of a similarly beloved lizard, canary, and rabbit were next on deck.
Schuyler rolled her eyes and doodled in the margins of her notebook. It was her way of zoning out from the world. When she couldn't take it anymore—her spoiled classmates' navel-gazing rants, endless math lectures, the yawn-inducing properties of single-cell division—she retreated into pen and paper. She'd always loved to draw. Anime girls and saucer-eyed boys. Dragons. Ghosts. Shoes. She was absentmindedly sketching Jack's profile when a hand reached out and scrawled a note on top of her page.
She looked up, startled, instinctively covering her drawing.
Jack Force nodded somberly at her, tapping on her notebook with a pencil, directing her gaze to the words he'd written.
Aggie didn't die of an overdose. Aggie was murdered.
CHAPTER 7
A gleaming Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow was waiting in front of the Duchesne gates when Bliss emerged. She felt slightly embarrassed, like she always did when she saw the car. She saw her half sister, Jordan, who was eleven and in the sixth grade, waiting for her. They had let the lower form out early too, even though they hardly knew Aggie.
The door to the Rolls opened, and a pair of long legs stepped out of the car. Bliss's stepmother, the former BobiAnne Shepherd, wearing a tight pink velour tracksuit with the zipper pulled down to reveal her ample bosom, and high-heeled Gucci clogs, began looking frantically around the clustered students.
Bliss wished, not for the first time, that her stepmother would let her take a cab or walk home like every other kid at Duchesne. The Rolls, the Juicy, the eleven-carat diamond, it was all so Texas. Bliss had learned, from her two months in Manhattan, that it was all about stealth wealth. The richest kids in class wore Old Navy and were on strict allowances. If they needed a car, their parents made sure it was a sleek and unobtrusive black Town Car. Even Mimi took cabs. Flashy displays of status and affluence were looked down upon. Of course, these were also the same kids who wore pre-stained jeans and unraveling sweaters from precious SoHo boutiques that charged in the five figures. It was all right to look poor, but actually being poor was completely inexcusable.
At first, everyone at school thought Bliss was a scholarship kid, with her fake-looking Chanel bag and her too-shiny shoes. But the appearance of the Silver Shadow Rolls every afternoon soon put an end to that rumor. The Llewellyns were loaded, all right, but in a vulgar, cartoonish, laughable fashion, which was almost as bad as having no money, but not quite.
"Darlings!" BobiAnne trilled, her voice carrying down the block. "I was so worried!" She gathered her daughter and her stepdaughter in her skinny arms, pressing her powdered cheek against theirs. She smelled like calcified perfume— sweet and chalky. Bliss's real mother had died when she was born, and her father never talked about her. Bliss had no memory of her mother. When she was three, her father had married BobiAnne, and they'd had Jordan soon after.
"Stop it, BobiAnne," Bliss complained. "We're fine. We're not the ones who were killed."
Killed. Now, why had she said that? Aggie's death was an accident. A drug overdose. But the word had come out naturally, without her even thinking about it. Why?
"I do wish you'd call me Mama, darlin'. I know, I know. I heard. The poor Carondolet girl. Her mother is in shock, the poor thing. Get in, get in."
Bliss followed her sister inside the car. Jordan was stoic as usual, taking her mother's histrionic ministrations with a studied indifference. Her sister couldn't have been more dissimilar to her. Whereas Bliss was tall and willowy, Jordan was short and stocky. Bliss was strikingly beautiful, but Jordan was so plain she was almost homely, a fact that BobiAnne never failed to point out. "As different as a swan from a water buffalo!" she lamented. BobiAnne was always trying to put Jordan on some kind of diet and admonishing her for her lack of interest in fashion or a "beauty regimen" while praising Bliss's looks to the heavens, which aggravated Bliss even more.
"You girls are not to go out anymore without a chaperone. You especially, Bliss, no more sneaking out with Mimi Force to god knows where. You're to be home every night by nine." BobiAnne said, nervously gnawing on her thumbnail. Bliss rolled her eyes. So now just because some girl died at a nightclub she had some kind of curfew? When did her stepmother even care about stuff like this? Bliss had been going to parties since seventh grade. She'd had her first taste of alcohol then, and had gotten stupid-drunk at the fairgrounds that year; her friend's older sister had had to come and pick her up after she'd vomited and passed out in the haystack behind the Ferris Wheel.
"Your father insists," BobiAnne said anxiously. "Now, don't y'all give me any more trouble about it, y'hear?"
The Rolls pulled away fr
om the Duchesne gates, drove down the length of the block, and made a U-turn to stop in front of the Llewellyn's apartment building right across the street.
They exited the car and walked into a palatial apartment building. The Anthetum was one of the oldest and most prestigious addresses in the city. The Llewellyn abode was a triplex penthouse on the top floor. BobiAnne had commissioned several interior designers to decorate the place, and had even given the apartment a grand name, Penthouse des Rêves (Penthouse of Dreams) even though all the French she knew could fit in a dress tag (Dry Clean Seulement). Each room in the apartment was decorated in flamboyant, peacock fashion, and no expense had been spared, from the floor-standing eighteen-carat gold candelabras in the dining room to the diamond-encrusted soap dishes in the powder room.
There was the «Versace» sitting room, filled with the dead designer's antiques that BobiAnne had scooped up at the auction, filled to the brim with sunburst mirrors, gold gilt china cabinets, and bombastic Italian nude sculpture. Another room was the «Bali» room, with wall-to-wall mahogany armoires, rough wooden benches, and bamboo bird cages. Every item in the room was an authentic, extremely rare and expensive South Asian artifact, but because there were so many of them, the overall effect was that of a fire sale at Pier 1 Imports. There was even a «Cinderella» room, modeled after the exhibit at Disney World—complete with a tiara-wearing mannequin in a dress held up by two fiberglass birds attached to the ceiling.
Bliss thought Penthouse de Crap would be more fitting.
Her stepmother was particularly agitated that afternoon. Bliss had never seen her so nervous. BobiAnne didn't even flinch when Bliss trailed dirty footsteps on the immaculate carpet.
"Before I forget, this came for you today." Her stepmother handed Bliss an oversize white linen envelope. It had an impressive heft and weight to it, like a wedding announcement. Bliss opened it, finding a thick embossed card inside. It was an invitation to join the New York Blood Bank Committee. One of the oldest charities in New York, it was also the most prestigious; only the children of the most socially prominent families were invited to join as junior members. At Duchesne, it was simply called "The Committee." Everyone who was anyone in school was in The Committee; being a member elevated you to a level of the social stratosphere that was so lofty, mere mortals could only aspire to, but never reach its heights.
Captains of all the school teams were on The Committee, as were the editors of the newspaper and yearbook, but it wasn't an honor society, since rich kids like Mimi Force, who weren't active in any school activities but whose parents were influential New Yorkers, made up the bulk of the membership. It was snobby, cliquey, and exclusive to the extreme; membership comprised of only kids from the top private schools. The Committee had never even released a full list of its members—if you were on the outside, you could only guess if someone was in it, and only a clue, like a Committee ring, a gold serpent around a cross, worn by a member, would give it away.
Bliss had been under the impression they weren't inducting new members until the spring, but the packet informed her the first meeting was for the following Monday, at the Jefferson Room at Duchesne.
"Why would I want to join a charity committee?" she asked, thinking it was all so silly. All that hoopla over fundraising and party-planning. She was sure Dylan would find it ridiculous. Not that she cared what Dylan thought. She still didn't know how she felt about him—she felt awful about not even saying hello when he'd tapped her on the shoulder earlier. But Mimi's watchful eyes were upon her, and Bliss just hadn't felt brave enough to give any indication that they were friends. Were they friends? They were certainly friendly Friday night.
"You don't join. You've been chosen," BobiAnne said.
Bliss nodded. "Do I have to?"
BobiAnne was adamant. "It would make your father and I very happy."
Later in the evening, Jordan knocked on Bliss's bedroom door. "Where were you on Friday night?" she asked, her chubby fingers resting on the doorknob, leaving sticky fingerprints on its gold plate. Jordan's dark eyes peered at her in an unnerving fashion.
Bliss shook her head. Her little sister was so strange. She was so alien to Bliss. When they were younger, Jordan had followed her everywhere like a lost puppy, and continually wondered why she didn't have curly hair like her sister, fair skin like her sister, and blue eyes like her sister. They used to be friends. But things had changed in the past year. Jordan had become secretive and shy around Bliss. It had been ages since Jordan had asked Bliss to braid her hair.
"At Block 122, you know, that private club all the celebs go to. It was in US Weekly last week," Bliss replied. "Why, who wants to know?" She was sitting on her princess bed, Committee papers spread out on the duvet. For a charity committee, there were an endless number of forms to be filled out, including a statement of acceptance, that included a commitment of two hours every Monday night.
"That's where she died, isn't it?" Jordan said darkly.
"Yeah." Bliss nodded, without looking up.
"You know who did it, don't you?" Jordan said. "You were there."
"What do you mean?" Bliss asked, finally putting down the papers.
Jordan shook her head. "You know."
"Actually, I have no idea what you're talking about. Didn't you get the 411? It was an overdose. Now, get lost, puke-face," Bliss said, throwing a pillow at the door.
What was Jordan talking about? What did she know? Why had her stepmother been so affected by Aggie's death? And what was the big deal about joining some charity committee?
She called Mimi. She knew Mimi was on The Committee, and Bliss wanted to make sure she was going to be at the meeting.
Catherine Carver’s Diary
25th of November, 1620
Plymouth, Massachusetts
Tonight we celebrated our safe journey into our new home. We have joyful news — the people of this new land have welcomed us with open arms and many gifts. They brought wild game, a large bird that could feed an army, a bounty of vegetables, and maize. It is a new beginning for us, and we are heartened by the sight of the verdant land, the vast virgin acres where we will make our settlement. All our dreams have been realized. This is what we left our home for — so that the children may grow up safe and whole.
— C.C.
CHAPTER 8
When school let out, Schuyler caught the crosstown bus at Ninety-sixth Street, sliding her white student MetroCard in the slot and finding an empty seat next to a harassed-looking mother with a double stroller. Schuyler was one of the few students at Duchesne who took public transportation.
The bus slowly lumbered across the avenues, past a host of specialty boutiques on Madison, including the unapologetically-named "Prince and Princess" that catered to the elite under-twelve set—French-smocked cotton dresses for girls and Barbour coats for boys; pharmacies that stocked five-hundred-dollar boar's-hair brushes; and tiny antique shops that sold arcana such as mapmaking equipment and fourteenth-century feather quills. Then it was through the Central Park greenery to the west side of town, toward Broadway, a change of neighborhood and scenery—Chino-Latino restaurants, less snooty retail shops—then finally a steep right up Riverside Drive.
She had meant to ask Jack what he'd meant by his note, but she hadn't been able to catch him after class. Jack Force, who had never even paid attention to her before? First he knows her name, now he's writing her notes? Why would he tell her Aggie Carondolet was murdered? It had to be some kind of joke. He was playing with her, scaring her, most likely. She shook her head in irritation. It didn't make sense. And even if Jack Force had some overheated Law and Order-type insight into the case, why was he sharing it with her? They barely knew each other.
At 100th street, she dinged the yellow tape and stepped lightly out the automatic doors to the still-sunny afternoon. She walked up one block toward the steps carved into the landscaped terraces that separated the traffic and led directly to her front door.
Riverside Drive was a sceni
c Parisian-style boulevard on the westernmost side of upper Manhattan: a grand serpentine route dotted with stately Italian Renaissance mansions and majestic Art Deco apartment buildings. It was here that the Van Alens had decamped in the turn of the last century from their lower Fifth Avenue abode. Once the most powerful and influential family in New York City, the Van Alens had founded many of the city's universities and cultural institutions, but their wealth and prestige had been in decline for decades. One of their last remaining holdings was the imposing French-style palace on the corner of leafy 101st and Riverside Drive that Schuyler called home. Made of beautiful gray stone, it had a wrought-iron door and gargoyles standing guard at the balcony level.
But unlike the sparkling refurbished townhouses that surrounded it, the house badly needed a new roof; tiles, and a coat of paint.
Schuyler rang the doorbell.
"I know, I'm sorry, Hattie, I forgot my keys again," she apologized to their housekeeper, who had been with the family ever since Schuyler could remember.
The white-haired Polish woman in an old-fashioned maid's uniform only grunted.
Schuyler followed her through the creaking double door and tiptoed across the great hall, which was dark and musty with Persian rugs (so old and rare, but covered in a layer of dust). There was never any light in the room because, even though the house had several large bay windows that overlooked the Hudson River, heavy velvet curtains always covered the views. Traces of the family's former largesse were in evidence, from the original Heppelwhite chairs to the massive Chippendale tables, but the house was too hot in the summer and too drafty in the winter, without the benefit of central air. Unlike the Llewellyn's penthouse, where everything was either a pricey reproduction or an antique bought at Christie's, every piece of furniture in the Van Alen home was original and handed down from earlier generations.
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