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Secret Society
Secret Society
Secret Society
Ebook291 pages3 hours

Secret Society

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

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Secrets, secrets are no fun. Secrets, secrets hurt someone. . . .

An eccentric new girl. A brooding socialite. The scion of one of New York's wealthiest families. A promising filmmaker. As students at the exclusive Chadwick School, Phoebe, Lauren, Nick, and Patch already live in a world most teenagers only dream about.

They didn't ask to be Society members. But when three of them receive a mysterious text message promising success and fame beyond belief, they say yes to everything—even to the harrowing initiation ceremony in a gritty warehouse downtown and to the ankh-shaped tattoo they're forced to get on the nape of their necks. Once they're part of the Society, things begin falling into place for them. Week after week, their ambitions are fulfilled. It's all perfect—until a body is found in Central Park with no distinguishing marks except for an ankh-shaped tattoo.

Tom Dolby makes his teen fiction debut with this riveting novel about a dangerous society so secret that once you get in, you can never get out.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateSep 29, 2009
ISBN9780061949838
Secret Society
Author

Tom Dolby

Tom Dolby is the author of the novels Secret Society, The Sixth Form, and The Trouble Boy. He was born in London, raised in San Francisco, and now divides his time between Manhattan's West Village and Wainscott, New York. He is a graduate of Yale University, where he received his BA in the history of art.

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Reviews for Secret Society

Rating: 3.1086957217391302 out of 5 stars
3/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I hate it when you spend all this time working on a review and then the internet decides it hates you and you lose everything.

    The Society follows four students from Chadwick Prep, Pheobe, Lauren, Nick and Patch. Phoebe, Laren and Nick are all invited to join the Society, a secret society in New York City that only the fifteen elite are invited to each year. At first the Society seems innocent enough but as time passes things become more and more sinister.

    The book opens with a death and then moves back to the beginning of the teens initiation in the society. I was dying to know who had died and I have to tell you, it was not at all who I expected. The pace of the book moves quickly as narration jumps back and forth between each of the four teens. Each of the characters has their own distinct voice even when they sometimes share the same feelings as Lauren and Phoebe sometimes seem to.

    My only complaint about the book is that we never really find out much about the Society itself. We just get a few generalities but nothing concrete. I wanted to know more about how the Society worked, especially since it was implied that this beginning was supposed to be the easy part where the initiates were supposed to simply be reaping benefits before the real work began. It sounds like there are even more sinister things going on and this beginning part was fairly sinister. There were also some unanswered questions regarding Patch and his family that are bugging me a little bit. I have heard that the author is writing a sequel and I am hoping that these questions will be answered there.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Secret Society comes with a wonderful synopsis to make you want to read it, and it has a very interesting plot to suck you in. At least, that's how it was for me.

    After reading a quarter of the book, I realized that this book hadn't reached its full potential yet. The characters weren't fleshed out so there was hardly anything to relate to with any of the characters. The plot was fantastic but I think that it could have been so much bigger. The essence of the plot wasn't fleshed out either, so when I ended the book, I felt like I sort of wasted my time.

    However, there are good things about the book! The main idea of the plot - a secret society that brands people and gives them all the success they want - is very alluring. I couldn't put the book down, because I wanted to now what would be the Secret Society's next move. It had a few surprises and confusing twists but that made it all the better.

    Character wise, I first liked Nick and Phoebe best. Phoebe was an artsy teenager without a lot of money. Nick was the handsome, down to earth, rich guy. However, over time, Phoebe became a whiny, annoying character but Nick stayed the same. At the end of the book, I loved Nick and Patch the best. Patch was adventurous and challenging. He did things that most others would be afraid to do and I always was interested in how it would end for him. I was sorta surprised at his ending.

    As a whole, there were some serious downfalls in the book but all its good things combined, I gave it three stars. I'm not sure if this interests me enough to read the sequel, though.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book was just what I needed...New York City...yet one more private elite school and sort of ordinary students...no vampires involved!!! The premise is that if you are lucky enough to get an invitation to this society...which you are not allowed to talk about or even ask questions about...your life will be perfection. Formerly closed doors will open, success, fame and fortune are yours for the asking. Now enter Patch...a very inquisitive investigative friend of one of the members. He will not rest until he knows more and perhaps reveals the secrets of the Secret Society. This is all I am going to say...but prepare yourself for a bit of a roller coaster ride and a surprise ending.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I have to admit that cover of this novel is was first turned my eye on this particular book. Although, I have to say that the cover and the book description did not live up to my expectations. I found this story line to be intriguing of secret societies and such, but I never found a point in this story that it just grabbed my attention and carried me through the rest of the story. It was a constant struggle for me to stay interested in the outcome. This would not be a book that I could whole heartedly recommend to my friends. Sorry for the negative review. This will be a Second Chance Giveaway shortly be on the lookout if you are truly interested in giving it a try.  
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Phoebe is the new girl at the Chadwick School, having just moved to New York City with her artist mother. Lauren is the queen-bee of Chadwick, rich and popular and hiding a troubled family behind her perfect veneer. Nick and Patch are childhood friends, living in the same building, but worlds apart. Nick's family is a bastion of wealth and power, while Patch lives in a small apartment with his grandmother on one of the lower floors. With a mother in a psychiatric institution and a father who died when he was just seven, Patch fends for himself and hopes that his prowess with a video camera will pave his way to a good college.As the high school juniors party at a club in the Meatpacking District, Nick, Phoebe and Lauren receive mysterious text messages ordering them to go to a close by location. Curiosity takes over, and the three teens find themselves at the Night of the Rebirth. As they are initiated into the Society, Patch secretly films the entire ordeal from a vent above. All of a sudden, 'doors' begin to open and the new initiates are offered chances at success they never dreamed of. Phoebe is given her own art show at a popular gallery at the age of sixteen, Lauren is designing a jewelry line for a famous fashion boutique, and Nick is promoting parties at the hottest nightclubs when he is not even old enough to drink. Is the Society behind these incredible opportunities and if so, what is the price of success? Who really runs the show and pulls the strings behind the screen? How do the initiates pay back for all the 'luck' they've been showered with? What will be the consequences for infiltrating this secret organization as Patch did? As Lauren, Phoebe and Nick become increasingly uncomfortable with the hold the Society has on their lives, will they try to leave its ranks or stay quiet for the sake of their success?After the Twilight series, I've become very fond of young adult fiction, and "Secret Society" by Tom Dolby definitely lived up to its shiny beautiful dust cover. Drawing on people's fascination with secret societies and the power they supposedly wield, Tom Dolby's novel is easy on the reader, yet full of intrigue and unexpected twists that make it difficult to put down. Mid-way through the novel, I felt that I had the ending figured, only to be completely surprised when I actually got there. I only felt disappointed at the number of story lines that were left unanswered, but even that is understandable given that there is a sequel in the works.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Where to start, where to start… hmm. Well first off, I was hyped for Secret Society, it sound original, fun and I loved the ankh tattoo idea since I’ve wanted one for… ever. Then I read it.The thing about Secret Society is that it’s actually pretty good, it’s just that even with everything going on nothing really happens. The kids get dragged into the Society, that they’ve all heard rumors about their entire lives, except for Phoebe who is the new girl. They know that by being in this Society other people have excelled, have been given their hopes and dreams and every desire, but when it comes down to it all it seemed like to me were empty promises and wishful thinking. They’re promised to have connections, but those connections fall through – they’re promised to have their hearts desire, but then whatever it is they want doesn’t work out. Now, I can see if maybe this happened for you know, one out of every 10 members, but it happens to ALL of the characters – why would anyone be interested in such a thing?A lot of the book is centered around silly things though – sleeping, eating, conversations that mean nothing – instead of what should have mattered more, like say… the Society. Since this IS what the book is supposed to be about. The first half of the book was interesting, but hard to get through. Nothing exciting happened other than the original initiation, and that was still for the most part boring and confusing. Then the middle was just… fluff, it makes me wonder where the other books will lead, and I have a feeling it might be round and round and round. There are some books that seem to be introductory only, and to be there just to lead up to the plot in the second book – like the author wrote book #2 first, and had to quickly fill in the reader about the characters and wrote the first book to do so, and that’s what Secret Society felt like to me. Other than the last 50 or so pages, which have some really interesting revelations the first part of the book seems to be slightly pointless, since everything the kids are given are then taken away in such a short time period. Things barely have a chance to go well before they’re going completely and utterly wrong, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what the hype could be for something like that.I think the most interesting aspect, plot or character, in Secret Society was probably Patch. His sneaky and infiltrating ways makes the book grab you at all the right parts. Patch helps stitch together all of the parts in the book, where the other plot points and characters are the arms and the leg, Patch and his discoveries are the body and the head of the book. Without him the rest would be pretty much useless.Still over all I felt like there wasn’t enough substance in Secret Society, I kept waiting and waiting for their to be some awesome twist, but even when the twist came it was only mildly unexpected. So in general, it was an okay book, and I will probably read the sequel, but if it doesn’t get better from there, then I probably won’t continue reading the series.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    In the circles of prestigious New York prep schools there’s a rumor of a secret society, a group of men and women tapped from the prep school population and initiated into a world that will open an unbelievable number of doors for them. Phoebe, Lauren, and Nick are three such lucky teenagers, and all their dreams start coming true nearly as soon as they get the ankh tattooed on the back of their necks. Nick’s old friend, Patch, is an aspiring filmmaker who’s got a juicy story on the secret society that could rock reality TV. However, being in a society and being against a society both have their deadly risks…Secret society activity is usually pretty cool, though easily clichéd. However, Tom Dolby’s debut novel just doesn’t cut it. SECRET SOCIETY reads like a tired retake on a cloak-and-dagger Gossip Girl-esque world, with flat characters and a marked lack of action.While I thought that all the characters’ initial setups were quite well done, the character development in the rest of the development unfortunately doesn’t follow through with it. Phoebe, Lauren, and Nick’s personalities blend together into a monotonous swirl of uncertainty and fear at their new statuses. Possible romances and family troubles are told—never shown—to us, as are many other things about the characters and plot.These rich high school kids’ lives aren’t nothing you’ve read before. Readers may be interested in the various clubbing and society scenes generously scattered throughout the book, but the thread connecting everything together is thin. There’s a lot of potential for suspenseful and exciting moments, but I found it difficult to connect with the story, and thus never felt invested in the outcomes of these characters and their involvement with the society.Still, if you haven’t read too many secret society novels in your day, you might be able to enjoy this one. Dolby paints an intriguing picture of New York rich-high-school-kid life, one that will be good for reluctant readers looking for a guilty pleasure. The more well-read reader might have trouble finding anything original or attention-holding in this book, though.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I would really rate this around a 2.5. Not quite a 3.This book was somewhat a disappointment for me. I was so looking forward to it but as I read I kept wanting to hurry the story along. I’ve always had a fascination with secret societies, the part they play in the larger world and what sort of rituals they used. Combine this with my love of YA books I thought it sounded like the perfect read. The biggest negative point was the pacing of the book. It really dragged and I kept hoping for something to happen and while eventually the story comes to a head it took so long that it seemed like a let down. I did not find myself caring much for Patch or Nick. I did like Lauren’s character and Phoebe has potential. The most interesting part was seeing how the perks of belonging to this society helped each of the students and the cost this help comes at. I may pick up the next book just to find out what happens as the last 30 or so pages did spark my curiosity. Most likely it will be a library pick though.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick and easy read. I liked the mystery surrounding the Society and all their members. In general I really loved the premise of the book. It was a refreshing change of pace from some of the books I normally read. I mean who doesn't ever wonder if clubs like this really exist. I know I have a time or two in my life.I liked how Tom had characters from all walks of life and not just socialites. It made them seem more believable that way. I would love to learn more about the Societies earlier years and learn how it all came about. He gives you a little glimpse in the book but I would love more.Secret Society had a little bit of everything, suspense, society fluff, romance, death, and secrets. I would recommend this to anyone who wants an evening of escape from their everyday lives.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I often wonder how some books become published. Secret Society would be torn apart (figuratively. Well, maybe literally, too.) in even an introduction to fiction class. The narration changes between four characters, often in the same scene, making the action difficult to follow.Dolby skips crucial scenes that would let readers connect with characters. One subplot is about Lauren who meets Alejandro. A couple sentences tell us Alejandro gives Lauren an extravagant birthday present and a few chapters later Lauren describes him as someone who "makes everything worth it." A few chapters beyond that she describes him as a flake, but Dolby hasn't shown us any behavior flakier than Lauren's own.Perhaps when Lauren said "worth it" she meant the $900 skirt she bought in her introductory chapter. It's so tough buying those, right?"She turned over the skirt's price tag: nine hundred dollars. Would her mother notice if she put it on her platinum card? No, Lauren shopped at Giroux all the time, so what was the big deal? Even if her parents' divorce had frozen her mother's love life, it had done no such thing to her bank account."Dolby tells us how great his characters are, but he never realy shows us. Why is Phoebe good at art? Her mom being n artist isn't enough. Has she studied art all of her life? What credentials does Nick, the one who supposedly loves music, have to judge what is good and poor sounding? Music lessons, ever? And for the love of anything that makes sense, why does Patch, the poor kid, go to the rich prep school?I had short expectations for this book. I was worried it would be about whiny rich kids. I will admit the characters aren't whiny. They're just shallow. I did have hope in the beginning when the kids vowed to obey the Society over church, school, and state. I thought Secret Society as going to be a story about standing up to corruption and oppression, and how materialism gets in the way of wisdom and righteousness.What I got was story about kids who can't look at person without noticing their L.L. Bean boots. Kids who say 'oh, how horrible this Society is. Let's investigate!' then give in to their oppressors after a reprimand. I read somewhere that this is going to be a series, and I was so sad I almost wept. Sometimes a story is muh stronger as stand alone piece. If this story had actually been revised, which I can't imagine it was from the poor quality of the writing, it could be a wonderful tale about the dangers of being out of touch with reality that privilege brings. I suppose it needs to be series because people in the industry don't own enough $900 skirts.At one point, an expensive shop owner tells Lauren that you have to pay for quality sometimes. It does make sense to pay for quality. Which is why it makes sense that I got this book for free.I didn't hate Secret Society because I think Dolby was trying to make a point about corruption. There was one character who spent the book trying to infiltrate the Society so he could expose them, and the kids do see some serious damage done by the Society. Dolby just really missed the mark in regards to making his characters come alive and creatng a story that means something.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In Secret Society we follow the lives of four students from Chadwick Prep, one of the most elite prep schools in New York City. Phoebe is the eccentric new girl in town, Nick is the up and coming member of one of the wealthiest families in New York, Lauren is the budding socialite, and Patch is an amateur filmmaker. There is something else about these students that make them special, three of these students have gained the interest of The Society.The Society is a secret group of people that’s mission is to “preserve a way of life.” I for one, have always had a major interest in secret societies and so I was already excited about this book; and Tom Dolby has definitely done his research with this. The imagery is so vivid that I actually found myself waking up from dreams about this book and about these characters, which is a major thing for me since most books don’t get in my head like that. Some people are probably thinking “Oh no, not something else about a secret society,” but this is majorly different. Think Gossip Girl (the show) meets The Skulls (Paul Walker/Joshua Jackson movie from 2000).After receiving text messages that tell them to go to a gritty downtown warehouse, the three students begin the initiation into The Society. This initiation concludes with each of them receiving an ankh shaped tattoo on the nape of their necks. Once they are entered into The Society, they start gaining everything they were promised: fame, fortune, friends in high places, parties, private town cars that deliver them to and from events. But what’s the price they must pay in order to have these rewards?Things start changing when the body of a young male is found in Central Park with no distinguishing marks, aside from the ankh tattoo on the nape of his neck. Then they start to wonder, is all of this worth the risk? But questioning The Society in that way can lead to be very dangerous to not only their careers, but also to their lives and the lives of the people they care about. I loved this book! I mean totally loved it, some of the characters are a bit cliché but I think in order to really relate to these characters at all, they needed to be. I also love the whole secret society thing. I find it so interesting and I have read all kinds of stuff about them. Fiction and nonfiction alike; The Life and Death Brigade (I love love love! Gilmore Girls), The Skulls, Skull and Bones, the Illuminati, the Freemasons, Fight Club, etc. are all secret societies either in popular culture or in reality. There are so many legends and depictions of these societies and I can’t help but to be fascinated. I so highly recommend this book, if you can’t tell already. I am so excited for the sequel, which according to Tom himself (via Twitter @TomDolby) “I am writing THE DENDUR CONSPIRACY right now, so...fall 2010. I know, too long to wait!” I think that is too long to wait and this is the issue I have with reading the first book in a series while it’s still an ARC, because that means I have longer to wait until the sequel comes out! But this is definitely a book I will read again. There are so many twists and turns that I didn’t see coming and I can’t wait to see how they pan out. Definitely a must read!

Book preview

Secret Society - Tom Dolby

PROLOGUE

Even the most seasoned walkers through Manhattan’s Central Park often miss Cleopatra’s Needle. The seven-story Egyptian obelisk dates back to the fifteenth century B.C.E. and stands less than a hundred yards from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

One Thanksgiving morning, it was hard to ignore. At the base of the granite obelisk was the body of a young man, lying among dead leaves and candy bar wrappers. The figure was naked but for a pair of white cotton briefs. It was discovered by a jogger at six-thirty A.M., and by eight, no fewer than fifty onlookers had gathered. Police officers cordoned off the area, reporters with camera crews commented on the scene, and holiday tourists gawked at the spectacle.

Detectives noted the details: white male, mid- to late teens, brown hair, blue eyes.

The only identifying mark: a dime-sized tattoo of an ankh, the Egyptian symbol for life, at the back of his neck.

I

REBIRTH

CHAPTER ONE

Invitations, Phoebe Dowling realized, often come from the most unexpected places.

The last thing she thought would happen on the third day of her junior year at the Chadwick School was that an adorable, shaggy-haired guy would hand her a flyer for a party: NICK BELL PRESENTS OLD SCHOOL ELECTROCLASH AT THE FREEZER, MUSIC BY DJ APOCALYPSE. Phoebe had read about DJ Apocalypse in Vanity Fair, how he spun for celebs and press-hungry socialites, but she never thought she’d get to go to one of his parties. And the boy who handed her the invite? Someone had told her once that if she and her mom ever moved to Manhattan, the guys really were better looking, but she hadn’t believed it. Until now.

Thanks, she croaked, as she felt her long, reddish-brown hair slide awkwardly over her lightly freckled forehead. She rushed to push it back behind her ear, catching it on her upper ear piercing.

No problem, he said, rushing down the hall, his worn loafers squeaking as he dodged book bags and elbows while handing out three more glossy invites in the time it had taken her to recover. She looked at his retreating figure, at the classic, threadbare blazer askew on his broad frame.

The Chadwick School, that brick-and-stone fortress located on the northeast edge of the Upper East Side, hadn’t exactly turned out to be what she had expected upon arriving in Manhattan from Los Angeles. Phoebe’s old school, St. Catherine’s, was known for its privileged student body, just as Chadwick was. St. Catherine’s had been populated by the bratty offspring of film stars and studio execs, as well as the odd artsy student, which Phoebe herself had been. But there was something different about the students at Chadwick. They all had it so together. It was as if they had been shopping at Bergdorf’s since they were three, as if they had had credit cards in their own names and cell phones forever, as if they didn’t know what it was like to feel their freedom or finances limited in any way. Phoebe sighed as she packed her book bag. She could play the game if she had to; her mother said that if she hated it there, she could transfer next year. But for now, she had to stick it out.

Classes were done for the day, and students streamed down the hall in every direction, a rush of khakis and plaid skirts and papers and notebooks. The school’s interiors were like a Merchant Ivory film: wood paneling in the hallways, inlaid mosaics in the entryway. True, some of Chadwick had been modernized—the student podcast station, the music practice rooms—but most of it wasn’t brand-new, the way everything seemed to be in California. The place had history: Phoebe could feel it as she ran her finger along the student graffiti carved into the oak Harkness tables, those large oval-shaped classroom tables that had been invented at a New England boarding school. She could sense it as she noticed the worn spots on the marble stairs that students had been climbing for nearly two hundred years.

That afternoon, she was planning on hopping on the 6 train, transferring at Grand Central, going over to the West Side, and visiting her mom at the gallery where her work was repped. She noticed the boys getting in cabs, and some of the girls even jumping into hired cars, giggling all the way. She had a creeping sensation that everyone else was having more fun than she was, was experiencing more of this grand, glittering city. Phoebe wanted to experience every version of New York: the gritty one, the glamorous one. Who held the key? That was what she needed to know. Who would make her Manhattan the one she had seen in the movies? She suspected that it was boys like the one who had handed her the invitation, boys like Nick Bell, who knew such things, who were to the manner born. Even if the manor was a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue.

Nick clutched his iPhone in his sweaty palm as he listened to the voice on the other end: There’s a problem with the liquor.

Even though he was jogging around the Central Park Reservoir, his sneakers pounding against the ground, he still felt his body seize up, a shiver running to his stomach. Had Amir, one of the owners of the club where he was throwing his bash that night, finally realized that the majority of his guests would be underage?

Yeah, what? Nick said, attempting to sound like he was in control.

The vodka sponsor’s delivery hasn’t arrived yet, Amir said.

Nick felt himself relax. We still have a few hours, don’t we? Besides, is one missing brand really that big a deal? Just switch it out with something cheaper.

I don’t know, Nick—you know how this crowd gets if they don’t get their top-shelf stuff during open bar.

It’ll be fine, Nick said, as he slowed down his jog to a trot. You could put Popov in a Ketel One bottle and no one would know the difference.

I guess you know them better than I do.

Amir, trust me, it’s the least of our worries. He cringed, hoping Amir wouldn’t ask him what he meant.

He clicked off the call and went back to the Digitalism track he was listening to—not exactly the most relaxing music, but it would get him psyched for the evening. Once the party started, he had six hours of DJ Apocalypse’s electronica to look forward to—that is, if he could confirm that the elusive turntablist was still coming. The guy hadn’t returned Nick’s last three messages.

Soaked from his run in the early September heat, he arrived home to his family’s Fifth Avenue apartment and took the elevator up to the top floor. As he traipsed through the foyer of the penthouse and up the staircase to the second level, he waved away Gertie, their rotund cook, when she asked if he wanted a snack. He could hear low voices coming from behind the living room’s paneled pocket doors—it sounded like his mother and his father and a male voice he didn’t recognize. He paused for a moment, although he couldn’t make anything out. It was unusual for his father to be home this early.

Nick thought ahead to the party as he cooled off in his bedroom, peeling off his sweaty socks and kicking his rank-smelling sneakers into a corner. He was trying not to stress, but all his usual worries came back to him: Had he invited enough people? Had he invited too many? Would the right ones show up? As of that afternoon, he was almost out of flyers—a good or a bad thing, depending on how you looked at it. He looked down at his phone. There was a text from his best friend, Patch, who had been in charge of setting up the door list for the party:

GUEST LIST MAXED AT 600. CLOSING IT NOW.

Nick texted him back that it was cool. The club held only about four hundred people, so six hundred names would be more than enough to pack the place while still allowing for no-shows. Although he had organized only a few club nights in the past, all out in the Hamptons, he was starting to feel like he was getting good at it. He grinned to himself, awash in excitement and adrenaline. Everything from the summer was coming to fruition.

It had all started when his parents had, almost shockingly, given him nearly free rein at the beach over summer break, and he had been doing what he liked to think of as partying with a purpose. Club owners at the Purple Elephant in Southampton and the Chocolate Lounge outside East Hampton had said that when they decamped back to the city in the fall, they would give him his own night there—that is, if he could promise to attract the kind of crowd they knew he could bring in: young, good looking, with disposable income for bottle service and an appetite for VIP treatment. Nick knew it was a little shady to give such power to a high school junior, but that was the thing: The club owners—Amir and his partner, Costa—didn’t know that he was still in high school. As they were foreigners (one was from Israel, Nick thought, and the other from—Brazil, was it?), they weren’t too familiar with the local private school scene, so when he said that he was a student at Chadwick, they had assumed he was already in college. He made a point of not shaving whenever he was going to be in their proximity, and given his recent growth spurt to a full six feet, two inches, they had no idea that he was only sixteen years old. They had seen him hanging out with the girls and guys he had grown up with; the guys were all relatively attractive (and if they did have acne or awkward haircuts, their parents whisked them off to a dermatologist or overpriced salon to get the problem fixed), and the girls-most of all, the girls—dressed older, acted older. With their expensive highlights and Marc Jacobs handbags and Christian Louboutin heels and casually smoked Nat Shermans, there was no way an onlooker could ever tell that his friends were only sixteen, seventeen, sometimes even as young as fifteen years old, never mind what it said on their fake IDs.

Nick had become a social butterfly, but the thing was—although he didn’t dare tell anyone—he didn’t really like most of the kids he was spending time with. The city was full of so many different kinds of people, and his parents had protected him, sheltered him from them all. It was starting to drive him crazy, drive him out of his skull. Some of his friends drowned it all out by being stoned 24–7, living in a cloud of cannabis, but that bored Nick. Sometimes, he wanted nothing more than to go back to the days when everything had been simple, when a weekend meant hanging out at the Southampton house on the glassed-in sunporch, renting bad Bruce Willis movies and eating too much pizza.

He put it out of his head as he stepped from the shower and wrapped a towel around his waist. His party was at The Freezer, Amir and Costa’s cash cow of a nightclub down in the Meatpacking District, which was admittedly past its prime. It was a good entry, though, to the New York promoting scene for Nick. The bad news was that DJ Apocalypse, supposedly fresh off a flight from Paris where he had headlined at a party for Veuve Clicquot—and rumored to have fallen off the wagon since his stint in rehab for meth addiction—was still nowhere to be found.

CHAPTER TWO

The skirt was to die for.

Lauren Mortimer was standing in front of a rack of new arrivals at Giroux New York, a boutique on Fourteenth Street that she had been obsessed with since she was twelve. The skirt, by an up-and-coming London designer, was short without being slutty short and was constructed of gorgeous folds of gray chiffon. It had an almost 1960s feel to it, which Lauren loved; it would be the perfect thing to wear to Nick’s party that night. She would pair it with the little Alexander McQueen leather jacket she had picked up a few weeks ago.

She lived for this, that sartorial moment when something in a store could take your breath away.

Once again, Lauren was in the Meatpacking District, her guilty pleasure, the site of so many of her sins, and she was trawling for fashion. She was the only person she knew who actually liked that the neighborhood could be so nasty. There was something exciting about stepping over slightly foul-smelling, blood-strewn streets with full shopping bags from Scoop or Catherine Malandrino or Diane von Furstenberg. It always made her feel as if she were in a shoot for French or Italian Vogue, that sharp contrast of fashion and filth. Lauren thought of herself as a purist: She loved the fact that designers had moved into the neighborhood, but she hated that it had driven out the nightclubs and the culture (not to mention most of the meatpacking plants). She didn’t mean the bridge-and-tunnel-packed clubs that occupied it today; there were still plenty of those, filled with girls with done-up hair and sparkly tops, outfits that made them look like hookers. From everything Lauren had heard, there used to be real nightclubs: goth clubs, performance art clubs, that sort of thing. Not that she had ever been to them, but she knew the stories. Her mother’s town car used to pull up at Jeffrey when the downtown style mecca was still the street’s main fashion outpost and Lauren was about nine years old. Her mother would try on shoe after shoe while a salesclerk with a shaved head and a serpent tattoo would amuse her with sanitized, PG-rated stories of everything that had gone on the night before: the performances, the transsexual go-go dancers, the European designers out with their models, the craziness, the all-night dancing. Lauren could read between the lines: Fashion equaled excitement and sex and fun, and she wanted to be part of it.

Now Lauren went downtown on her own, in a cab or on the subway (which, weirdly, she sometimes preferred—everyone was so normal compared to the people in her life on the Upper East), and explored that world herself. She didn’t know where she might fit into it, but what she did know was that she didn’t want to be like her mother: drinking gimlets at four in the afternoon, moaning about her failed marriage, poring over photos from her days as a debutante. It was beyond pathetic. Live in the present! Lauren wanted to scream at her. But she couldn’t, and anyway, her mom wouldn’t. It was much easier, after all, to soak in the gin-laced past.

She turned over the skirt’s price tag: nine hundred dollars. Would her mother notice if she put it on her platinum card? No, Lauren shopped at Giroux all the time, so what was the big deal? Even if her parents’ divorce had frozen her mother’s love life, it had done no such thing to her bank account.

Later that evening, Nick’s best friend, Patchfield Evans III, threw on a pair of wrinkled jeans and a T-shirt as he readied himself for his friend’s party. He had printed out the guest list and also emailed a copy to the club’s owners, as Nick had requested. He went out to the living room, where his grandmother, Eugenia, was sitting. Her fingers danced gracefully over the keys of the old Steinway, which was, to Patch’s ear, a tad out of tune. Every day, she still got dressed, did up her white hair, put on makeup, even a string of pearls, as though she might be receiving a gentleman caller.

He reviewed his evening plans with her, and she nodded as if they had been on her mind all day.

Nick will be there? she asked.

Patch nodded.

Be careful, yes? If there’s a problem, you call on your…you know.

Cell phone, Genie, cell phone. He had saved up and bought her one several years ago, but she never seemed to use it.

That’s right. She smiled. Cell phone. I’ll be here.

I know, Patch said, chuckling a bit. As if his grandmother would ever leave the apartment at this hour. You want me to bring you anything?

She shook her head. My dear, I have everything I need. She opened a drawer and held up a stack of delivery menus, giving him an impish grin. There’s a Cary Grant marathon on Turner Classics. I’ll be up late.

Patch headed back to his bedroom to finish getting ready. He shared the small two-bedroom with Genie, which he didn’t mind, all things considered. Eugenia Rogers Madison was eighty-three years old and knew things about the city and about Patch’s life that sometimes he didn’t even realize himself. Even though they lived in a landmarked co-op building across the street from the Metropolitan Museum, their place was a far cry from the sprawling penthouse where Nick lived, ten floors above them. In Patch’s apartment, which had been split up from a much larger unit, the linoleum was coming up in the kitchen, and the electrical hadn’t been inspected since the 1960s (they nearly had a fire last year when his grandmother plugged too many appliances into one extension cord). Eugenia and her late husband, Patch’s grandfather, had bought the apartment in 1953 for less than what a parking space in the city would cost today. His grandfather had never made much money of his own, and Patch’s father had died in a terrible drowning accident when Patch was five, without ever having the foresight to purchase life insurance for the family. His mother, sadly, was in an institution upstate. One day, for no reason that was apparent to anyone, she had turned completely catatonic. Patch now saw her only a few times a year.

He sighed as he laced up his dirty Puma sneakers, glancing up to his desk at the video work in progress on the glowing monitor, a grimy old flat screen that Nick had been about to toss. Four years ago, it had been far better than the ancient one Patch had owned at the time, but now it was looking a bit shopworn.

As he reached for his wallet, Patch thought about how he and his grandmother had the oldest kind of old money: the kind that didn’t exist anymore.

Patch grabbed the rest of his equipment and headed for the door. He needed to get some good footage for his vlog, PatchWork, the type that would really impress some of the TV producers he had been meeting with. He was nervous about tonight, and he tried to think past it. He and the producers were in endless talks about him directing a reality show set at Chadwick, a situation that was admittedly impressive for a high school junior, but it was not enough for Patch. He had gotten the email two months ago, out of nowhere: I’ve been watching your vlog. I produce television shows. Can we meet? What had followed had been a flurry of lawyers and agents and release forms. The school was thrilled that a high profile project might be shot on school grounds. Their enthusiasm had been surprising, but Chadwick was in need of a shot of energy—and the money the project could raise for the endowment fund wouldn’t hurt, either. The biggest benefit was that the headmaster and the administration thought the show might be the boost the school needed to modernize its image, to make it seem less stuffy and stuck up. Patch was in the final round of discussions with a series of producers; he wanted to sign with a team that would really get it, that wouldn’t make him feel like he had sold out. He imagined what his idol, Gus Van Sant, would do. That is, if Gus Van Sant shot documentaries about private school kids.

CHAPTER THREE

Nick had shown up at The Freezer half an hour before the doors were set to open. As he entered, saying hello to the doormen, he noticed a strange man in a suit lurking a few doors down. Probably just the usual eurotrash who populated the area, but something about it bothered Nick. He had been looking right at him.

The club manager’s iPod was on autoshuffle, so music was blasting, but it wouldn’t be long before people started to notice that DJ Apocalypse wasn’t in the booth. Nick had gone all out for this party: Patch had designed the flyers, they had sent out emails,

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