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
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, blue shirt-tail hanging out of his pants.
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 leaving 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 had 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 saw the indentations in the marble stairs where students had been stepping 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.
