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Prologue
CONNOR COBALT
“You wanna know real life, kid?” a otta know yourself first” He drank a bottle of booze fro on the backdoor steps of a five-star hotel I wandered outside onair Everyone in the convention hall was thirty-five and up Not a single kid e
I wore a suit that squeezed nore the fact that just insidestonant, she cole person in that room with reticence and stoicism that I could easily mimic
“I knoho I am,” I told hiht The kid who always knehen to shut up and when to speak I bit ue until it bled
He eyed my suit and snorted “You’re nothin’ but a monkey, kid You wanna be those men in there” He nodded to the door behind hih to confess a secret, his vodka stench al me backwards And yet, I still anticipated his words “Then you gotta be better than them”
The advice of an old drunkard stayed withmy father ever said Two years later, my mother sat me in our family parlor to deliver news that I would parallel with that memory That shaped me in some catalytic way
You see, a life can be broken down to years,moments Three moments defined mine
One
I elve I spent holidays at Faust Boarding School for Young Boys, but on one fluke of a weekend, I decided to visit my mother’s house outside of Philadelphia
She chose then to tell me She didn’t set a date, plan the event, ht it was She broke the news like she was firing an employee Swift and construct
“Your father and I are divorced”
Divorced As in past tense So dra nose because my mother believed it meant very little She made me believe it too
Their separation was deerown apart Katarina Cobalt had never let me into her life one-hundred percent She let no one see beyond what she gave them And it was in thisand inhuman all at once
I lost contact with Jim Elson, my father I had no desire to rekindle a relationship with him The truths that I kept close were only painful if I let them be, and I convinced myself fairly well that they were just facts And I moved on
Two
I was sixteen In the di the air, two upperclass in front of each pledge
Joining a secret society was the equivalent of being accepted to a lacrosse team Dressed in preparatory slacks, blazers, and ties, the lot of us were supposed to grace the halls of Harvard and Yale and repeat the saain
They asked each guy an identical question and each responded with a simple submissive yes and was told to drop to their knees Then they set their sights on the next boy
When they stopped in front of me, I stayed relatively co, conceited s their chest and asking for a banana The thing aboutbanana Every benefit should outweigh the cost
“Connor Cobalt,” the blond said, leering “Will you suck my cock?”
The question was supposed to shoilling ere to follow orders And I honestly wasn’t sure how far they would go, all to prove this point
What do I get out of it?
The prize would be a membership into a social clique I believed I could obtain this a different way I saw a path that no one else did
“I think you have it backwards,” I told hih “You should suck my cock You would enjoy it more”
The pledges broke into laughter, and the blond stepped forward, his nose nearly touching mine “What did you just say to me?”
“I thought I was perfectly clear the first tiain But if I wanted to be led by a group of testosterone poisoned monkeys, I would have joined the football team
“You weren’t”
“Then let h every pore My lips brushed his ear He liked that ht he would “Suck My Cock”
He pushed ht red, and my eyebrow arched
“Problem?” I asked him
“Are you gay, Cobalt?”
“I only love myself In that respect, maybe And yet, I still won’t blow you” With this, I left the secret society behind
Eight of the ten pledges joined me
Three
I was nineteen At the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League
And I sprinted down the student center, slowing to a brisk walk as I reached the girls’ bathrooirl with four-inch heels and a conservative blue dress stood by the sink, scrubbing a stain et paper towels, her eyes bloodshot with anger and anxiety
When she saw me enter, she directed all of her pent-up frustration at irls’ bathroo a paper towel at round in defeat
I wasn’t the one who spilt a can of Cherry Fizz on her dress But in Rose Calloway’s ht as well have been the offender We crossed paths every year,at Model UN and honor societies
I was supposed to be her Student A her on tour of campus before her intervieith the Dean, which would decide whether or not she’d be in the Honor’s Program
“I’m aware,” I told her easily, ripped the sink at one point, like she was about to scream
“I’ to rip out her hair one strand at a time and then steal all of her clothes”
Her excessive exaggerations always re a health class at Dalton Academy, her prep school, she took her baby doll and stabbed the stuffing with a pair of scissors Another person said she scribbled over the baby’s forehead and handed it to the teacher The note: I won’t care for an inanimate object unless the boys do it too
People thought she was nuts—in a genius “I will devour your soul” kind of way
I thought she was fking fascinating
“Rose—”
She slammed her palms on the counter “She spilt soda on me I’d rather she punched me in the face At least I have makeup”
“I have a solution”
She raised a hand to o-free bathroom”
“Then what the fk are you doing here?” I asked her with the tilt of my head
She glared, and I neared her anyway, about to help She shoved er
I hardly even moved “That was a little infantile, even for you”