The boys pulled up on Versailles Avenue. (All the streets in the Park Cities bespoke the hoity-toity—Bordeaux Avenue, Harvard Avenue, Beverly Drive, Not Your Country Club Court, and so on.) They could hear the party from five doors down, and as they walked up the Barlows’ driveway to the thumping music, Rick looked unsure.

“Only a matter of time before the cops come.”

He was right—the party was borderline bonkers, and way too loud for uptight Highland Park. From the front door they went through a living room obscured in a fat cloud of pot smoke and headed toward a sunken den with long green leather sectionals. That was where Rick ran into girl number one, Jane.

“Hey, baby, que pasa?” Rick smiled, unsurprised, playing it cool as a Cusack. Jane Osbaldeston was a dark-redhead with a smooth porcelain face that reminded Dan of the Oil of Olay lady on the box that sat by his mother’s sink. Jane was all A’s and honor roll but hated going to Ursuline and always dragged Rick downtown to meet up with her bummed-out Arts Magnet friends to enjoy collective melancholy. She also worked the lotions counter at Marshall Field’s in the Galleria, another symbol of her worldliness, and was so over everything about high school, except Rick Dowlearn, who had her pretty twisted.

Barely able to shout over the blare of Whitesnake, Jane frowned and reported: “Welcome to moron central. Maura ditched me to go upstairs with the heavy drug addicts.” She down-talked in a reverse Valley Girl accent.

“Did you work tonight with Maura? You poor thing.” Rick was a natural at teasing and flirting. He had Jane half draped over him with just one line.

Time to leave these lovebirds, Dan thought. He found a possibly used red Solo cup, which he washed out in the kitchen sink, and concocted a vodka and flat, warm Pepsi. Not great. The party was packed, and he had to swim through a bunch of assholes standing around with not a whole lot to do. As he bumped his way by, he ran into Lili, Rick’s girl number two.

Lili Villeneuve was a French foreign exchange student at Ursuline. Beautiful, dark features, pouty lips, a short angled braid pulled into a sideways ponytail like Demi Moore’s in One Crazy Summer.

“Oh, Dan-ee.” Her accent was thick as a milkshake chocolat. “Have you seen Rick?” Reek.

“I think I saw him out front. He might have been leaving.”

“D’accord. If you see him, tell him to find me. Okay, Dan-ee?”

“Sure thing.” She didn’t seem like she was going to hunt for Rick herself. Which thankfully bought Dan time to warn him.