Chapters (42)
Back in his room, Trevor Googled Claudia Castro. She had nearly twenty thousand followers on Instagram, and the last time she’d posted was the night before they’d met. The night whatever happened to her happened to her. The photo was a selfie taken from that elevated angle girls use that makes them look vulnerable when they’re actually entirely in control. The caption read: #springbreak #staycation #nyc. There were other selfies in the feed, too, and some weird art. Wikipedia said her dad was a music producer who had worked with Beck and Rihanna and the Strokes and won a bunch of Grammys. Her mom had been a model, the daughter of a senator who died in a plane crash. He followed some links to old gossip items about Claudia’s parents, who apparently: never married but had been together for more than two decades. There were pictures of them with Johnny Depp and Kate Moss, Jennifer Lopez and Puffy, and an article about someone in a London hotel calling the police because of their “loud sex.” There were images of Claudia and her sister, Edie or Eden, depending on the captions, posing beneath white tents, in front of banners, on boats; with friends, boyfriends, celebrities. Edie appeared taller than Claudia in most, but they could have been twins with their long brown hair and golden-flecked eyes. Right after the New Year, Claudia was named one of Manhattan magazine’s Most Beautiful New Yorkers under Twenty-five. The magazine called her an “art patron, student” and linked to a six-year-old article from the New York Post: