The man trembled as he spoke and Trevor understood that attacking Jeremy wasn’t just attacking Jeremy. When police had thrown Mike and Trevor into cells in Canton, they’d locked the boys’ parents up, too. What had Trevor’s mom and dad said to their church friends after both their sons were arrested for selling drugs? When the other parents glared at them? When the cops interviewed them? Were Mike and Trevor part of a gang? Did they own firearms? His mom and dad had been walking with their heads down ever since. But Trevor had escaped. The essay that got him into NYU was about deciding to become a lawyer after a “cousin” went to prison. He’d written that he saw how “unjust the justice system was” to people without connections and wealth. He didn’t like to think of it this way but, in a sense, Mike getting locked up gave Trevor a new life. And this is what he’d done with it. What was he going to tell his parents? Why had he thought this would help anything? Claudia didn’t need this. She didn’t need a lackey; she needed a friend. If he really cared about her, he had to stop her.

RIDLEY

The moment after his son showed him that stupid video, Ridley Drake began collecting evidence. If Claudia cried rape, her name alone would get her a meeting with an ADA. And once an ADA saw it—well, a certain kind of ADA; a woman—the video was a big problem. Chad was the perfect target. No one would feel sorry for his son. The tabloids would make him into a mini-Weinstein: the prep school predator. Like the Stanford swimmer but so evil that he’d recorded the whole thing. Chad would become a symbol of all that was wrong in America. Ridley had to get his hands on every copy and he had to destroy them. But he couldn’t find Claudia. So he started with the boyfriend: Trevor Barber of fucking Canton, Ohio. The sister, Edie, was slumming it, too. Knocked up by some kid from Poughkeepsie. Married at twenty-three. They took after their father, he guessed.

Men like Gabe Castro were among Ridley’s least favorite. So-called artists. Boot strappers. Resentful and entitled. Fifty-year-old men who wore T-shirts to board meetings. Who were they trying to kid? Michelle finally seemed to have tired of it. He’d been genuinely surprised when she flirted with him the summer before at the club, but the more he thought about it the more it made sense. Michelle Whitehouse had run the rock and roll rebel dream all the way out, and it was time to come home. Too late to play mom, he guessed, but not too late to have a second act in the world she’d rejected as a teenager.