The Secret Runners of New York Read online

  Misty and Griff sat beside the fireplace—their usual spot, I learned—sipping espressos and nibbling éclairs as they gossiped.

  Griff said, ‘So my dad tells me that he wants to get me a car for my eighteenth birthday in April. I said “Awesome, I want a Porsche 911 Turbo.” But then he says he’s already bought it: a Jaguar convertible. I mean, Jesus, do I look like a forty-year-old wage slave suffering a midlife crisis?’

  He threw his head back, laughing, sending his mop of frizzy orange hair bouncing wildly.

  In my time since starting at Monmouth, I’d discovered that the rumours about Griff going to rehab twice were true. He’d gone for substance abuse.

  But it was actually more complicated than it appeared.

  When he was thirteen, Griff had been hit by a drunk driver while crossing 69th Street. Both of his legs had been broken. He was living in constant pain so his doctor prescribed him several different pain-relief meds including Vicodin. Griff, already on Ritalin for ADHD, got hooked. Twice. He stole a few of his dad’s watches and pawned them for money for drugs. Hence, rehab. Twice.

  ‘Where are you going to keep it?’ I asked.

  Griff’s family lived in the Majestic building. Garage space in Manhattan is priceless, especially near old buildings like the Majestic since, because they were built in the 1880s, they don’t have any internal parking.

  Griff said, ‘My dad took a leaf out of Jerry Seinfeld’s book: he bought a townhouse a couple of blocks behind our place, gutted it, and turned it into a garage. It has an internal elevator, fits four cars.’

  That townhouse, I figured, was probably worth about sixteen million dollars.

  No wonder regular people despised the wealthy. While the homeless lived on the streets and the middle class struggled to make ends meet, people like the O’Deas were gutting perfectly inhabitable homes in order to store their car collections.

  I was reminded of the story of Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France at the onset of the French Revolution.

  The poor are starving, Your Majesty.

  Then let them eat cake, she’d said, before the poor rose up and cut off her head on the guillotine.

  Misty said, ‘Oh, Griff. A Jag. You do understand that I am never ever going to be seen in that car with you.’

  They laughed. I tried to, but I just ended up turning and looking out the windows at the glorious view of the park.

  Let them eat cake, I thought.

  And then, after all this special treatment, came the invitation.

  The following Friday, February 16, was Verity Keeley’s seventeenth birthday and she was throwing a party at her family’s apartment in the Carlyle on the East Side. I’d heard the other girls talking about it for a couple of weeks, but until I’d rescued Misty, I had not been privy to the details. Of course, as Verity’s current squeeze, Red had been invited a month ago.

  The day after I went to the Plaza with her, Misty elbowed Verity and said, ‘Hey, V, you should invite Skye to your party on Friday night. She’ll dig it the most.’

  I saw a flash of calculation cross Verity’s face. It only lasted a millisecond, but it was there: the calculus of social status.

  Then she smiled sweetly and said, ‘Cool. Sure. What do you say, Skye, wanna come? The theme is Famous Villains.’

  In the moment before I answered, a warning bell rang in the back of my mind: if I said yes to this, would I be stepping into a social scene like the one that had broken me in Memphis?

  I figured I would be, but then I was older and wiser now and this was my new life in a new city. I couldn’t hide forever. And, of course, Red and Bo would be there, so I wouldn’t be in it all by myself.

  ‘Thanks, Verity,’ I said. ‘I’d love to come.’

  THE PARTY

  The Carlyle building is one of the premier addresses on the Upper East Side. John F. Kennedy once lived there, famously sneaking Marilyn Monroe in via a basement entrance. Set back a block from Central Park, at 35 storeys tall it commands superb views of the park and the city.

  Red and I arrived at Verity’s penthouse apartment at the same time Griff did. We were met by Mr and Mrs Keeley.

  ‘Hey, kids,’ Verity’s father said. ‘The party’s up on the roof. You can head up via our private stairs.’

  We were guided by a butler through the gorgeous apartment. I’d heard that Verity’s dad was a keen hunter and as we passed his den, I saw some deer antlers on the wall, plus a very high-tech-looking crossbow on a display shelf.

  Griff nudged us. ‘See that crossbow? It’s a TenPoint Carbon Xtra. It’s a four-thousand-dollar weapon. Best hunting crossbow money can buy.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said as we headed up the private stairwell.

  Like the San Remo, the Carlyle has an awesome rooftop ‘temple’ structure which residents can use to host private events and which, I must admit, was a fantastic location for a girl’s seventeenth birthday party.

  And what a party it was.

  Fairy lights crisscrossed the multi-tiered terraces. Hollywood-style spotlights sent shafts of light into the sky. Bow-tied servers carried trays of soda drinks (which the kids liberally spiked with vodka).

  Music was pumping. A hot DJ named PhaseOne was working his turntable, headphones on, head bouncing to the rhythm while a couple of girls danced provocatively in front of him.

  There must have been fifty kids there, most of them from Monmouth plus a few from other nearby schools.

  And then there were the costumes.

  For the boys, dressing up as a movie villain wasn’t hard. There were the usual Batman villains: a lot of Jokers, both the Heath Ledger version and the Jack Nicholson one (no Jared Leto Jokers; I guess that one never took off); Griff was dressed as the Riddler in a natty green suit covered in question marks; and there were a few Banes (gym jocks wanting to show off their muscles). One Dr Evil, a Darth Vader and a very clever Jigsaw from Saw added nicely to the mix.

  Dane Summerhays was dressed as Tyler Durden from Fight Club: in a red leather jacket and with his already chiselled Brad Pitt–like features, he’d picked an outfit that was villainous but which also made him look good.

  Red, with his copper-coloured hair, went as Syndrome, the bad guy superkid from The Incredibles. He had gelled up his hair, attached a mask over his eyes and happily went out in public in a cape and spandex. That was my brother.

  Bo was there, looking devastating in a navy blue LAPD motorcycle cop outfit, complete with knee-high black boots. He was the T-1000 from Terminator 2, not the Arnie terminator, but the sleeker one, the liquid-metal man who’d adopted the body of an LA cop.

  Misty’s younger brother, Oz, was there too. He was the same age as Verity’s kid brother and they were buddies, which must have been how he’d got invited. Oz’s costume was detailed, elaborate and easily the scariest thing on the whole rooftop.

  He was fully decked out as Pennywise the evil clown from the Stephen King horror novel, It. Oz had painted his face white and his lips red, added a skullcap with clown hair and put scary fang-like teeth in his mouth. Tim Curry would have been proud.

  As for the girls, they hadn’t held back.

  They had gone for the villainesses with the skimpiest, sexiest outfits. Or put another way, like Dane Summerhays, they’d gone for the villains who made them look hot.

  I counted four Harley Quinns (sequinned hotpants), three Catwomen (sleek bodysuits), two Jennifer Checks (a male-fantasy cheerleader’s outfit with a tiny skirt and bare midriff) and two Maleficents (nice horns).

  Verity, the birthday girl, was dressed in the distinctive yellow-and-black motorcycle bodysuit of Uma Thurman’s character in Kill Bill: Volume 1. She even had a samurai sword slung across her back.

  The bright yellow costume stood out beautifully among the crowd on the rooftop, and at a party full of villains, it was obviously the birthday girl’s privilege to d
ress as the only heroine: a clever touch.

  As I tentatively stepped out of the stairwell onto the Carlyle’s roof, I beheld all this saucy villainy with more than a touch of self-consciousness.

  My costume wasn’t sexy at all.

  In fact, it was dowdy; deliberately dowdy.

  I had parted my brown hair on the side and pressed it down flat, fixing it in place with hairpins, making it look short and drab. And I wore a rural Appalachian outfit: a colourless flannel shirt buttoned right up to my chin with a plain brown smock-dress over it.

  Sure, my villain was a little old, but she was from my favourite Stephen King book. As I looked out over the party, however, I feared that no-one would get it—

  ‘You’re the crazy hillbilly woman from Misery!’ Misty cried when she saw me. ‘The psycho stalker of that author, who used the sledgehammer on him. I love it!’

  I exhaled with relief.

  Misty wore a distinctive crown and a black-and-gold medieval-style velvet dress that narrowed dramatically at the waist, thanks to an internal corset of some kind. Its gold stitching matched her figure-eight necklace perfectly. Her blonde hair rolled down over her shoulders in a pair of long undulating tresses.

  I saw who she was instantly.

  ‘Cersei Lannister,’ I said. ‘The queen from Game of Thrones. She’s an awesome villain.’

  There was more to it than that, a clever subtlety to her choice: even in fancy dress, Misty was the queen of the hive.

  Standing with her was her older sister, Chastity, the Head Girl at Monmouth. Chastity wore a sexy nurse’s outfit with a white pirate’s eye patch. The eye patch had a red medical cross on it. With her long blonde hair, she was the spitting image of Daryl Hannah’s female assassin in Kill Bill.

  ‘Elle Driver from Kill Bill,’ I said, nodding. ‘She was a great villain.’

  Chastity shrugged. ‘I just wanted to be a hot nurse.’

  Misty guided me through the party and I said hi and happy birthday to Verity. Verity frowned as she looked me up and down. She didn’t get my costume at all.

  At one point, I found myself standing alone at the edge of the rooftop looking out over Central Park. I could see my home, the San Remo, on the opposite side. The park itself was a rectangle of inky blackness edged by the lights of the city.

  ‘Annie Wilkes,’ a voice said from behind me, lisping on the s.

  I turned.

  Oz Collins stood before me in his evil clown costume. He was four inches taller than me. Despite his garish circus make-up, he looked at me with genuine earnestness.

  I smiled. ‘A few people at this party have guessed that I’m the chick from Misery—including your sister, Misty—but no-one has known her actual name till now. Props to you . . . Pennywise.’

  His eyes widened with delight.

  ‘You know my character’s name?’ he asked, shocked.

  I shrugged bashfully. ‘I’m a big Stephen King fan.’

  ‘Me, too.’ His eyes brightened. ‘I own every single book he’s written.’

  I said, ‘I have them arranged in order of publication on my bookshelf, including the Bachman books. Yup, King nerd.’ I nodded at my hillbilly costume. ‘Misery is my favourite. And just to show how truly King-nerdy I am, it’s not Pennywise the Evil Clown, it’s Pennywise the Dancing Clown.’

  ‘That’s right!’ he said.

  He stared at me in a strange way—made all the stranger by the fact that he was covered in clown make-up. It was a kind of dazed admiring awe. Apparently, identifying his character’s name had scored me many brownie points.

  He held that gaze a fraction too long and I began to feel uncomfortable. I recalled his sweet but awkward magic performance. I also remembered Jenny’s comments about Oz Collins: heavy Ritalin dosage, porn searches on the Internet, military school over the summer.

  Thankfully, at that moment, Bo came over in his dashing LAPD cop uniform, gripping two drinks in plastic cups.

  ‘Mind if I steal this young lady from you, Mr Evil Clown?’ he said politely to Oz.

  Oz bowed his head shyly. ‘Of course, of course,’ he muttered, and my heart went out to him. What hope did a lisping sophomore dressed as a clown have against the Head Boy dressed as a motorcycle cop?

  But I’d wanted to be alone with Bo since I’d arrived and the chance hadn’t arisen till now so I jumped at it.

  We eased over to an isolated corner of the rooftop.

  ‘You arrived at exactly the right moment,’ I said, extracting some of the hairpins from my hair. I also undid the top button of my hillbilly shirt in the vain hope it somehow made me sexier.

  I sipped the drink Bo gave me, instantly tasting the alcohol in it but saying nothing about it.

  ‘You look awesome,’ he said.

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘Okay, how about: you picked a great movie villain and you look a lot like her,’ he corrected himself.

  ‘At least that’s honest,’ I said, smiling. ‘I knew I should’ve come as Poison Ivy. We didn’t do many movie-villain costume parties back in Memphis.’

  Bo nodded. ‘I was hoping to get some time alone with you—’

  ‘Hey hey, party people!’ Misty sprang between us, grinning broadly and spilling her own jacked-up diet soda.

  Bo retreated instantly from me.

  ‘Was my little brother getting weird on you?’ Misty asked me.

  ‘He’s harmless, but yeah, a little weird.’

  ‘Fucking creepoid loser,’ she spat, glaring at Oz a short distance away. Misty may not have been drunk but she was definitely getting there. ‘He and V’s brother, Quincy, are always doing whacked-out shit. Verity’s mom insisted that V invite them to the party, but they’re so embarrassing. I mean, shit, an evil clown? Come on! I’ll check his room later this week to make sure he hasn’t put a photo of you on the wall to jerk off to.’

  She turned to Bo. ‘Why, hey there, Bo. Haven’t had a chance to say hi.’

  ‘Hi, Misty,’ Bo said a little standoffishly and I sensed that in some way he’d been here before. Did they have a history? Or was he just uncomfortable in the face of her very forthright attentions? Or did he, like me, also detect her subtle possessiveness of him?

  ‘Do you like my costume, Bo?’ she asked, stroking her corseted waist sexily.

  I glanced again at my own frumpy costume and once again cursed my literal interpretation of the dress code.

  ‘Why, your majesty,’ Bo said with a smile, ‘of course I do. Queen Cersei is one of the best female villains of them all.’

  Misty leaned in close to his ear, and whether it was the alcohol or just because I was so close, I heard it very clearly when she whispered a little too loudly, ‘We could always go downstairs to V’s room and play Cersei and Jaime . . .’

  Bo leaned back uncomfortably, glanced worriedly at me and, as politely as he could, said, ‘Thanks, Misty, but I think you might have had one too many “sodas”. How about we all go join the birthday girl?’

  It was a smooth transition and Misty seemed to take it in stride and in a few seconds we were safely ensconced within a larger group of Red, Verity, Hattie, Dane, Griff and Chastity.

  ‘Safety in numbers,’ Bo whispered to me.

  I hid my smile, thrilled to know that it took more than a sexy costume to capture his attention.

  At length, the party wound down, as even the best parties do, and the crowd thinned out until by about 2:30 a.m. all that remained were the members of the inner circle, which tonight included me.

  Misty had sobered up a little by then but she was still energised.

  ‘What do you say, boys and girls? Is it time for a run?’ she said.

  Verity threw a glance at me. So did Hattie and Griff. Bo waited for Misty to respond, saying nothing.

  So did my brother, Red. I looked at him as innocently and inc
omprehensively as I could—as if to say, ‘What does that mean?’—desperately not wanting to let on that I knew full well what a run was.

  Misty smiled at me. ‘It’s okay. She’s cool. You’re cool, aren’t you, Skye? I mean, you can keep a secret, can’t you?’

  INTO THE PARK

  Within minutes, the nine of us were out of the Carlyle and striding/waltzing/spinning down Fifth Avenue at 2:45 in the morning, a gang of joyous teens dressed in our colourful villain costumes—although by this time a few of our outfits had been partially covered with track tops or anoraks, and high heels had been replaced with sneakers.

  Misty, ever the ringleader, led the way in her sleek velvet dress, now overlaid with a white Moncler parka.

  Hattie called, ‘I’m too tired to run tonight. I’ll meet you at the other end.’

  ‘And I’m too drunk,’ Griff said. ‘I’ll go with Hattie.’

  I watched this exchange with a suitably perplexed look on my face, a look Misty noticed and seemed to enjoy.

  ‘Here.’ Misty tossed a keychain with some keys on it to Hattie. ‘For the outer locks.’

  Hattie caught the keys and then dived into an Uber with Griff, calling out the window, ‘See you at the other end!’ as the car peeled away.

  ‘The other end?’ I said to Bo.

  ‘You’ll understand soon,’ was all he would say.

  I glanced at Misty as we walked up Fifth Avenue, alongside the low stone fence that separated the street from Central Park.

  ‘All will be revealed,’ she said mysteriously as we crossed the 79th Street Transverse just short of the Met.

  Then Misty veered abruptly, hurdling the stone fence and plunging into the darkened park.

  It was all a blur to me as the group swept along in the shadow of the Met and arrived at the private conservancy garden, went down the hatch, climbed down some ladders and suddenly we were in the dirt-walled chamber that Red had told me about, the cave with the ancient stone doorway in it.