ERIC LAWINGTON WAS bored out of his skull.
Yet again, he was throwing a party for people he couldn’t care less about. He’d only been at the Edith Wharton Academy for Young Adults for a day, but already he could tell that its students would be carbon copies of people at his old school: vapid, shallow, and pretentious. People who pretended to have a passion for politics and Vladimir Nabokov when they would rather piss their parents’ money away on drugs and alcohol than pick up a newspaper or Pale Fire.
Why do I keep providing superficial teenagers with free booze? he thought, wrinkling his nose when he saw a wasted girl throw up into a priceless Ming vase and an intoxicated boy stick his tongue into an apathetic blonde’s mouth. The pathetic answer—to be liked, popular. Which was an incredi
