Blue Bloods by Melissa de La Cruz Page A

your appointment with Dr. Pat.”
    Schuyler nodded.
    Beauty made herself at home on Schuyler’s duvet, look ing out the window toward the river twinkling behind the trees.
    Cordeliabegan to pat Beauty’s smooth fur. “I had a dog like this once,” she said. “When I was about your age. Your mother did, too.” Cordelia smiled wistfully.
    Her grandmother rarely talked about Schuyler’s mother, who, technically, wasn’t dead she’d slipped into a coma when Schuyler was hardly a year old, and had been trapped in that state ever since. The doctors all agreed she registered normal brain activity, and that she could wake up at any moment. But she never had. Schuyler visited her mother every Sunday at the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital to read to her from the Sunday Times.
    Schuyler didn’t have many memories of her mother— apart from a sad, beautiful woman who sang lullabies to her in the crib. Maybe she just remembered that her mother looked sad because that’s how she looked now, when she was asleep—there was a melancholy cast to her features. A lovely, sorrowful-looking woman with folded hands, her plat inum hair fanned against the pillow.
    She wanted to ask her grandmother more questions about her mother and her bloodhound—but the faraway look had left Cordelia’s face, and Schuyler knew she wouldn’t get any more tidbits about her mother that night.
    “Dinner at six,” her grandmother said, leaving the room.
    “Yes, Cordelia ,” Schuyler mumbled.
    She closed her eyes and lay on the bed, leaning against Beauty. The sun began to set through the blinds. Her grand mother was such an enigma. Schuyler wished, not for the first time, that she were a normal girl, with a normal family. She felt very lonely all of a sudden. She wondered if she should have told Oliver about Jack’s note. She’d never kept something like that from him before. But she was worried he’d just call her silly for falling for some stupid joke.
    Then her phone beeped. Oliver’s number flashed on the text message, almost as if he knew how she was feeling right then.
    MISS U BABE.
    Schuyler smiled. She might not have parents. But at least she had one true friend.

NINE
    Aggie Carondolet’s funeral had all the trappings of an exclusive society event. The Carondolets were a high-profile New York family, and Aggie’s untimely death had been fodder for the tabloids. PREP SCHOOL GIRL DEAD IN DOWNTOWN CLUB. Her parents had shuddered, but there was nothing they could do about it. The city was obsessed with the beautiful, rich, and tragic. (The more beautiful, rich, and trag ic, the bigger the headline.) That morning, a phalanx of pho tographers stood guard at the school’s gates, waiting to get a shot of the grieving mother (a dignified Sloane Carondolet , 1985’s deb of the year) and the stricken best friend, none other than lissome It-girl-about-town Mimi Force.
    Once Mimi saw the photographers, she was glad she’d splurged on the Dior Homme suit by Hedi Slimane . It had been a bitch getting it tailored overnight, but what Mimi wanted, Mimi always got. The suit was of black satin, with sharp, severe lines. She wore nothing underneath but an onyx choker. She would look fabulous in tomorrow’s papers—the soupçon of tragedy making her an even more glamorous figure.
    Seating inside the Duchesne chapel was arranged according to rank, just like a fashion show Of course, Mimi was given a front-row perch. She was seated between her father and her brother, the three of them making a good-looking trio. Her mother, stuck in a three-month plastic surgery safari in South Africa (facelifts disguised as vacations) couldn’t return in time, so Gina DuPont, a beautiful art dealer and close friend of her father’s, had accompanied him to the funeral.
    Mimi knew Gina was actually one of her father’s mis tresses, but the knowledge didn’t bother her. Growing up, she’d been shocked by the constancy of her parents’ extra marital affairs, but when