Chapter One

ONE

It’s a cold and windless January night following a two-day winter storm. All across the campus of the Cleveland Art Institute a blanket of snow sparkles as if encrusted with tiny diamonds. Thick clouds blot out the moonlight and for a moment it feels that all of nature is hushed.

Suzy, Robin, and I walk the half mile to the Theta Chi frat house, a box-shaped building with dark brown vinyl siding that looks like it could be the back part of a church where the priests reside, were it not for the large wooden Greek letters hanging between the second and third floors. Theta Chi is hosting a Welcome Back keg party and all comers are indeed welcome, so long as they can produce an ID, real or otherwise, along with twenty bucks to be paid in cash at the door.

I have to go because my roommate Suzy has a huge crush on the president, and she convinces Robin and me to be her accomplices in the manhunt. But being that it’s a new semester, and a brand-new year, I’m certainly open for adventure. When you’re eighteen, the possibilities seem endless. At the same time, I’m feeling a bit lonely, since Craig, the guy I really like, attends college in Minnesota. We’re eleven hundred miles apart, and he and I both agreed that it’s best not to be exclusive with each other, at least for now.

Once inside the front door we pay our cover charge and a guy wearing a multicolored felt jester hat uses a stamp to emblazon the backs of our hands with big purple beavers. In the strobe-lit entrance hall Billy Joel blares from speakers that seem to be everywhere. The jacked-up bass causes the wooden floorboards t