THE MYSTERY SURROUNDING the disappearance of Maggie Stanford, now eighteen years old, who disappeared on the night of the annual Patrician Ball two years ago, has yet to be solved. The police never found a ransom note or any indication of kidnapping or foul play in relation to the case, and have suggested the girl ran away of her own volition. Mrs. Dorothea Stanford, of Newport, has reportedly become mentally unbalanced from the shock of her daughter’s disappearance. Mr. Stanford died from grief shortly after Maggie went missing.
Strange hallucinations continue to afflict the mother, who claims that her neighbors and friends are concealing the truth about her daughter’s whereabouts and keeping her from coming home. The Herald visited Mrs. Stanford in her home, and from what could be made of Mrs. Stanford’s speech, she is still laboring under the impression that someone has her girl in custody and refuses to release her.
The Herald has discovered that Maggie Stanford had been living at the St. Dymphna Asylum in Newport for a year before she went missing, receiving treatment for an unknown condition. Anyone having any information on her disappearance is urged to come forward.
* * *
TWENTYFOUR
Chic magazine was located in a snazzy new steel-and-glass building in the middle of Times Square. It was just one of the high-profile media properties owned by the Christie-Best organization, a conglomerate that also counted Flash, Kiss, Splendid, and Mine among its many other one-word-only glossy titles. Its lobby was a serene, marbled space with a dribbling zen fountain and an army of blue-jacketed security guards who manned the onyx reception desks. One afternoon after school, Bliss stood patiently in the lobby while waiting for the guard to call up to Chic’s model booker for entrance. Farnsworth Models had sent her for a go-see, an appointment to see if the magazine would like to hire Bliss for their next photo shoot. Bliss was wearing her standard go-see outfit: tight, tight dark-wash Stitched for Civilization jeans, Lanvin flats, a loose white blouse. Her face was freshly scrubbed and free of makeup, as advised by her agency. Bliss had been much in demand since she had booked the Stitched campaign, and the photos of her in the dazzling Dior dress had been reprinted all over the globe—crowning her the new young socialite (and displacing Mimi in the international best-dressed list). She had shot a shoe ad, a Gap ad, and had already done a five-page editorial spread in Kiss. Chic was the mother lode, the top of the glossy heap, and while Bliss thought modeling was a bit of a lark, she also wanted the gig very much.
“Schuyler Van Alen,” she heard the girl at the next station tell the guard.
“Schuyler! Are you here for the Chic go-see?” Bliss asked, pleasantly surprised to find Schuyler there as well.
“I am.” Schuyler smiled back. Ever since her grandmother’s passing, she had turned down the modeling opportunities that had come fast and furious after her Times Square Stitched for Civilization billboard. But Linda Farnsworth had convinced her to keep the Chic appointment, and Schuyler had agreed, if only to keep her mind off the distressing news that Charles Force wanted to adopt her.
As usual, Schuyler looked like a ragamuffin in her tattered sweater, empire-waist tunic, footless tights, and Jack Purcell sneakers, with several layers of plastic beads draped around her neck. Although, it should be noted that several fashion editors who had spotted her in the lobby had quickly noticed her unique style, and three months later, the pages of Kiss, Splendid, and Flash would all feature an outfit eerily similar to the one Schuyler was wearing.
“You girls can go up,” the guard told them, beeping them through the automatic turnstiles.
The Chic office was on the tenth floor, and Schuyler and Bliss felt a little intimidated by the immaculate surroundings. The interior waiting area was lined with poster-size blowups of the most famous Chic magazine covers—a virtual tour of the most celebrated beauties of the twentieth and twenty-first century.
A grandmotherly receptionist advised them to take a seat on one of the white Barcelona chairs.
The girls chatted quietly about neutral topics: school gossip, tests, why the cafeteria was suddenly serving hot dogs. They both studiously avoided the topic of Dylan’s death— Schuyler, because she feared it would hurt Bliss too much, and Bliss, because she felt there was nothing more to say, since the boy in the lake had turned out to be Kingsley.
“You’ve been hanging out with Kingsley a lot,” Schuyler said, when Bliss mentioned he had taken her to a party at the hot new club, Disaster.