D.O.L City Lights Part 1
Set in New York City proper during the late 1990s, Lilly Lamberton’s life was flipped upside down at age thirteen. In one year she lost her father, betrayed her best friend, and fell into a crushing depression. Now, at age seventeen, she lives with an abusive stepmother who only agreed to take custody in order to steal Lilly’s inheritance. Lilly has no knowledge of her family history and is completely orphaned. Racked with guilt and desperate to relieve the pain in her head, Lilly does her best to remain apathetic towards others.
While Lilly’s home life is traumatic, it pales in comparison to her social life at Brookside High. Cindy Harper, Lilly’s former childhood friend and self-imposed matriarch of the school, is plotting her revenge against Lilly, but there is a hidden motivation behind Cindy’s schemes. Cindy’s intellectual prowess far exceeds that of the typical high schooler, and as things unfold, it is all that Lilly can do just to keep up.
Nick Tenner, a chivalrous streetfighter with a recent love of words, is more or less, Lilly’s shadow. He bullied both Lilly and Cindy growing up and now is attempting to atone for his past mistakes.
Elijah Hunt Rhodes, a suave, charismatic, and witty trash talker, is the third member of Lilly’s clique and is, on the surface, relatively normal. However, Cindy finds out first hand just how abnormal he is when she and the football team attempt the unthinkable.
Aurora Windfall, an affluent yet bubbly day dreamer, willingly leaves a structured and ritzy life behind to start her sophomore year at Brookside. She quickly realizes that public school is not at all what she thought. In her first month at Brookside, Aurora is slashed, beaten, and thrown into a dumpster with the trash. Yet still she comes back.
Even though Lilly wants nothing to do with any of them, she finds herself pulled into the middle of a complex conspiracy that brings out her old caring self. Lilly builds a fondness for Aurora and the two become friends. However, unbeknownst to most, Lilly carries a secret of her own. An energy-based force is manifesting within her and tends to unleash itself at unpredictable times. This is not your typical power that can be turned on and off like a light switch. Nor does it have a discernible feature. This energy is what Cindy seeks, and she’s not the only one who is after it. A vicious yet sophisticated New York gang called the Black Mambas is hell bent on getting their hands on Lilly. For personal reasons Lilly does her best to remain neutral in all this. However, her lofty idealism is shattered when Elijah and Nick go missing. Desperate to save Aurora from becoming a casualty of Cindy’s stratagem, Lilly's outlook eventually changes and she gears up to fight her former best friend in order to save her current one.
