Anyway, I'm still trying to decide how I feel about this book, despite having had almost a week now to think over it and organize my thoughts for a review. At this point, I have decided that I most likely never will do such a thing, and so have gone ahead to throw my opinion out into the world.
Billy Kinsey is 17 and he knows the epitome of meaningless. He should, living in an insanely rich California neighborhood in a house far too huge for him and his parents who don't really love each other anymore. They've lived in the house ever since Billy's dad won the lottery, 13 years ago. When he was 11, Billy's twin sister Dorie died in the hospital. She had leukemia, but Billy's bone marrow donation never had time to save her. Now, Billy begins his senior year of high school with no plans for college. He's been an insomniac since Dorie died. He has a massive store of knowledge accumulated over years of research and following interests. He drums himself into numbness in his soundproofed basement drum room. He is completely nihilistic.
And then, on the first week of school, a new student shows up in his history class. The boy's name is Twom Twomey (pronounced like "tomb"). On one arm he has a barbed-wire tattoo. The other arm is covered in colorful flowers. His left hand is marked change. The right says chaos. Twom likes to go a little outlaw--following his own rules and not listening to the idiots. Twom sticks up for the downtrodden. He's kind to the fat, friendless girl who has a crush on him. He avenges the pushing-down of nerdy hacker Ephraim in the locker-room shower. Spending a night in jail is nothing to him. His lifestyle attracts jaded, miserable Billy--it's thoroughly different than anything he's ever known.
Just in time for the start of school, Gretchen Quinn, Dorie's best friend, comes back from Africa, where her doctor parents were researching cures for AIDS. She thinks that she and Billy were friends, too. She's a magnificent runner. She has a perfect family, with an older brother, two little sisters, a parents who love each other. They have conversations at the dinner table, something that, to Billy, might as well be an alien practice. She's about as different from Twom as you could get, and yet Billy finds himself equally attracted to her.
Ephraim, the nerdy hacker, has been avoided for years by Billy--and everyone. But, alongside the other changes of this school year, Ephraim somehow becomes part of Billy's friend circle (also a new thing for Billy). Same with Deliza, the daughter of a man who launders money for a Mexican cartel. Deliza is beautiful, popular, and has taken a fancy to Twom, which means that she ends up spending lots of time with Billy.
Soon, the four friends are onto a major housebreaking operation that becomes routine. They never take anything, just break into the houses of the rich and do their separate things. Billy always sleeps. Any nightmares in these strangers' houses are not his, and he can lay down peacefully without Dorie haunting his rest.
But the peace and mindlessness cannot last. Before they know what's happening, Billy, Twom, Ephraim, Deliza, and even Gretchen--who is only really involved with Billy--are spiralling down into a different kind of meaninglessness from the one they're used to, victims of their own tragic age.