Olivia and Ricky's Odyssey to Rock Bottom

3. Banks party

Claudia Banks lived on the Upper West Side in a pre-war building with a doorman and view of Central Park, located a block from the Museum of Natural History. The place was swarming with young people in high spirits—the hip-hop music even higher—when Roxie and her brother, Lincoln, arrived.

Entering the large apartment, Roxie spotted Porceline, the girl with waist-long hair, who had been after Olivia at school. She was leaning against a wall, smiling and talking to a senior guy wearing round horn-rimmed glasses. He was leaning over her with a hand pressed against the wall, smiling back knowingly. They both looked toward Roxie and Lincoln when they noticed them enter, neither looking particularly pleased with seeing them.

"What's their problem?" Lincoln asked, bending a little to Roxie's height.

She shrugged. "Who knows?"

Roxie was Lincoln's polar opposite with his well-built towering height of six foot five, dwarfing Roxie's skinny five foot. Not to mention they didn't share any features since Roxie had been adopted into the Magnussen family when she was two years old.

Lincoln was the sporty type, and in the past, he'd landed plenty of girls on that account. But it looked like he had met his match in Coco van der Meersch.

Coco was the kind of stunningly beautiful you couldn't help but stare at. She had an elegant face with full, pillowy lips, a model figure, and long wavy sandy-blonde hair.

Since the first time Lincoln saw her at school, he had been able to think of little else. He had done everything to gain her attention, but so far, she hadn't offered him so much as a smile.

As Lincoln and Roxie entered the bright and spacious living room, with massive windows overlooking the park, all thoughts of Coco were forgotten for a moment, seeing Sebastian and Ricky preparing a sizable joint by the large square coffee table littered with bags of chips, used glasses, cans, and bottles. Among it was also a book with thin white lines of cocaine on top.

Everything inside the apartment, from the walls and floors to the designer furniture and exclusive decorations, was kept in white, glass, or chrome. In Roxie's opinion, it was all a little too much.

Lincoln made a straight line for the group gathered on the massive horseshoe-shaped couch, getting a few laughs for the gray T-shirt he was wearing with a print of an oversized name tag reading 'Hello! I'm Awesome.'

Roxie had planned on joining Lincoln and squeezing down next to Sebastian, but she was called over by the Fashionistas, hanging out at the counter of the open streamlined kitchen in direct connection to the living room. Here, an additional group was being loud and having fun, playing Up Chickens, Down Chickens.

The three girls gushed over Roxie's 'barely there' stiletto sandals and small black leather shorts before the conversation eventually changed to Emmy's on-again/off-again relationship with Atticus, a fellow St. Aquinas senior. A conversation Roxie was rather fed up with since they had already discussed it at length during school.

In short: Emmy and Atticus had broken up over the summer, but now she wanted to get back together again.

"I totally think you should go for it."

"Totally," Emmy's friends encouraged.

"What do you think?" Emmy turned to Roxie, her brown curls dancing around her shoulders, picking at the label of her wine cooler.

"Well," Roxie shrugged her shoulders, sitting on the kitchen counter, eating a mini pretzel, "I still think you should go for it if you have unresolved feelings for him."

Roxie had, in fact, told Emmy this on multiple occasions, so it was with some relief she followed Emmy and the others when Emmy finally decided to talk with Atticus—an hour later. Roxie hoped it meant she could slip away and find Sebastian before he left.