“Mom and Dad know you snuck out, and they’re getting ready to go nuclear.” She takes a moment to hide her surprise at seeing him. He has to call her name three times to get her attention. He’s their parents’ perfect nightmare: ratlike fingernails, competing tattoos, and a man-bun protruding from his head like a tumor. Ivy’s by the pool with Craig, her infinite-loser boyfriend, who lives here. It isn’t long before Isaac spots his sister – her Slurpee-blue hair is a dead giveaway. Which might be why the water is clouded and green like a study in bioterrorism.
It’s overgrown and features an amoeba-shaped pool not large enough to do anything but float, or secretly urinate. Where seedy things don’t happen in back rooms but are in your face – the dismal and the desperate shoving their brains into a hydraulic press just to make themselves forget how finite they are. He’s a junior, so he’s been to plenty in his time, where things were going on that his parents wouldn’t want to know about… But he doesn’t go to these kinds of parties – his sister’s kinds of parties. Ivy is a year older than Isaac, but more often than not, Isaac feels like her older brother. And if this night is like any other Friday night, he’ll find Ivy here. A seedy dude too old for this party, talking to a girl who’s too young for it.
Or worse, actually having a seizure while interpretive dancing – which would be a really sad way to die, because the audience would just slow clap while you writhe yourself into oblivion. He’s ankle-deep in deadbeats, burnouts, and druggies – all of whom are far too wasted to realize that freak-dancing to techno looks like faking a seizure to someone who’s close to sober. The house reeks of puke, hormones, and beer, making Isaac wince as he wades through the living room. No doubt about it this is Ivy’s kind of party. Ivy’s got to be here somewhere, thinks Isaac Ramey as he pushes through the door of the cesspool, looking for his sister. The only question is… Which one? Roxy is a chilling take on the opioid epidemic by the New York Times bestselling Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman, suitable for ages 14 Extract Roxy by Neal Shusterman & Jarrod Shusterman This is the start of a race to the bottom that will determine life and death. Isaac is desperate to recover from a sports injury that jeopardizes his chance of a scholarship. Ivy is under-stimulated and overmedicated. Roxy and Addison have made a wager to see who can be lethal the quickest. But here they are malevolent gods, toying with the fates of mortals. Humans know the partygoers simply as “narcotics”, “opioids”, “drugs”. Above our world is a toxic wonderland where the party has raged for centuries.
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