When gods play games, even love is a lie.
Roxy is a young adult fiction novel written by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman.
The freeway is coming.
It will cut the neighborhood in two. Construction has already started, pushing toward this corridor of condemned houses and cracked concrete with the momentum of the inevitable. Yet there you are, in the fifth house on the left, fighting for your life.
Ramey, I.
The victim of the bet between two manufactured gods: the seductive and lethal Roxy (Oxycontin), who is at the top of her game, and the smart, high-achieving Addison (Adderall), who is tired of being the helpful one, and longs for a more dangerous, less wholesome image. The wager—a contest to see who can bring their mark to “the Party” first—is a race to the bottom of a rave that has raged since the beginning of time. And you are only human, dazzled by the lights and music. Drawn by what the drugs offer—tempted to take that step past helpful to harmful…and the troubled places that lie beyond.
But there are two I. Rameys—Isaac, a soccer player thrown into Roxy’s orbit by a bad fall and a bad doctor and Ivy, his older sister, whose increasing frustration with her untreated ADHD leads her to renew her acquaintance with Addy.
The book was released on November 9, 2021.
Tropes shown in Roxy (spoilers):
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Roxy is oxycontin and Addison is adderall, while other drugs are also seen, such as Al (alcohol).
- Cool Old Lady: The grandmother of the Ramey family. She's the kind of grandma that honestly relates to her grandchildren and does her best to support them. Even when a broken hip sends her to physical rehab, she keeps her sense of humor.
- Descent into Addiction: Both of the Ramey siblings:
- Ivy had an established reputation with drugs (namely marijuana) and alcohol, but her constant struggles with school and home send her headed to a psychiatrist which allows Addison to enter the scene. While she initially takes her medication as prescribed and begins to approve academically, she eventually begins to use Addison more and more in order to stay on the top of her game and out of trouble. Ivy then becomes hyperstimulated and misses a lot of sleep.
- Isaac breaks his ankle after getting into a fight with Ivy's sketchy boyfriend Craig. While he simply tries to trudge along using ibuprofen, the pain eventually has him take an offered oxycodone pill from his grandmother. As well as helping the injury feel better, Isaac comes to enjoy the euphoria and relaxation that comes with the opioid, leading him to do things such as filch more pills off his unsuspecting grandmother, purposefully injuring himself during a soccer game to obtain more, and even going as far as to steal some from a senior rehabilitation center and buy them from the dark web. Isaac begins to fall behind in school, no longer cares about soccer or his friends, and goes to frightening lengths to get more fixes.
- Downer Ending: Isaac dies of an opioid overdose.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Craig, Ivy's horrid ex-boyfriend and the reason Isaac's ankle ends up injured to begin with, makes Isaac do and say outrageous things while the poor boy begs for painkillers, horrendously sick from withdrawal. Craig gives him two choices towards the end of the "test": call Ivy a bloodsucking whore, or smash his hand with a hammer. Isaac refuses to dishonor his sister, and goes to bring the hammer down before a horrified Craig stops him. While he still makes Isaac carry his things to a moving truck before handing him the bottle, the guy seemed to be genuinely scared that Isaac was that desperate.
- Everyone Has Standards: Even though the drugs of the Party work under a class-oriented hierarchy, some of them do enjoy serving their legitimate purposes for actually needing them, such as when Roxy comforts Isaac's grandmother in the hospital after she is injured...if only to soothe any sense of conscience.
- She also can't bear to watch a different "plus one" overdose on heroin (orchestrated by the opioid boss, Hiro).
- Addison doesn't seem as competition-driven as Roxy is concerning their bet, but he ultimately gives up his goal to overdose Ivy, stating that it was a dumb and dangerous idea, and would use the last of their time together to help her find a dangerously high Isaac.
- Femme Fatale: Roxy gives off this vibe.
- Foreshadowing:
- Anybody who knows the purpose of naloxone will ultimately know which Ramey sibling dies as shown in the prologue. For those who don't, naloxone is an opioid antagonist that is used to reverse overdoses of such drugs. Isaac ends up dying from an overdose at the end of the novel.
- The first chapter mentions the refrigerator spitting out ice too forcefully. Guess how the grandmother breaks her hip a handful of chapters later?
- Molly's mini-chapter has her talking to a teen about all the things he sees and feels while on MDMA. When she mentions flying away, the poor fellow takes a flying leap off the top of the Party and disappears. A couple chapters later, we hear that it happened at one of Craig's drug-fueled parties.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Ivy starts out as this, then Addison helps her get on a narrower path.
- Heel–Face Turn: Addison does this at the end of the book after Ivy survives her adderall overdose.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: At Isaac's funeral, Ivy slips a note into her deceased brother's hands in his casket, vowing that should be going to rehab for the both of them and would live a happy and healthy life honoring Isaac.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: A few, actually:
- Craig is the one that breaks Isaac's ankle at the beginning of the story, and is also the one that gives Isaac the bottle of oxycodone the he would overdose on at the end.
- Isaac's well-intentioned grandmother is the one who actually gives him the very first pill he ever takes, and it begins snowballing from there.
- The clinic doctor when Isaac goes to an urgent care center to get further treatment for his ankle and the hospital staff after he injures himself at a soccer game unwittingly pay into his growing opioid addiction.
- Chet, one of Isaac's buddies, is the one that gives him a link to the dark web to obtain more painkillers. He did it under the assumption he was offering some (admittedly shady) help to a friend who was being screwed over by "uppity doctors".
