Everything Gold

01: Bambi in the City

The day of her sixteenth birthday, Olivia was back in New York City for the first time in three years. As she stepped inside the foyer of her Fifth Avenue apartment - which had been featured in Vogue Magazine six times for its taste-of-the-century design - Olivia felt like screaming.

Olivia's father was a real estate mogul who read the Wall Street Journal, supported Fox News at political parties (you never knew when you might stumble into a tax-cutting favor), and had given so much money to the Met Museum (for accompanying tax cuts) that he was now on the board of the museum. He had a Dali in one of his living rooms, but he thought it was Picasso. This week, he was skiing in Aspen, and so of course her asshole 17-year-old brother, Maddox, could throw a party on a Tuesday morning and have nobody but Linda - the housekeeper - despair.

Olivia, dragging her suitcases, pushed passed the masses, stopping only for a brief second when she spotted a girl who wore layered Roxanne Assoulin chokers with a backless Isabel Marant dress. Genius. She felt too petty to compliment her, so she took a photo instead. 

Someone grabbed the phone out of her hand.

Olivia whirled around to find Ramona Givenchy grinning at her, ear to ear. "Is this Olivia de Montague, in our own city of New York?"

"Ramona! I've missed you too much," Olivia screeched as she tackled Ramona to the floor. 

"Shit, I'm getting stepped on," Ramona laughed. 

Olivia, standing back up and ignoring the excited stares from a few girls nearby, held her hand just out of Ramona's grasp. "I'll help you back up only if you can tell me where to find today's copy of the New York Times," Olivia said.

Ramona rolled her eyes, still grinning. "It's in the living room. I'll show you in, so help me up," Ramona said. 

"Oh, right, I forgot. You know my house better than I do now," Olivia said as she looped her arm over Ramona's shoulders. "Where is Maddox, anyway?"

"In the living room."

"Fantastic," Olivia sighed. And then, as an afterthought, she said, "I can't believe this is my first time seeing him in three years. Is it bad that I'm kind of excited, just to make a grand return?" 

Ramona looked at her best friend from the corner of her eye but didn't say anything. As they entered the living room, glass-walled and looking over Central Park's Great Lawn, Olivia could very well see for herself that her brother wasn't the nerd she'd left behind the summer before eighth grade. 

 Four boys and two girls sat, draped over designer couches that probably cost more than the Degas painting by the marble, spiral staircase. 

"What the hell? Why the hell are you here?" Maddox glared at Olivia. The only thing different about the twins was their hair color; while Olivia's was a dirty blonde, Maddox's was brown. Right now, it was so messy that Olivia was ninety-nine percent sure that he'd just ended a very intense hookup with the brunette now sitting on the floor.

Ramona was on one of the couches, kissing Gus, the guy she'd been hooking up with for the last month. Olivia wasn't sure why the boys in the city couldn't get over themselves and start dating girls. Olivia realized when she was staring when a wry chuckle came from her left.

"Fifty dollars says she's secretly a virgin," a boy's voice said. Olivia turned and did a double take. Not true. The boy's tanned skin, high cheekbones, black hair, barely-there smothering of freckles and deep-blue eyes made him wildly, wildly attractive. He leaned forward, all lean muscle. Definitely a sailor. "But the real question is, who are you?" 

"I live here," Olivia said. Mentally, she kicked herself. She always came up with funny responses hours after interactions, precisely when she didn't need them.

"No, she doesn't," Maddox said. "She's stopping here for a couple weeks before she and Ramona start junior year at Dupont in Georgetown." He looked at his friend. "Wait a minute - you guys will go to school together."  

The blue eyes crinkled at their corners. "Alex Phillips, glad to meet you," the boy said as he stood up and held out his hand for Olivia to shake. 

As their hands touched, Olivia's mind was reeling.

Everybody in Olivia's social circle, whether in California, New York, DC, Shanghai, Paris or Tokyo, knew who Alexander Phillips was. His mother was a Democratic senator who also played major roles in other countries' politics, and his father, besides being one of the most elite lawyers in the world, was on the board of Pear, the financial technology empire he had helped found that had revolutionized the way the world payed. Alexander's watch reeked of his family's money - old money, not new - but Olivia was also friends with a girl he'd "had some fun with" in Dubai. And if there was one thing Olivia held against people, it was when others wronged her friends.

She frowned and pulled her hand back, ignoring Alex's look and pulled Ramona away from Gus. 

"See you," Olivia said, not looking back over her shoulder.

*****

Olivia suppressed a groan as the humidity outside hit her with full force. She and Ramona had chosen the wrong time to move to DC, she thought, but she couldn't kill the fun. She had a reputation of being fun to uphold, whether or not it was her best friend at her side. 

Ramona was a hell of a best friend. In the first year after Olivia was sent to boarding school in Paris and Ramona stayed at Eastlake Hall, the school of New York City's most privileged spawn, the girls' friendship had consisted primarily of weekly FaceTime updates. The minute freshman year came, along with the illusion of being mature, Ramona snuck a ride to Paris on her father's private jet. For the next two years, Olivia and Ramona had been two of the most infamous freshmen, then sophomores, around. There was nothing that could make two girls bond as much as waking up in Dubai after a particularly wild night one weekend and then in Moscow the next. Olivia was almost worried about how much junior year in the a place like Georgetown would pale in comparison. 

Olivia turned to Ramona. 

"So. Where's the party?"