Shanghai's Elite

5. Mount Everest

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"I'm just saying that it wouldn't cost you to come home for dinner every night. You leave at four am and come back at eleven at night, that's ridiculous!"

"Oh my fucking God, here we go again! I'm done arguing about this. Every breath I was waste on this conversation is a dollar lost."

LENNOX RICHMOND SHUT HER EYES tightly in an attempt to drown out the sound of her parents arguing. Warm water ran down her bare face as she sucked in a breath. It wasn't working. She twisted the steel knob, turning the shower head and jets off, and stepped out of her custom contemporary shower, wrapping a turkish cotton towel around her tan body. Wiping tiny droplets of water from her skin, she leaned against the bathroom door to listen in. 

Her parents never had a perfect marriage, at least not that she could remember, but it had begun to crumble in the last year. Her dad was never home, he was always "working". For the past few months, heated arguments at the dinner table became a daily occurrence. It always ended with her mother threatening to smash her 18-carat engagement ring into pieces, and her father slamming the door to his office. They were on the verge of separation, and Lennox knew it. 

Lennox also knew why, the reason he was never home, that is. She figured out her dad and this Chinese girl, who looked at least nineteen, were meeting at the Hilton two months ago. After she saw them together with her own eyes, everything started to make sense: his business trips that took a day too long, how he arrived home past his work hours, and was all fidgety when he got texts....

Mrs. Richmond wasn't a turn-the-other-cheek kind of woman, so Lennox knew her mother was completely clueless. She was burdened with that secret and it was eating her alive. It was horrible having to watch her mom do things to please him and try her hardest to save their marriage, while she knew the truth, that her father was a cheating scumbag. But she couldn't bring herself to tell her mother. She'd tried before, but the words just wouldn't come out. 

With a sigh, she removed her ear from the dark pinewood. She glared at herself in the mirror, her reflection staring back at her. She looked miserable. Her eyeliner was smudged and her flawless face pale. Lennox licked her dry lips as water dripped from her wet hair, her parents still fighting in the background. She poured white powder from a small vessel onto her counter and then used a blade to form lines. 

Lennox shivered at the sound of a door slamming. There goes father, she thought. Heels then began clacking her way. So she snorted in the powder, staring at her exhausted self in the mirror as the footsteps louder.

"Lennox, I'm going to get some air!" Her mother shouted from the other side of the door, a very distressed tone in her voice. By going to get some air, her mom probably meant shopping. Hermès was literally oxygen to Mrs. Richmond. In fact, 

She scrambled to hide the coke while sniffing in every last bit of the line. "Yeah, mom. That's fine, I'm going out with Dakota anyway." 

The brunette leaned over the sink, waiting till the sound of her mom's platforms faded into the distance. It was time to transform into Lennox Richmond: signed model, party girl, 2nd most popular girl at school, heiress to a chain of retail outlets... the Lennox that everybody knew and envied.

It wasn't that hard either, it all started with her appearance. First, she blow-dried her long brown hair, then proceeded to cover up the bags under her eyes with concealer, dab a little powder, wing her eyeliner perfectly, pull her shiny locks into a high pony and bam. That was it. The Lennox Richmond look, which had become quite the trend around Shanghai private schools.