Armed and Dangerous (The IMA) by Nenia Campbell Read Free Book Online Page B

registration day was dead-last. That concerned me. Everything worth taking would surely be gone. Why was I stuck with such a crappy priority number? I was a scholarship student. I turned down Stanford to go to this dump. I…was beginning to sound an awful lot like Mamá.
    I uncapped the bottle of soda and took a long swig. Maybe I should have stuck with something non-caffeinated. When I'd eaten my fill, I stuck the leftovers in the fridge for tomorrow. Then I located my toothbrush and toothpaste, changed into pajamas, and slept like a stone.
     
     

Chapter Six
    Regret
    Christina:
    I woke up around noon the next day, all my muscles screaming. Breakfast was cold leftover pizza washed down with flat soda. After cleaning the inside of the dresser, I began folding up my clothes in the drawers.
    At three o' clock sharp I logged into my account, Cmparker. I opened up several tabs in the browser window to make registration as easy for myself as possible. Course catalog. Undergrad requirements. RateMyProfessor. But the moment I saw the available courses, I knew I was in trouble. Medieval Literature. Ancient Peruvian Art. The Philosophy of Biology. Macrame . Were these even real classes? I could feel my eyes crossing as I read the syllabi.
    To think I had poured my heart out to the admissions people in that stupid personal statement. All that garbage about “healing journeys” and “finding myself.” I kind of wanted to march down there and redact everything I'd said.
    “Crap,” I muttered, “Crap, crap, crap.” I couldn't just take nothing . I wouldn't be insured if I wasn't a full-time student with at least twelve units. Feeling increasingly frantic, I quickly skimmed through the general ed. requirements for undergraduates and selected a handful of courses that fulfilled some of my prerequisites for graduation. On a memo pad, I mapped out a sample schedule. Two of the courses had time conflicts and one of them was taught by an asshole, so those got scratched out.
    All of the classes left on my sheet sounded equally bland and unappealing. Which made sense; if they were interesting, they'd be full, too. Supposedly if I kept my grades up and stayed in good academic standing my priority number would get ratcheted up next semester. Until then, I was essentially paying them to teach me nothing in the good faith that they would later teach me something.
    For now, there was nothing I could do except pay for the classes I had and hope I'd get some better ones later. That didn't mean I was happy about this decision. I wasn't, not at all. I didn't like feeling helpless. Coming to Coswell was supposed to help me forget . So why did I keep getting forced to remember?
    I closed the registration window and finished off the last of the pizza. The pineapple and ham did hula hoops of unease in the pit of my stomach. I took an anti-anxiety pill to settle my stomach and went grocery shopping.
    I also bought a knife.
    A nice one, with a retractable blade.
    If I got caught with it on campus having the knife in my possession would not be as likely to protect me from trouble as put me right into the middle of it, but seeing it in my purse made me feel better.
    Were the IMA watching me right now? Laughing at my pitiful attempt to arm myself against them? I was living on borrowed time. Every waking moment, I wondered, “Is today the day that they will come for me?”
    I knew I would never see it coming. Not unless they wanted me to. Not until it was already too late.
     
    Michael:
    The black corset could barely contain her breasts. They wobbled attractively as she straddled my lap, hands cupping my jaw as she leaned in for a kiss. She was wearing stockings. Garters. A whisper of a thong.
    Few things in life are as satisfying as the knowledge that sex is imminent — except, of course, for the actual sex.
    I rolled my head back, giving her access to my neck. Her nails scratched down my torso, rasping against my chest hair. I sucked in a breath as