At Any Price (Gaming The System) by Brenna Aubrey Read Free Book Online Page A

her.
    “Password?” I demanded.
    The two girls glanced at each other and in unison they chanted, “I aim to misbehave.” I grinned at our favorite quote from Captain Mal Reynolds of Firefly .
    Jenna sidled into the room, squeezing ahead of Alex. She held a Tupperware container that rattled and said, “Can we come in?”
    As she was already mostly in the apartment anyway, I stepped aside with an exaggerated sigh. Alex grabbed my arm and gave me a dramatic shake, her dark brown eyes widening. “We are doing a Dr. Who marathon at our place tomorrow night. You gotta come. There’ll be a drinking game. We shoot tequila every time the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver. We do a beer bong when he says ‘I’m the Doctor.’”
    I laughed. I loved Dr. Who but I knew I wasn’t up for that. Not this week. “I’ve got my study group—”
    Alex stomped her foot and the sound of it echoed on the floor below, which was the ceiling of her mother’s garage. “Come on, Mia! There will be cute boys there. Cute boys who love Dr. Who. ”
    I snorted. “Yeah, and they’ll be even cuter after the beer goggles are on.”
    Jenna shook her box again and it rattled as she plopped down on my half broken-down couch—the fabric was shredded and patched with duct tape. “Okay, so you don’t like to party. We get it. We’ve been asking you for months. But at least tell me you are going to come to my Dungeons and Dragons game next Saturday.”
    I groaned inwardly. Not this again. “I’m sorry, Jen, I have to work a double shift on Saturday.”
    She raised her pale—almost invisible—brows at me and popped off the cover of her plastic container. “You think you’re a gamer, punching around on your keyboard, hunched over your monitor? You haven’t truly gamed until you’ve used these, ” she said, holding her palm open to display some tiny three-dimensional plastic pieces of all sizes and colors. Some were shaped like pyramids, others were multifaceted spheres. Some gleamed like gems in the late afternoon sunlight. All of them were covered with plain, white numbers.
    “That little tiny pyramid looks cool,” I conceded.
    Her face fell. I’d somehow displeased her. “This is a d-four—a four-sided die. It is perfectly balanced to give me the perfect chance for a completely random one-in-four roll every time.”
    “Um. Okay.”
    Jenna pulled out an oilcloth and began polishing the shapes. “You don’t get to use cool stuff like this for computer games.”
    I sighed. “I’m sorry. I promise I’ll come soon. But this test has me so stressed out I can hardly think of anything else but studying and working so I can eat in order to keep myself alive so I can continue to stress about this damn test.”
    Because I’d failed it last year. I’d bombed so abysmally that that failure hung over my future like an executioner’s axe. It froze me with fear so that the thought of taking it—and failing it—again made me physically ill inside. Instead, I studied and studied and put off the retakes. The test was offered every month and everything— everything —I’d planned for my future rested on that godforsaken test. I hadn’t yet found my confidence, or the courage, to try it again.
    But if I didn’t do it, I’d never be a doctor.
    Since school and testing usually came pretty easily to me, I’d thought that the MCAT would be the same. How terribly wrong I’d been. I swallowed an icy pebble of fear, willing myself not to think about it.
    Alex plopped down beside Jenna and fingered some of the dice in the box, avoiding my eyes. “We get it,” she said, but it was easy to hear the hurt in her voice.
    I sighed, sinking down onto the metal folding chair opposite them—I had such fashionable furniture. It was bad, even for a college pad.
    “I’m sorry. Really.”
    Alex looked up, her eyes hard. “I said we get it.”
    Jenna placed a hand on her arm. “Alejandra, calm down please. I’m sure she’ll hang with us again when