Girl Geek: A Gaming The System Prequel

by Brenna Aubrey

  Heath’s forehead buckled. “MHM?”

  “Majorly hot male.”

  He snorted. “Don’t do Craigslist. You take your life in your hands with the crazies. I forbid it.”

  I bit my lip. “One of those swipe left or right apps, then?”

  Heath’s mouth twisted thoughtfully. “Make some friends. Go to a few parties. Stop spending every night gaming with me, Fallen and Kat. Or the immature goobers that Jenna and Alex always flirt with. They won’t get you anywhere, either.”

  A group of rowdy high school students made their way past our table, bumping Heath’s back. He threw them a glare and they all backed off immediately, hands upraised in surrender.

  “Oh, you want me to stop gaming with you?”

  He turned back to me with an exaggerated eye roll. “No, I didn’t say that. I said stop gaming with us on your only spare night. Get out and enjoy your college years—especially now that they are almost over. You’ve only got a year left.”

  I shook my head vehemently while gripping my hands together even tighter. “I don’t want to do the social thing. I don’t want to spend time with a guy who will boss me around. Or worse—someone who will want to change me to fit his image of what he wants me to be.”

  I didn’t look Heath in the eye as I said this to him. In many ways, I was describing his boyfriend. If I could help it, he’d never know how much I disliked Brian.

  Theirs was definitely a relationship I wasn’t interested in emulating. I didn’t want any romantic relationships. I didn’t see the need. I’d never had to rely on a man—from the moment I was born, even—and I never, ever would.

  But sex…maybe sex could be good. I’d never know until I tried it, right?

  It was just getting past that pesky virginity hurdle. No casual one-night stand dude would want a part in that. Would they?

  “What about that Jon guy in your study group? He seemed nice when I met him.”

  I shrugged. Jon was a good-looking guy, but… he just didn’t do it for me. There was something about him that put me off. Maybe just because he was so overly eager.

  “He’s definitely into you. That’s no mystery,” Heath said with a crooked smile as he threw down his last French fry. “You know, whoever it is, it doesn’t have to be a big, long-term commitment. You’re friends with the guy. Why not just do a friends-with-benefits thing or something?”

  I rubbed my cheek, my gaze drifting as I considered it. It wasn’t really a bad idea. Jon was nice enough. He was smart, attractive—if a little needy. I didn’t want him hanging around forever as a boyfriend, but once I retook the MCAT, I wouldn’t be in his study group. Nor would we share any of the same classes, since he was a year behind me.

  I contemplated that possibility. He’d probably ask me out again. He’d been persistent in the past. But…could I go all the way with him? And would he back away afterward if I did?

  I blew out a breath. “There has to be an easier way to do this.”

  Heath laughed. “Don’t sweat it, Mia. If you stop being so…aloof and unavailable, it will probably take care of itself. Just don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

  I raised a brow at him. “Have you ever known me to do anything spontaneous and potentially self-destructive?”

  His smile faded. “There’s always a first time… so try to be your usual sensible self. I’m sure you’ll get that cherry popped in no time. Just don’t expect it to be the best experience of your life. And don’t expect the first to be your forever-love or something. Also, don’t give up on sex because that first time ends up being crappy.”

  I shook my head, grimacing. “Wow, when you put it that way, what the hell have I been waiting for? Hold me back before I find some big stud to deflower me!”

  Fortunately, I’d remembered to keep my voice down. But just in case, I glanced over at the table next to us, relieved to see that it was now empty.

  Heath took me home and we hung out for a little bit before he declared it “too damn hot.” Not twenty minutes after he left, my neighbors started screwing again—loudly.

  ***

  Mom was definitely hiding something. It had been nagging me since the day I’d seen that look in her eyes. When she’d implied that she should have hid her cancer from me to keep me from worrying.

  Of course, I was hiding things from her as well.

  My MCAT failure, for one thing. And the fact that I’d decided to play amateur sleuth the next time I went back to the ranch.

  She caught me at her desk, rifling through her bills.

  “What are you doing with my private papers?”

  She’d just come around the corner to find me elbow deep in envelopes. Her face immediately flushed.

  My eyes snapped to hers and we held each other’s gaze for a long, awkward moment.

  Mom was looking under the weather this weekend, and she hadn’t seemed too happy about my surprise visit. Maybe she’d wanted to spend the weekend alone or in bed or something. As it was, she’d been sleeping in later than normal, and I’d taken advantage of that this morning to flip through her mail—bills, mostly, the regular kind, and a lot of medical bills to boot.

  Under the faint flush, her face appeared sallow with that unnatural yellowing of a person who’d been through harrowing medical treatment. In addition, her cheeks were hollow. “I was, um, just tidying up,” I croaked. Caught red-handed, my own face started to flush with heat.

  “They don’t need tidying up!” she snapped. “Why are you digging through my business?”

  I slowly stood from the table and swallowed a lump in my throat.

  “I, um, wasn’t trying to be nosy.” A bald-faced lie. My gaze drifted away from hers.

  With her mouth pressed into a straight line, she bent and jerkily snatched up her mail then stuffed it into a giant manila envelope.

  I folded my arms across my chest. “Mom. Are you in some kind of financial trouble?”

  She heaved a sigh. “Mia, you need to stop being all up in everyone else’s business and get a life of your own.” She did an about-face, turned the corner and disappeared into her room.

  I stood there, my jaw hanging open. Suddenly, there were tears in my eyes, sharp and prickly. My own mother thought I was a loser who didn’t have a life.

  It was like a punch to the gut.

  I left the house and went out to the barn to spend some time whining to the horses. I had no idea what Mom was doing in the house. Obviously, she was feeling like crap this weekend, and a lot of her attitude had come from that.

  But the rest of it?

  Were those bills the source of stress she was trying to hide from me?

  Why did people who loved one another try to hide so much from each other?

  If Mom was in financial trouble, was the stress from it making her sicker? She definitely looked worse this weekend than she had before. And she’d finished chemo weeks ago…

  Afterward, I ran to the store to buy her some of the foods she relied on when she was feeling sick. When I got back, her bedroom door was closed, the light off.

  I could only assume she was napping.

  I left her a long note with an apology and a lame excuse about how I had to get back to my studies.

  Then I left, filled with more questions and a ton more worry than I’d had before I arrived.

  Chapter 11: She’s Auctioning What?

  I returned early enough on Saturday afternoon, affording me a rare chunk of time to blow off steam on DE alone. I was still stewing from Mom’s snappy behavior, particularly her assertion that I didn’t have a life.

  And instead of trying to figure out how to go out and actually get a life, I licked my wounds at home on a Saturday night by gaming. By myself.

  Luckily, I wasn’t alone for long. FallenOne logged on about an hour after I did. I guess he had nothing better to do with his weekend, either.

  Our two missing party members, however, had not hesitated to inform us previously that they were going to enjoy themselves. Th
ey actually had social lives—and sex lives to boot!

  I wondered what had happened that Fallen was hanging out with me. He’d been hooking up with someone fairly regularly. Until recently, he casually mentioned going out with a “friend” or having “a date.” And, as usual, he’d been mysterious about it. Only an occasional pronoun clued me in that it was a woman.

  Or maybe because he was in the Eastern Time Zone, he’d already gone out and come back from his dates before gaming with us… Who knew?

  *You tell FallenOne, So why aren’t you out on a date tonight, too, leaving me to grind my dailies alone?

  *FallenOne tells you, Shrug. I dunno.

  Me: Did things fall through with your “friend”?

  Him: You’re nosy. And why would you put friend in quotes?

  Me: I guess it’s just my way of abbreviating Friend With Benefits.

  Him: Well, we used to work together. She recently moved on to something else. Haven’t seen her much, and, honestly, we never hung out a lot…

  Me: You just got together to hook up?

  Him: Not *just to hook up, no…but…more often than not.

  Me: Hmmm.

  Him: What, hmmm? I take it you disapprove?

  Me: Me? No…I’m just wondering how something like that comes about…a friends with benefits type of situation. Like there’s someone you’re hanging out with as a friend and you just decide to start sleeping together? Does it just happen or do you have a conversation about it ahead of time or…?

  Him: You’re overthinking it.

  Me: I overthink *everything. I am the queen of overthinking.

  Him: I can see that. What’s got you so interested in all this?

  Me: I dunno. I think it’s time to …move forward and experience new things—so to speak. But I have zero interest in relationships or dating. You seem to have a convenient set-up, so I was just trying to figure out how you did it.

  Him: I’m sure you’ll figure something out with a little of that brainpower.

  I could see that he was typing, but nothing was coming through. It was as if he were typing and deleting the lines—more than once. Finally, a message came through.

  Him: But you know, what’s the rush, right? You’ve got tests and medical school and all that…

  Me: The rush is that I don’t want to be an octogenarian virgin, tyvm.

  Him: Well, there’s quite some time before you become an octogenarian.

  Me: Oh, whatever. Let’s just go kill stuff.

  Him: Like you just killed that conversation? Okay, fine. How about we try out that new fireworks quest? Word on the street is that people are having a lot of fun with it.

  Me: Blowing crap up is almost as good as killing stuff. I’m down for that.

  ***

  *Elosia has entered the world of Yondareth

  FallenOne and Eloisa are scrambling around the crater of a steaming volcano, dodging random pools of lava as they collect pockets of sulfur for their wicked concoction.

  Hassim, the quest-giver, has provided them with a special collection container, along with a list of ingredients that they will need in order to help him with his magical—and explosive—creations. Once finished, they’ll have to venture into the deepest, darkest caves of Yondareth to collect saltpeter…

  “I hope this quest is worth it,” Eloisa murmurs to FallenOne, holding her nose to block out the rotten egg smell of the sulfur. Even so, she manages to reach her scoop into a pocket of the yellow substance hiding under a rock and dump it into her clay container, corking it up tightly.

  “Hassim makes beautiful fireworks,” replies FallenOne, nodding. “I’m sure it will be a sight to see.”

  After arduous days of trekking across the land, the two adventurers end up in a dwarvish mining camp, where they trade their labor—repairing the minecart tracks—for lumps of raw copper. The metal is a vital ingredient to produce the fireworks’ blue sparks, among the many other colors of the display.

  It’s a long and tireless quest, and finally, with all necessary ingredients gathered, they return to Hassim. The exotics chemist will assemble them into his famous creations in time for the Great Gnomish World Festival.

  Both FallenOne and Eloisa are full of excitement and can’t wait to participate.

  “Aside from getting our own personal fireworks to set off whenever we want, I can’t wait to help assemble the display for the Festival.” FallenOne combs his hand through his snowy beard thoughtfully, a dreamy look in his eyes—it’s as if he’s picturing what it will be like.

  Eloisa, however, has been silent ever since turning the ingredients over to Hassim. While the two adventurers wait for him to assemble his fiery rockets, they’ve been asked to create a clearing, build a platform and, once the rockets are ready, set them up properly. She’s beginning to think that this is a lot of work for very little gain.

  As the tasks have mounted, Eloisa has become less and less amused.

  “This is a great deal of trouble for nothing, I think,” she pouts.

  FallenOne straightens from his backbreaking labor, having assembled the platform and stands for the rockets. “We’re almost done. You’ll see! Once the sun goes down, there will be such a sight to be seen, and we’ll be the great heroes who brought the special magic of Hassim’s creations to all the inhabitants in these parts.”

  But there are still more tasks to be completed. Hassim is very specific about the layout of the rockets, which must be arranged in a particular pattern, as does the black powder that acts as a fuse.

  Eloisa’s cheeks grow red with frustration and even a little anger. She’s at the end of a too-short tether of patience. And she’s not going to suffer fools gladly.

  She’s going to fight back.

  She grabs the majority of the rockets and the barrel of black powder before FallenOne even realizes what she is doing. Hauling them to the platform, she piles the explosives in a high mound.

  “That’s not how Hassim told us to do it!” Fallen protests when he finally catches up with her, still a little stunned that she can move so fast.

  “I don’t care,” retorts Eloisa. “That’s what he’s going to get!”

  Then she uncorks her keg of black powder and begins to spread it across the ground in intricate patterns and shapes. She also spells out words in a mysterious foreign tongue that FallenOne has never seen before.

  He watches, eyes growing wider at the pictures her patterns seem to form. “That’s not—you can’t be—what—?”

  “Watch me,” Eloisa bites out as she throws down her empty barrel of powder and pulls out her flint and steel. “I’d advise you to stand back.”

  Eyes wide and jaw practically hitting the ground, FallenOne complies, backing as far away as he possibly can while still in a position to witness what is about to happen in this tiny hapless hamlet at the edge of the woods.

  When she’s ready, Eloisa ignites a spark at the end of a long and twisting trail of scattered black powder, which leads directly to the gigantic mound of fireworks, sure to explode once the fire reaches them.

  “That’s the last time I do their monkey labor all for a damn reusable firework that will sit in my backpack and take up room until I decide to destroy it!”

  FallenOne can only shake his head as the fire follows the trail of black powder, meandering around the intricate shapes and foreign alphabet letters, wending closer and closer toward the heap of explosives at the center of the platform.

  “I’m going to give them a show they’ll never forget!” Eloisa shouts gleefully.

  ***

  I watched the display on the monitor, a fist pressed to my mouth as I suppressed a cackle. I could sense Fallen’s annoyance from here.

  The powder ignited from where I’d set fire to it, and flames erupted, lighting up the patterns. I had no idea what was going through Fallen’s mind as he witnessed my rebellion, but it sure was funny as hell to me.

  Flames wound around two giant circles, stretching into an elongated shaft of
light. A flare of white stars streamed from the very tip. Lights flickered in patterns and spelled out words.

  “Fuck off, Hassim” was one. “You suck, Draco,” another. And other fun little messages.

  FallenOne remained noticeably quiet until the trail of flames led to the grand finale—a giant-ass mound of fireworks heaped into a pile that all exploded at once, nearly burning my retinas with the on-screen obnoxious display of light.

  The entire village—had it existed outside the realm of pixels and bytes—would have been demolished.

  I giggled like a child as I witnessed my devastation—the giant smoking crater in the clearing, all tinged with black. In just a quarter of an hour, it would all go back to looking as it did before, for the benefit of the NPC villagers and the players who would venture there with their own quests to complete.

  But I’d likely burned my own bridges—in a manner of speaking.

  That thought just made me laugh harder.

  *FallenOne tells you, Cock and balls, Mia, REALLY?

  *Eloisa tells FallenOne, It’s funny! Hassim’s quest *really was annoying af. Don’t you think?

  Him: It wasn’t *that annoying.

  Me: It was damn annoying. This game is full of annoying busywork quests like that. I’d had enough.

  Him: Oh come on, it was an interesting quest. And a great reward! Not that YOU were around to receive it.

  Me: Says you. I rebelled.

  Him: So I noticed. You are quite the rebel.

  Me: I like mixing it up, what can I say?

  Him: I assume there will be a full and thorough review of this quest chain on the blog sometime soon?

  Me: Of course, I took screenies and everything.

  Him: Wow. You’re going nuclear.

  Me: Meh. If I was going scorched earth, you’d know it. This is nothing. They’ll get over it. Maybe they won’t make so many busywork quests in the future. Win-win for all of us players.

  Him: Are you actually trying to school the creators of the game with your snarkfest of a blog?

  Me: I simply offer another perspective.