At Any Price

*You tell FallenOne, “Everyone’s gotta lose it sometime. Why not go out with a bang?”

*FallenOne tells you, “Pun intended, I hope?”

I laughed. That “sounded” more like the Fallen I knew. We chatted for a few more minutes before we traveled to the same game zone—the place where our characters were located, the Misty Caverns, in order to go hunt bad guys together. Little more was said about the auction or our personal lives after that. Fallen didn’t promise to log in again on our regular game night and with no small amount of sadness I realized that this might be the end of our regular gaming relationship.

Our mutual friend, Persephone, would be sad. She’d been trying to play matchmaker for Fallen and me for months and she hadn’t been subtle about it. And me, well, I wasn’t sure how I felt. More confused than ever, I guess.

After a few hours, a few hundred oozing undead and several quest rewards, Fallen decided to log off. I kept going—a form of procrastination and avoidance of the things I should be doing and thinking about. The question of Drake, Mr. CEO of the game I so loved, and his arrogance was still on my mind. Killing monsters didn’t help so I resolved to go for a run later that evening.

But I never got there because less than a half hour after Fallen logged off, my door was nearly pounded off its hinges. I’d have recognized that knock at midnight in the middle of cyclone. With a smile I got up and jerked open the door.

My two besties—besides, Heath, of course—stood in the door, shoulder to shoulder. I grinned at Alex, the daughter of my landlady, who had her long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. She had beautiful olive skin and was wearing a tight T-shirt with a printed-on bowtie and the motto Bowties Are Cool across her ample chest.

Jenna, her best friend and roommate, with the brightest blond hair I’d ever seen on a person out of childhood—complete with a shock of brilliant purple—fidgeted beside 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.”