The Girl Who Dared to Think by Bella Forrest (e reader for manga TXT) 📕

for me to kick my boots off before leading me to her room, “what happened, and how are you back? I can’t see Princess Prim not keeping to her scheduled dosages.”

I immediately flopped onto her bed and tilted my head up toward the ceiling, watching the clear, glowing pipe of bubbling water shooting by overhead.

“I honestly don’t know,” I admitted balefully. “I just woke up today feeling normal. No—not normal. Like I was waking up from a nightmare to realize I was living a stranger’s life.” I looked down at my feet, my legs in the perfectly pressed uniform. “And suddenly I just couldn’t take it anymore. I got out of there as fast as I could.”

Zoe sighed and tossed her hair over her shoulder, then crossed over to her desk. Several slim books stood in a line, their covers of various colors. She pulled out a red one and began flipping through it, slowly turning around. Then she paused and began to read.

“‘Procedures performed by the Medica in order to prevent dissidence are more often than not met with failure. Medications that have been developed thus far have no lasting effect on the subject, and are—'’”

“Summarize, girl,” I interrupted, and she looked up at me, her nose wrinkling.

“You’re no fun.” She pouted as she put the book back in its rightful place, treating it gently. “Basically, we develop a tolerance to the medication eventually, and some people are just… naturally immune.”

“Of course I am one of those people,” I breathed, and she gave me a sympathetic look. I placed my face into my hands and exhaled. “Why can’t I just catch a break?” I mumbled, my voice coming out muffled from behind my hands.

“I didn’t catch that, but if you’re whining about why life isn’t being fair to you, I suggest you take a look outside this Tower and think about whether history has been fair to humanity.”

I sat up, her words like hot lead being poured into a lethal mold. “That’s great for humanity, Zoe, but I’m having a bit of a selfish moment over here, and would appreciate some sympathy. I mean, how can I be expected to succeed if my body or mind or whatever won’t even get with the program? I really don’t want to find out the hard way what restructuring is.”

She blinked at me, her angry face withdrawing some, and sighed. I knew why she was angry—she didn’t like pity parties or people feeling sorry for themselves. It was her biggest pet peeve.

“Do you think you can maintain your number for a while at least? Maybe I can do some research or something.”

By way of response, I held up my wrist. The orange five held firm.

“Apparently not,” Zoe said gravely. “That didn’t take long.”

“What do you mean?”

She frowned. “You were a six yesterday,” she said.

“What am I going to do?” I asked, my eyes still on the pipe overhead.

Zoe lay down beside me and wrapped an arm around my waist, hugging me. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But the drugs have got to go. That’s first and foremost.”

My mind flashed to the pill in my pocket and the kiss Grey and I had shared, and I flushed with embarrassment and shame, grabbing one of her pillows and shoving it over my face.

“Oh, God, Zoe, I made a complete idiot of myself today, on top of everything else.”

“What? How is that possible? It’s only ten in the morning!”

“I know,” I groaned as I removed the pillow and rolled onto my side so I could face her. My fingers traced the outline of an elephant on the bedspread before me, gold in a sea of royal blue, and I sighed. “Do you remember that one I told you about? The one that suddenly became a nine?”

“Yeah. That happened on the day you became a three.”

I smiled, pleased that she remembered. It might seem like a small thing, but it made me feel important, knowing that she actually listened and cared about what I told her.

“Well, anyway, I ran into him, and…” I flushed, the blush growing hotter as I forced out the words. “…I wound up kissing him.”

Silence met my confession, and when I looked up into my best friend’s face, I could see the incredulity there. “You kissed a potential criminal,” she said flatly, her brows furrowing. “Now I know you’re off the drugs for sure. Princess Prim would never do that.”

“He’s a nine,” I said defensively. “So technically, Princess Prim wouldn’t have a problem with kissing him.”

The thought backfired as I realized the implications of what I had just said: as long as I took those pills, I would never really know who I was kissing—or why. Kissing Grey didn’t seem so bad, under that light. Sure, it had happened under false pretenses, but at least I got to make the decision—even if it was the wrong one. It was my bad decision to make. Not hers.

Zoe stared at me, then gave me a small smile. “So how was it?” she asked.

“Zoe!” I chided, grabbing a pillow and whapping her in the face with it. But my mind flashed to that hungry kiss, and I felt another blush coming on. This time, however, I managed to push it back, needing to take this seriously so she would too. “Look, I think this guy has some information on a case I’m working on. He told me he’d give me the information if I kissed him, and I—”

“Say no more,” she said with a smile, sitting up and pressing on a panel on the wall over her bed. “This is a classic romance story arc,” she said, pulling a battered book from the now exposed compartment. I alone was privy to this little cache of illegal books, and it had never once occurred to me to turn her or them in. Besides, she let me borrow Charlotte’s Web regularly; it made me see spiders in a whole new light, and now I let the little