Page 1 of Never Broken

1

HER

It was 2 a.m., and I yawned and stared at the little orange pill in my desk drawer—half dying to use it, half hating it was even there.

Here I was, heiress of a corporate empire, daughter of societal privilege, top of the Class of 2024 atthesecondary school of the New North American Union elite. And I couldn’t even figure out a way to stay awake long enough to finish one goddamn chemistry chapter, let alone prevent myself from flunking out of college and—since my father couldn’t exactly help me anymore—losing my chance to become a doctor, build a life, and actually make a difference in the world. Or at least start figuring out how.

So here it was, decision time: either pop this pep pill down my throat or guzzle a macchiato.

The macchiato was looking like the winner. Fewer side effects,andI could order a slave to bring it up to my room.

However, here was my other thought: that the toilet was just a few short steps away in my en suite bathroom, and that to be safe, maybe the pill was better off there.

Before I could decide whether to flush the pill or hit the intercom to call a slave, my phone saved me. My friend Juliette was blowing it up. The smug little vibrations came one after another—first, some cartoonishly chiseled college guy grinning and guzzling a lager, then the obligatory selfie of her and him tossing ping-pong balls at each other and grinning like the drunk, horny idiots I wished to God I had the luxury of being right now.

But that wasn’t my world, much as I had once hoped it would be.

With a sigh, I stared at the phone, which was still buzzing obnoxiously. Saving me? Right. If anything belonged in the toilet —

Juliette

Where are u?? This mixer is lit

Louisa

Studying

It’s kind of the point of college, remember?

Maybe I’d feel better about spending all my time in college studying instead of partying if it had been the college Iwanted. I’dwantedto go east, but the university here in Phoenix had offered me a better academic scholarship—one that at that point I not only wanted but needed. Plus, it had a good scholastic reputation, not to mention a handful of faculty that had so far managed to evade being fired or arrested for being radical enemies of the union. And it had been crowned one of the union’s top ten party schools. The best of all worlds, right?

Or, for someone who was currently missing out on all of it, the worst.

I huffed a long curl off my face, closed the drawer, flipped the phone upside down, and turned back to my organic chemistry book. Sometimes my fellow pre-meds seemed to proudly rack up all-night study sessions the way some girls racked up drunken hookups. It didn’t seem fair that after nearly a semester, I’d notched exactly zero of either.But as my eyelids drooped, I knew tonight would be no exception. Suddenly, pills and macchiatos and intercomsallseemed like too much work.

I slammed the book and rested my head on its cool, glossy cover. My long, thick, not-quite-brown curls were a bitch to care for most of the time, but they did offer an awfully good natural pillow. Even though I needed to take my contacts out, I actually allowed my eyelids to close for a split second.

Juliette

U there?

No. I sprang up at the vibration. My midterm was looming over me like a thunderhead, and I, who had gently breezed through secondary school, was barely scraping by with a D. If I didn’t pass, I could kiss my academic scholarship—and my dreams of ever getting the hell out of my parents’ house, let alone becoming a doctor—goodbye.

Louisa

Sorry, fell asleep for a second

Juliette

U need a pick-me-up, girl

I prescribe some Vitamin D

She sent another sly pic of a pair of distressed jeans thatmayhave outlined a guy’s bulge if you squinted. Not like my mind wouldn’t have gone there anyway, even if it hadn’t.

In any case,thatwasn’t on tonight’s menu. There wasn’t any good D within ten miles of our neighborhood unless you counted one of the well-shampooed corporate types that Daddy had had over for cocktails earlier in the evening to try to convince them that he was still relevant to the union’s corporate elite, even though he was unemployed and buried under an avalanche of debt. The suit had to be thirty at least, but perhaps the time had come to consider that I was, well, desperate.

And desperate to get out of this bland, depressing, financially nosediving snooze factory I currently called home, which required graduating, so maybe my pick-me-up would have to be some Vitamin B: Benzedrine. Impulsively, I opened the drawer again and picked up the pill, turning it over between my fingers. My classmate Corey, an engineering major and family friend on a never-ending quest to prove he had everything about college figured out—and to nail me—had slipped it to me after my last lecture. “Every guy in my fraternity uses it,” he’d whispered. “There’s no reason to suffer.”

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