Below Zero (The STEMinist Novellas, #3)

by Ali Hazelwood

Caring what others think is a lot of work, and—with a handful of exceptions—I’m not a huge fan of work.

I wanted to stop feeling as though I were rotting in my own aimlessness,

I was confused, contradictory, and, looking back, probably a shitty teenager to be around. Sorry, Mom and Dad and the rest of the world. No hard feelings, eh?

But at the tender age of sixteen, I was confronted with the unbearable turmoil that comes with trying your best and realizing that sometimes it simply isn’t enough.

Who would have figured that being a little shit for the first one and a half decades of my life would bring lasting consequences?

Wow. A male engineer who’s not an asshole. The bar is pretty low, but I’m nevertheless impressed.

Honestly, I know that my best bet is to keep people at arm’s length, so that they never find out what I’m actually like. Which is, incidentally: a bit of a bitch.

That would be, honestly, pretty idiotic. Too idiotic even for me: a well-known occasional idiot.

Something within me rejects being known, because being known means being rejected.