Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia (Zoey Ashe #3)

by Jason Pargin

Minutes passed. Again, she was being made to wait. Will said they like to watch you while you wait, see what you do. Are you a fidgeter? Do you pace around, inspect the surroundings? Will’s rule: Sit and appear totally unperturbed by the delay. They get ten minutes. If they don’t arrive by then, leave. It doesn’t matter how badly you need the meeting, you don’t give them the satisfaction of letting you dangle on the hook. So Zoey had a seat in one of the lawn chairs, rotating it to face the back door so Damon wouldn’t have the pleasure of sneaking up on her. Don’t pick at your clothes, she thought. Don’t pull out your phone. Don’t reveal how much it enrages you that this petty wannabe tyrant is using your concern for the missing women against you because he himself is incapable of feeling any such thing. Find something to think about to distract yourself. Zoey decided she would pass the time by pondering just how much she hated politics. It was an arena in which everyone lied, all the time, because lying was required, demanded by the voters themselves. And because Zoey had money, it meant she had no escape. The snakes hit her up for campaign donations, they hinted at their ability to grease wheels she needed greased, they dropped implied threats about how they could make the machinery of commerce grind to a halt if she didn’t play ball. But the worst part was that, despite all this, politicians had an insidious ability to make you like them. Zoey thought of them as a speci...