LITMIR.BIZ

      BLURB

      In a time and place where the gulf between the haves and the have-nots has grown painfully wide, Olivia lives a life cushioned with abundance.

      Until the day she is kidnapped and held for ransom by Hannah, a girl from a very different kind of life. Olivia discovers a taste for things not commonly condoned in her world: black-market books, daring friends, wild creativity.

      From the depths of factory oppression to the dizzying heights of vigilante rooftops, Olivia travels the margins of society, where the misfits gather and build homes for themselves out of whatever they can get their hands on — and fight to make a life worth living.

      For Beth and Regan

      1

      Hannah, the girl in the red rabbit mask, brings food to Olivia's cell twice a day. Hannah is two or three years older than Olivia, but no taller and much thinner, and she stares at the trays of food — rice and gravy and vegetables — as if these small, cold meals are the most important thing she's ever seen and much, much more valuable than Olivia's money.

      Two meals is less than Olivia's used to, but on the third day she pushes her hunger out of her mind as much as she can and eats only a small portion of the meal before offering the tray to Hannah.

      'Do you want some?'

      'I'm not supposed to,' Hannah says, but Olivia can see her eyes behind the red rabbit mask, and Hannah's eyes are more like those of a starving wolf than any kind of rabbit.

      'Who am I gonna tell?' Olivia replies, gesturing to the tiny, empty cement space of the room. That makes Hannah smirk. It's the first smile Olivia's seen from her.

      'Go on. Really.' Olivia holds the tray out again, and after another moment's hesitation Hannah takes it from her.

      Hannah eats like she expects the food to be snatched away from her at any moment, scooping mouthfuls in, almost without stopping to chew. Her sleeve falls back as she raises the spoon to her mouth again, and Olivia can see that Hannah's skin looks sore and tight around the ports installed in her thin wrist. She must have had them put in very young for her body to have grown that much around them.

      That makes Olivia feel sorry for her. That Hannah had ports put in and yet wound up here, masked and starving, is the most unfair thing Olivia has ever seen in her life.

      'Do you guys have my schoolbag?' she asks Hannah as Hannah eats, 'Or have you sent it to my parents as proof of life or whatever? I'm asking because my glasses are in there and I want to take my contact lenses out.'

      'We have it. I'll ask,' Hannah says. She eats the next bite of food more slowly, like she's realised that Olivia gave it to her in exchange for glasses. Olivia's pretty sure that people who're kidnapped aren't supposed to make little unspoken trades like that, but she can't see why not. This whole stupid awful thing is supposed to be about giving everyone something they want, isn't it? The maskers want money, Olivia's parents want Olivia back. Everyone wins. Hannah wants dinner and Olivia wants her glasses.

      Olivia also wants to know how much they think she's worth, but hasn't found a way to ask that won't sound weird and creepy.

      'I'll see what I can do,' says Hannah.

      Olivia smiles. 'Thank you.'

      'Don't,' Hannah says sharply, putting down the spoon and leaving the room. Olivia notices that despite the dramatic exit, Hannah finished all the food before departing.

      Olivia's room used to be a store room. It has little holes in a spaced-out, regular pattern around the walls where shelving used to be attached to them. Everything's been scrubbed, so it isn't dusty or dirty. Olivia appreciates that, and makes a note that she should tell Hannah to say thank you to the other captors on Olivia's behalf.

      It sucks being locked in here, but Olivia's always cheered herself up by noticing all the ways things could suck even more than they do. Like: they gave her a bucket with a lid to use as a toilet, which is about a thousand times better than a bucket without a lid would have been. There's a flickering, faintly buzzing bare lightbulb attached to the ceiling, and the switch is located by the door so she can turn it on or off as she wants. There's a small, slatted window high up on one wall, which doesn't do much in the way of light but keeps her from running out of air to breathe, and that's absolutely something that belongs in the "plus" column of things going on in her life right now.

      The bedroll they've given her doesn't stop the cement floor from being hard and cold, but she has a blanket and a pillow. At home she has quilts and cushions and everything else she could possibly want for a good night's sleep, but since Hannah doesn't even seem to get much food, Olivia suspects that comfortable bedding doesn't happen much in her kidnappers' lives. She's sure that they've given her the same level of luxury that they have themselves; maybe better.

      It's not like she likes being held hostage; but it's not especially awful, considering.

      A few hours later, Hannah comes back with Olivia's schoolbag in her hands.

      'Am I allowed to say thank you now, or are you gonna get all weird and broody at me again if I do?' Olivia asks.

      She can't tell for certain, what with the mask in the way, but she's sure that Hannah rolls her eyes.

      'You're weird,' Hannah says.

      'You're a masker,' Olivia retorts, dumping her school supplies on the floor and picking up the case of contacts stuff from the resulting pile of rubble.

      'Yeah, but that's a cool kind of weird,' insists Hannah. Olivia snorts.

      'Please. Anything that needs to be stridently defended as cool is automatically not cool. And oooh, scary, I got ambushed by a bunny and a cat and a fox and a mouse. What a joke.'

      It's a lie, though, the bravado. Olivia's certain that Hannah isn't fooled for a second. Being grabbed like that had been terrifying, her face covered by a pillow case as she was thrown into the back of a van. Olivia hadn't known before that moment that it truly was possible to be so frightened that she couldn't even scream.

      The memory makes her hands shake, so she puts aside the contacts case for the time being and looks up at Hannah instead.

      Hannah's hands are a little lighter than Olivia's own. The rest of her skin is covered by her worn, faded clothes and her mask.

      'Are the others your family? Your parents?' Olivia asks. Hannah shakes her head.

      'No. My parents are dead.'

      Olivia wants to say 'I'm sorry', but knows that to do so is risking another abrupt exit from Hannah, and Olivia doesn't want her to go.

      'They're just a gang I'm running with,' Hannah goes on, breaking the short silence. 'I don't care one way or the other about them, and they don't care about me. It's a job, not a family. What's that?'

      She points at a smaller drawstring bag among the stuff from inside Olivia's schoolbag. It's printed with a design of cutesy cartoon sharks and dolphins.

      'Oh. My swimming stuff. I would've had gym today.' Her hands are steadier now, so Olivia starts taking out her contacts. 'I really love it. I'm shitty at it, but I still love it. I had to beg my parents to let me do it. My dad wanted me to do riding instead. I had to really fight for it.'

      'You must love it,' Hannah agrees, a dubious note in her voice, as though she can't imagine why anyone would.

      Olivia's glasses feel comforting on her nose, like there's a thin layer of force-field between her and everything around her. Usually she only wears her glasses at home, in the evenings. Her mother says she's prettier when people can see her face properly,

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