Freedom was a strange look on Holland, particularly because her freedom was partial, and incomplete. Everyone looked at her, all the time. They watched her while she bought food, and clothes. They watched her while she walked down the street. She’d taken to wearing a hat and sunglasses, but these things didn’t help; everyone knew she was here, back in Six, back in the city, and some of them had even taken to understanding her daily routines. She didn’t think it was a coincidence that she sometimes saw the same people, again and again.
She’d asked Carol to come to Six to help her decorate her new house, the mansion she didn’t want to live in but had to. However, as soon as he’d gotten there, she’d whisked him away on the back of her father’s motorcycle, and they made the trip north to the town she’d lived in before she was Reaped.
She’d found the spare key and showed him the studio, untouched since the day of the Reaping. She showed him some of the animals she’d done herself and hadn’t wanted to get rid of, pieces she was proud of. Finally, she dragged him out back, into the little house that sat on the back of the property, in which she’d lived before everything. This place, too, was unchanged. Her bed unmade. She dropped her backpack onto it and unzipped it, then held out a box to him. “You ever dyed anybody’s hair?”
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