Chapter 1

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I'm in a cage.

It's about six-by-eight feet. The walls are a russet brown. The steel bench bolted to the concrete is covered in a blanket hand-knitted by someone with no sense of comfort. I use it, of course. How else am I going to keep myself warm through the lonely winter nights?

This is the Downtown Police Station, and my home away from home. I spend more time here than I do anywhere else. I suppose I should start referring to myself as an addict. Maybe I like sleeping here, listening to the sirens outside in the lot or the grumbles of drunks and hookers in other cells. Or maybe it's safer here than it is on a park bench or someone's open garage.

My name is Jessica Knight. I'm five-foot-four, my hair is annoyingly black and I'm some part Armenian (I think). I don't live at home. I don't have a home. I'm no one. But I'm free – most of the time – and that's all I need to live for.

I'm guessing you have a frown on your face. You're wondering why a teenage girl like me doesn't live in a small-town house with a white, picket fence,annoying siblings and parents committed to their careers. I'll be honest; leaving home was the best thing that ever happened to me. I have no rules and no parents who scowl at me when I sneak home three minutes after curfew or try to tell me who I can and cannot date. At least, I don't live with them anymore. That's the way things are.

As for a home... I live in lots of places. More often than not, I'm with my friend Alice.She's twenty-five and shares a flat with her hipster boyfriend Shane. They're always happy to let me crash.

Then there's the life-plan aspect.

Okay, I'm not completely life-less. I'm not a vegetable, if that's how you want to look at it. Everyone has a purpose. I just don't really know what my purpose is. I go about my business – earning cash through street crew–run deals – because I have no other way of making money. No one wants to hire a homeless, uneducated teenage criminal.Except ... well, criminals themselves.

I don't like going against the law. I don't feel much of a thrill when I deal drugs or steal for cash. The only reason I do what I do is because it's all I've known since I left home at fifteen. And jail is better than owing people favors. I don't feel guilty for crashing in prison.

I don't know what in hell will happen to me tomorrow. And frankly, I don't care. I'm a teenage criminal with the longest juvy record in history, but I'm free as a bird. A jailbird. Oh, the irony.

I gaze at the decayed bars of my regular holding cell and begin to wonder about birds. The ones who live in cages just like mine. They don't think about where they're going to stay or where they'll get their next meal. They sing because they're happy, because they don't know otherwise.That's the one thing we don't have in common.

Sergeant Symons hobbles through the security door and into the corridor. I can hear him whistling a low, wordless tune. His footsteps grow louder and more rhythmic as he marches toward my cell. I let my arms hang out of the bars and press my face up against them. I've grown so comfortable here. I can probably tell you how many bricks there are on the back wall of my cell.

The clack,clack, clack of his perfectly polished shoes break their even tempo as he approaches the gate and glances down at me. His expression is of boredom. That's because he expects me to ignore him when he gives the 'I don't want to see you in here again, got it?' speech, so he doesn't say anything. Instead, he chews his gum, adjusts the holster under his overflowing gut and unlocks the door.

Another difference between me and the birds is three glorious words:

"You've got bail,"Sarge grumbles and I spit out a laugh. It's a running joke at the station, one Sarge became tired of long ago. It still makes me chuckle. "You know the drill, Knight. Get out of here."

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