Sugar Plum

By Jennie Bates Bozic

At six inches tall with gorgeous purple wings, seventeen-year-old Sugar is the spitting image of a fairy - and that makes her the perfect spy.

It’s the year 2081 and the USA hasn’t been united for five years. Now it’s divided into three bitterly feuding sections - the West, the East, and the Mids, and thousands of families have been separated by the conflict. In order to figure out how spies are crossing from the right coast, the West is targeting caravans of families crossing the Mids illegally. Trouble is, the crossers are hard to track, and that’s where Sugar comes in.

Every week, she and hundreds of others like her are packaged as Christmas tree ornaments and “donated” to poor children. If they’re lucky, they’ll end up with a crosser kid and dig up valuable information about the clandestine caravans while their wings serve as a tracking device. If not, they fly back to the Candy Factory for reassignment. Wash, Rinse, Repeat until they’ve served enough missions to earn their freedom.

When Sugar is placed with a crosser kid named Clara, she quickly discovers that the conflict is more complicated than she thought. Clara’s uncle and his family were assassinated and now her parents are running for their lives. Every second that Sugar remains with the family, she puts them in danger. If she leaves, she’ll surely be caught and lose any chance at freedom. If she stays, she might lose everything.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jennie Bates Bozic
• Release date: Nov 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9780989734714

Jennie Bates Bozic

I'm a visual effects artist for film and television by day, and at night I don my author cape and pen stories for the YA crowd. I love a good fairy tale, especially if there's a creepy twist, so that's what I write.I met my husband in the World of Warcraft and we live in Los Angeles with our cat. We spend our time playing video games, reading, hiking, sweeping up cat hair, and cursing the terrible traffic.I have a bachelor's degree in Religion and Philosophy from Hillsdale College, and some of my past jobs have included: swimming lessons teacher, lifeguard, furniture salesperson, barista, and loan officer. I was especially terrible at the loan officer bit and that's what prompted me to make a major change and go off to Canada to get a diploma in 3D Animation and Visual Effects. After that, I moved to Los Angeles by myself and roomed with two crazy sisters I found on Craigslist. But that's another tale.Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you enjoy my books!

Book preview

Damselfly

Jennie Bates Bozic

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013 by Jennie Bates Bozic LLC

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Published by Jennie Bates Bozic LLC

Cover Design by Jennie Bates Bozic

Copyedited by Rebecca Weston

978-0-9897347-1-4  

SUGAR PLUM is a companion novelette to DAMSELFLY. It is approximately 40 pages long and can be read either before or after DAMSELFLY.

There are twelve days until Christmas, and I’m celebrating by getting my arms encased in plastic. My packager snaps the right one in place and adjusts my dress sleeves so they disguise the spot where the fake arms mold against my body. This way, I can relax and my hands will still stick straight out from my sides. The plastic is supposed to help me stay motionless so I am indistinguishable from a Christmas tree ornament.

I’m also wearing a doll mask, and I can barely see out of the eye holes. My skin is already sticky with sweat. The next couple of hours are going to feel like years. I wiggle my fingers inside the hands as an itch creeps up my left forearm.

Hold still. A crop of short red hair appears through my eye slits. Odette shakes her finger at me. Stop moving. I’ve almost got you cinched in.

I have an itch! I screech, but it comes out muffled.

What?

An itch!

She rolls her eyes and steps back. Okay. We have to test the release mech anyway.

I press my thumbs against the buttons and the plastic arm casing snaps off while the restraints around my ankles and middle open. I yank the mask off and use it to scratch away.

Odette folds her arms. You done?

No. There aren’t enough air holes.

There are plenty. No one else has complained.

I hold the mask out. How many other people have worn this thing?

I don’t know. Enough. Why does it matter? She gathers up the casings and holds up my left arm. Come on. Be like Jesus for just five minutes while I put these back on. I still have to get packaged, too.

I want to know who I’m sharing sweat and spit with today, I mutter.

She snaps my plastic arms in place and shoves the mask back on my face in reply. Her head disappears from my narrow field of vision as she refastens my waist holder. She’s gruff and quick but has this way of going back over her work with gentler hands, as if she’s remembered she’s dealing with a human being. We’re the same age—seventeen—but Odette has been working here at the Candy Factory for a lot longer than I have. All of us mark the moment we woke up as our new birth and we don’t talk about what our lives were like before that point because we don’t remember them.

The day I woke up, the first thing I noticed was how far away the ceiling looked. I felt like I was inside a skyscraper with all the floors knocked out, and I was looking up, up, up at the very highest ceiling. The names of things, the definitions of words, slowly returned to me as I lay there on the table. And the table felt so different; the textures were strange. My body was feather-light, and it took so much less effort to lift my hand to my face and wipe away my tears. I still don’t know why I cried. Some nights, the same sadness takes over