Chapter 1: The Offer

The little pink slip was staring at me. It was pinned to the fabric wall of my cubicle with a rusty thumbtack, right next to a doodle I’d drawn of a smiling cat. The paper didn’t look angry or mean. It was just ... final.

Notice of Redundancy.

I, Denise Holt, was redundant. At nineteen years old, with a high school diploma I’d gotten just a few months ago, I was already useless. The word echoed in my head. Re-dun-dent. It sounded like a robot saying you’re broken.

My stomach felt like a rock was sitting in it. This job in the mailroom wasn’t glamorous. My hands always smelled like paper and dust, but it was money. It was the money that kept the lights on in our tiny apartment. It was the money for my little brother Tyler’s school snacks. It was the money that stopped my mom’s hands from shaking when she opened the bills.

What are we going to do now? The thought was a cold whisper in my mind. I pictured the eviction notice stuck to our fridge with a banana magnet. This pink slip was its best friend.

“Holt.”

I jumped. My supervisor, Mr. Roberts, was standing at the entrance of my cubicle. His face was like a closed door. He didn’t look sorry for me. I wondered if he had a pink slip coming, too.

“My office,” he said. “Now.”

I stood up, my legs feeling wobbly. This is it, I thought. He’s going to tell me to clean out my desk. I followed him through the maze of gray cubicles, the fluorescent lights humming a sad song overhead. Everyone was typing, heads down, pretending not to see me walk by. They all knew.

His office had glass walls. You could see everything, but you couldn’t hear anything. It was like being in a silent, see-through box. I sat down in the stiff chair in front of his big, clean desk. He sat down and didn’t look at me, shuffling some papers.

“As you know, your position is being eliminated,” he said, his voice flat. “Your last day is Friday.”

The rock in my stomach got heavier. Friday was in two days.

“But,” he said, and that one word made my heart give a little jump. He finally looked at me. His eyes were like two little cameras, scanning my face, my cheap blouse, and my nervous hands. “There is a ... alternative. One opening. It reports directly to the CEO. Angelica Howell.”

The air in the room got thinner. Angelica Howell. Everyone knew that name. She was the one who had changed everything after the new laws passed. The Vernon Ruling. It was all over the news. Some people called it freedom. Some people called it exploitation. At companies like this one, it meant that some employees, the ones who worked directly for the top bosses, were ... different.

They were called “Skins.”

Mr. Roberts saw the panic on my face. “The role requires a significant ... adjustment,” he went on, choosing his words carefully. “It operates under the new corporate expressive vision. Do you understand what that means?”

I nodded, but I didn’t really. I understood it meant working naked. That part was simple and terrifying.

Then he slid a security badge across the smooth surface of the desk. It wasn’t white like mine. It was a sleek, serious black.

“The position pays sixty dollars an hour,” he said.

The number hit me like a physical shock. Sixty dollars. I did the math instantly. That was more than four times what I make now. It was more money than my mom made in two weeks. My breath caught in my throat.

Sixty dollars an hour could erase the eviction notice. It could buy Tyler all the new shoes he needed. It could put real food in the fridge and silence the constant, quiet worry in my mom’s voice.

It could fix everything.

I stared at the black badge. It looked like a key. A key to a prison, or a key to a palace. I didn’t know which. All I knew was that I was already reaching for it.

The bus ride home felt longer than usual. I clutched the black security badge in my hand so hard the plastic edges dug into my palm. Sixty dollars an hour. The number played on a loop in my head, a bright, shiny shield against the fear.

But every time the bus hit a bump, reality shook through me. Corporate expressive vision. That was the fancy term for it. On the news, people screamed about the Vernon Ruling. They said it gave companies the right to treat people like objects. They said the “Skins” were slaves. But the people defending it talked about freedom and authenticity. I never knew who to believe. It wasn’t supposed to be my problem.

Now it was.

I got off the bus and walked toward our apartment building. The paint was peeling, and the lobby always smelled like old cabbage. I took the stairs, my feet heavy on the steps I’d climbed a thousand times.

Before I even got the key in the lock, I could hear them.