After warfare destroyed most of the country, only one area remains where people can survive. Because of limited food and space, the leaders decreed that each person is allowed to have only one friend.

A teenage girl believes things should be otherwise.

Sixteen-year-old Alabama Long keeps her head high, even with the heavy metal ball the guards chained to her back. She feels the eyes of Tellers on her as she's led down the dirt road to the old stadium, where a scanner checks the device implanted in her heel and wants the name of her friend. Her grandmother who's raised her is the only person she can speak to freely while inside their dwelling, but why not one or more of those other teen girls she performs with? Or the Teller boy who watches her with a different kind of interest? Soon she's thrust into realizing that the scruffy mutt who tries to jump hurdles with her will become the catalyst to send her and her friend to discover a better place—or their cruel deaths.

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