Your Body. Rented Out. Used For Murder.

First, Callie Lost Her Parents.
Then She Lost Her Home.
And, Finally, Her Body.
But She Will Stop At Nothing To Get It Back.

Starters is written by Lissa Price, and is set in a time of war. A new law that is accepted earlier on doesn’t allow adolescents for employment and this law will make surviving in a world with no middle-aged citizens an exceptionally hard task. Children without the supervision of grandparents are gathered up by the Marshals and are place in new homes to be looked after by horrid people, who will most likely put them to work in camps. Those who escape the Marshals, who are hell-bent on capturing children, live squatting in different abandoned buildings and doing whatever they need to do in order to survive.
Callie and her younger brother Tyler are two children who luckily had the luxury of escaping the Marshals. When their mother falls sick, with the killing spores that live in the air from this war, the two children take her to the hospital where she dies in no time at all. After this sad incident their father is soon taken away by the Marshals, and when he figures out that they will not free him, he sends his children an encrypted message for them to run, saving them from being imprisoned.
Tyler, the younger brother, becomes sick and with no access to a hospital, and on top of a poor diet, he increasingly becomes sicker.
However, another refugee from the war, their friend Michael offers to help aid Tyler while Callie investigates the one and extremely dangerous opportunity she has to make enough money to help her slowly dying brother. After hours of walking in the dark she finally gazes upon the building Prime Destinations where she is greeted kindly. The program is explained to her, with a great reward for which seems like a very short and painless requirement.
She takes the contract to share with Michael, to think about it carefully like her father had always taught her, but when Marshals raid the building they are currently living in, quickly leaves them homeless once more, Callie thinks that now she has no choice.
She travels back to Prime Destination. For three rentals, she would have enough money to get herself, Tyler , and Michael a real home.
She hesitatingly signs the contract, and is quickly rushed into their “treatment program”. Washed, hair cut and styled, manicured, scars and acne removed, make up added and new, fresh clothes, clean clothes. When she is presented to herself, she barely recognises the girl looking back at her through the mirror.
An uninterrupted sleep in a real bed is followed next. When she wakes up next morning to be taken for the procedure that will plant a chip in the back of her head. This chip will make an “Ender”, one of the senior population, be able to enter and control her consciousness and body as if it were her own. This all takes place whilst Callie’s consciousness sleeps comfortably in Prime Destinations, she is told.
Most of what she has been told is true, and Callie comes through the first two rentals with flying colours. She is then asked to go on to the third rental which will take place over a course of a whole month. She asks to make a deal. She will accept, once she goes and sees her brother and Tyler, giving them food and the time to explain why she will be gone for so long.
Tyler says she misses her and Callie promises that this will all be worth it in time.
This third rental changes everything. Shortly after gaining control of her body, she finds herself in a place called Club Rune, where the music is loud and the crowd is young and beautiful. Something has allowed her and the renter named Helena to talk and Helena opens Callie to the truth. Prime is taking children off the street and forcing them into service. At first, Callie doesn’t want to believe what her renter is telling her. Helena says that she is looking for her granddaughter Emma, and she is not alone. She introduces Callie to others who have the idea that Prime Destinations has taken their family members as well. Callie is really disturbed when she finds out that Prime Destinations is preparing a new program where a renter can become a new owner of their young rental. The donor would of course, die. Callie joins a group whose mission is to end Prime Destinations, but in unexpected events, she meets Blake Harrison (Senator Harrison’s grandson). Blake and Callie date, and she slowly starts to falls for him. It is her first date, her first crush, and her first heartbreak, all rolled into one guy. How can she have the time to stop Prime, help her brother and Michael, and get revenge of the deaths of so many people and loved ones.
This ticks the list of a rugged individual because, Callie is only a teen with so much responsibility resting on her shoulders. Her brother who she has to protect for many years is slowly dying and she barely has a roof over their head. The sad memories of her mother passing and her father disappearing. Callie has to be so strong for her brother and goes out on so many dangerous encounters by herself. Callie has definitely earned the right to say she is a strong and courageous rugged individual.