Little Girl Lost.

"No, you're lying to me. This is some sick joke, this isn't real. There's no way you can actually be telling me the truth!" I found myself screaming; my tongue an unbridled hurricane, "You're wrong. Okay, you're wrong. None of this is fucking happening, stop trying to trick me."

She frantically tried to shush me, my screams bouncing off the gray ceiling above like a strange, surreal game of pinball.

"Just slow down, 'kay? Let me explain but please don't scream." She whispered, suddenly covering my mouth with her hand. She threw a glance back behind her, as if waiting for someone to burst into the abandoned room and catch us at any second.

"Please..it won't be good if they hear you. Just listen, kid. I have no reason to lie."

I narrowed my eyes, suspicious but too afraid to say anything to protest against her. Her words were still ringing in my ears, echoing in my head.

"So they can sell you."

Nodding, I tried to hide the tears stinging at the backs of my eyes. I couldn't cry, I wouldn't cry.

She moved her hand, assured I wasn't going to scream again and opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing. She bit her lip and absentmindedly scratched at the top of her head, her thin fingers tangled in her dark hair.

"I'm not lying.. I have no reason to lie to you. You and I, same situation right? I've just been here a little longer." She mumbled, shrugging her shoulders.

"How long.."

"Didn't care to count after the third year." She sighed, pushing a tangled lock of hair away from her forehead.

My breath hitched in my throat and I struggled to fight back the wave of nausea that gripped my stomach. More than three years..how long would I be here? Panic seized my heart and that same overwhelming urge to leave my body and float somewhere else took hold again. I wanted to run, get out, get away, go somewhere else. My body could stay here, on the floor of this dull, dim gray prison.

"You have to break to be sold, nobody wants someone who's gonna fight back. If they can't take that from you, they can't do anything with you. But they'll try..like hell they'll try."

The image of her scarred ear flashed in my mind. "They'll try..like hell they'll try."

"What do you mean..sold."

Her gaze met mine and for a moment, I saw a flash of anger light up her tired eyes before she let it fall to the floor again, tracing a senseless pattern in the dust and dirt.

"There's sick people out there. Will do anything for some cheap work or sex...whatever they want. So they'll go to the Market, buy whoever they want to work in those big mansions, do whatever they want at night when their rich wives are too busy to pay attention to 'em. As long as you won't fight back, they don't care who you are or where you came from."

"Market..you mean human trafficking?"

I remembered 9th grade. The paper I wrote for my English class, how I researched for hours and wrote this speech about the trafficking trade in the United States, how the country that lived under the words, "Home of the Free," was home to some of the top traffickers in the world. I never thought that those people would be me, that I would have become them. My computer screen and report covers had put a shield between me and that bitter reality. Who was I to think that they'd break apart and it'd become real?

"No...no." I moaned, my head beginning to spin and throb with that same nauseating anxiety. I wanted Rodney and home. I wanted to go home. My bed and the faded posters on my wall, the jewelry box my grandmother had given me as a birthday present, I wanted home. The warmth and light, none of the gray and dirt that was here.

And then it hit me. This is home now. I'm not leaving.

"I'm sorry.."

"It's fine..I'm fine." I mumbled, wiping at my eyes and trying to compose myself hoping that she'd explain more while also wanting to clamp my hands over my ears and scream; drowning everything and everyone else out until the world around me just disappeared.

"How do you know this?" The question hung in the air like the swinging, buzzing lightbulb above.

"I..uhm. My O.A gets drunk and he spills stuff sometimes. I figured it out over the last couple years. And when the girls start disappearing, you get to put two and two together."

Two and two together. Like it was some sick, twisted jigsaw puzzle.

"I keep hearing that..what is that? O.A, I mean.."

"Stands for something like..overseeing authority. It's their job to..y'know.." Her voice trailed off into silence.

"Break you..?" I finished her sentence for her, hoping I would be wrong.

Her head slowly bobbed as she nodded and she bit her lip, "I'm sorry, I know it's not easy to hear but..you tried to protect her. Nobody does that in here. You're..different. I don't know, I figured you had the right to know."

Layla. The red head who was pummeled into a pulp earlier by the guard.

"Is she okay?" I blurted out before I had realized what I said. It wasn't my business, why was I asking?

Tracey simply shrugged her shoulders, looking completely defeated and tired. She'd been in here for years, yet somehow hadn't given in.. or worse. What kind of person goes out of their way to make sure a stranger eats? Hundreds of people must come through here constantly, you'd think that everyone would blur together.

"What's the thing about work?"

"Oh..right. We gotta go, they'll be looking." She grabbed my hand and pulled me back towards the door, "You work, keeps you busy so you don't get any ideas and a lot of the buyers want girls who work," she hastily explained while pulling me along behind her.

"Like what? Digging holes?"

"Cleaning, mostly. It's big, the Compound, where we are I mean. And there's some..other stuff. You'll see just stick with me and don't say anything to anyone. They'll tell your O.A if you cause problems and he won't be happy."

Ducking behind a corner, she peered around to make sure nobody was coming. Upon seeing it was clear, she continued pulling me along through the maze of hallways behind her. Everything looked the same, I wondered how she was able to navigate it so easily.

"What are we going to do?" I queried, not expecting an answer as she seemed preoccupied with getting wherever we were supposed to be without being spotted.

I tried to figure out why she seemed to care so much. She had said that I was different so I deserved to know what was going on. Did that mean nobody else knew? Was she just keeping this huge secret about the reality of everyone's situation to herself and not letting anyone else in on what they were really facing?

I couldn't decide for myself if doing so would be considered selfish or selfless.