Shana was sold first, since she was the least valuable. A pimp from Camden, New Jersey, bought her for one thousand dollars.
When the men arrived to pick her up, John William went into the basement and opened Shana’s kennel. “Let’s go, bitch. You’ve been bought,” he barked.
“Ha! See,” Shana said, turning to the other two girls. “I am the hottest one.” Then she turned to John William. “You have any dope for me?” She leaned in. “It’ll help me sleep when I get back down here.”
“You’re not coming back down here. You’ve been sold. As in, you’re leaving with your new pimp to work the streets of Camden. Man, is your new boss gonna have a good time getting you under control. You were worthless to us at the auction. Your new boss, he ain’t as nice as me…he ain’t gonna let you do him for dope. You’ll do him so that he doesn’t kill you,” John William said, tormenting her.
Shana looked terror-stricken. “Cali,” she cried, “please don’t let them take me. Please.”
Shana turned back to John William and fell to her knees. She grabbed at his jeans. “Oh God. Please, John William. I don’t want to go. I wanna stay with the others.”
John William laughed. “Nobody cares what you want. You’re a little crack ho, and this is where girls like you end up: in the shit hole of the earth.” Then he put his large, slimy hand over her face and pushed her off him. She landed on her back on the dirt floor. She shuffled on her hands and knees as fast as possible to Cali’s kennel.
Cali put her fingers through the chain link fence. “I’m so sorry, Shana. I’m so, so sorry,” Cali told her.
“I don’t wanna go. I wanna stay here with you guys,” Shana cried.
“Shana,” Maggie stated in a firm voice. “I don’t want you to go.”
Shana’s face snarled angrily, and she burst into a fit of rage. “All of this happened after you came. Why did you have to come? It’s your fault. Everything is your fault. It’s your fault they hurt me, your fault that Max died, and your fault that I’m being sent away. I hate you, Maggie Clarke.”
Maggie couldn’t bear to think that these would be the last words they shared. “I know you hate me, Shana. But I don’t hate you,” she said in a quiet voice.
Shana turned back to Cali and kissed her on the lips through the fence. John William watched their sorrow-filled exchange with sheer delight. When he motioned for her to step out of her kennel, she ran over to Seth, “Come here, baby,” Shana told him.
Seth moved to the fence and put his tiny hand over hers.
“You take good care of yourself, OK?” she said.
“OK, Shana. But where are you going?” the small boy asked.
“I’m going away, and we’re probably never gonna see each other again. But remember that you’re gonna be a really cool guy when you grow up. OK?” she muttered, not knowing what else to say to the child.
Having seen enough, John William grabbed Shana under the arm and pulled her toward the stairs. “Let’s go. Time to become someone else’s bitch.”
As John William yanked Shana up the stairs behind him, Maggie and Cali huddled together at the fence that separated them. Cali broke the silence. “They’re selling us off, Maggie. They’re not going to keep us anymore. That’s why they filmed us by ourselves. We need to wrap our minds around this.”
Maggie began weeping. She hated her life as it was, but she had clung to the belief that someday she would go home to her family. The thought of continuing in this sick world without the other kids was unbearable. Maggie felt like she had the day John William took her from the mall. Then she looked across the basement and saw Seth, his eyes as wide as silver dollars, staring at her, waiting for her to make him feel safe, and she felt a gush of guilt. If they were all separated, what would happen to Seth? Worry about Seth’s fate overpowered her fear of her own destiny.
Maggie did the only thing that she could think of: she sat on the dirt floor of her kennel and prayed that somehow they would all be OK and that Seth would stay with her.