That night, Armando trailed ten feet behind Maggie on Kensington Avenue as she faced her greatest fear. When her fourth customer pulled up to the curb, Maggie leaned into the car.
“How much for regular?” the seedy young man asked.
When Maggie told him the price, he said, “Get in.”
Maggie reached for the door handle, and it felt as though the metal was burning through her flesh. She looked over her shoulder and saw Armando watching her intently. She flashed back to what he had done to Seth, and with courage she didn’t know that she had, Maggie pulled the door open. Every muscle and nerve in her body twitched as fright clamped down on her senses.
“Are you getting in or what? I don’t have all night,” the john said. “Let’s go!”
Overwhelmed by a sudden urge to run away, Maggie looked back at Armando just as he started to walk toward her. She took a deep breath, held it, and slid into the passenger seat of the car. As the man pulled away, she looked out her window. Everything was a blur, and she was sweating profusely. The man reached over and put his hand on her inner thigh. His fingers felt like daggers on her skin, and she flinched.
“Oh, you wanna play hard to get, huh? That’s good. That’s very good. I like games.” He pulled into an abandoned lot. “Come on; let’s get into the backseat,” he told Maggie.
Maggie reached for the door handle, but it was missing. Panic rose in her gorge, but she focused on Seth. Don’t freak out, she told herself, Seth needs you to be brave.
Maggie looked over at the stranger who was watching her with a slimy smile. “That’s been broken for a while. Doesn’t matter, though. I want you to climb over the seat. That way I can get a look at that sweet ass of yours,” he stated in a disturbingly perverted voice.
As Maggie hoisted herself over the front seat, she spotted door handles on both rear doors. Her anxiety subsided slightly. At least there was a way out of the car. Then she imagined that Armando had followed them to make sure she did what she’d promised. This thought allowed her to relax. If Armando is watching, he’ll never let this low-life pig steal me, she decided.
Maggie’s john had reached up her short skirt as she was climbing into the back. Her senses fully awake, she was repulsed by his touch and by the things she was doing. It was as if curtains had opened and she was peering into the window of her life since she’d been taken. The reality rocked her to the core. Instead of giving into her fear and disgust, Maggie grew stronger, fiercer, and made up her mind that she was going to find a way out. She didn’t know when, and she couldn’t conceive of how, but she believed that a way out would come to her.
As the man slid on top of her and mauled her, Maggie lay lifelessly, unwilling to participate. She didn’t care what he wanted from her. She no longer cared what any of the men wanted from her. Maggie decided that very night that she would take her life back. This potent thought calmed her. She felt powerful as the belief took root in her heart.
When the slob finished, he drove her back to Kensington Avenue. He stopped next to the curb, close to where he had picked her up. She was no longer a naïve girl.
She turned to the slime ball. “Give me my money,” she stated in a hard voice.
The man handed Maggie the cash, and she floated out of the car. Armando watched, realizing that something about her had drastically changed; it was visible. Her demeanor and strut made him uneasy. He didn’t understand the depth of agony Maggie had suffered at the hands of the sex traffickers. Therefore, Armando could never grasp the strength of her will to emancipate herself from the physical and mental slavery that had been consuming her.
Maggie had finally left the kidnapped child behind her. In less than an hour, in a moment of clarity, she’d become a woman who wouldn’t quit. As she swaggered down the street with her head held high, she remembered what Cali had said right before they drowned her: you are the one among us who will survive. Her fearlessness grew with each deliberate step. People who had seen her on the streets before now watched a woman on a mission.
Maggie was no longer afraid of the monsters who had been weighing her down; she was going on the greatest journey of her life. Destination: freedom.