“ I only ever see her at Christmas ,” Danny told me one day . We sat on the bus , on our way to some field trip . “ That ’ s when we go to Florida . She lives there .” “ What about your dad ?” I asked . “ I don ’ t have one .” He picked at a hole in the dark green seat ahead of us . “ Never had one . It ’ s okay .”
The bus driver hit a bump in the road . It jostled us . The other kids on the bus screamed and laughed . “ Do you ever miss your mom ?” I asked . “ Not really .” He pulled at the hole , making it bigger . “ She smokes crack . That ’ s what she uses the money for .”
I lowered myself , put my knees up against the seat in front of us . Danny did the same . “ I hate her ,” he said . “ Sometimes I wish she would die .”
Later that year , the boys found another kid to bully . They left Danny alone for a while . Even so , he always looked sad . Too much rested on him . Too many burdens that none of us knew how to hold .
The next year , sixth grade , Danny was gone for a week . “ He went to Florida ,” Renee told me . I was confused because it wasn ’ t Christmas .
When he came back , he didn ’ t talk much . He kept to himself even more . The teachers let him take lots of breaks .
“ My mom ’ s dead ,” he told me during class . We sat on the floor drawing on poster board . I looked up . He had no expression . “ What happened ?” I asked . “ She stepped out into the street . Right in front of a bus . My Uncle thinks she did it on purpose .”
“ Are you sad ?” I hated that I asked that question . I wished right away that I could take it back . “ I don ’ t know ,” he answered . “ I ’ m mad .”
Danny started smoking cigarettes in ninth grade . He got drunk for the first time that same year . Then he smoked pot . Dropped acid . I begged him to get help . Told him that I didn ’ t want anything bad to happen to him . “ Nothing ’ s going to happen to me ,” he said , leaning against his locker . “ It ’ s bad ,” I said .
“ I don ’ t care what you think .” He pushed away from the locker and stood up straight . “ It doesn ’ t matter .” The smell of cigarettes and pot lingered long after he walked away .
By eleventh grade , Danny stopped showing up at school completely . I heard rumors about him . The drugs he did . That he ’ d started “ doing things ” with strangers to earn money for his addictions . They laughed about it . About him .
Once again , Danny had become a joke . Someone who wasn ’ t as good as the other kids . Someone who was bad . Even though I didn ’ t really understand why he was bad . Even though I didn ’ t want to believe that he was beyond fixing . And I couldn ’ t laugh at that .
Seventeen years passed . College . Marriage . Jobs . Careers . Kids . Life swooped up under me . I forgot about Danny . I forgot until a woman I know died . A woman who was leaving the “ life ” of the prostituted . She had children . Children that didn ’ t live with her . Just like Danny .
“ Hey , I ’ ve been thinking about Danny a lot ,” I emailed Renee . She still knows everything about everybody . “ What happened with him ? Do you know ?”
I wanted her to write back that he was fine . That he had a family and a good life and was off drugs . To tell me that he ’ d survived .
A few moments later , her email arrived in my inbox . “ I do know what happened . And , unfortunately , it ’ s not good ,” she wrote back . “ Danny overdosed a few years ago . They didn ’ t even have a funeral for him .”
You see , when I think of victims of sex trafficking , I can ’ t get Danny ’ s face out of my head . Not the thin , bleached blonde teenager who smelled of weed and neglect . I keep seeing the brown haired blue eyed boy with those long eyelashes . I see him in the coat room , crying . His back against the wall , crouched down by the book bags . Alone .