Forgive Me(82)

“The girl,” Angie said, gripping the edge of her desk, her fingers whitening from the pressure. “What happened to her?”

“I have no idea,” Dot said. “After the trial, the whole family just disappeared.”





CHAPTER 42




You don’t come back the same from what I did. It’s impossible, I think. There is no way things can return to how they were before. I see a shrink and a social worker now, and talk to these people from the FBI and NCMEC and whatever. They’re just people trying to help me, but I honestly don’t know if I can be helped. Everything about me is tainted with something I can’t scrub off my skin no matter how many showers I take—and believe me, I’ve taken a lot.

I’ve read stuff online about people like me. People who were trafficked. That’s the word for what I was—trafficked. The numbers are really mind-blowing. 21 million, I read somewhere. Something like 4.5 million people who are trafficked are also sexually exploited. Exploited or not, I consider everyone who gets trafficked for whatever reason, forced labor or forced sex, to be part of the 21 million club. But that’s just a number, right? It doesn’t really mean anything. I mean, let’s be honest, 21 million! I’ve tried to imagine it, tried to wrap my brain around it. I’ve been to FedEx field for a Taylor Swift concert and once for some dumb football game. I think it held like, I dunno, 80,000 people. I need my calculator to do the math. 21,000,000/80,000 = 262.5 FedEx stadiums full of victims. 262.5 stadiums! Damn, it’s still too big to get my mind around, so instead I focus on one number that means something to me, a number that means the most to me, in fact. I focus on the number 1. Why? Because there’s 1 person named Nadine Jessup who lives in Potomac, Maryland who got trafficked for sex. That’s the number that resonates for me. 1, the number that crawls into my brain every night as I try to fall asleep, thinking about the apartment I once shared with Ricardo and then the one I shared with Tasha. 1 got me caught up in that life for whatever reason. Everything that happened to me happened to only 1 person. They can eradicate (still got my vocab!) sex trafficking, I mean free all 21 million human trafficking victims worldwide and that number 1 will still be with me, following me like a shadow, sticking to me like a tattoo. Of all the victims around the globe, I might not have suffered the most, but hey this isn’t a competition. The point I’m trying to make here is that I’m more than a statistic. I’m more than a success story on Angie’s wall (love her BTW).

I’m a 1.

Now multiply me by 21 million.





Oh, I should note my journal is gone so I’m starting anew. The old one is with the police, I guess. WTF, right?! Wrong! I’m glad they have it if it will help put those a-holes away. Go on! Read all my private thoughts. Read all my sinful deeds. Go page by page and find out for yourself everything I’ve done and who I’ve done it to. Hell, it’s not the first time I’ve been naked and exposed in front of strangers.





The looks I get around town are a CRAPLOAD worse than what I got when I was with Buggy and Casper. The strangers I ran into in Baltimore (now I know for sure that’s where I was) always looked at me like a curiosity. What’s she doing with them? That kind of curiosity. But around here the looks I get are a whole lot different. Sure some people eye me with sympathy—“poor little girl” kind of thing—but mostly what I feel is judged and dirty. They look at me and I can just tell their minds are working overtime trying to figure me out. But they’re not thinking about the hole, or the cigarette burns, or the knives, or all the threats. They’re thinking what I probably would be thinking about one of my friends if she was there instead of me. I’d be thinking, why didn’t you run? Why didn’t you call for help sooner? There’s only one answer they can come up with. I didn’t want to leave.

So Screw THEM!!!

I wish I didn’t care what anybody else thinks. But when you’re 1 out of 21 million, life can feel pretty damn lonely.





Okay, let’s talk about my mom and dad. Nothing has changed. Mom still drinks and my dad is still not interested in me. I spent a night at his place and he took me out for dinner. But he didn’t know what to say to me. I swear it was like the weirdest conversation ever! How’s the fish? Do you want another Coke? Um, yeah, okay Dad. . . . Is that really all he has to say to me?

Before all this I was just his great mistake, right? Well, my mom was his great mistake and I was the aftermath. I just don’t get it. I’m his daughter! Does he feel guilty because he couldn’t keep me safe or is he ashamed of me because I slept with so many men? One thing I know for certain, I’m not his innocent little girl anymore. Daddies always see their daughters in a certain light. Well, I want the lights to go out. I don’t want my dad to see me at all anymore.





How do I get drugs? Seriously? I don’t know how. Do I go to some street corner here in Potomac and wait? Do I steal my mom’s car and drive back to Baltimore? Where do I get them? Where? Believe it or not, I actually miss something about my old life. Back there, when the business of living hurt too much, I could always take a pill.





I spend most of my time in my bedroom. I feel sort of better surrounded by my things. I say sorta because it all looks so childish to me now. Like I’ve outgrown everything I own. My clothes, my books, my posters, my music, everything. It belongs to a girl who didn’t know anything about the big bad world. Now that I know—taken a bite of the forbidden apple kind of know—I want to get rid of it all. The old Nadine is gone and this new person doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Anna Kendrick. This new Nadine no longer believes we could be BFFs.