One Among Us

by Paige Dearth

  “What are they?” Maggie asked.

  “It’s hillbilly heroin. Those little bastards will get her good and fucked up. Only give her one at a time. I don’t need her overdosing on me. I’ve had enough drama out of that little bitch for one day. Just remember what I told you: if she fuckin’ dies, it’s your fault!”

  In Maggie’s desire to heal her “friend,” she helped Shana swallow her first dose of OxyContin.

  Chapter Fourteen

  For the ten days that followed, young Maggie spent her nights satisfying clients and her days nursing Shana. Shana’s feet were healing, and she was on a constant high from the hillbilly heroin. In her eagerness to numb herself to the pain caused by the burns, Shana quickly became addicted to the drug. Shana was callous with Maggie, reminding her at every opportunity that if Maggie hadn’t stolen Myles from her, she never would have been burned.

  Cali and Max were annoyed that Shana was so thankless to Maggie, who had slaved and watched over her. The two older teens sat on the floor next to Shana’s cot. “You know, Shana,” Cali said. “You could be nice to Maggie. She didn’t do this to you. The kid has done nothing but help you. If you want to blame someone, blame all these fuckin’ crazy pervs.”

  “I don’t care what you say, Cali. I know what Maggie did. The minute she met Myles, she threw herself at him so that he would want her. You know it’s true too!” Shana accused.

  “Come on, Shana. Be real,” Max chimed in. “She didn’t even know Myles. He was the one who picked her, just like he picked you. Remember? We don’t get to pick anything around here, and you know that. So knock off the shit, OK? It’s just making it harder for all of us.”

  Shana shook her head but kept quiet.

  “What happened, Shana? What did they do to you?” Cali finally asked.

  Shana stared at the ceiling of her cell. Just thinking about the horrible things the man had done made her insides rattle. “It was a crazy older guy. He was into hurting me. At first, he was slapping me around the room. Then he took a brick out of his backpack. I thought he was going to bash my head in with it, but he just kept grating it all over my body. It fucking hurt like hell. He stopped and left the room for a while, but then he came back. He was carrying two plastic buckets, and I could see steam coming off the water. He started dancing and laughing when he saw how scared I was.” She stopped and began to sob.

  “Then he stuck your feet in the buckets of water?” Cali asked, unable to process the violence and cruelty that Shana had endured.

  Shana nodded, but said nothing more.

  “We have to get the fuck out of here,” Max announced tearfully.

  Cali looked at him, wishing it was possible but knowing there was little hope. She leaned over and pulled his head to her chest. She let Max cry until his last sob ended. She looked up at Shana, who was lying perfectly still on the cot, and wondered if any of them would make it out of there alive.

  Maggie sat in her cell, reading a home-remedy book to Seth. He looked up at her with puppy dog eyes. “Aggie, I love you,” he said with sweet innocence.

  Seth adored Maggie; she was the person he turned to when he was scared. Seth and the others didn’t know it, but it was his fifth birthday. Up until then, he’d been too innocent for sex trafficking, but now John William believed he was perfect for kiddy porn.

  “I love you too, Seth,” Maggie answered, feeling a tug at her heart for the small boy who she now felt belonged to her.

  “Aggie? How comes you’re crying in here at night sometimes?” Seth asked.

  “Because I still miss my mom and dad a whole lot and I wish I could go home,” she explained.

  “But if you go home, are you going to leave me here?” the child asked with a pout.

  “There’s no way I’m leaving you here, Seth. You and me, we’re family. We stick together, right?” Maggie stated.

  “Yep. We stick together forever and ever. But when will we be able to go outside and play like you told me?” asked Seth, with the attention span of a gnat.

  Maggie laughed at his abrupt shift to another topic. She pulled Seth closer to her and stroked his hair. “I don’t know how or when, but I know something is going to change. I can feel it in my bones,” she explained, more to herself than to Seth. “When we get out of here, we’ll start our lives all over again. We can go to the park and sit on big blankets and eat ice cream. I bet our parents will be really good friends, and when we get old, we’ll still be together every Christmas. We’ll have a bond so strong that no one will be able to stand between us. I can see our kids growing up together. We’ll never tell them about what happened to us in this rotten place, but we’ll always know that we survived something horrible. I might even call my first son Seth. How does that sound?” Maggie finished, looking down at Seth.

  Seth had fallen asleep in her arms, the rhythm of Maggie’s sweet, soft voice allowing him to feel safe enough to let his eyes close. Even the five-year-old was keen to the evil that prowled throughout the prison.

  That night, John William came for Seth. He took the young boy upstairs for the first time since he’d arrived in the godforsaken, abandoned building.

  Seth was about to have his first photo shoot.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Maggie couldn’t sit still while Seth was upstairs with John William. She worried about what they were doing to him. John William had only said, “They want him upstairs.” He smiled as he watched her anxiety mount.

  Two hours later, John William untied the child and carried him downstairs. As he was removing the tight knots from the nylon cord, John William obsessed on the thought of being tied up and confined. This fear had prompted anxiety attacks in John William since he was a child. Being tied to the chair under the stairs was far worse than the frequent beatings he received from his mother. I’m in control now, he reminded himself.

  As John William put Seth into his cell, all of the other kids listened to the sounds of his tiny chest heaving in bitter sorrow.

  “John William, please let me talk to Seth,” Maggie begged from her cell.

  “No. He’s fine. Mind your own fucking business and go the hell to sleep. There are people coming to see you tonight,” he told Maggie.

  Maggie’s stomach flip-flopped. Her worry for Seth still remained, but doing what clients wanted always made her edgy. Who and what would she face that night?

  Later, Maggie sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for another client. Finally, she heard voices coming toward the room. She was relieved when she recognized Sabrina’s laughter. Bernie entered the room first, followed by Sabrina.

  “OK, let’s change things up a little tonight, shall we?” Bernie stated.

  “Well, um, like what?” Sabrina asked nervously.

  “I was thinking that our stunning toy over here would participate,” he said.

  “Oh, Bernie, I don’t know about that. I don’t think I’m ready for Maggie to join us,” Sabrina responded, batting her long eyelashes at him.

  “Nah, not tonight, hon. Tonight, I get what I want for a change.” Bernie turned to Maggie. “Take your clothes off.” Then he looked at Sabrina. “You too.”

  Once Bernie had satisfied his deviant sexual desire, they all dressed. Sabrina slipped another note into Maggie’s underwear. Alone that night in her cell, Maggie read the message: Don’t tell the others about me.

  Then, just like the first note had instructed, Maggie put the note in a small piece of newspaper and threw it into the toilet. For the first time in a little over a year, Maggie had a glimmer of hope that someone on the outside was going to rescue them.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Lorraine, how about if we take Keith to the park today? I think it would be good for all of us,” Rob coaxed, sitting at the kitchen table with her.

  “Nah. I have to look into some things, Rob. I read this article on missing children. It said to make a list of all the new, different, or unusual people that were around for a year prior to the kidnapping. I need to do resear
ch on all of the changes at the school and around our neighborhood. This could be the break we’ve been looking for. I just have too much to do,” she explained.

  “What kind of changes are you talking about?”

  Lorraine perked up at his interest. “Well, they say you should find out if the school or anyone in the neighborhood did any remodeling or repairs. If they did, we get a list of contractors, take it to the police, and they’ll be able to run some checks on all the people. The other thing I need to look at is all the home sales within an eight-block radius the year before Maggie was taken. Sometimes these maniacs go to open houses, like they’re interested in buying a home, but they really just scope the neighborhood for kids.”

  Rob listened and couldn’t argue with the logic behind what she said. Still, he couldn’t help but ask, “How about if you tell Detective Harker, who you meet with every week, I might add, to do all of this stuff. Harker has more resources and easier access to this information than you do. I mean, Lorraine, that’s his job. Besides, you know he’ll do anything to help us find Maggie. I’m sure he would agree with me.”

  “I know, Rob. I also know that Harker is a good man and will never give up his search. But Maggie isn’t the only case he’s working on. No one is going to be as thorough as I am. I have to do these things myself. What if Harker gives it to some incompetent asshole who misses just one little piece of information? How would I ever be able to live with myself? I can barely live with myself now…” Lorraine’s voice trailed off.

  On several occasions, Rob tried to comfort his wife, but he, too, resented her for her poor judgment. He often told himself that if he had taken the kids to the mall that day, he would not have allowed his eleven-year-old to go off alone, not even for one minute. Other times, after he had a few drinks and couldn’t hold back the unshakable bereavement that had cast a dull pain around his heart, Rob would sit in the basement alone and cry, unable to escape the hopelessness and feeling hatred toward Lorraine.

  “OK, Lorraine. I’m not going to argue with you. But you can’t forget that Keith is still here, and he needs us. If Maggie ever comes back to us, she needs to have a family to come back to,” Rob said.

  “If? What do you mean if she comes back to us? How can you give up so easily? I will keep looking until I find her. So go off to the park and do whatever it is that you do, OK, Rob? In the meantime, I’m going to look for our daughter,” Lorraine growled, agitated by his apparent admission of defeat.

  Rob left Lorraine sitting at the kitchen table, tears spilling down her cheeks as she wished that she could go back to the moment that she had made the worst decision of her life.

  Chapter Seventeen

  In the weeks that followed, Maggie received two more notes from Sabrina. The first said, I’m going to help you. But it was the second note that filled Maggie with anticipation. It said, I know who you are.

  Sabrina, whose real name was Abigail Loomis, was an FBI agent. She had been undercover for almost three years, working to break into the sex-trafficking cartel in the Northeast corridor. Her parents were told that Abigail had died in a car accident. The car had caught on fire, and the remains were charred beyond recognition. She had ruined her parents’ lives to save the lives of innocent children.

  Sabrina was immersed in her new life. She had no contact with the agency, except for the occasional anonymous note that she sent to the bureau, addressed to her commanding officer. The notes were always cryptic, just as she had been taught to write them. They gave little information. When she met and moved in with Bernie, the note read: Living with one now. There was never a return address, but the postmark always revealed the city in which she was living.

  As Sabrina infiltrated the cartel and descended deeper into the sick world of pedophilia and human slavery, she wondered if she had the stomach to see it through until the end. Then she met Maggie. She had seen the girl’s picture on a local television station when she had disappeared from the mall. The child’s cobalt-blue eyes made her easy to identify. They were the most intense eyes she’d ever seen. When she saw the young girl standing in the room that first night, she knew she was Maggie Clarke, the eleven-year-old who had been kidnapped.

  By chance, after several months of going to see Maggie with Bernie, Sabrina overhead two men chatting in a well-lit room while waiting to be taken to watch the children perform.

  “Yeah, some guy told me last week that Al Capone served time here,” she heard a wealthy looking, bald man tell his friend.

  “Really? I wouldn’t mind taking a look at the cell they kept him in,” remarked the tall unattractive, unkempt fortysomething.

  It was easy to figure out where they were after hearing that bit of information. Sabrina dragged Bernie to the library one day to take out a couple of books to read. While Bernie was skimming through years of Sport Illustrated swimsuit editions, Sabrina did some research on Al Capone. She found out that Capone had been incarcerated at a prison in Pennsylvania. Later that week, she wrote a note to her commanding officer. All it said was Capone, PA Prison.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Cali and Max noticed a change in Maggie. She seemed a little happier and more settled than the rest of them. While they were both relieved when any of the children showed signs of joy, Maggie’s seemed to linger. They decided to find out what was going on with her. On a Saturday morning, after showers, Cali and Max went into Maggie’s cell.

  “Hey, Mags,” Cali greeted. “What’s going on?”

  Maggie looked up from the new book that Dr. Barnes had given to her and smiled. “Nothing. Just reading this book that Dr. Barnes gave me. It’s about a girl who gets her period,” she said, showing them the cover of Judy Blume’s book, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

  A smile crept onto Cali’s face. She had read the same book right before she’d been kidnapped. While Cali reminisced, Max pursued the conversation. “So, you’ve been awfully upbeat lately. What’s going on with you? One of your clients give you more candy?” he asked, trying to get her to open up.

  “Nope. I wish,” she stated simply, but her facial expression revealed there was something more.

  “You look like you have a secret. We could all use a little sunshine, Maggie. Come on, what’s got you so happy?” Max asked in a pleading voice.

  Maggie loved the other kids, even Shana. But Max and Cali had been her rocks. They were always there for her and never let her down. Still, she remembered the note that instructed: Don’t tell the others about me. Maggie felt a surge of guilt for holding out on her friends, the very people that she considered her family. She wanted to do what Sabrina had instructed, but she also wanted to share the news with the two people she trusted most.

  Maggie’s voice dropped to barely a whisper. “Did any of the clients ever say things and tell you not to tell anyone?”

  The little hairs on the back of Cali’s neck went stiff. “Like what kinds of things, Mags?” she asked gently.

  “I don’t know. Like things that make you feel good?” Maggie hedged.

  “Well, once I had a guy who told me he was going to get me out of here and bring me home so that I could be his son,” Max offered.

  Cali chimed in, “Yeah, sure, there are always one or two people who promise to get you out. That just makes them feel more powerful. At first, you believe them and wait for them to make good on their promise. But months later, when you’re still here, you know it was all bullshit. They get you all hyped up, and when nothing changes, you feel totally deflated. Did someone promise to get you out of here, Mags?”

  “No, nothing like that.” Maggie paused and filled her lungs with air as if she was getting ready to jump into a swimming pool. “That woman, Sabrina. She’s been giving me notes. One of them said not to tell any of you guys about them.”

  Maggie looked at Max and Cali to see if they had a reaction. The looks on their faces told her that she had struck a nerve with them.

  “It’s nothing bad. It’s just that her last note said,
I know who you are,” Maggie told them. “If Sabrina knows who I am, then maybe she’ll send the police here, and we’ll get to go home,” she added, hoping the other two would agree.

  Cali plopped on the cot next to Maggie. “Listen, Mags. First of all, it’s really dangerous for you to bring notes back here. Where are they?”

  “I wrapped them in newspaper and put them in the toilet,” she admitted.

  “OK, well, second, it would be really great if this Sabrina woman was for real, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up. All these people know we’ve been taken from our families. They’ll do and say whatever it takes to live out their own little fantasies,” Cali explained.

  “Yeah,” Max added, “she might be turned on by making you think that she’s gonna save you. It’s always some fucked-up mind game with these pervs. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but you gotta remember that none of these assholes wants to help us. If we get out of here, we could identify them, and they’d go to prison.”

  Maggie had never thought about any of the adults who had sex with kids going to prison. She accepted what Cali and Max were telling her—and even considered that there was a high likelihood that they were right. But she had a feeling about Sabrina. The other two weren’t in the room with Sabrina. They didn’t know that she was kind and looked at Maggie differently than any of the other clients had.

  “But what if Sabrina is different? What if she’s really going to help us?” Maggie protested.

  “Then we will all be home soon,” Cali assured her.

  Max added, “Maggie, you sure are one special chick. I think you might just have enough hope for all of us. We just don’t want you to be disappointed, OK? If nothing changes, we don’t want you to be any sadder than you already are just being here. All right?”

  “OK. But I still think that Sabrina is different. Just wait, you’ll see,” she told them with a child’s optimism.