“So, sex for a nice dinner?”

I shrug.

“Then what happened?” the woman prompts.

“More friends came over.”

“That night?”

I shake my head. “That weekend.”

“And what happened? Did Luis ‘not know’ it was happening this time, too?”

I take a deep breath. “He wasn’t home.”

“Then how did they know to come over?”

I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure I asked at the time, I’m sure Luis had a good excuse, but I don’t remember it. He always sounded so mature, so reasonable.

“I don’t remember.”

“You’re sure? Men just randomly came into your apartment to have sex with you against your will and you don’t know how or why?”

I shake my head.

“And the next time?”

“The second night I made five hundred dollars. I was glad I made the money. I knew Luis needed the money to make rent. He had just lost his job. I wanted to stay with him. I couldn’t go home. So the next time, I did it willingly.”

“You did it for Luis?”

I nod. “Yes.”

“So for the next three years you had sex with Luis’s friends for money?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t always Luis’s friends.”

The woman nods, but apparently that’s not important for her purposes.

“And never, during this time, did Luis say anything to you to keep you working?”

I shrug. “We made plans about opening a shop, selling goofy tourist stuff. But we needed money to do it.”

“But you never opened a shop, did you?”

“We never got the chance.”

The woman walks over to a desk with papers spread over it. “Anna, what if I told you that Luis never lost his job?”

My eyes narrow quickly. I’m confused. I don’t know what she means.

“The year you met, he was working for a construction company.”

I nod.

“And you said you had sex for money because you needed the money for the apartment.”

I nod again.

“And you needed it because Luis lost his job.”

“Yes,” I say, waiting for her to make her point.

She holds up a piece of paper. “This is Luis’s resignation letter. It’s dated forty-two days after you were officially listed a missing person.”

“That can’t be…” I lean in to look closer at the paper. Luis needed me. If he chose to leave his job, did that mean…

“He quit his job just after he started selling you to his friends.”

I see Luis’s lawyer begin to stand, but I beat him to the punch.

“He didn’t sell me,” I say firmly.

“Right, since Luis’s friends forced themselves on you without his suggestion. Well, he quit right after that. You don’t think that’s odd?”

I don’t know, I don’t know.

I shake my head slightly, fighting back tears. I came here to tell the truth, and now I’m finding out maybe I never knew the truth at all.

I remember the kind Luis. The funny Luis. The guy I was in love with.

I look into the crowd and see a girl from my health class. She’s thirteen, the age I was when I moved to New York.

She’s so young, so innocent. I think about all of the girls like her, their awkwardness, braces, acne, and stringy hair. Was I like them?

Could I imagine that girl sleeping with older men for money on her own?

I can’t. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t, right?

I take a deep breath.

But what if Luis really did use me? He suggested my name, Exquisite. He introduced me to Tamara, the hooker from the Bronx. He brought all his friends over.

He quit his job before I ever agreed to do it on a regular basis.

The woman puts down her paper.

“Anna, do you really believe it was your idea to sleep with men you didn’t know to pay the rent?”

I shake my head.

“What was that?” she asks, wanting me to speak aloud.

“It wasn’t my idea,” I say, and it feels like the most honest thing I’ve said today.

“Then whose idea was it?”

Faces of men pop into my head, flashing like one of those stupid slide shows they use in school, all the men that paid me for sex, willingly or not. I hated it. I hated them all.

Luis was the only one I didn’t hate, but was he worth it?

Was I just too young to see, to understand?

I gave him everything.

Now I’m nothing because of him.

A string of words ring through my mind. Tears roll down my cheeks.

“He used to—” My voice breaks, so I start again. “He used to tell me, ‘Sex is a good thing. People would kill to be paid to have sex.’”

Maybe sex can be a good thing. But is it a good thing for a thirteen-year-old? Is it a good thing to have sex with people you don’t know, men you could get diseases from? Is it a good thing to do it when you don’t want to?

Would it have been good if I had gotten pregnant from one of these men? Would Luis have taken care of me?

I remember my last days with Luis. I remember how he brought home five guys to have sex with me.

He didn’t ask.

And if I had said no, it wouldn’t have mattered. Not to Luis, and certainly not to them. I would have just ended up with a bloody lip and more ripped clothing.

A few days later, he took me to lunch, met a “gang” pimp, the kind who owned and sold a bunch of girls throughout the city, sometimes even in more than one city. Those kinds of guys take away a girl’s future forever. There’s no getting away from them once they have you.

Luis walked away from that restaurant without me, a pile of money in his hand instead.

He sold me.

I always knew this, but right now it hits me like a subway train.

I’ve tried to tell myself that he cared about me. That maybe he sold me because he had no better option. Maybe he even thought it would be for my own good. That we had started out good, only to crumble with time.

I only had one chance to get away from the gang pimp before he could get his hooks in me, before Luis was gone forever.

Getting away was the easy part. The pimp was a huge guy covered in red tattoos named Axel. He was cocky. He knew I’d try to run. He just thought he could handle it.

I remember that I started crying and pretend to have given up. Then, when he wasn’t looking, I ran. And I ran fast.

Down the streets of New York, Luis the only thing on my mind. I had to find him, get to him. Convince him to change his mind.

He wasn’t very far down the street, so I reached him easily. I thought I’d won. For one glorious second, I thought it would be okay, just like Luis always said.

I didn’t notice the horror on his face when I wrapped my arms around him. Not until after.

He pushed me away, his words muffled and unclear through my sobs. The blast to my face, however, was crystal clear. In all the time I’d been with him, Luis had never hit me. Not once. Not until that day.

I backed away from him, pressing my back against the wall. Then, several things happened at one. Axel turned the corner, and Luis threw up his hands like he was surrendering. I’m pretty sure the fist that Luis took to the face was worse than the one I’d taken. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.

The second I saw the flashing blue and red lights, I ran. Leaving Luis behind. The cops didn’t find me until that night. Until I was broken beyond repair with nowhere to go.

I never saw that day coming. I thought he loved me.

Now I know it was never love at all. Forty-two days. That’s how long he waited. That’s how long our “perfect” relationship lasted, if it had even existed at all.

“I’m going to ask you again, Anna. Did Luis Santino ever force or push you to have sex with men?”

I guess she wants a direct answer.

I look at Luis, whose face is green. Does he know what I’m about to say? Does he know that his little hooker has grown up? Does he know that I can see through him now?

“Yes.”

The room is no longer silent. I hear a few small whispers in the crowd, the rustle of paperwork as Luis’s lawyer tries to find a way around this. And I hear Luis let out an angry, exasperated grunt.