“You don’t wake up one day and say, ‘I want to sell my body.’ It starts with someone selling you the lie that you’re worth nothing more.”


I was sixteen the first time I ran away. That kind of age where everything feels like a storm — loud, messy, and nobody listening. The group home smelled like bleach and broken promises. I shared a room with two other girls, and one of them used to cry in her sleep. I never asked why. We all had stories. Some were just too tired to tell them.


The day I left, I had seventeen dollars, a phone with 3% battery, and no plan beyond anywhere but here. I took a bus downtown, wearing jeans with a hole in the knee and a hoodie that used to belong to one of my foster brothers. I wandered around for hours until the sun went down and the city got meaner.


That’s when I met him.


Marcus.


He was sitting on the hood of a black Monte Carlo outside a liquor store, eating sunflower seeds and watching people like he already knew what they were about to do. I was cold, hungry, and stupid. He smiled at me like he’d been waiting.


“You lost or just too pretty to be walkin’ around here alone?”


I didn’t answer right away. He liked that.


“Come here, ma. I ain’t gon’ bite. You need a place to chill? Something to eat?”


My stomach answered before I did. He laughed and offered me a ride. I got in.


Marcus didn’t touch me that night. Didn’t even try. He bought me food—chicken wings and fries—and let me crash on his couch. Played Tupac on low and told me stories about how he used to hustle but was out the game now. Said he ran a “modeling agency” now. I didn’t understand then, but I nodded like I did.


Over the next few weeks, he fed me, dressed me, called me “baby girl.” Told me I was special. Said I had the kind of face that could pay rent and the kind of body that could make men weak.


I didn’t even notice when he stopped being Marcus and started being Daddy.


It started small—him asking me to go on “dates” with his friends. Just for company, he said. “They lonely. You don’t gotta do nothin’ you don’t want to.”


But not doing something came with consequences.


Silence. Cold stares. Withheld meals. Sleepless nights with the TV turned up too loud to drown out what was happening in the other room.


So one night, I did it.


I put on the dress he gave me, the heels that didn’t fit, and sat in the passenger seat while he drove me to a motel on the West Side. He handed me a hotel key and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.


“Twenty minutes. Be sweet. Don’t let him get rough. I’ll be right outside.”


That was the night I died.


And the next morning, I woke up in the life.


I never went back to the group home. No one came looking. Marcus made sure I stayed in nice clothes and always had my nails done. I was his prize. His earner. Eventually, I stopped asking myself how I got there and started asking how I’d survive it.


Because when you’ve been invisible long enough, even the wrong kind of attention feels like love.