“Sara, you are thirteen years old today. Happy Birthday. As part of a birthday, present I’m giving you this chocolate bar.”
“Thanks Aunt Terry,” says Sara. She takes the chocolate, opens the wrapping and eats the bar.
Then the sky changes. It used to be blue. Now it is pink. The grass changes too. It used to be green. Now it’s light blue. And look at the people. Their heads are three times the size.
Next thing Sara knows, she’s riding in a car somewhere. She’s being taken to a motel. She goes inside, lies down on the bed and goes to sleep. When she wakes up, she is a room with other girls just like her and everything is now normal. But what happened while she was sleeping?
Tracy says, “We are all friends here. We get the nicest clothes and we have the best food and we can do whatever we want. We are all kids. The grown-ups don’t tell us what to do. Only we can’t leave the boat we are on now.”
“What do you do on the boat?”
“Nothing much. At 5 o’clock we have cocktails and then lie down on these lounging chairs.”
“Then what,” asks Sara?
“Everything goes blank until morning,” says Terry.
“Oh, look at her,” exclaims Sara, looking at a girl with a black eye and bruises all over her.”
“Yeah, I know,” says Terry. “That happens sometimes.”
“Oh, look at her,” says Sara, pointing to a very young girl, all dressed up with a white ribbon in her hair.
“Oh,” says Terry. “She’s very popular. She’s a virgin. You can tell by the white ribbon in her hair. And you too. You have a white ribbon in your hair.”
“Oh.”
“Cocktails! Cocktails!” cries out some man offering all the girls drinks.
“The police! The police!”
And the police broke it all up.
But the girls will be back again. Yes, they’ll be back again.
Yes, and they were back again, the very next day.
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