Little Peach Read online

  I see them now. I can see them all. My daddy too. I know what he is. And I think the words every time they slam my head.

  Thank you.

  Because the make-believe is over.

  Thank you.

  Because at least I know that you don’t love me, either.

  Thank you.

  Because now, I can run.

  “Yo, D, you hear that?” Boost says. Devon looks out the window, then at me. Sirens. A broken smile on my lips.

  “You little bitch.”

  Boost picks me up, opens the door, and with a single sweaty heave I tumble down the stairs into the light.

  15

  CONEY ISLAND HOSPITAL

  Coney Island, New York

  You ask me to tell you the truth, and so I’ll try. I’ll try to tell you everything. I’ll try very hard to not be scared. I don’t have the pills anymore. I shiver like Kat. All the time.

  “What’s your name?” you asked the morning I came in, your voice all soft and warm.

  That is not an easy question. I’ve been called so many things.

  Michelle.

  Little Peach.

  Bitch.

  But my favorite name, nobody will remember. Nobody’s left to know what I was called a long time ago when I was little, when I would hide beneath my red bear blanket, the TV glowing all soft and bluish in my toasty-warm living room.

  Punky.

  Time for bed, Punks. Wanna read a book?

  I would give anything.

  I think Kat is dead. I think they killed her. She was gonna have a baby. I think she thought that was her way out, her way to save herself, to maybe save all of us. But the baby’s dead too. It died right there at the amusement park on the day we got to play.

  I don’t know if Daddy told Queen Bee to kill it, but it doesn’t really matter. Kat thought so. It made her go crazy.

  I didn’t want to leave Baby. I tried. I swear I did. But I couldn’t make her look at me. Her eyes got far away and I couldn’t reach her.

  She hates me now.

  Maybe she should.

  I know that you will take me to a group home. I got no family. There’s no one left to love me. That’s where girls like me end up: a brick building with other kids that nobody wants. We stay there till we’re big and then they let us go too.

  I’m not stupid, Kat. I know there ain’t no magic place for kids like us.

  Isn’t.

  I know there isn’t.

  But nothing can be worse than where we were. Nothing can be worse than that, right?

  Daddy will know where to find me. He’ll know where I’ll end up. Maybe someday he’ll come for me or he’ll send one of his boys. His name’s carved in my chest. I can never take it off, no matter how hard I scrub. In a way, I’ll always be his.

  But for now I’m safe, here at the hospital with you. I will stay as long as I can and I will try to explain.

  I think you’ll understand, even if you can’t do much. That counts for something, I guess—the way you look at me, like I’m not bad. Like deep inside, I’m just a kid who didn’t mean to.

  I didn’t mean to. I swear.

  I thought he was my friend.

  I’m alone in the room now, the tube stuck in my hand, my leg all wrapped and clean. I can see better now. My eyes are not so swollen. But I still shake. Everywhere. Even my bones tremble.

  I want a pill so bad. I want to feel warm again, to float away and be happy.

  I’ll wait for you, here in the bed. I know you’ll come back. And I will tell you. I’ll tell you as much as I can.

  I will tell you where to find them—Daddy and Baby and the rest. They’ll be gone, though. The apartment will be empty. He’s smart, my daddy. He knows how to hide us. He knows nobody’s gonna look too hard anyway.

  But somewhere out there, in this place called New York, there is a girl. I don’t know her real name, but if you look closely, if you can coax her over, if you bring her a present and wrap it up all nice, maybe she’ll talk to you. And maybe you’ll see the red heart on her chest.

  “Baby,” it says. “Devon’s Baby.”

  She’s only twelve years old. She doesn’t act scared.

  But sometimes, scared is right. I’m scared—now, without the pills. My hands keep shaking, and I can’t turn off my brain. It buzzes in my head, noisy and electric.

  I don’t know if I can stand it. It won’t last forever. That’s what you say. But it hurts. It hurts so bad like I don’t even know.

  My name’s Michelle Boyton. I grew up in Philadelphia, in a house on North 26th Street. My grandpa raised me. We had food and a TV and blue lights for Christmas.

  Maybe someday I’ll go back. I’ll find my house and clean it. I’ll open the windows and let in the light. Chuck will be waiting. I’ll clean him up, too, once I’m old enough.

  But for now, I’ll do what you tell me. For now I am here. It’s not enough. But it’s something.

  The door opens.

  There you are.

  You sit by my side and take my hand.

  “You’re awake,” you say, and I smile.

  I am.

  I am awake.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In the United States, the average age of entry into prostitution is thirteen years old. In the New York City area alone, an estimated two thousand young girls are being sold for sex. Like Peach, Baby, and Kat, the vast majority are runaways, often from our poorest communities, who are fleeing sexual abuse at home. Desperate for food, shelter and—above all—a sense of safety and love, these girls make easy prey for those who seek to profit from the sale of their bodies. Unlike a bag of heroin, a girl can be sold again and again—a steady stream of revenue for those who “recruit” them.

  While researching this novel, I witnessed the selling of girls in the hotels of Coney Island and East New York, Brooklyn. I spent many hours driving the streets with an NYPD detective, who showed me the intricacies of gang culture and the sex trade. I also spent time with two women who had been targeted in the same way Peach was. Both had been tattooed by their pimps before the age of fourteen. Both had been given highly addictive narcotics, making them all the more dependent on their captors. And, like the girls in this novel, both believed that this was the best they could hope for. Though Little Peach is fiction, it is closely based on the stories these women shared with me.

  How can this be happening in a country as wealthy as ours? The answer is complicated, and there is no easy fix. Child protective services are terribly underfunded. Inner-city public schools are overburdened and understaffed—in some cases, without enough money to even have a school nurse or guidance counselor available to help students like Peach. Finally, there is our criminal justice system. The United States now incarcerates more individuals than any other country on the planet, and most of those individuals are poor, nonviolent, and minority. All too often, girls like Peach are treated as criminals rather than victims, and end up in jail for prostitution or drug use once they turn eighteen.

  We can, and must, do better. I do not have an easy solution, but I put my hope in you, dear reader, that you will raise your fists, rattle the cage, and insist that this comes to an end.

  For more information on domestic trafficking and what you can do to help, visit the Girls Educational and Mentoring Services website at www.gems-girls.org.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book would not have been possible without the help of Sergeant Joe Catapano of the NYPD. I am forever thankful for your time, your assistance, and for your kindness to the women we met.

  Special thanks are also owed to the mighty Ms. Patty McCormick, Marcia Wernick, Alessandra Balzer, Chris Calhoun, Dr. Jackie Devine, Dr. Beth Kastner, Bob Reeves, the Stony Brook Southampton MFA program, Annette Triquere, Andrea Davis Pinkney, Kathleen Lynch, Katharine Richards, Heatherose Peluso, Bill Holland, Irene Schulman, and Nick Spathis.

  I am incredibly grateful to my family—Erin and Chris, Mom, Jill and Abigail—who stand by my side ev
ery single day.

  Above all, to Miracle and Jen, for trusting me with your stories. I hope I’ve done them justice.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PEGGY KERN has written two books for the Bluford Series. She lives with her daughter in Massachusetts.

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  CREDITS

  Cover type illustration © 2015 by Steven Bonner/Jelly London

  Cover photograph © 2015 by Sheila Creighton

  Cover design by Michelle Taormina

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  COPYRIGHT

  Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  LITTLE PEACH. Copyright © 2015 by Peggy Kern. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. www.epicreads.com

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kern, Peggy.

  Little Peach / Peg Kern. — First edition.

  pages cm

  Summary: Hospitalized in Brooklyn, New York, fourteen-year-old Michelle recalls being raised in Philadelphia by a loving grandfather and drug-addicted mother before running away and getting lured into prostitution.

  ISBN 978-0-06-226695-8

  EPub Edition January 2015 ISBN 9780062266972

  [1. Prostitution—Fiction. 2. Drug abuse—Fiction. 3. Runaways—Fiction. 4. African Americans—Fiction. 5. Family problems—Fiction. 6. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.K457835Lit 2015

  2014022114

  [Fic]—dc23

  CIP

  AC

  * * *

  15 16 17 18 19 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  FIRST EDITION

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