Sold–by Patricia McCormick

McCormick, Patricia.  Sold.  New York: Hyperion, 2006.

You probably know that in many parts of the world, kids your age do not have the same kinds of freedoms and privileges you have.  Extreme poverty means a lot more than not getting to watch tv or join the soccer team; for 13-year-old Lakshmi in Nepal, poverty means surrendering everything to help her family survive.  When her step-father announces that she must leave their village to find work as a maid in the city, Lakshmi is unhappy but willing.  As she leaves the village with the woman who appears to have hired her, though, things start looking fishy, and they don’t get any better as she reaches the big city.

“Mumtaz studies me.  ‘Are you ready to go to work?’ she says in my language.  I nod and say yes, then nod again, although I do not understand how these city people do their chores in such fine clothes and uncomfortable shoes.  I follow Mumtaz down a hallway lined with tiny rooms.  We pass by girls sitting cross-legged on the floor.  Girls drawing on tiger eyes.  Girls spraying themselves with flower water.  Some of them stare at me.  Some take no notice.

“We go up some stairs, down another hallway, then into a room where an old man is lying on a bed.  His skin is yellow and he has tufts of hair poking out from his ears.  Mumtaz speaks kindly to him and I wonder if he is sick.  Across the hall, in another room, where a red cloth is hung across the doorway, I hear the sound of grunting.  It is a strange, animal sound that makes me shudder.  Mumtaz points to me and says something to the old man.  He licks his palm and smoothes down his hair.  They do not seem to notice the grunting.  Then it stops.  The red cloth is pulled back.  And a man stands in the hallway zipping his pants.  I look down at my red-painted nails and my new shoes.  Something is not right here.  I don’t know what is going on, but it is not right, not right at all.”  (p. 102-103)

And it’s not right.  Lakshmi has been sold into the illegal sex trade in India, and her only way out…well, it isn’t a way out at all…

Story of a Girl–by Sara Zarr

Zarr, Sara.  Story of a Girl.  New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007.

“I was thirteen when my dad caught me with Tommy Webber in the back of Tommy’s Buick, parked next to the old Chart House down in Montara at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night.  Tommy was seventeen and the supposed friend of my brother, Darren.  I didn’t love him.  I’m not sure I even liked him…My dad dragged him out of the car, then me.  He threw Tommy to the ground and pushed me into our old Tercel.  Right before we pulled out of the lot, I stole a look at my dad.  There might have been tears slipping down his cheek, or it might have been a trick of the headlights bouncing off the night fog.  I started to say something.  I don’t remember what.  ‘Don’t,’ he said.  That was almost three years ago.  My dad hasn’t looked me in the eye or talked to me, really talked to me, since.” (p. 1-2)

So now Deanna’s sixteen and the school slut…except she’s not.  She’s a girl who made a mistake three years ago, but once Tommy has spread it around their small town, she’ll never hear the end of it no matter what she does.  To make matters worse, her family is completely screwed up; her dad still won’t talk to her, her brother went and got his girlfriend pregnant, and her mother is way out of touch with reality.  Her only two friends have started dating, leaving her as a serious third wheel; and to top it all off, when she walks into her summer job, there stands her co-worker—Tommy.  That Tommy.

And you thought you had problems.