It was time to go to the supermarket again but Trina wasn't keen in going. In fact, she dreaded going there especially after she understood what was going on. She was already in P6 and knew that what her mother was making her and her brother do wasn't right in the eyes of the law. Her mother would have them carried an empty bag each and headed for the mart. Once at the mart, she would 'conveniently' place stuffs that she needed into their bags and would then walk out of the place without paying for anything since she didn't have anything in her hands. When Trina tried to tell her that it was an offence to shoplift, what she received in return was a slap on her face. Derick who was two years younger than Trina, would always be willing to do as told to please his mother and would even remind her of the items to take, most of which were what he wanted.

Once, they were prevented from leaving the place when one of the staff became suspicious. He wanted to check the children's bags. Trina's mother pretended that she didn't know what had happened and demanded to know why he was stopping them from leaving. However, when confronted with the loot, she claimed that she didn't know how the things got into the children's bags. Then she pointed her finger at Trina, saying that she must have taken them without her knowledge. She apologised for her folly and went on to scold and hit Trina for what she had done. She then offered to pay for whatever that were being taken, only to burst into tears, saying that she didn't have that much cash on her. Then the scolding continued, blaming Trina for everything. Not wanting the commotion to affect business, they were let off with a warning to watch her children more carefully. It seemed that the trick worked whenever they were caught, with Trina being made the culprit, of course.

Lena who was five years older than Trina, quit school when she was in sec.3. She had never enjoyed going to school anyway as she felt that her classmates and teachers suck. She envied her friends from outside school as being school dropouts, they didn't have to do homework nor sit for exams and best of all they had all the time to themselves for merry making. So one day, she decided to call it a day after another row with her teacher. She had since been hanging out with her 'dropout' friends, spending most of their time at the arcade or just loitering around shopping malls. Soon she was smoking and then she progressed to trying out different kinds of pills. Though she kept all that from her mother, the latter became suspicious when she started keeping late nights and smelt of tobacco. When questioned about it, Lena would say that she was waiting for her friends to finish work and that there were smokers at their workplace. Somehow, her mother bought her story and would just remind her not to mix with the wrong company.

Though taken in small does, the pills that Lena was taking was addictive and soon she discovered that she couldn't live a day without taking them. Her friends had stopped giving them freely to her and she had to pay dearly for them. She would ask her mother for the money, telling her that she needed to buy new clothes and other stuffs. Once, she asked for $200, claiming that she needed it to buy a gold chain for a friend's birthday but her mother told her that she didn't have that kind of money. Lena who wasn't ready to take 'no' for an answer, started banging her head against the wall, saying that she would rather die than to lose face in front of her friends. Lena's mother was so taken aback by Lena's threat to commit suicide that she promised to get the money from her husband. Just like her mother's ploy to fool the staff at the supermarket worked, so did Lena's threat to end her life.