Asha - I only desired what my friends had.

A novel that deals with an extremely sensitive and topical issue: child prostitution.  I thought it would be easy to end it. After all, just close your eyes, lean over until you lose your balance, and let go. But no, damn me! Here I am, teetering, with my eyes closed, but I can't stretch enough to fall. I don't lose my balance and I think, I think, reliving the flashbacks of my childhood...Asha is the third-born daughter of an Albanian immigrant family, in Italy for 20 years, who can barely make ends meet with their jobs. Seeing her friends dress well and get everything they want, while she wears shabby clothes and lives in a dilapidated house, makes her feel envious. Drawn by a friend, blinded by the prospect of having what her parents cannot give her, she runs away and decides to sell her body to get them. This choice, however, while allowing her to fulfill all her desires, soon makes her regret not being able to have a life as a normal teenager, cultivating friendships, laughing, joking, falling in love. Sold to a criminal organization, segregated and forced to their will, she escapes several times, but is always found. Discovering that she is pregnant, unable to find the little boy with whom she conceived him, she attempts to make a middle-aged man, whom she met during one of her escapes, believe that he is the child's father. This attempt also failed, tired of running away, with those criminals giving her no respite, she decides to end it all. The discovery of her suicide note, which she leaves on a coffee shop table, kicks off the story.