It takes a while for Danny to begin growing up. There is no one to teach him how to walk, talk or potty train him. Eventually he begins to figure some of it out and when entered in school, struggles to keep up. Working as hard as he can on his homework, he thinks that if he brings home an A+ report card that his mother will start to like him. After weeks of studying and working hard, he gets his A+ report card. Running home to tell her, he finds her there with a guy. She's not interested in talking to him while guys are over so he waits patiently. They ignore him all evening and he goes to bed without showing her the card. When he shows her the next day she gives him a faint smile and says "That's nice." before going to have another bubble bath. Danny rips up his report card and cries himself to sleep on the couch.

After a few weeks, one of his teachers notices that Danny always looks tired, hungry and dirty. Speaking to him after class one day, she discovers that Danny doesn't have his own bed to sleep in and instead sleeps on the couch after his mother and any guy she has over leaves for the evening. The teacher tries to phone up Tasha to warn her that she needs to take proper care of her son, but Tasha is on the phone and misses the call. Her new job is being a phone sex girl and she talks into the late hours of the night while Danny tries to sleep.

Seeing Danny continue to decline in health and grades, the teacher calls Child Services.

Danny's birthday is only a day away when the Child Services van comes by to check out the home. Tasha is at work and Danny is at home alone. He missed the bus and is still sleeping on the couch in front of the TV when when the agents let themselves in and survey the home. While it's mostly clean, they see that there is little evidence of Danny being cared for. There are no toys, no bedroom for him and a garbage pail of used condoms in the bathroom from his mother's constant visitors.

After waking him, they talk to him for a while and confirm the teacher's reports. Danny is so tired and hungry at this point that he cries and agrees to go away with them. They will help him become healthy and find him a caring new family. Without saying goodbye to Tasha, Danny gets into the van with the workers and leaves.

Later that night when Tasha comes home, she doesn't even notice the note stuck to her door or that Danny is no where to be seen. Only after she has a bath and come out to watch TV in her underwear does she realize that he's not there. After seeing the papers on her kitchen table, she phones up the agency in shock. They tell her Danny is safe now and that she doesn't have a shot in hell of ever seeing him again. She hangs up and then begins to sob uncontrollably.

Crying uncontrollably for days, Tasha realizes what a horrible mother she had been. No matter how many times she phones the Child Services, they tell her she needs to get her life together before they'd even consider letting her see Danny again.

Left to rot in her own misery, Tasha slowly loses her grip on reality. She sits staring for hours each day at the painting Danny had been trying to make her before he was taken away. It's the only thing left of him that she has. Tasha can't manage to even make it through a phone call without sobbing and quickly loses her phone sex job.

After a particularly bad weekend of drinking, getting stoned and having sex with random guys, she decides that she needs to leave town. She wants a new life where she doesn't have to face what's she's done every day she wakes up and sees Danny's unfinished painting.

In a drunken rage, she destroys the painting and throws it in the trash before packing up all her stuff and leaving Strangetown. Perhaps she'd come back someday if she found a guy that wanted to move there, but as far as she is concerned, she never wants to see Strangetown again.