Free The Best American Crime Writing by Otto Penzler

Texas town, who had been arrested in the state of Washington for fraud because she was pretending to be a high school student: taking classes, playing on the tennis team, and acting in school dramas. Why, I wanted to know, did a grown woman desperately want to be back in the one place
,
high school, that most teenagers wanted to escape? And thus began my year-long journey into the bewildering life of Treva Throneberry
.
    Because Treva wouldn’t talk to me about many episodes in her life, I had to do far more reporting than I thought I would need. I interviewed dozens of people from around the country, filed records requests in various states to get court documents, begged social workers to let me see their files, and finally traveled to Treva’s hometown in the windswept plains of North Texas, talking to almost anyone I could find, looking for evidence of long-held secrets. But it wasn’t just the mystery of Treva’s life that absorbed me. I realized that with this story I could try something rarely seen in nonfiction. Instead of creating a traditional narrative, I kept readers jumping back and forth through most of the story between the lives of two teenage girls who seemed to have nothing to do with one another whatsoever. Then slowly and inevitably I brought those two lives together
.

SEX, LIES, AND VIDEO CAMERAS
RENE CHUN
    F rom the corner of Broadway and Canal Street, SoHo Models looked like any other boutique modeling agency: the converted loft building; the flag with the agency logo billowing in the wind; the engraved brass plaque mounted above the intercom. Seeing all this, scores of would-be models rang the bell, proceeded to the elevator, and obeyed the sign that read, ALL MODELS PLEASE REPORT DIRECTLY TO THE THIRD FLOOR .
    But once the elevator doors opened, the meticulously crafted illusion crumbled. There were no bookers working the phones. No photographers showing portfolios. Not even a dog-eared copy of
Vogue
.
    Which isn’t to say there weren’t attractive girls. There were. Their names were scrawled in grease pencil on two large schedules opposite the reception desk: HOT LIPS, POISON IVY, CANDY ASS .
    The girls worked in cubicles in an adjoining room. The 5-by-8-foot cells were just big enough to hold a twin bed, a wall-mounted Hi-8 video camera, a flat-panel screen, a keyboard, and a mouse. Somewhere in cyberspace, a prospective customer bought a block of time with a credit card, entered a chat room, selected a mate, and typed out instructions:
    STRIP.
    SPREAD YOUR LEGS.
    TOUCH YOURSELF.
    The girl in the cubicle read the instructions on her screen, complied, and tapped out a response:
    HOW’s THE VIEW, BIG BOY?
    I’M PUTTING ON “BOLERO.”
    BUY SOME MORE MINUTES.
    Although SoHo Models was clearly no ordinary modeling agency, it had the potential to be an incredibly lucrative operation, with a projected annual gross of $3 million, or even $6 million. These fantastic figures ultimately proved meaningless. By the time SoHo Models closed its doors last in December of 2001, its cash flow had slowed to a trickle. One night before the end, only three of the twenty booths were occupied. Depeche Mode played as models sprawled on cheap mattresses, staring vacantly at their flat panels. From time to time they composed offers of companionship. Finally a reply came back from the ether:
    I WANT YOU TO STICK A BLACK DILDO UP YOUR ASS .
    Just another day in the glamorous world of modeling.
    Sex scandals have always plagued the modeling business. They’re usually fairly routine stuff: Milanese playboys booking talent for orgies at Lake Como, Parisian agents deflowering underage girls from the American heartland, coke-addled photographers demanding head for head shots.
    But SoHo Models was something new—a fictitious agency used to recruit attractive young women for online porn. Even hardened veterans of the business were appalled. “This is the worst possible thing, because it undermines legitimate modeling