Free Bad Girls by M. William Phelps

mobile home behind that massive, growing structure. The girls had to share a room in the trailer, but they were each assigned a room upstairs in the main house. They were both allowed to give their input on its design and decoration.
    “It was truly their home,” said the uncle. “[We had four] acres on the Brazos River. [It was] beautiful, peaceful, serene, and [a] healthy environment. When Jennifer was old enough to get her driver’s license, we worked with her, teaching her driving skills . . . and then went over to Dallas and purchased a cute little used Honda Civic, red with spoiler, perfect for a teen driver. We made improvements to the car, keyed remote for safety, alarm for security, and bought both girls cell phones.” (This was when a cell phone was a relatively new thing.) “I helped her with her homework and school projects, just like any parent should do for their own child. Her grades were improved, she seemed happy,” Jen’s uncle observed.
    Stephanie stepped up and took to it all like a child growing into a responsible adult might. Jen’s sister made the right choices and carved out the best life she could for herself. She took great advantage of this wonderfully blessed opportunity. Yet, there was something inside Jen that couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Maybe she had seen too much? Jennifer was older than Stephanie. Perhaps the damage had been done and Jennifer didn’t know how to accept love?
    “Jennifer has always had this extreme self-destructive streak,” her uncle said. “We talked of college, jobs, education, and a future. All we asked in return was respect and adherence to the rules. . . .”
    Jennifer couldn’t do it.
    Regarding her mother, Jen later summed up Kathy’s role rather convincingly and sharply: “She’s been in and out of jail, in and out of prison, in and out of my life.”
    Never there for more than a whisper of a promise and a hug on the way out the door. And when Jen did see her mother, Kathy was generally always asking for something, or showing her daughter the proper way to smoke weed or drink alcohol.
    “I used to buy them beer,” Kathy laughingly told me.
    It was that constant state of not having a solid, consistent female role model in her life to bond with and rely on, Jen later claimed, that set her on a path of destruction—one she could never turn away from, no matter how much love her aunt and uncle gave her. She needed encouragement, love, and praise as much as any other teenager—especially during those ultraimportant and imperative years, when the impurities and immoral behaviors of society flow past the teen’s eyes, begging for her to take part, reaching out sometimes through peer pressure to grab hold. The wrong type of influence was all around Jen. At a time when the child needed a female to talk things over with, she was alone, having to make decisions by herself. One could argue her aunt and uncle were always willing to listen and stand in for the parent, but Jennifer didn’t obviously bond with them or take to that “rewards system,” which they offered.
    “No, I really didn’t,” Jen said when asked about receiving love from her mother, or any of the adults in her life while growing up. “Every now and then, you know, someone would give me a pat on the back. But it’s just . . . it wasn’t really enough for me. You know, it’s really hard when your family is not really there for you. And it’s just as”—and she cried here while continuing—“a kid, well, you want that. You know, you want to feel loved and you want that approval from everyone without having to try that hard.”
    Near this time in her life, Jen later confided to her journal, when that path of good and evil split, Jen found herself facing a choice. For a kid in this position, the easiest way is the most likely way. Jen chose the path of least resistance. She chose the road lined with various ways in which to forget about that life she desperately wanted to