Free Lost Girls by Robert Kolker Page B

what people thought about her,” Carl said. “She really didn’t. It was kind of her thing, and I always admired her for that.”
    Not everyone was quite as warmhearted as Carl. A promiscuous white girl in Nesbitt Courts was a hot topic, and Amber got a reputation. A rumor went around that Amber was spreading gonorrhea. Amber never cared what anyone said. Her sister was more famous around Nesbitt Courts than she would ever be.
    Everyone saw that Kim had a car, cash, and clothes. Practically everyone except their parents knew where Kim was working. She had made up a cover story for Al and Margie that held for a while. She said she worked for the Hilton in Wilmington, driving a limo to the airport to pick up VIPs. All her cash, she said, came from tips. She waited to tell them the truth until she was sure there was nothing they could do about it. They needed her. They were too frail to work, and Kim was paying their bills.
    When Amber finally joined Kim at Coed Confidential, both sisters were mindful enough not to throw it in their parents’ faces. Privately, Margie told Al that she hoped the girls were working their way through a phase. The girls were young, she said. Their stories weren’t over yet. Al tried his best to be philosophical. Kim was a hard worker, ambitious and powerful, stronger than he was. Amber, though, was a special case, more sensitive and vulnerable. Al saw how much Amber needed to be close to Kim, but he also saw her wrestling with her decisions. What gave him the most hope was the way Amber would allow herself to be overtaken by a deep and chaste religious fervor, at least sometimes. That, in Al’s estimation, had always been the biggest difference between the sisters: While Kim never believed in anything except herself, Amber never stopped searching for something bigger.
     
    They’d seemed so alike to the other girls at Coed Confidential—both skinny little chatterboxes, brash and sassy—that it took a while for everyone to notice how different Amber was from Kim. Kim ran cooler. She was less affectionate and more self-reliant and mercenary. Amber was the sweet one. She had an endearing daffiness, a genuine innocence. She couldn’t even drive.
    For Amber, the work didn’t seem to be as much about the money as the chance to connect with the people at Teresa’s house—to be a part of a family. She wanted the money, but more than that, she wanted to make an impression, to fit in. If you asked her to pick up a dime bag of weed, she would come back with a quarter bag or a twenty and try to shrug it off: “Here, I got you some extra, I didn’t know if you wanted it or not, but what the hell.” “She’d yes you to death,” June remembered, telling you anything you wanted to hear if you would only be her friend.
    Once, the boyfriend of a girl named Chastity got busted buying pills, and she couldn’t afford a lawyer. Amber wanted so badly to help that she made an offer: “I’ll just dance for the lawyer. How about that?” After Amber walked out of the office, whatever had happened inside, Chastity’s boyfriend had adequate legal representation.
    Teresa’s parties were getting bigger—so big that they upstaged the business. Where they’d once lasted all weekend, now they started earlier in the week until it seemed like every day offered a chance to cop. Teresa moved seamlessly from pot to acid to ecstasy, then coke, then crack, then heroin, then meth. She’d order enough for everyone, as if ordering pizza. The ecstasy parties always got a little mystical. Crystal thought ecstasy opened her third eye. Once Crystal was giving Teresa a massage and started seeing a flash of light in Teresa’s back, and then she started seeing visions of what seemed to be Teresa’s life. Teresa went ballistic, screaming, “What the fuck!” After that, everyone wanted a reading.
    Kim’s first pull on a crack pipe happened at one of Teresa’s parties. Teresa had been the first to try it, as usual. Then