Lost Girls by Robert Kolker

she kept taking June’s coke and cooking it into crack, and June—the stuck-up one who used to say, “Crack, that’s the poor people’s drug”—eventually went all in. Then came Crystal and, finally, Kim, who fell in love. “I could work all the fucking time,” she said. One gram would last Kim for two days. She could work an entire weekend without crashing. The only problem with crack was how miserable you got when you started to come down. All the girls experimented with Xanax and other pills, anything to help them sleep off the hollow feeling.
    Whom Teresa liked best often depended on who did the drug she liked at the time. When she was into coke, she and Kim were best friends. When she moved on to crack, she and June were best friends. And when Teresa started on heroin, it was Amber’s turn. Amber wanted only crack at first—like her sister—but heroin snuggled up to her and held her tight. It numbed her, zoned her out. She started when Teresa had made a new connection, a dealer who would go to New York and bring back pills. One day the dealer showed Teresa and Amber how to shoot up. Heroin brought the parties to another level. The dealer went into convulsions once, and they stuck a wallet between his teeth so he wouldn’t bite off his tongue. When the dealer’s girlfriend started OD’ing once, they had to do the same thing for her; for a little while, as they watched her shake, they considered dumping her at the ER and driving away.
    By then the drugs had fully upset the familial atmosphere at Coed Confidential. Kim was scooping up whatever coke was floating around at the parties and selling it on the side. Crystal left Teresa altogether and started a rival agency called Sensual Pleasure, specializing in happy-ending massages. And Amber was forced out by Teresa after too many complaints about her ripping off the johns—taking the payment and any drugs and just walking out.
    With nowhere else to go, Amber worked a little for Crystal. One night she went by Crystal’s place at the Governours Square Apartments, near Carolina Beach, and they smoked crack. Crystal performed a reading on Amber, looking into her past and seeing that she had been through something terrible. They talked about the rape and cried together. Crystal thought the drugs must have been to help ease the pain. She could relate: She didn’t want to deal with the stuff flashing in her head all the time, either.
    By dawn, the crack was gone, and they didn’t have anything to help them come down. Amber started crying again. She wanted to go out and get more. Crystal said they should stay there. Amber kept crying, so Crystal held her like a baby. Then Crystal started praying for her, telling her it was going to be okay. “Have you ever prayed before?” she asked Amber.
    “Yeah,” Amber said. “I pray sometimes.”
    “Well, are you saved? Are you a Christian?”
    “I think I am, but I don’t know.”
    “Let’s just be sure,” Crystal said. She said the Sinner’s prayer— Heavenly Father, I know that I have sinned against you and that my sins separate me from you . Amber repeated it after her and received Jesus Christ.
    Amber stopped crying. She smiled a big smile and gazed upward, weeping gratefully, praising God, praising Jesus, praising and praising until her voice was a hollow whisper. Crystal sat and watched her, thinking how fucked up it was, coming down off a crack high and praising the Lord.

MARIE

    New Year’s had come and gone, and so far, for Sara Karnes, 2007 had been a disaster. The telemarketing job had ended, as had the job at McDonald’s. Things with her boyfriend were strained. They fought as much as they slept together, and they hadn’t lived together since losing the hotel room. The only bright spot was Maureen.
    Sara said she hadn’t known what her new friend was really doing at the massage appointments. Later on, she would chalk that up to gullibility. Even if she had suspected something, Sara might not have