A generation apart, but both of them feel betrayed by the mythology they grew up on: that Jersey girls are the most beautiful, the most carefree, the most fun. That they were meant for something big, that they had grand destinies to claim, that Atlantic City had enough energy, enough luck, enough money and glitter for everyone. That they would one day have their own stories to tell their grandchildren—serving a martini to Madonna. The limo ride with Muhammad Ali. The silk and satin of their uniforms, the hair spray and air kisses and twenty-dollar bills rolled into their bustiers. That’s what he’s taken from them.

They knew death was inevitable. Once they started with the needles, being surprised by death would have been like being surprised when you come to the other end of a piece of string. But he took their stories and changed the shape of them. Janes 1 and 2 share their greatest regret: that once they are found here, in the marsh, this will be the only story anyone will ever tell about them.

LILY

I GOT THE INTERVIEW AT the spa for one reason: my father worked as an electrician at the casino before he died and people still remembered his name. My mother made a phone call to a friend of Dad’s from the union, who put in another call to the facilities manager, who forwarded my résumé to the hiring manager, Deidre. We set up my interview for a Friday morning, two weeks exactly since I boarded a Greyhound bus from Port Authority and got off in Atlantic City, my eyes red from crying, my suitcase filled with a few things from the apartment I’d shared with Matthew. My future, which had once felt sturdy and assured, a ship I was steering, revealed itself to be much more fragile than that: a candy dish that I had mishandled. Now I was sweeping the pieces back into my hands, trying not to get cut.

The day of my interview, I stopped at the bar near the penny slots. It was only 11 a.m. but the bartender didn’t bat an eye when I ordered a vodka and soda. A slumped-over man two stools away glanced at me in a slow, side-eyed way that reminded me of a lizard, and the sweat from my palms left a stamp on the bar top. Already slot machines whirred around us. The lights’ glow brought out the crevices around gamblers’ mouths, the circles under their eyes, the sagging skin around their chins. Every now and then, some coins crashed out a metal chute or a cocktail waitress clicked by in her heels with a tray of screwdrivers, but mostly there was just the empty, meaningless dinging and the lethargic dim of a large room designed to keep out natural light.