All told, Ronnie didn’t mind Topless Maids that much; she was used to men looking. Since she was thirteen, men had gone to pieces around her—especially men of an older generation. How many times, growing up, when she was wearing something even remotely revealing, had someone whispered, “Look at those titties” or “Playboy model ” or even just “slut” as she passed? Ronnie’s dad, Jimmy, was always down on his luck, perpetually getting laid off from jobs, and that instilled in him a certain ineffectualness. He tried to protect Ronnie from the male population, though instead of lashing out at the people who ogled, he told Ronnie to stay inside and not invite the comments at all.

Ronnie’s mother, Brenda, agreed. She sent Ronnie upstairs half the mornings before school, saying she looked “too sexy.” Ronnie’s older sister, Vanessa, wore clothes that were far more revealing . . . but no one looked at Vanessa. Vanessa treated Ronnie’s looks as an inconvenience, annoyed that so many boys in her grade came up to ask her if Ronnie was old enough to date. “You’re not that pretty,” she always told Ronnie—right in front of their parents, who made no efforts to correct her. “Don’t be stupid enough to believe what those guys say.”

When Ronnie was seventeen, her dad died of a heart attack. Ronnie’s mother fell apart shortly after that and passed away a year later. Going to college wasn’t in the cards for Vanessa, but Ronnie still thought it was a possibility for her. She’d major in business, she thought, or maybe accounting. She was good at managing things and crunching numbers. Though she had no idea how she’d even pay the application fees. Then, when a friend of a friend at a party jokingly told her she should work at Kittens, the county’s only strip club, Ronnie took it to heart. She’d heard through the grapevine how much money you could make, so she called to see if they were hiring. For someone like Ronnie, of course they were.

Ronnie kept her new job a secret for a while, but then she blurted it out to Vanessa, who was scandalized but probably, deep down, quite jealous. “How can you do that for strangers?” she asked.

“It’s okay,” Ronnie said. “And anyway, it’s just to raise money for college.”