saree FirtHy Ricu dramatically in anticipation. block out the Barbies behind her. Over on the Gold Coast, girls sf the earbuds: Britney Spears. in big, high-ceilinged bedrooms have American Girl dolls. Dolls - starts to dance, moving her with natural smiles, perfectly vacant moon faces. American Girl dolls are beautiful. They’re expensive. But you have to have one if Mom and Dad are willing to pay. Over on the Coast, most mothers and fathers are. But out in the sticks, where Mary lives, _ you get Barbies—passed down from mother to daughter, from ig. She’s twirling around and sister to sister. They're rail-thin, missile-breasted. There’s a touch rab the clothes hanging up in of knowingness to the curl of their otherwise innocent mouths. thousand fans! Then she stops American Girl dolls are girlie, but Barbie’s like Britney Spears. ly she’s become fourteen again. | Barbie’s dangling her long legs over the line that separates girls from women. w is what she will wear to the | Be like Barbie, Mary thinks. She can’t be nervous. Not now. Not today. | What she tells herself, over and over again, is: It’s not that big a deal. . in impression. This will be her | But, of course, it is a big deal. Before long, Mary’s visit to the ot want to look like a child on i big fancy house will become part of a months-long Palm Beach police investigation—an affidavit for probable cause, filed by ‘white jeans, puts on a freshly the Palm Beach PD—and, finally, the arrest and conviction of r flat stomach bare. The cross j the home’s owner, Jeffrey Epstein. angs from her neck. mey. Several weeks’ wages at ; some old man a massage? She i nto the closet, sings along with : y perfectly. She turns to check j a ig the scene with her fingers to Al 3 4 5 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019121