Character Analysis
Alice meets Chris in a little hippie boutique in her new town and it's practically love at first sight—especially because Chris gives her uppers to cheer her up. Nothing says friendship like drugs. Or not to Alice, anyway.
Chris is Alice's partner-in-crime for her first runaway escapade to San Francisco, and she's probably Alice's most well-matched friend in terms of interests, affection... and drugs, of course.
The girls are inseparable from Ted and Richie at first, and what a foursome they make, selling drugs to little kids. That is, until they walk in on Ted and Richie knocking boots—then the girls hightail it out of there, but not before hopping on their high moral horses and vengefully reporting their exes to the cops. Because why not throw a little homophobia into this intensely cautionary tale?
Then Alice and Chris both pay a ton of lip service to the notion of avoiding the drug scene for as long as possible, only to leap back on the bandwagon as soon as they're given the opportunity. At Chris's boss's party, they don't even try to talk each other out of getting high for the first time in ages:
Then I smelled it. I almost stopped talking in the middle of a sentence, the smell was so strong. Chris was over on the other side of the room but I saw her looking around and knew she had smelled it too. […] Then I turned around and one of the men passed me a joint and that was it. I wanted to be ripped, smashed, torn up as I had never wanted anything before. (101.5)
Of course, terrible things happen in the "swingers" scene, so they both run off to Berkeley and open a boutique together. Once again, they experience a brief period of success, but then their homesickness takes over and they both return to their families. At home, they manage to both be clean and sober for a bit, but this time Chris is the first to cave:
Each new time is the best time and Chris feels the same way. Last night when she called and asked me to come over, I knew something terrible had happened. She sounded like she didn't know what to do, But when I got there and smelled that incredible smell, I just sat down on the floor of her room with her and cried and smoked. It was beautiful and wonderful and we'd been without it for so long. (138.2)
This is the epitome of enabling behavior. Way to go, girls. Life continues this way for these two until they get busted by the cops, and then the terms of their probation keep them apart, which is probably for the best.