Kiara Johnson

Kiara is the teenage protagonist of Nightcrawling. When the novel begins, she is 17 years old and attempting to support herself and her older brother Marcus, who refuses to get a job while he is pursuing a music career. She is unable to find a job herself because she has little work experience, and when she is mistaken for a sex worker by a man she meets in a strip club, she realizes that this could be a viable means of keeping herself and Marcus afloat financially. The siblings are on their own because their father is dead and their mother is living in a halfway house while on parole. Shortly after the novel begins, Kiara finds herself also responsible for her nine-year-old neighbor Trevor, whose mother has abandoned him.

While having sex with a man for money in Chapter 9, Kiara is caught by the police. The officer...