In her early twenties, Kristine made her way to Atlanta. She got a waitress job and roomed with Kelly Richardson, now a film-production assistant. But Atlanta was too makeup-and-big-hair; and on a trip to New York, when she visited her sister Kathy, who was living with Kevin in a tenement on East 3rd Street, she vowed to move there. When Kathy and Kevin moved out, Kristine moved in. Her clothes changed from flowing neo-hippie to sleek black-on-black.

She got a job at MacDougals Cafe, a tourist magnet across from Cafe Le Figaro in the Village. Nick Papanikolu -- a young Greek-American raised in Brooklyn, Greece, and the Boston suburbs -- also waited tables there, while putting himself through college. He was solemn; she was vivacious. They went to moma on their first date. "She kept touching the paintings," Nick recalls. "I said, 'Kristine, they'll kick us out!' " She moved into his apartment on Hudson Street, near the mouth of the Holland Tunnel. After three years, they broke up -- her decision -- but remained best friends. She entered Baruch and, maintaining high grades, won a full Provost scholarship. She founded the school's Philosophy Club, setting up debates on whether organized religion is oppressive, on whether focus on the Holocaust obscures the evil of slavery, and on the media's role in the death of Princess Diana. She typed papers for blind students.

Kathy and Kristine, working-class sisters, shopped at thrift stores, cooked at home, got $12 haircuts, and took the subway everywhere -- always competing over who could save more money. Kristine's weakness for Joan & David shoes almost cost her the honor until she found the house in Kensington and began filling it with roommates to defray the rent. Ozlem has been there the longest, and she became the little sister Kristine never had. "I would knock on her door five times a day." says Ozlem, usually with a question about a romance. "Kristine would say, 'Stop being a drama queen. Just look at the facts!' "

With men, Kristine could give as good as she got. She often chewed them out for not calling when they said they would. "She didn't want to dominate, but she was powerful. It was challenging for the man and for her," says Ozlem. Kristine put it more bluntly to her friend Suzana Riordan: "You're like me. We have balls -- we scare 'em off." She was involved with a law student, then, for months, a security guard. Lilien says, "I felt she picked men who weren't her equal. She's a really strong person. She needed somebody who could match her." Her mother, who had thought the security guard was "an overgrown brat," was pleased when Kristine stopped seeing him sometime around last winter. At the time, her mother recalls, "Kristine said, 'No more men! No more relationships! I'm going to settle down now and just finish school!' "

But in the spring, Kristine started telling people she had a crush on her science teacher. She told her mother she was attracted to his intellect. Ozlem recalls her saying that "his skin was so clean and he didn't drink, didn't smoke, never ate meat. She also liked him because he had all these tacky neckties and not-matching clothes." Valerie Santos, a social worker who was Negril's night hostess, says that at first Kristine "didn't know how to read him; she was trying to figure out if he had a girlfriend." Then Kristine told Valerie that Rudy "was single -- he had recently broken up with someone. He basically gave her the impression he was available." They exchanged numbers -- her phone, his beeper. During conversations they had after class, he told Kristine about a business trip he would soon be taking to Turkey. An envious Kristine quipped to Kathy, "I wish he could take an assistant."