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felt that my parents looked at me and found me lacking. I was far from perfect. I was smoking pot, getting drunk, and sleeping with boys. So, I always felt that my parents thought that the wrong daughter died.” She shrugged. “I was filled with self-loathing, so I puked my way through middle school and high school. Nobody ever knew except my dentist.” She looked at me. “So, I gues s I'm saying that I know from self-loathing. If there is anything I could do to help you, I would love that.”
    I put my hand on hers sympathetically. Yet I couldn’t open to her like she had just opened up to me. I admired her for being able to tell me these things. I wish ed that I could be an open book as well, but I had always been pretty closed-off. That was probably a lot of my problem.
    Nat continued. “Nate doesn’t know about this. Ryan neither. So, please don’t say anything to the boys. I'm only telling you this because I see a kindred spirit.”
    “Ryan has been through a lot, too, in his life. He used to also self-destruct. He would probably understand what you were going through.”
    She kept quiet for a bit. Then she finally said “Yes, but I never want Ryan to see me in that light.”
    The words that she said left words also unspoken. The unspoken words were that she was still in love with Ryan, and she never wanted him to see her as anything but perfect.
    It occurred to me that this house was a vortex of dysfunction, three of us recovering from destructive tendencies. Me a recovering self-mutilator, Nat a recovering bulimic and Ryan a recovering drug addict. I couldn’t help but wonder if Nate had a similar dark secret.
    I smiled. “Well, we certainly are a group of people in this apartment, huh?”
    Nat laughed. “It seems that way.”
    I once again was reminded of the need to get beyond the façade of beauty and wealth. You pull it back, and they are more vulnerable than anybody else. More vulnerable because they are expected by society to uphold their end of the bargain, as it were – they are given much, so they should be almost god-like. Then, when they fall, people like to pounce. Schadenfreude as Ryan says – that is what drives the media coverage about the beautiful people doing bad things. It’s like the famous F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, where he said that he had never been able to forgive the rich for being rich. This was how society looked at the rich, a lot of times, and this was why people like Ryan and Natalie were vulnerable.
    Ryan presently came into the den. “Honey, Nate and I have been talking. We can stay here for as long as we need to. I don’t think that the media is going to figure out that we’re here. But I want to get in touch with Nick back home, to see how he’s holding up. I’d imagine that he’s getting it as much as we are. Alexis, too.”
    “Call him, and put him on speaker phone, if you don’t mind,” I said.
    So, he did.
    “Buddy,” Ryan said when Nick answered the phone.
    “It’s about fucking time. Where the hell are you?” Nick asked.
    “I’m so sorry about all this.”
    “What the hell? What’s going on? My phone has been blowing up, and I have media people camped out on my doorstep, trying to get information about you two.”
    “What do you tell them?”
    “No comment, of course. They won’t go away, though.”
    “What about Alexis? You heard from her?”
    “Of course. She’s been calling non-stop, because she can’t get ahold of you guys. She’s pretty sick of her private life blowing up on TV as well.”
    Ryan sighed. “The chickens have finally come home to roost. I knew that they would, eventually. Now they have.”
    “When are you coming home?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “I really don’t know why your job puts up with your constant absences.” Nick seemed incredulous about this.
    “Never mind about that. I have to figure out how to address this.”
    “Tackle it head-on. Talk to the media, give them your story.”
    “I hate to ask