A FATAL FEUD
Nadine twirls on a dance floor, arms raised. She stops as she sees the camera, her gaze unfocused for a moment too long.
Ivan Drozdov: We should have gotten her help earlier.
Nadine in the spotlight. She wears a high-necked gown, her hair piled atop her head and steadily she takes aim with a gun. The scene cuts to Nadine backstage, that same gown. She is collapsed in her chair, head on her dressing table, hyperventilating.
Nadine Heywood: I was very good at hiding it. And I had a historic reputation as someone who wouldn’t dream of touching anything, let alone the hard stuff.
Amos DuPont: I still don’t quite believe it. You should have met the Nadine I knew in our student days; she’d have fainted at the sight of a Tylenol.
Nadine Heywood: I don’t blame anyone for not realizing. Those closest to me knew the complicated relationship I had with my parents. I doubt they realized how terribly I was reacting to their passing. Even I was baffled by it, which I suppose was part of the problem.
Sasha Wallace: Her parents were … It’s not really my place to say.
Ivan Drozdov: Neglect is the word that springs to mind but emotional starvation feels more apt.
Sasha Wallace: Their deaths robbed Nadine of the possibility of it ever getting better.
Nadine Heywood: Look, it’s unfair to assign all of the blame to grief.
It would be too easy. There were other factors—the quieter sadness I was constantly running from, a lifetime of never cutting loose, the invasive press who robbed me of my privacy, and me, of course—my vapidity and materialism, my relentless pursuit that carried one part of me so far and left quite a lot of me behind.
Jasmine McKenna: From a media perspective, 2000 was the era of Heywood’s rebrand. Party-girl Nadine was born.
Nadine Heywood: The millennium raced forward. And I became a tragic little icon.