Also: In chapter 22, in the section that goes from meeting Kevyn Aucoin through the MTV Video Awards to the Tupac revelation, man, I felt her terror on the red carpet. I don't know if that's due to good writing or just the way I felt at the time, but it hit me.
...
I wasn't aware of the way (or when) she met Virginia either. That was pretty cool.
That was fantastic, the way she kept hitting the lock button. Aucoin made some killer product and his memory lives on through them.
Nedra is a sociopath, without a doubt. The way Jewel described the bit re: the vacation home? How fast she switched when backed to the wall? She broke for just a moment.
I've dealt with at least one sociopath and even with a good childhood, they are so smooth, so practiced and calculating, you lose yourself to some degree. There's a part of your mind that holds the image of that robot from the old Lost In Space series (Danger Will Robinson!!) while another part tells you that you are being ridiculous. It's similar to why even after Ted Bundy's girlfriend found the plaster of paris in their bedroom closet, as well as the fake slings, her mind wouldn't let her believe it was 'her Ted'. The rational part of her called her girlfriend, who she knew would turn him in, while at the same time sitting there in complete denial.
An acquaintance of mine, who's husband was sociopathic, literally ended up checking herself into a psychiatric hospital at the suggestion of her 'concerned' husband, who had been continually gas lighting her. When she did, he took all the money, sent the daughter to a school for troubled kids (she was a teen and had figured her father out) and got full custody of the son. He went from concerned to cold instantly. The psychiatrist at the center figured it out fast, since there was nothing wrong with her.
Dealing with people like this is just mind-altering.
