WE HAVE TO PAY FOR REALITY

you  may  think  you’re  winning  this  heartbreak,  but  you’re  not  gonna  win  it  ‘cause  CHECKMATE.

would  you  love  me  more  if  I  killed  someone  for  you?  would  you  hold  my  hands?  they’re  the  same  ones  that  I  used  when  I  killed  someone  for  you.  would  you  turn  me  in  when  they  say  I'm  on  the  loose?  would  you  hide  me  when  my  face  is  on  the  news?

                        ‘CAUSE  I  KILLED  SOMEONE  FOR  YOU.

pre - movie.

MOTHER. katie adler, fifty-two. very much conservative in her ways and her thoughts. has always seen nikki as a problem child because she never did as she was told and didn’t tend to act all that lady-like. as nikki got into her teen years and embraced her sexuality katie became less and less approving and more and more distant. her mother’s distance only made nikki act out more, and the minute nikki finished high school she was moving out. not to go to college as her mother had hoped, but instead just to get away from her mother. she lived in an apartment with joseph, now seeing less and less of her mother, the woman not all that interested in her daughter’s lifestyle.

FATHER. nolan adler, fifty-one. less conservative than katie but somewhat submissive in personality. he always tried to support his daughter, but it was clear that he would take her mother’s side over hers. the more nikki grew up and acted out the less the pair really talked, though she was slightly more likely to go to her father with her problems than her mother. she told him her plans to move out at the start of her senior year, something he soon told her mother which caused even more of a rift between the pair. when nikki moved out nolan helped her, encouraging her to stay with joseph for as long as she can because family should stay close.

OLDER BROTHER. joseph adler, twenty-six. joseph is the one nikki’s closest to out of everyone. he’s only a couple of years older than her and taught her most of what she knows about the world. her personality developed based a lot on him and his friends, always trying to fit in with them. she did become a part of his friend group, but for the most part everyone just treated her like the baby of the bunch, so come high school she distanced herself from his friends and made her own. joseph was happy for her to make her own friends, though he wasn’t too big on heather or ryan to start with. soon enough he came around to them, if only because nikki was such a big fan of them. once high school ended he knew he wanted to move out, but didn’t have the means to live on his own yet. he saved for a while and once nikki got out of high school a couple of years later they moved in together.

YOUNGER BROTHER. damien adler, seventeen. damien’s the baby of the family, adored by his parents and protected by his siblings. he doesn’t like that they treat him like a baby, but he does like the privileges that he gets by being the youngest and the favorite child. where joseph is athletic and nikki is.. nikki, damien is more academically inclined; something his parents have been wanting one of their children to be for years. despite their differences he looked up to nikki, always loved how she was confident and did anything she wanted. he was far more insecure, especially considering he was in the center of high school and puberty. he’s quite a bit younger than his siblings, but he does his best to talk to them as much as possible. he wants to move out and live with nikki and joseph, though their mother isn’t a huge fan of the idea.

during  and  post - movie.

MOTHER. katie wasn’t a fan of nikki going to new orleans, was even less of a fan when she found out through joseph that she was going to texas too. it wasn’t really texas that she didn’t like, so much as the fact that they were going there because of someone in heather’s family dying. joseph told her that he’d been called from a hospital in texas, explained that nikki had been attacked and was in bad shape. of course katie was worried for her, but she wasn’t planning on travelling to texas just to see her. they’d never been all that close, and nikki didn’t really want to see her anyway. katie called her, talked for a couple of minutes, but both of them were too hostile for the conversation to hold. when nikki returned home her mother came to see her once, but it was nolan that did all the talking rather than katie.

FATHER. nolan had told nikki that going to new orleans would be great and she’d have fun, didn’t even realize she was stopping in texas until katie had ranted about it after nikki had already left. when he heard about what happened he was terrified for nikki, didn’t want to lose his daughter, but he couldn’t just fly off to texas like joseph could. he didn’t have the money, not to mention that he’d been at work when he heard the news. he talked to nikki on the phone, but he could tell that she wasn’t really in a place for conversation. he and katie visited nikki as soon as she got home, nolan doing all that he could to try to help her. he’d drop around cooked food and takeout a couple of times a week so that joseph didn’t have to cook or buy food all the time, eventually trying to get her to cook for herself again but it never stuck.

OLDER BROTHER. joseph was nikki’s emergency contact and had been called the moment she was brought to the hospital. he instantly bought a flight to texas with his emergency savings and was at the hospital by the time nikki got out of surgery. he didn’t force her to talk to him about what happened, but did force her to call their parents just to let them know she was alive. he stayed beside her hospital bed until she was ready to go home and caught a bus with her back home. for the first few nights he stayed sitting next to her all night, promising her that no one was coming for her. she didn’t really sleep, but when she did she had all kinds of nightmares. he held her as she cried and listened to her quiet ramblings, though he never really heard more than ‘chainsaw’, ‘kenny’, ‘ryan’, ‘blood’ and a whole lot of quiet swearing. after that he’d occasionally force her to go out of the house, but he tried to be as patient as possible with her recovery.