Daisy

Daisy is Nic Sheff’s younger sister, growing up with Jasper and their parents while Nic’s addiction repeatedly disrupts the family’s sense of safety. Her place in the narrative is not simply that of a child affected by events she cannot control: she watches, asks questions, and finds her own language for the distance between the brother she knows and the brother who disappears into drug use. Everyday details—school clothes, waffles, a stuffed unicorn, and a letter to a teacher—make visible the childhood that continues even as her family’s attention is pulled toward Nic’s illness.

Childhood Within a Family in Crisis

When Nic is missing, Daisy comes into the kitchen yawning, her hair wild, after Jasper has already joined Karen for toast. The adults do not yet explain what has happened, hoping not to worry the children, but Daisy and Jasper sense that something is wrong and know that Nic is absent. Jasper eventually asks where Nic is. The scene establishes the children’s position: they are not told everything at once, but they are perceptive enough to notice the change in their home.

Later, while Nic sleeps in his room, their father sits down with Daisy and Jasper and explains that Nic is using drugs again and is ill, and that he is seeking a hospital or rehabilitation program. He also tells them that children in families affected by addiction sometimes think the problem is their fault. He promises that it is not. The children stare back, sad and unable to understand fully. Daisy’s experience is thus shaped both by Nic’s absence and by the adults’ effort to give that absence an explanation she can bear.

A program counselor describes addiction as a disease that affects the whole family and uses a hanging mobile to illustrate the family’s roles. The central paper doll represents the addict; smaller figures around it stand for the children and Karen, tied to the central figure’s moods and drug use despite their helplessness. The account places Daisy among those whose lives are affected by Nic without suggesting that she can control his choices. The counselor’s image gives form to a reality Daisy experiences at home: a sibling’s illness can become the emotional center of family life, even for children who did not cause it.

Nic’s Return and the Limits of Explanation

During Nic’s stay in treatment, he visits the family at a rundown inn after nearly three months away. His last encounter with Jasper and Daisy had been painful: he was coming down from a high, depressed, and angrily leaving for rehabilitation. This time Daisy and Jasper are initially reluctant, but soon they are happy to see him. Nic plays with them in the cold water, bats tennis balls back and forth, and joins Karen and the children for croquet. He asks about school and friends and tells them about a cat on the hospital grounds. From the children’s perspective, he seems well enough to be home. When their father takes him back to the hospital, they are perplexed about why he cannot come with them. Their confusion reflects the difficulty of explaining an illness that may be invisible in a moment of affection and play.

The family’s later reunion on Molokai opens with Nic gathering Daisy into a bear hug and spinning her around. He greets her as “missypants” and “little boinky,” then bends down to Jasper and tells him he has missed him more than the sun misses the moon at night. The affectionate welcome does not erase the awkwardness of being together again: during the drive to camp, the family is diffident until Jasper asks for a bedtime story. The scene shows how familiar sibling rituals can help restore contact, even when the history of separation remains present.

School, Play, and Daisy’s Own Voice

Daisy’s childhood also appears in scenes unrelated to treatment. At a school ceremony, her grade is called forward, and she rises with her classmates in a soft blue smocked dress that had belonged to Nancy as a child. The inherited dress connects a small public milestone to family history, while the ceremony marks Daisy’s own progression through school. Later, as she begins fourth grade, she writes to her teacher Laura about wanting to improve at math, liking science and reading, and finding Spanish “not my cup of tea.” She mentions a new retainer that makes it hard to say the letter G and describes learning not to flip it around in her mouth. These particularities establish her as a child with concerns and enthusiasms of her own, not only as Nic’s sister.

Her letter also gathers family events into the candid inventory of a child trying to tell a teacher about her life. Daisy writes that Jasper once called Moondog “Moongoggy,” and that the dog died of cancer. She then explains, “My brother was a smoky guy, but he stopped. Don’t worry it’s not Jasper. It’s Nic. He lives in LA.” In the same account, she mentions her father’s brain hemorrhage, Jasper’s bicycle accident, and her own eye caught in her jacket zipper, which is now fine. Her closing reassurance that everything is “A okay now” sits beside the accumulation of bad news. The letter makes clear how family crises enter a child’s everyday self-presentation, alongside pets, school, and small mishaps.

At home, Daisy and Jasper make waffles with Karen and their father, then play hide-and-seek. Daisy curls into her usual basket; Jasper tips it, and the two tumble onto the concrete floor laughing before racing into Nic’s vacant bedroom, which has become their base despite the bad memories associated with it. Later, after they lose a lacrosse ball in the garden, their handclapping game gives way to talk about Nic. Asked whether he resembles Bob Dylan, Daisy does not answer directly. Instead, she asks why the man takes drugs. Jasper says he thinks drugs make him feel better. Daisy replies, “They don’t. They make him feel all sad and bad.” Her short explanation joins a child’s understanding of drugs to what she has witnessed of their effects on her brother.

Naming the Distance and Seeking Help

As Nic’s addiction continues, Daisy gives the separation between his different selves a precise description. On the drive home from school, near the crest of the hill above Olema, she looks up from the scarf she is knitting and says, “It’s like Nic is like my brother who I know and this other guy who I don’t.” The phrasing does not deny that both are Nic; it records the emotional division she experiences between the brother she recognizes and the person his addiction makes unfamiliar. Her observation is especially significant because it comes during an ordinary ride home, rather than in a formal conversation about treatment.

Daisy has also discussed drugs with the older girls in Girls on the Run, a group where girls in fourth through sixth grade run and talk about subjects including body image, nutrition, and why young people begin drinking, smoking, or using drugs. The family seeks additional support for her and Jasper because no ongoing Al-Anon group is available for children as young as they are; Alateen is for older children. Their father wants the children to know that they are not alone or responsible, and that they can continue to love Nic while grieving the brother they miss. A family therapist later tells them it is scary to have a brother who uses drugs partly because they cannot know what will happen. Jasper identifies Nic’s current location as rehabilitation. The exchange frames Daisy’s situation as an ongoing effort to understand uncertainty, preserve love, and make room for her own grief without making her responsible for curing her brother.