“I like pain, but only if it
doesn’t hurt too much.”

MAKE US
PROUD

NICK HEALY

Played by DEREK KLENA

SALUTATORIAN, ALL-STATE SYMPHONY CELLIST, MATHLETE, AP SCHOLAR, CONNECTICUT DEBATE SOCIETY CHAMPION, CAPTAIN OF THE SWIM TEAM, RESENTFUL SON, TIGHT-LIPPED WITNESS

Up until now, Nick Healy has played life like a board game. He was raised to think that the world works according to a simple plan: You earn all the right chips, follow the rules, keep your head down, and in the end you’ll prevail. That philosophy, ingrained in him by his parents and teachers, has served him well so far. (His milk-fed good looks and athlete’s physique may have helped some too.) He’s graduating high school at the top of his class and bound for Harvard University.

Since they were toddlers, Nick has been a close confidant for his adopted sister, Frankie. However, as Frankie has recently begun claiming her own stake as a person apart from the family, their relationship has started to fracture. Her awakening leads him to start questioning the structures around him. Then, when he is forced to face the ugly act that his friend committed at Lancer’s party, his world turns upside down. He stood by and watched as his friend took advantage of Bella and he did nothing. Why did he freeze? Why couldn’t he act?

Nick senses a simmering resentment boiling up beneath the surface: Why do his parents have to place so much pressure on him? Did their need for Nick to keep himself out of trouble lead to his inaction the night of the party? MJ and Steve projected so many of their own personal hopes and dreams upon him that Nick is starting to feel he doesn’t have any hopes and dreams of his own. He feels like a marionette doll whose strings are being pulled by the authority figures around him. He’s tired of coloring between the lines. How can he fall in line with expectations, but also strike out on his own? And how can he be his own person when Frankie has already claimed the role of “rebellious youth” in the family? It’s hard to feel sorry for someone so privileged and seemingly perfect, but Nick shows that privilege—and patriarchy—can form a prison of its own kind.