When Dan awoke the next morning, he was alone. There was no other Dan lurking in his bed. He dressed cautiously, wondering whether the spell had broken, and went downstairs. Natalie was sitting at the kitchen table, looking absolutely exhausted. He now knew why. She was reading the back of a cereal box.

"Hey, Nat," he tried, wondering if she could hear him.

"Morning, Dad," she said, not looking up. Oh well. He would take it. He knew better than to offer her a ride to school; instead he wordlessly began making her lunch.

"You want to go out to dinner tonight?" he asked, thinking it might be a good idea. Natalie looked up a little in surprise.

"Oh, um... well, I have homework," she said. He almost laughed in her face but instead he just looked at her. "But, well... if you make it home in time, then..."

He smiled. "You name the place. I'll be home right after school." He handed her the lunch. "I promise."

"Right," she said, and he didn't miss the eye roll.

This was going to be more difficult than he expected.

They had dinner that night, and he didn't know what to do when they got home. Their conversation had been pleasant but distant- he had nothing to say that didn't involve her mother, which he knew she didn't want to hear about, or her drug problem, which he thought best to bring up later. He didn't know how to tell her that he knew she was on drugs; after all, he couldn't exactly explain what had happened the day before. "Natalie, I sort of repeated a day as an invisible, undetectable phantom...?" No, that wouldn't do.

He didn't want her to go out and party any more, but he knew at the same time that whatever he did to try and prevent it, she would find a way of getting out of the house.

That night, he tried to stay up all night. He would stop her if he heard her leave her room. Though, as fate would have it again, he fell asleep around eleven thirty. He woke again at one, and ran to Nat's room. She was gone. He tried calling her, but he knew that she wouldn't answer. Surprisingly enough, he heard her phone ring from her bedroom.

She left it at home? Why?

A small voice in his head wondered if she didn't want Henry finding her. Well, he was the only one who could. Dan, for once, didn't care about Natalie's feelings.

He cursed himself for not paying more attention when he'd been in the car the night before, because he knew he had no hope of finding the club again. And who knows if she'd even gone to the same one? Henry would probably have a better chance in finding her.

He opened her phone, feeling invasive. He'd always trusted her- he'd never gone through her room looking for drugs, or read her emails, or anything he'd once deemed overprotective. He wondered if, invasive as those methods were, they would have made a difference.

He opened her phone, and saw a new message from Henry.

"You ok?" he read. "I didn't see you at lunch. I thought you would sit with me today... Are you staying home tonight? Please say yes."

Dan shook his head, but then closed the message, found Henry's number, and began a new text message. Remembering that this would be sent from Natalie's number, he needed to make it sound legitimate.

"Come pick me up," he wrote, and then sent it.

A minute later, he got a message back. "WTF?! Where are you???"

"I don't know," he wrote back, hating himself for not knowing where his daughter was. "At a club... just come."

"I'm leaving now and finding you... I can't believe you're doing this again. This is fucking messed up."

My feelings exactly, Dan thought, though he might have used more appropriate language.

Dan breathed a sigh of relief. Even if he couldn't find her, he felt relief knowing she'd be home soon. And it was still somewhat early. On a whim, he deleted the recent text messages from her phone, hoping Henry wouldn't bring them up in conversation, and she wouldn't know he'd done that.

About an hour and a half later, he was waiting in the living room when she came home. She saw him there, and swore loudly.

"Now, Nat, I want to talk to you-"

"No, just leave me alone-"

She didn't let him get a word in, but he also didn't let her leave. They fought for hours... it was the most terrible fight they'd ever had, between the two of them. They'd had worse fights, but always about Diana. He realized that everything had always been about Diana- maybe that had been the problem in the first place. He screamed to Natalie about how he knew she was doing drugs, and how she was a fool for doing so. She at first denied it, and then just shut down, yelling for him to shut up whenever he said anything. She didn't admit anything, and made it clear she wasn't going to talk to him at all that night. He just couldn't get through to her. Eventually she ran upstairs, crying, and he sat defeated on the couch. He tried his hardest to be a good father- what more could he do?

The next night, he stayed in the living room, just waiting for her to come sneak out. But this time, she didn't come downstairs. Around midnight, he checked her room, wondering if she'd snuck out a window or something. But no; he found her asleep in bed.

He smiled. She looked so... young in her sleep. He remembered her as a tiny baby, a little toddler, a young girl, an awkward adolescent... she looked the same in her sleep. Maybe he was getting through to her.

The next morning, she awoke in a somewhat good mood. Well, that wasn't exactly surprising, considering she'd probably slept more the night before than she had in a long time.

"Hey Nat?" he asked, desperate to find ways to make her feel better.

"What?"

"You wanna invite Henry over tomorrow night? For dinner or something?"

"No," she answered right away.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm kind of not speaking to him right now," she said tartly.

"Oh." He was taken aback. "Is this... recent?"

She shrugged, and he dropped it.

Though he tried his best for the next few days, he knew that some nights she still snuck out. She always made it home safely, and had since brought her phone with her each time. Dan knew he was a coward for not calling her out on any of these nighttime escapades- he knew what she was doing; why couldn't he say anything?

He didn't know if she continued texting Henry, or if he simply came each night and found her anyway. Dan had to admit he was surprised when Natalie had said they weren't speaking- or rather, that she wasn't speaking to him. But without much information, he made an educated guess on the situation. He gathered that she couldn't face him in the morning knowing that he knew what she'd done the night before. His day and night spent tagging along (for that was as best he could describe it- the whole episode was too confusing to even attempt to understand) had given him enough information to know that Natalie knew what she was doing was wrong, and was ashamed of it. However, she just couldn't stop. He had to admire the kid's patience, though. How could he go without sleep all these nights and manage to come and drive her home? How did he find the motivation to continue helping her?

Well, Dan could understand that. He'd been through it himself, if not with the same exact situation. Diana probably required the same amount of devotion and patience. He just couldn't imagine going through all this as a seventeen year old. Yet Dan still had the feeling that Henry could handle this better than he could- that he was supposed to handle this and help Natalie, just like he himself was supposed to help Diana. Did that make him a very bad father, to leave all this responsibility on just a kid? He couldn't handle his own daughter, and he was making Henry do it... Again, he was just a kid. Henry had his own problems to worry about, his own life to keep track of. How could Dan be so selfish? Should he be helping Natalie? Truth be told, Natalie probably accepted Henry's help more easily. She knew she wouldn't get in any trouble by asking Henry for help. But Dan knew that, at this point, if Natalie needed help, he'd do anything to help her, no questions asked, no punishment included, as long as she was trying to get better.

However, any of these reasons for her going to Henry instead of him didn't excuse his non-attentive behavior. He was her father, not Henry. He was supposed to protect her, not Henry. He tried to tell himself that he didn't want to reprimand her too harshly because he knew that she would stop trusting him as soon as he resorted to that, but he knew that was just an excuse. She didn't trust him anyway.

Still, he didn't know what more he could do. If he grounded Natalie or found some more secure way of keeping her home, he knew she would just find another way or sneaking out or rebelling. Still, he remembered that when they had their fight, she'd stayed in the next night. Could the answer really just be paying the slightest bit of attention to her? Even fighting?

One night, he was sitting in the living room at around eleven, knowing she would come downstairs soon. When she did, he looked up at her, hurt in his eyes.

"I, um... need something to eat," she covered badly, looking nervous. He wasn't in the mood to fight anymore. He couldn't scream anything else, couldn't say any more hurtful words.

"I love you, Natalie," he called, and she popped back into the room.

"What?"

"I said I love you. I do," he said, hoping she'd understand. She looked like she was trying not to smile.

"OK."

"Goodnight, sweetheart."

"'Night, Dad."

That night, she didn't come down again.

This chapter was kind of confusing, I know, but I didn't want Natalie's problem to just vanish because her dad suddenly understood, you know? It would take time either way. I hope Dan's struggle came across, and that he didn't seem to weak in anyone's eyes.

Please, please, please review this.