Little Girl Lost

She knows that in many ways her job is a dream, but despite Abrams' warnings she wasn't prepared for how overwhelming it would all become. She managed to put off the Big Meltdown until near the end of Season One. Worn down by her workload, she called her parents in full hysterics. They told her, "Screw Hollywood -- you come home and we'll feed you some chicken-noodle soup."

Instead, Lilly went to Rwanda, where a friend was doing missionary work. "I holed up and read and wrote and prayed," she says. "I just disappeared off the face of the earth." Ironically, the consequence of playing the character of a forgotten person stranded on one of the most remote corners of the planet is that she has to travel great distances to end up someplace where nobody will recognize her.

I meet Lilly in the parking lot of an airfield on Oahu's north shore; she wants to go for a glider ride. Lilly is wearing a white shirt and white shorts. She'd be the perfect tennis-player pinup, except for the smudges on her arms: "dirt" makeup from the show that doesn't wash off easily.

"Want to go for a swim?" she says, and spontaneously strips off her clothes, revealing a green bikini and an extremely well-toned body that looks even better in person than on TV. We run toward the Pacific. The surf conceals sharp rocks, but Lilly never slows down.

Back at the airfield, our pilot reports that the glider is ready. Lilly and I squeeze into a passenger seat that seems better suited to one person; she encourages me to put my arm around her. Another plane tows us into the air, and then we spend the better part of an hour flying around in circles without an engine, riding thermal pockets like a roller coaster. Lilly loves every gut-twisting moment in the air, lamenting only that this particular glider can't loop the loop. The pilot keeps up a running monologue, but when he says, "Youth is wasted on the young," Lilly interrupts him.

"It's not wasted on me."

(From RS 984, Oct. 6, 2005)