“Jessica!  Jessica!”

            The calls suddenly crashed on her ears.  She shoved the drawer closed with shaky hands, wondering why she didn’t recognize the voice.  “Coming,” she said, making her voice deliberately slow and enunciating carefully.

            Alana was standing at the door, her hands on her hips with her thumbs resting against the bare, tanned skin of her midriff.  “Five minutes!”

            “Yeah,” Jessica mumbled, keeping her face tilted down.

            “Are you okay?”

            “I feel a little sick,” Jessica said, articulating carefully before deciding to cut down on words.  “Don’t think I’ll go on.”

            Alana grasped Jessica’s face and wrenched it upwards until Jess’s bloodshot eyes met Alana’s clear blue ones.  “This is the first time you’re headlining a concert, Jessica!  You can’t bail!  Take something.  I’ll see if they have any colored contacts,” she said, reaching her finger towards Jessica’s eye.  Jessica’s didn’t realize that she was doing so until the finger was brushing against her eyelid.  She pulled away and nodded, not daring to exhale.  “Go on.  And hurry!”

            Jess closed the door quickly and breathed a sigh of relief.  She crossed back to the drawer and opened it.  “It’s your own fault, Alana,” she muttered to herself as she pulled out a bottle of pills and shook it.  Half empty.  Damn.  “You told me to take something.”  She began to take the pills, two at a time, until the little bottle was empty.  She washed them down with liquid from her water bottle, but she couldn’t remember exactly what liquid she had refilled it with.  She couldn’t taste it.

            She walked slowly out of the room.  As soon as she was outside, she was grabbed by various stylists poked and prodded until she was ready to scream.  She began to swat them away.

            “What is with you?” Alana asked, hurrying to catch up.  “Your first solo concert doesn’t mean that you have to go all diva.”

            Jessica whirled around to glare at the other girl.  “You know what, Alana?” she yelled, her voice much louder than she knew, “I’m sick of you telling me what to do.  I’m sick of this!”

            “You’re drunk!” Alana exclaimed after she got a whiff of Jessica’s breath.

            “Ask me if I care.”  Jessica barely noticed as one last stylist added a dab of makeup to her face.  She didn’t even look back at Alana before she was shoved out of the light, into the dark.

            And, suddenly, there was a single beam of light, aimed right at her.  She blinked.  The spotlight.  The one thing that she had been fighting for all her life.  And, now, it was all hers.  She only had to share it with a lonely microphone a few feet before her, beckoning to her.

            Suddenly, she didn’t care.

            It was like she was underwater.  The sounds were all muted and the sights seemed to waver.  One single beam of light had penetrated down deep enough to reach her.  The music came faintly, but she didn’t know the words.  She had to sing.  That was all that she knew.

            Automatically, she opened her mouth to breathe, forgetting that she was underwater.

            Her cough was loud and resonating.  Without a fight or a struggle, she sank to the bottom and let herself drown.

***

            “She’s going to be okay.”

            “What’s the problem?”

            “She overdosed on pills and alcohol.  We haven’t identified what the pills are yet.”

            “No!”

            “There was an empty bottle of something in her dressing room.  Go check it out.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “What do we tell the press?”

            “Jess, Jessica, can you hear me?”

            “Say that she’s sick.”

            “She’ll be okay.”

            “Oh, Jessica, wake up.  I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.”

            “We’ll say she got the flu.  That’s why she fainted.”

            “I’ll never bother you again, I swear.  Don’t die, Jess, please don’t die.”

            Footsteps, many footsteps, as the voices died down.

            “Jessica, you’re crying.  Are you awake?”  Jessica opened her moist eyes to see a wavering image of Alana standing over her.  “Oh, Jess, Jess…  You’re back.”

            Jessica didn’t know quite what to say.  “This is the third time I’ve tried,” she whispered hoarsely.

            “Tried what?”

            “To kill myself.”

            Alana’s blue eyes widened in shock.  “Jessica…”

            “I’m never trying again.”