I tried to bury the pain. I shoveled it down under the smiles and laughs, but the dark circles under my eyes and the dark thoughts in my mind were hard to hide. Three years had passed. Three fucking years and it never got easier. I still saw him dangling from that fucking tree, haunting me with every breath.

I needed a way to shut off my brain. A way to numb the pain that refused to be buried, clawing its way through my entire being. Jonas, my tv love, placed his hand in mine and took me down to the Sunset strip. His kindness was foreign, but he could see I was falling apart. Everyone could see it. I was a gaping wound that refused to heal. He ordered me a shot and pressed the tiny cup to my lips. It burned like acid, like vomit. But I drank it. And another. And another. Until I didn't feel anything at all. Except dizzy. And that was fun. Dizzy was good.

I got dizzy again the next day. And the next. And the next. I was best when the room was spinning, topsy turvy tipsy.

The bottles in my bag clinked together. Clink. The sound made me smile. Clink. I could almost not feel it. He was almost not behind my eyes every time they closed. I was almost numb.

My summer dripped away like the last drops of an empty bottle. I huddled in my converted garage apartment at the front of my parents' house--as far from the fucking tree as I could get and still be on the property--and drank my days away. I drank until I couldn't cry anymore, passed out or puking instead.

Clink. My bag of bottles instead of books clinked. Clink. I stumbled through the studio lot. Mitch grabbed the bag and threw it against the wall of the sound stage, the Marina Nights doused in vodka. I flinched away from him, wrapping my arms around myself. "Enough," he growled. Then softer, "enough."

I fell to my knees and wept for my lost liquor, shuddering sobs that came out like howls. He crouched beside me and pushed my hands from my contorted face. "Jesus."

His arms wrapped around and under me, and he lifted me like a baby. A crying baby. He placed me in the back of his car and drove me to the hospital. When I realized where I was, I was so angry, I quit the show. I called him every foul name I could think of, the worst of which was probably fucking pervert pedo. I wanted my numbness back. And he shattered it across the wall containing my stupid fake fucking life.

But then I started to see. As the cloud of alcohol left me, I started to see that I was never really numb. He was still hanging there and I was still sad.

I never drank again.