THE END OF A TRUE LIFE TRAGEDY

Early this morning stage hands discovered the body one of Broadways's brightest stars, Rachel Berry. Though no official cause of death has been released, inside sources are telling a gruesome tale of suicide. Now, why would a beloved star in the likes of Rachel Berry wish to end her life? Turn to page six for the story that has been kept under wraps until now, the history of this young star's life before the Broadway marquee and secrets of a girl in a small town that even the brightest spotlights could not unveil.

Mike sighed and ran a hand through his hair upon reading the headline and the following blurb. He did not bother turning to page six before dropping the paper in the trash bin and gulping down his still scalding coffee. He already knew what it would say on page six. He had been there, he didn't need to read a paper to remember high school. Her hell years she had once called them. God, he had thought she was happy now. Sure, it's true that he only saw her once a or twice a month for lunch, but Mike really thought that they were friends now. Close friends. Why would she do this? She had everything she had ever wanted. But Mike guessed that's why she was a star, she was an amazing actress, owner of the perfect show face, and hiding her true thoughts and emotions wouldn't have been a challenge for Rachel, it never had been. He heard Quinn scream from the living room as she heard the news. He sighed once more before dialing his office, he would not be comeing in today.

"Santana is that you? Is someone crying? Oh my god, are you crying? Britt, get in here!" Artie said this all in rapid succession, yelling the last sentence down the hall before beginning his attempts to calm the hysterical Latina on the phone. Through her sobs he managed to get one word, 'speaker'. He quickly turned his apartment's phone on speaker, just as his wife walked in carrying their four month old son.

"What's going on Artie? I was just getting Griffin up." Santana's sobs quieted slightly at the sound of her best friend's voice and she managed to get out a full, coherent, sentence.

"Put Griffin down, Britt." Brittany did as Santana asked, placing James in the car seat that sat on the table, ready for the day's adventures.

"What are you calling San? What's going on? Are you alright?" Santana sniffled once more before taking a deep breath and stated in a voice that was eerily calm for someone who had just been hysterically crying.

"Rach is dead. Rachel's gone."

"Excuse me, what did you just say?" The man on the phone turned, and a frightened look immediately made an appearance when he saw who he was talking to.

"I'm sorry Mr. Evans, I know I'm not supposed to talk on my cell while on the job, but my daughter is upset, please can I just-?" Sam cut him off, not really caring what his rules were.

"I don't care about that. Who's name did you just say?" The man looked confused now, a bit of his fear inching away.

"Rachel Berry, she's on Broadway. Well she was. She was my daughter's idol. This morning they found her body, the papers are saying suicide." Sam froze. Rachel Berry...dead? No, it's not possible. He would have denied it was the same Rachel if the man had not mentioned Broadway. He knew it was the same Rachel, he had taken Tina to see Wicked for their for their first anniversary, and she had been Elphaba, the star as always. They had waited at her stage door and her and Tina had talked for hours after everyone else was gone. They had come a long way from their high school pettiness.

"Sir, are you alright?"

"Suicide?" The man nodded and Sam could feel the bile in his stomach rising. The driven girl he knew from high school, the girl who wore animal sweaters, but never even considered giving up. Rachel Berry had committed suicide. He had to tell Tina, before she found out the news from some impersonal newscaster.

"I already heard." Both his tone and his words were short and clipped, he didn't want to speak with her, not now of all times.

"I wasn't sure, I just wanted to tell you." There was sounds of crying in the background and Shelby could hear his wife informing her friends while trying not to break into sobs.

"Thank you," He didn't mean those words, he meant the exact opposite. He had read the article. "Now, I have to let you go. Santana's taking it hard. They were best friends." Shelby nodded even though Puck could not see her and she heard the click of him hanging up the phone so he could go and comfort his girlfriend.

"Mommy are you okay?" Shelby turned to see her seven year old daughter standing in the doorway. She closed her computer with a snap, not wanting to see the words or photos anymore. Without a word she held her arms open and Beth rushed into them, giving Shelby a tight squeeze. Burying her face in her daughter's hair she tried not to think about the article. She had been featured heavily. What type of mother would force her way into her daughter's life, just to abandon her and then adopt a baby girl. What type of mother, no person, could do that?

"Why don't we stay home today sweetie, have a girl day?"

"Yes thank you for calling, it means a lot to me. I'll be there." The director turned back to Kurt and the rest of the cast before acknowledging him with his heavy British accent. "I want you all to share a moment of silence for a fallen star, one of our own who lost herself. Please." All of the actors and dancers bowed their heads and stood without a word, not questioning their director at all.

"Thank you. I'm sure many of you have heard of Rachel Berry, she was youngest Elphaba in the show's history and she had to switch to night classes at Julliard to pull through. They were strongly considering her to portray Elphaba in the on screen adaption. She was an icon to us all, with her brilliant work ethic and enviable talent." Kurt almost sighed, when he had graduated high school he had thought he would escape the fawning over Rachel Berry. They were good friends, but still. "I worked with her in her very first show, Hairspray, she was Penny, and you could never have met a more enthusiastic performer. I wish you all could have met her before her death.

"What?" Everyone stared at Kurt for so rudely interrupting the director's speech. Kurt couldn't really bring himself to care. "Rachel, Rachel Berry is dead?" The director nodded solemnly and didn't protest when Kurt rushed off the stage towards the door. Before the door swung close Kurt heard him telling everyone to go home, he was flying to New York for the funeral. Kurt rushed home, yearning for Blaine's comforting arms. On the way he pulled out his phone to call Mercedes and Matt's house.

"Hello?"

"Hello, is this Tina Cohen-Chang?" Tina was confused. No one ever called her this early in the morning. No one ever called anyone this early in the morning. Especially if the person you're calling happens to be a college student (even if she was a law student) who may or may not have been partying all last night, and on top of it she didn't even know them... though their voice did sound familiar.

"Um yeah...this is her." That was all they needed to continue talking too much, too early.

"We apologize for calling so early, but we had to extend our utmost gratitude-." His voice was cut off by another's, which Tina was very thankful for.

"Shut up Leroy, just give me the phone." Tina could hear the phone changing hands before another voice spoke through the speakers.

"We really are sorry for calling you this morning. We just wanted to thank you, Rachel never really told us how bad her school life was. I mean, we always wondered why she never brought home any friends, but we were away a lot so we figured she was having people over when we were gone. And you were the only one in the glee club who the newspaper didn't really mention. From the article, you could tell that was a good thing. So we just wanted to thank you for being probably the closest thing Rachel had to a friend in high school. Now, after her death, we've come to realize how absent we were in her childhood and what pushing her to be a star might have done to her."

"What do you mean after her death? What's going on?" By this time Tina had realized that these had to be the infamous Daddies Berry (Puck's former name for them) who had their daughter in singing competitions since she was three months old and often took trips to exotic places for extended periods of time, leaving their daughter alone.

"Oh, sweetheart you haven't heard. Oh god, why did this happen?" Tina could hear tears and wondered which one of them, if not both, were crying. While he cried Tina made her way over to her laptop and typed Rachel Berry into Google. The first article up was the New York Times' article on her role as Elphaba. The second was their article on her death.

"Eyla, what's wrong?" Emma tried to calm the sobbing child before her and she couldn't help but be reminded of the first time she had met the young girl. Carl hadn't been able to get her to open her mouth, or stop crying, so he had called her to help. Eyla had left the dentist office happy, clean mouthed, and with a sticker. After that Emma was the go to person when Eyla had an issue, or pretty much any star's kid after word got out how good she was with Eyla Zefron. But hey, these kids weren't much different from the ones back in Ohio, and it almost felt as if she and Carl were running a business together; he fixed the stars' teeth and she counciled their kids.

"She's been like this since she found out." Her head snapped up to meet the celebrity's eyes.

"Found out what exactly?" he looked pretty upset himself...maybe she should offer him a few sessions of counseling as well.

"A-a-about Aunt Rachel" Emma was confused, they had talked about Eyla's family before, and she was absolutely sure that there was no Aunt Rachel in the mix. Luckily Mr. Efron clarified.

"Rachel Berry, when we were on Dancing With the Stars together we grew pretty close. She was wonderful with Eyla, really helped her when me and Lauren split. Even though her and Lauren were friends, she still managed to help us both. I just don't understand why she would so this." He flopped down in the chair next to his daughter while Emma tried to cover her shock that he knew Rachel Berry, the girl she had caught trying to throw up when she had no gag reflex.

"I never even knew she was unhappy. What kind of friend was I? How could I not see it coming? I mean, I looked it up this morning and a ton of the signs were there. Last month she sent me a copy of her will. When I asked her why she said something about being prepared. I thought it was just Rachel stuff, but now look what happened. There was even money set aside for her funeral, and a dress for her to wear in the casket! She was losing weight, I know it. When me and Eyla went to China, she called us at three in the morning, for her, it was four in the afternoon for us. Why was she calling us at three in the morning? Irregular sleeping patterns was one of the symptoms!" Emma tried her best to calm him while Eyla still cried.

"There's no way you could have known." He shook his head.

"No Terri, there must have been some way I could have stopped her." Terri shook her head at her husband's words. She may be the one on meds, but sometimes she thinks he might need some too.

"Will, there is absolutely no way you could have known. You haven't spoken to the girl in two years! How exactly were you supposed to know this was going to happen?"

"I just can't believe it." Finn nodded along with his girlfriend's words as they both stared at the television in shock.

"I mean, she was always so driven. It's true that I didn't really know her, but as a Cheerio I did watch her get made fun of a lot, and I said a lot of the mean comments too. But we were never really able get her down. That's part of the reason we kept making fun of her, no matter how many times we tried to tear her down, she never broke. I guess we hurt her a lot more than we realized. Is it sick to know that if we were still in high school this is probably what all of the Cheerios wanted. Finn shook his head.

"This isn't what you wanted. That's guilt talking. If this had happened back than you would have been just as upset as you are now." She nodded solemnly before snuggling deeper into his arms- trying to forget the words of the newscaster while Finn was lost in thoughts of the girl he had once loved.

"Check it out Rachel, it looks like your suicide made the front page of the Times. You always were the star." Rachel shot him a glare before picking up the paper. When she turned to page six and Jesse could see the headline clearly once again he tried to ignore the voice in his head that told him he just how he would be reacting if he didn't know that Rachel wasn't actually dead.

"I can't believe they printed all of this information about my childhood! They even went so far as to say that my dads were impersonal and used dance and vocal lessons as day care when they went on vacation. That is not true, I highly enjoyed those lessons, and look how far they have gotten me! And what right do they have to print these things anyway? Couldn't you have stopped this?" She turned her I-am-a-star-and-will-eat-you-alive glare at the officer standing a few feet away. He just shrugged and raised his hands as if to tell her he was innocent.

"There's nothing we could do. We had to give a reason why you wouldn't be performing tonight, that wouldn't make anyone suspicious since everyone knows you never take off, and your too careful to fall down and break a leg. We suggested a car crash and you said that Rachel Berry would go out of this world as dramatically as she had lived in it. You told us suicide by hanging over the stage- in costume I may add- yourself. It was your idea!"

"I didn't care that they printed my suicide story, I expected that. I meant the digs at my dad and the writing out of my entire history." he shrugged.

"Someone must have told them all that." Rachel huffed.

"I'm kind of disappointed, I didn't even make it into the paper did I?" The officer turned to Jesse eagerly, thanking him silently for making it so Rachel could not start berating him again.

"Actually, we didn't announce anything on you yet, we don't have to right away. We just had a look alike drive a car to your house upstate. Makes it look like you're mourning her in peace. In a few days we may have you go missing on your yacht" Jesse nodded sagely, already missing his yacht. This was going to be rough.

"Lame." He just managed to catch the word as it was muttered under Rachel's breath. It was true, compared to her flashy suicide his would be lame. But at least they wouldn't dig up anything about his messed up family.

"And by the way, you did make the paper. There's a whole page on our relationship over the years. A whole paragraph on your first abandonment of me. They even included the egg." He sighed. That was not going to win him any fans.

"Well, at least they got our epic romance right." She huffed and tossed her hair over her shoulder.

"I wish you had never asked me on that stupid date."

"Believe me, at this moment I'm regretting it a whole lot." He didn't say anything about how his record label had forced him to expand his horizons from sluts, they wanted him to date a goody two shoes and they had hand picked Rachel for him, because of their prior drama. She didn't mention that her director had threatened to recast her if she didn't accept his offer on a date- times were tough and Broadway needed a nice scandal. Rachel was pretty sure her suicide was pretty scandalous. Neither of them mentioned the fact that Rachel had gotten steadily closer to him all night and he hadn't pushed her away.

And neither of them mentioned that they didn't regret the date all that much- just the fact that they took a different route back to Rachel's apartment. If they hadn't they would probably be waking up right now- not waiting in the Witness Protection Program office for their transportation to arrive- because they saw some gangster shoot a guy.

"Your car's here, looks like you're ready for Georgia."

"Where are we going again?"

"Ambrose."

"I've never heard of it."

"That Ms. Berry, is the point."