Thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter! Sorry it took so long, I was on holiday and also I was being lazy. :-)

"What the hell is going on here?"

I smoothed my jeans and finger-combed my hair, trying to calm my external appearance even if my internal goings-on weren't so peachy. My heart was racing, my palms were sweaty… I had barely had time to contemplate what was happening with Paul and now it was all over. And by the way that Paul immediately rushed to Kelly; I had a feeling it would never happen again.

"Kel, I swear it meant nothing," he said, stroking her hair and her face as she remained still with a pained expression. "Suze means nothing to me, I'm telling the truth!"

Now wait one second.

"What?" I spat out, stupidly. "That meant nothing?"

Paul spun round to give me a you're-not-helping-things look, but I ignored it. Those thirty seconds had been the best of my life, and they were just nothing to him?

"I'm in love with you," I said, simply. "I thought by that you felt the same about me. Are you telling me that that was just some game? That you were just messing me around?"

"Suze." Paul, I saw with some satisfaction, left Kelly alone to tend to me. "I'm sorry, but I guess I just didn't realise-"

"Bullshit." This didn't come from me, though something to that effect was about to come running out of my mouth. Instead, it came from Kelly, who had her mouth set in a firm line. "You're lying, Paul," she said, and her eyes practically popped out of her head as she whispered the words. She looked awful, even for someone who had just caught her boyfriend cheating. Her hair was dark with sweat, her cheeks were red – beyond flushed – and the colour of her irises was abnormal. I could see her pupils from here. My mind immediately flashed to the last time I'd seen her – high.

"You always knew how obsessed she was by you," Kelly continued, running a shaky hand through her hair. "That's how you knew it would be easy to get her up here, and it would be easy to seduce her. I can see all that now. You just didn't plan of me walking in here and screwing your whole plan."

"Kelly." My heart was racing even faster now. "I'm sorry that we hurt you but I'm not sorry for what just happened between me and Paul. It was the best thing that's ever happened to me."

"Bullshit!" she shrieked again, and she lurched for a drawer in Paul's dresser. Paul acted immediately, throwing all his weight onto her and forcing her back.

"No, Kelly," he said, and his voice sounded panicked. "I told you about that in confidence. Please don't do anything stupid. Listen to me – I love you, not Suze. Of course I love you."

That hurt, of course it did. I tried to tell myself that he was just saying that so that he could calm her down, stop her from doing whatever he was afraid she was about to do. But it didn't work. I'd told him, finally, how I felt, and he had just tossed me aside like I didn't even matter.

And boy was I pissed.

"Kelly," Paul murmured, and he cradled her face in his hands tenderly. "Please forgive me. It was nothing but a huge mistake."

O.K. Now I had to draw the line.

"Mistake?" I echoed. My voice cracked. Kelly lifted one sullen eye to me, and exploded again.

"I was so complacent," she said, her voice sending the short hairs on the back of my neck into overdrive. "Being in love with Paul and figuring you, Suze, were too busy being a popstar and being in love with Jesse to make a move on Paul-"

WHAT?

"Kelly," I said, trying to keep my voice level. "I'm not in love with Jesse. Believe me, my life would be a whole lot simpler right now if I loved Jesse and not Paul-"

Kelly snorted indelicately. "Oh, please," she said, rolling her eyes as Paul stood helplessly between us. "You don't love Paul. You've got some obsessive little crush on him but it's not serious, no matter how much you want it to be." She watched my face wince a little at the remembrance of Paul's rejection, and smiled slyly. "You're just some pretty little poptart he could use and forget about. You think he cares, that he's your manager, he'd never desert you. Well I got news for you. He was about to sign me and drop you like a hot potato."

One look at Paul told me everything I needed to know. That it was true he didn't really care about me, that it was true he was going to sign Kelly, that it was true he was just going to go as far as he could with me and then dump me just so he could tell all his friends he'd slept with Susannah Simon. I felt sick.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" Kelly said, with her tone oozing with satisfaction. "Now you know how it feels to be betrayed by someone you thought you could trust."

She reached behind her and retrieved something from her back pocket, and from the look on Paul's face, this was exactly what he had been trying to stop her from getting her hands on. She lifted it to her head, and wrapped two fingers around the trigger.

"If I called you murderers would that be too harsh?" she asked, as she tightened her grip. "Because you have made me want to die."

"Kelly, no-" I screamed, but it was too late. One loud bang signalled to the whole word that I was too late and I watched in horror as the jigsaw of her face fell apart with the blast. I fell to my knees, sobbing as my heart too broke into pieces after all that I had done.

Everything about being in a hospital scared me – the monotonous beeping, the stiff staff uniforms, the imminent death. I had been in one eleven years ago to witness my dad leave this world, and now I was back to see the same happen to my friend.

Only this time it was my fault.

Paul called an ambulance in panic as I sat at Kelly's side, clasping her cold clammy hand as I waited desperately and helplessly for sirens to be heard in the distance. I knew it was hopeless – the pulse in her wrist had ebbed away long before – but some childlike part of me was clinging to the belief that the paramedics could reverse what I had done to her.

We sat in those cold hard seats now, long after hearing the confirmation: dead on arrival. Kelly Prescott, my classmate, long-term rival and short-term friend was dead. She might have pressed the trigger herself, but I had made her do it, no matter what the doctor said about high levels of drugs in her system making her paranoid, or whatever. I knew the truth. I was to blame.

Paul hadn't spoken to me since we'd arrived; he only sat numbly beside me now as I closed my eyes, wishing for a do-over of today. Or maybe not only of today but of the past couple of months on how I'd handled everything. Would I still have signed with Paul if I could have foreseen this? Was it even worth it?

As if answering my internal question, a newspaper caught my eye. I picked it up with shaking fingers and took in the headline with a heavy heart:

SIMON'S ALBUM FALLS OUT OF TOP 40: IS SHE JUST A ONE-HIT WONDER?

That was enough – enough to tip me over the edge. Without a word to Paul I got up, not knowing exactly where I was heading or what I was about to do. It was only as I reached the payphone and stabbed in a number I knew off by heart that I fully realised who I needed at this moment in time.

"Mom?" I said, as her voice filled the earpiece. "I need you to come and get me."