Chapter
29
“What!?”
Jenna gasped. “Nick-“
“Shh,”
Nick hushed. “Don’t even try to change my
mind. We’re getting help.”
“How
could you do this to me, Nick Carter?!” she yelled, as he took her hand and
pulled her down the hall. “I thought you
loved me!”
“I
do love you, Jen. And that’s why
I’m doing this,” Nick replied simply, dragging her along.
“What’s
going on here?” demanded Don, JADE’s manager, who had just stepped out into the
hall.
“Don,
can I talk to you for a minute?” Nick asked.
“Sure,”
Don said, looking slightly confused.
“Stay
here, Jen,” Nick said, leaving Jenna alone in the hall, while he led Don into
his empty dressing room.
Once
inside, Nick cleared his throat. “Don,
I’m afraid we’ve got a problem.”
***
“I
can’t believe this,” Serena moaned, looking pained. “How could this have been going on without us
knowing it? I mean, we spend every
single day with Jen. How could we not
realize it was happening?”
“I
know,” Ashalyn said. “I feel
horrible. What kind of friends are we?”
Elyssa
put her arms around her two friends’ shoulders.
“Come on, guys, don’t beat yourselves up over this. Maybe we should have realized something was
wrong, but it’s not our fault. We need
to stop blaming ourselves and focus on the real issue – Jenna.”
Serena
and Ashalyn nodded slightly. But they
couldn’t keep themselves from feeling guilty.
It
was now going on midnight. Don hadn’t
let Jenna go onstage. He had insisted
the other three girls go on without her, and during the concert, he had
personally driven her to the nearest hospital.
They
had both gotten back by the time the concert was over, and it was then that Don
broke the news to the girls and the Backstreet Boys: Jenna had been diagnosed with bulimia.
Now
they were back on the bus. Jenna had
gone immediately to her bunk in the back, ignoring the others, and had fallen
asleep. Ashalyn, Serena, and Elyssa sat
in the front of the bus, quietly talking.
They
were heading to Tampa, where the next concert would be. But they already knew that Jenna would not
be performing at it, or at any of the shows after it. Don had already made plans for her to check
into a clinic in Tampa for people with eating disorders, where she would spend
the next few weeks, maybe even months.
They had not yet decided what to do with the
group and the tour. They could either
drop out of it and let the Backstreet Boys get another opening act. Or they could go on without Jenna. It was a hard decision to make, especially
right then, when they were already upset about what they had just found out.
“We
need to decide what we’re going to do,” Elyssa said, glancing up at Ashalyn and
Serena. “Do we quit, or do we go on with
only the three of us?”
“I
say we go on,” Ashalyn spoke up. “I
don’t think we should quit. I mean, I
think Jenna would want us to go on without her, not just give up because of
her. Plus, think of all the hassle we
would cause for Don and everyone if we dropped out of the tour. They’d have to get someone else to open for
the guys, and all kinds of stuff.”
Elyssa
nodded slowly. “I agree,” she said. “I think Jen would want us to go on.”
“But
what about our actual show? Can we still
do it without Jen?” Serena asked.
“We
can do it,” Elyssa replied. “We did it
tonight, didn’t we? We’ll just split up
her solos between each other. We’ll get
it organized.”
“Yeah,”
Ashalyn agreed. “It’ll take some work on
our part, but I think in the long run, it’ll be for the best.”
“Okay,”
Serena said. “I want us to go on
too. I love performing… and I love being
with Howie too.” She smiled devilishly.
Ashalyn
and Elyssa laughed.
“Okay,
that’s settled then,” Ashalyn said. “We
can talk to Don in the morning. Right
now, I think I’m gonna go to bed.”
“Yeah,
me too. I’m exhausted,” Serena agreed.
“Me
too,” Elyssa said.
With
that, they headed to the back of the bus to their bunks.
***
