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Chapter Thirteen
Point of View: Narrator

The thing about Nick was that he couldn't get ten minutes without something going wrong. There were so many elements in his life that just kept coming at him - one bad break at a time - that there wasn't time for him to breathe, to relax, to slow down. So he had to make that time himself.

He was making the time at Spyder.

Being at the club made him feel guilty for not even being able to keep his promise to himself for one day. This compounded the problem of getting his mind off stuff. It made him feel like a failure.

He partied hard. Extremely hard. By the time closing came, he was completely trashed. He stumbled onto the sidewalk in front of the club, leaning on the shoulders of some girls he'd been doing shots with, and tripped on the curb, his arms flying out from around their necks. They watched, laughing, as he fell onto the hood of his Escalade, swearing.

Glancing at each other, they silently agreed he was way too wasted to ride with, and took off, abandoning him there, cursing at the curb. He laid a swift kick at the granite, only succeeding to hurt his toes.

Nick stumbled back onto the sidewalk and saw a photographer chasing after what looked like Lindsay Lohan. "Hey," he called, "I'm Nick Carter."

Only a couple of them bit - the ones that were close enough to hear him. He grumbled. "Hey!" he said again, "I'm a Backstreet Boy. I'm famous." A couple more turned to look at him, though not with any real interest, more with pity. "I'm just as fucked up as she is," he whined as they continued after Lindsay, "Look at me, damn it. I dumped Krystal Armaleto."

He started to go after them, but tripped on a sewer grate, and bounced off the side of the Escalade, landing on his ass.

Now the cameras were flashing. He felt justified, at least they were taking pictures now. He struggled up, his back killing him from the fall, and limped back to the front of the car. The photogs were more annoying than he'd expected, and he regretted calling their attention to them. He gave one of them the finger, and opened his driver's side door. "Nevermind, Jesus, leave me alone," he snapped, as they shoved their cameras in his face. The flashes were blinding him.

He laid on his horn to get them to clear off, and quickly whipped the Escalade out of the spot, cutting off another car that was about to speed by. "Watch where you're fuckin' going," he slurred, flipping them the bird, too.

Nick's Escalade hit the highway at 75mph off the ramp. By the time he'd passed the exit he normally took to go home, he'd managed to get it up to 100mph. He unrolled the window and stuck his head out like he was a dog. The air felt amazing after being inside so long. He was the only one on the freeway, so he wasn't really worried about getting in an accident.

Hanging his head out the window seemed to clear his head - which was spinning like unbelievable. He was finding it hard to keep up with his own thoughts. Even drunk, Nick knew his mind wasn't working very coherently. But that didn't make him slow down any. He got the Escalade up to 140mph before he hit the brake, laughing at the way the tires squealed and the feeling of lack of control he had as the car's back end shook.

Finally, deciding he needed to throw up, he took the next exit. The Escalade sped down the ramp at 80mph. He took the turn at the bottom without stopping for the sign, probably on two wheels. Part of him wanted to pass a cop doing crazy shit like this. He imagined the news coverage of the car chase vividly, could almost hear the announcers in his head marveling at the fucking awesome maneuvers he was pulling, saying how if that guy's not a stunt driver, he should become one!

He found himself in a neighborhood he'd never been in before. It was a crappy area, not nice like where he lived. Obviously this was where the lower classes lived, he thought. There were a few mobile homes mixed in with the regular types. A lot of tiny yards with brown, sunburned grass and toys and shit out front. He passed a yard with a ton of tractors out front and laughed.

His stereo was too loud. The bass was making the speakers hiss and shake against the calf muscles of his legs. He turned it up louder. Wake up the entire fuckin' neighborhood, wake'em all up! he thought bitterly, So they can have as great a time as I am. Wake'em all up, that's right. Nick Carter's coming through.

He'd gone down a street that came to an abrupt L turn without realizing it. He took the corner going 60, despite his best efforts to hit the brake. The Escalade was practically screaming for mercy as it spun. His iPod fell off its dock and, for whatever idiotic reason, he dove for it.

With no one manning the wheel, the Escalade spun completely out of control. The back end spun forward from the velocity of the turn it was in, and the vehicle crossed to the wrong side of the road, back end first. Nick looked up, panicked, grabbed the wheel, and turned it into the spin like he thought he could remember learning once about driving and hitting a skid.

The Escalade was powerless to stop, though, the turn had been taken way, way too hard and way, way too fast, and before Nick could even think to reach for his seat belt, the vehicle had wrapped, tight and fast, around a huge elm tree on the side of the road. Steam rose from the engine, and blood sprayed across the dashboard and shattered glass.

With a shaking, bleeding arm, his eyes unfocused, Nick reached up for the OnStar button on the ceiling.

Finally, he knew that he needed help.