"Hey Nicky," AJ called through the bathroom door while knocking. "Lunch is here. You better hurry before Brian eats all of the good stuff."

"I'll be there in a second," Nick called back as he looked at his reflection in the mirror. "Just save me something."

"All right."

Nick continued to look at his reflection in the mirror as he heard his footsteps fade away. He sighed and splashed water on his face before looking at his reflection once more.

A slightly different version of himself stared back at him. His hair used to fall into his eyes but he had recently cut it short because of his mother's wishes, but it was more like nagging to him. Nick liked when his hair was long. He could use it as a sort of shield. He could hide behind it.

But now that it was gone he was vulnerable.

Nick made the mistake of staying online for too long. He was cooped up in the hotel room because he couldn’t go outside. They had too many interviews to do and going outside, especially at his celebrity status, was suicide. He’d only have one foot out the door before fans would be swarming him for autographs.

All because he was Nick Carter, the Backstreet Boy. That’s allthe fans saw.

But Nick could see something else.

He pulled his t-shirt off over his head and looked at his stomach. Someone else would have seen a flat, hard stomach. But what he saw was flab. He pinched the skin on his stomach as his breath came out shaky.

He knew he shouldn’t have gone onto the internet.

He was innocently checking his e-mail, replying to a few here and there, when he decided to search himself up on Google. Most of the comments on fansites made a smile form on his face and his ego swell.

But that was before he saw the dark side of the internet.

He stumbled upon one comment on his weight but he pushed it aside. What did they know? He was a growing boy after all. But soon one multiplied into three. Three turned into nine. Before Nick knew it he was looking at a message board dedicated to his weight.

Mean, hurtful comments pierced through the glow of the computer screen and burned itself into his brain. He finally had to shut the compute off before he threw it out the window. They didn’t know what he was going through. He noticed he had gained a bit of weight, who wouldn’t with their touring schedule? Many cases the only kind of food they had time to stop for was fast food so that became his diet since he was thirteen. So it may have caught up to him a bit, it didn’t mean he was fat.

Right?