He was looking in the living room when he heard something or someone bump into a piece of furniture that slid across the floor. Lance whipped around and turned on the lamp on the side table only to find Chris standing by the coffee table cursing because he stubbed his toe.

“Are you ok?” Lance asked breaking the silence between the two.

“Yeah, I’ll live. I heard someone moving around. What are you doing down here?”

Lance sighed. “I thought I heard something like a window crash or something.”

“I didn’t hear anything.” Chris replied looking skeptically at Lance.

“I must have imagined it then.” He said shaking his head. He couldn’t be going crazy, could he?

“I’m gonna head back to bed. You coming?” Chris asked.

“Yeah, I’ll be up in a minute.”

“Ok. Night.” Chris headed back to his room thinking it was kind of odd for Lance to be hearing things but just shrugged it off as a thought that he was probably tired and over working his brain.

Lance turned off the light in the living room and moved toward the kitchen. He sat down at the table and sighed while running his fingers through his messy hair. He kept on thinking about how he had to be going crazy. Only crazy people hear things that didn’t really happen. He shook his head and went to the liquor cabinet. He pulled out a bottle and started to drink from it. He normally never drank more than he should but he just felt that he needed it. Lance had always heard that drinking helps solve your problems or at least puts them off for a while. So he sat there and drank the whole bottle.

Once he was done he threw the bottle away and looked at the clock. He couldn’t see straight so he had a hard time figuring out what time it was. After 15 minutes of staring at the clock and try to get his eyes to focus, he decided that it was 4 in the morning. Lance groaned and headed up to bed before one of the guys woke up and saw him like this. He walked up the stairs as quiet as he could and successfully made it into his room without waking anyone up. He fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

It was 10 o’clock when JC woke up. He was surprised to see Lance still asleep. Normally Lance was up before all of them. JC just figured that Lance had to be really tired and was catching up on some uninterrupted sleep. This thought reminded Jc that he needed to talk to Chris and the guys. He wanted to talk to them right now but knew that Lance was a light sleeper. After several minutes of debate, JC decided to chance it. He hoped that Lance wouldn’t be up until they were finished with their talk. So with this in mind, JC headed downstairs where all the guys were.

“Morning.” JC said to them as he entered the living room where they were sitting around watching TV. There were a few ‘morning’s and some ‘hi’s. JC sat down on the couch next to Chris. Chris smiled at JC and JC gave one back. JC looked at Chris briefly and said, “Guys, we need to talk.” All the guys turned to him and once JC knew he had their attention he started again.

“We need to talk about Lance.” All the guys nodded.

“I’m surprised he’s still sleeping.” Justin said following JC’s lead to talk about it.

“I’m not.” Chris replied.

“Why’s that?” Joey asked.

“Because he was up at 3 in the morning and it looked like he didn’t get any sleep. Almost like he didn’t go to sleep at all.” Chris answered.

“Why was he up at 3 in the morning and how do you know?” JC questioned looking at Chris.

“He told me that he thought he heard something like a window crash or something. I came down here just to find out what was going on because I heard someone moving around the house.” Chris explained.

“I’m worried about him guys. He hardly eats, he probably doesn’t sleep, he won’t talk to us, he was acting weird when we were picking up Chinese, and now he’s hearing things.” JC said.

“Whoa! Hold up there. Go back.” Joey said.

“He’s hearing things?” JC questioned looking at him.

Joey shook his head. “Go back one more.” It then donned on JC what he was talking about.

“Him acting weird?”

“Yeah. What’s up with that? I didn’t notice anything extremely wrong with him.” Joey replied.

“Well when we picked up the Chinese he was waiting in the car and when I came back, he was paler than he normally is and he wasn’t smiling anymore. It looked like he saw a ghost, like he was spooked from something he saw. Then when I asked him about it he’s like ‘I saw something move in the shadows. It’s probably just a cat or something,’ and he wouldn’t tell me anything else. I didn’t press though because I remember what you told me, Chris. But damn it! He won’t talk to us about anything and I’m worried.” JC explained to everyone.

“We are too.” Justin assured. “We just don’t know what to do about it. We’ve never had to deal with this kind of situation before.”

“I know. It’s just…I hate to see him like this.” JC said with a sigh.

“We could try to get him to see someone.” Joey suggested.

“What makes you think that he’ll tell a stranger his whole life and story when he won’t even tell us, his best friends, about what he’s feeling.” JC exclaimed.

“It was just an idea. Chill out, Jace.” Joey said.

“I think that it’s a good idea. It might help him. I know people that are really good at this kind of stuff and that could possibly help him.” Chris stated.

“What if it doesn’t help him? What then?” JC asked.

“Then we’ll come up with something else. We’ll do what he have to.” Chris replied then added, “For now we just wait and see if he talks to us.”

Everyone nodded. “Are we still going to the mall or some where?” Justin spoke up.

“If you want to.” JC said.

“I do. I want to get out.” Justin replied and everyone agreed with him.

“Alright then, I’ll go wake up Lance.” JC left to go wake Lance up. JC opened the door to their room slowly letting the sunlight filter into the room. He looked over to Lance’s bed and saw that he was still buried under his covers. JC moved to the bed and sat down on it.

“C’mon Lance. It’s time to get up.” JC said softly as he began shaking Lance. JC was getting no response with this and decided to smack him in the head with a pillow. He got up and grabbed a pillow off his bed. He went over to Lance and smacked him with the pillow. JC grinned as he heard Lance moan. He kept on doing this to Lance until Lance sat up in bed and gave JC the look of death.

“Sorry Lance but it’s time to wake up. It’s afternoon.” JC studied Lance’s features. Instead of him looking awake and refreshed from getting sleep, he looked even more tired than he did when he went to bed and his eyes looked clouded. Lance closed his eyes. He had a horrible migraine from all the alcohol he drank.

“You up?” JC asked after a few minutes. Lance nodded.

“I’m up.” Lance replied as he got out of bed and went directly to the bathroom for some Tylenol. JC followed him and Lance didn’t bother closing the bathroom door. Lance opened the bottle that he took from the medicine cabinet and popped four pills in his mouth as he swallowed them.

“You got a headache again?” JC asked breaking the silence that Lance was in. Lance looked at him in shock that he was standing in the bathroom with him and nodded his head.

“You going to get ready to leave?”

“Leave where?” Lance asked. Lance winced as he heard his voice. It still sounded like he was drunk but JC wasn’t really paying any attention to it so Lance just shrugged it off.

“I don’t know. We just want to go out and do something, that is unless you’re not up to it.” JC answered. Lance shook his head.

“I want to go.”

“Ok. I’ll meet you downstairs.” Lance watched him leave and changed into his clothes after making his bed. Before he went downstairs, he looked into the mirror. He looked tired, his eyes all puffy and watery, his face ten times paler than it normally is. Lance sighed. He didn’t know how JC didn’t notice that he had been drinking. JC normally could pick up on that kind of stuff real fast. Lance decided to just forget about it and headed down to the guys.

“Hey, look who finally decided to wake up.” Joey joked as Lance walked into the living room. Lance rolled his eyes.

“Are we ready to go?” Lance asked his words slurring just slightly so that if you weren’t really listening to him you couldn’t really tell but Joey picked it out.

“You get drunk last night, Scoop?”

“No. What makes you say that?” Lance asked defending himself. There was no way that he would let the guys know that he got drunk last night.

“You slurring and the way you look. I’ve seen that look before. I’ve gotten drunk before. I know.”

“I’m just tired.” Lance replied and JC gave Joey a look telling him to forget about it. JC didn’t want to believe that Lance could have gotten drunk last night.

“Whatever you say man. I don’t want to start nothing. I’m sorry I even mentioned it.” Joey dropped it just so they could leave. He knew that Lance was drunk even though he wasn’t completely drunk; he knew Lance was drunk.

The guys all left. They decided to go to the movies because it would be nice and cool in the theater. They had gotten all of their snacks and pop when they sat in the back of the room. The movie started and Lance had tried to stay awake but the beginning was just so boring that he fell asleep. He could feel himself being shaken awake a little while later. He opened his eyes and saw Justin.

“Hey man. You slept through the whole movie. We’re going home now.” Lance nodded and got out of the seat. His muscles screamed with pain. They were so cramped from sleeping in a cramped position. Lance made it into the very back of JC’s car where Chris sat. Chris wrapped his arm around Lance’s shoulder.

“Feel better that you got more sleep?” Chris asked. Lance smiled sheepishly.

“Yeah, it felt nice.” Lance answered and Chris laughed.

“I swear you’re worse than JC.”

“What’s wrong with me?” JC asked from the driver’s seat.

“Nothing. I was just saying that normally you’re the one to fall asleep when we go places but definitely not Lance. He’s usually the last one to go to sleep no matter how tired he is.” Chris explained.

“I was tired and besides the movie didn’t look very interesting anyway.” Lance replied and everyone laughed. The rest of the ride home Lance was lost in his own thoughts. The guys didn’t notice though since they were busy having a heated discussion. Lance was thinking about committing suicide because of him going crazy. Also he didn’t want to put the guys in danger just because of what he saw. Lance wasn’t sure if he would go through with it but if he did decide to go through it, he wanted to know how he would do it. So he thought about all the possible ways. He thought about cutting his wrists but decided that it was too messy and that there was no way he could inflict a cut on himself. The next thought that came to mind was a gun to the head. Lance thought about it for a minute. It definitely would be the quickest way but he didn’t know if he could pull the trigger. Lance began to think of suicides that were in movies when he thought of overdose. He could do that. He wouldn’t have to inflict any wounds, he wouldn’t have to pull a trigger, and it wouldn’t be that hard to over dose considering he already took four Tylenol today. Lance made up his mind. If he were to go through with it, he would do overdose.

They made it back to JC’s house and ordered pizza. The food came and they all were in the kitchen telling stories and reminiscing. Lance still had a really bad headache and didn’t know why. He felt better.

“Lance aren’t you going to eat?” JC asked and Lance shook his head. “Why not?”

“I still have a bad headache and my stomach hurts.” Lance replied. “I’m going to the bathroom.” Lance stood up and went to the bathroom that’s right off the kitchen. He went in and closed the door behind him. While they were eating Lance had decided that he was tired of living like this. He couldn’t take anymore of this. He wanted to end it. He didn’t want to end up in some mental hospital because that’s surely what would happen if he told them about his thoughts and him hearing things and being paranoid. Lance had contemplated during the ride home from the movies on how he was going to do it and he chose overdose.

He opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed the bottle of Tylenol. It still had a lot left. He dumped them into the palm of his hand. He counted the pills. There were ten pills. Lance brought the pills closer to his mouth and was about to dump them in when the door opened. Lance had his back facing the door and went to turn around to see whom it was. Unfortunately, when he turned he bumped his head off the open medicine cabinet and that threw off his balance. Lance fell and his head hit off the toilet that was next to the medicine cabinet. The pills went flying all over the bathroom and Lance fell into unconsciousness.

A/N:  I know, I know, another cliffhanger. I'm really sorry. I don't know why I write so many of them. I promise I'll get the next part up soon. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far!