One

"This is everything I asked for. I've been given the opportunity to become a star. So... why do I feel so empty?"

•

The girl struts, long tresses flowing out behind her, brown eyes heavily obscured by a wealth of ebony mascara. Her long fingers, caked with layers and layers of shiny polish are jammed firmly into her designer jeans' pockets. Pale blue eyes pierce the audience's hearts coldly.

Her ponytail is huge and long, yanked up impossibly high and held in place with overflowing amounts of gel.

Slowly, she pulls one manicured hand out of its pocket of denim, wrapping it around the cool surface of the microphone in front of her.

Her voice has been edited and processed by the sound department until she can no longer call it her own, guilty of the sin of autotune, producing such a strange, robotic tone that's flat and emotionless.

She closes her eyes as she sings, wishing with all her might that the once familiar rush of emotion would befall her, transport her into a new, beautiful world, but as usual, it stays just out of her reach.

Two

"Why?! Why did you take everything away from me? Why did you take my life away from me?"

•

She wakes up from her twelve-day coma, a sheen of sweat glistening at the back of her neck. She sucks in a breath of air, wanting to scream, but she's horrified when that scream never comes.

She remembers the car speeding towards her, her thin legs frozen in place and shivering, and pain floods her system, and the only word her eloquent mind could conjure being agony.

She'd been in too much pain to even grimace or wince, and she remembers the small, helpless feeling she had as darkness enveloped her, white-hot torture lancing through her limbs in painful, pricking arrows.

She'd tried to scream, but no sound came out.

Her silent yells are futile, and the only sound she manages is a rusted, croaking whisper, and she doesn't care about that, because she wants her voice back.

She wants herself back.

And as she flails and struggles wildly, unknown faces arrive in her room and stab needles through her skin, and even as the foreign substances lull her back into unconsciousness, she screams and screams and screams even though she knows no sound will come out.

Three

"You know... maybe losing my way wasn't so bad after all. The path's clearer then it's ever been."

The girl's soft brunette waves crashed down over her shoulders, having lost the previous gleam and lustre that it once possessed. Her eyes are wide and large, despite the enhancement of makeup that she's so heavily relied on before.

The ice-stained contacts have been long discarded, a vulnerable brown shining through the walls of her pupils for the very first time in forever.

Raw, exposed— pure, the very way she started out.

The backup singers are gone, and so is the editing. She stands alone, accompanied with nothing but a single, painfully plain piano.

The huge crowd is gone— only a few people are left.

A smile finally breaks through her stone-hard yet fragile walls of glass, and she ignores the cracks and faults in her healing voice that she had originally despised.

Elated to have the walls finally down, ecstatic to have her freedom back, she reaches out, her eyes fixated on a bright, flaming star that twinkles down at her from the night sky.

She just needs her heart to know that this is OK. That this small, makeshift performance is more than enough for her.

"And let the magic in your heart stay true"

This is who she really is.

A tear runs down her cheek, melting into an unseen puddle as she opens her mouth and sings.