When I played the song for Manny in his office a couple of days later, he seemed to really like it. The thought of recording a song written about Sev and then it becoming my next released single made me feel really nervous. It was the first song I'd written in a while that was inspired by my own life rather than a figment of my imagination.

But seeing the look of excitement on Manny's face grow as the song went on, I felt a swelling sense of pride in my own work.

"This is great, Maren," he said at the end of the song. "You are unstoppable."

"Thank you," I responded with a gentle smile on my face. Hearing the song again made me think about the kiss I shared with Sev in the closet. I haven't been able to talk about it with anybody and I was almost afraid to even think about it too much in fear of Mrs. Lamb finding out. He knew everything, so it felt dangerous to even let the memory play in my mind.

"I'm going to set up some time for you to get into the studio in a couple of weeks," he informed me, typing something into his computer. "That will give you some time to tweak anything you want and really polish it."

"Sounds good. Have you heard any updates about those pictures?" I asked him nervously. He mentioned getting a professional to be able to prove that the photos were edited, but I hadn't heard anything about what that guy has found. Although those pictures didn't create a huge stir, I would still like to be able to clear my name.

Granted, there wasn't really anything wrong with taking nude pictures of yourself, and having my fan base think that I have posted my nudes onto the internet wasn't the end of the world, it sure was embarrassing.

"I'm still working on it," he told me with a small shrug. "But, I really don't think you have anything to worry about. It's unfortunate, but things like this happen to people all the time, and the world moves on."

"Yeah, I guess I needed to hear that," I mumbled. "I just want all of this to be over."

"I know. And it will be," he assured me. "Once they get the guy that's been pulling all of this crap, and you can really focus on your career, you'll skyrocket."

I didn't feel like they'd ever get the guy at that point. I couldn't see any end in sight from this nightmare, and I felt like my life time dreams of becoming a well known artist was slipping through my fingers. I wanted to believe Manny and I wanted to have all of his confidence, but I just didn't.

Mrs. Lamb is ruining anything good in my life and he was getting away with it. Instead of enjoying the end of a wonderful Thanksgiving spent with Sev, I had to clean my kitchen of an uneaten turkey dinner and when Ron offered to help carry the heavy turkey to the garbage for me, I had to try and explain to him exactly why I was throwing out a completely uneaten dinner.

After my kiss with Sev, I wanted it to consume every single thought in my head, but every time I thought about it, it was followed by the paranoid worries of what if Mrs. Lamb knew or could find out that it happened?

Nothing good happens without some sort of sabotage or paranoia following on its tail.

"I'll email you about the studio slot when I get confirmation," Manny said at the end of the meeting, standing up to politely shake my hand as he did at the end of all of our meetings. "And good luck at your show this weekend, it'll be a hit."

"Thank you," I said as he adjusted his gray sports jacket and I started heading for the door.

The tall wooden door that led to the hallway toward the reception area was closed, like it always was when Manny had a meeting, but when I grabbed the knob to twist it open, it didn't budge. I tried again, still nothing.

"Is it locked?" Manny noticed my struggle to open the door, walking around his desk to attempt to open the door himself, but to no avail. "Julia must not have realized we were in here and locked the door on her way to lunch."

Although Manny didn't seem worried and began fishing through his briefcase for his keys, I could feel my heart rate rising. Any small thing that wasn't the ordinary for me, now felt like danger. This door had never been locked before, and I was getting a bad feeling about it.

That bad feeling was heightened when Manny located his keys and even after using his own key to unlock the door, it wouldn't budge. As my breaths became shallower and uneven, my vision started to blur. I didn't know what was going on, but I could tell that Mrs. Lamb had something to do with it.

"Maren, it's okay," he assured me, still sounding very calm and unbothered. "The door is probably just jammed. I'll call Julia."

There was a window behind Manny's desk about two feet wide, high up on the wall, and I considered how easy it would be to maneuver out of it. His office was on the first floor of the building, I could just slide out onto the grass and get out of this room.

As Manny spoke to his receptionist on the phone, I backed away from the door to stand closer to the desk. What was on the other side of that door? What was his plan?

"Everything is fine," Manny continued to try and keep me calm once his phone call was over. "Julia isn't far, she's on her way back now."

His soothing voice, for a moment, was helping to calm me down... until I thought, maybe it was too soothing? Manny knew about all the problems I'd been having, he knew that I had a stalker. So why was he so calm about the door being jammed? Did he know what was going to happen next?

I've known Manny since I moved to the city, he'd helped me grow my career from the ground up. He knew everything about me. My address, my clothing sizes for wardrobe decisions, my schedule. It was his job to stay updated on me.

The way he leaned against the corner of the desk with such a nonchalant attitude was starting to make me want to vomit. Shouldn't he be at least a little bit worried? Or was everything going according to plan?

"You alright, Maren?" he asked slowly, his jet black eyebrows rising a bit when he noticed that I'd been looking at him, probably a little bit too intensely.

I remembered all of the self defense techniques I'd learned in my classes and tried to assure myself that if anything were to happen in this room, maybe I could get the upper hand.

"Has the door ever jammed like this before?" I asked him in a slow, quiet voice.

He shrugged and said, "No, not really. But it's an old building and weird things happen all of the time, so it's nothing to worry about."

Before I had the chance to respond to him, there was a sudden sharp pain on the side of my head, and then my shoulder. Manny was all the way across the room, so I had no idea what could have hit me so hard. But whatever it was, knocked me onto the ground and my cheek was scratching against the cheap carpet. And everything was hot.

I tried to get up to see what happened and to fight back, but my entire body ached and I wasn't even able to lift myself into a seated position. The loud ringing in my ears was painful and confusing, I was disoriented and confused without any idea as to what was going on. But slowly, as I was able to lift my head some more, I realized that even with my eyes open, all I could see was gray.

I realized it was smoke when my lungs started refusing to take in any more air.

Finally, I was able to get my tired, sore arms to push my cheek off of the carpet and into a sitting position. With more visibility, the smoke became less of a concern because I was more focused on the angry tendrils of fire dancing their way into the room. The door that was once locked was now on the ground, its hinges blown to splinters of wood. The fire was so tall and thick that there was no way I was getting through to the other side.

My body was trembling and aching, but I was able to use the bookshelf beside me to push myself into a standing position. The whole process of getting to my feet was slow due to the pain in my head and shoulder. Ironically, the same shoulder that was injured at the Jackroller when I was slammed to the ground before.

I couldn't see the other end of the hallway because the flames were so high and they were getting closer. The heat was unbearable and everything in my body was begging for relief, but I had nowhere to go.

Slowly, the ringing started to subdue and I could hear the faint calls of Manny saying my name. It sounded like he was really far away, maybe at the other end of a tunnel or a cave. But when I turned toward him, he was just on the other side of the desk and it looked like he was shouting. He was standing by the window, his gray sports jacket was seeping red on the left bicep as he frantically pointed toward the bookshelf beside me.

"The dragon!" I heard him saying, repeatedly and frantically. I was slow to realize what he was talking about, but finally noticed the bookend shaped like a dragon's head. It was heavy when I picked it up with my non-injured arm and fumbled my way toward him. Once I got close enough, Manny ripped the bookend out of my grip and then motioned for me to get away from the window.

I did as he asked, stepping back into the corner of the room, as far away from the flames as I could get, and he started slamming the heavy bookend into the window over and over. The glass was stubborn, barely even cracking with every blow of our dragon martyr.

Still feeling dazed, I turned my attention back to the fire as it continued to creep into the room, toward us. My skin felt like it was melting off of my bones, my blood boiling as I roasted in the heat of the enraged fire. Every instinct in my body was telling me to get away from the big red ball of flames that continued to creep closer to me. I wanted to get away too, but the only way to do that was through that window, and the stubborn glass was only just beginning to crack under Manny's constant beatings.

Was this really how it ended? Stuck in this office, with my manager? My manager, who had two children and a wife at home. I'm sure they never would have dreamed that, when they kissed him goodbye that morning, it might have been the last. I watched a framed picture of his family of four that hung on the wall by the door burn into ash. The fire ate it up like it was nothing, and spit out smoke.

How would my family react when they found out that I'd died in a fire? My parents would feel so guilty for not talking to me these passed couple of weeks. My siblings would remember me by all of the good memories we had together. When I commiserated with Lily about being the disappointments in the family and how I danced in Abigail's living room with her young children, wearing princess gowns and tiaras. And when I would write little jingles for Joshua to help him remember whatever subject he was studying in school.

I was glad that I got to kiss Sev before it all ended, but wished we could have kissed more. I wondered how he would react when he heard the news. If he would simply move on, or would he fight for justice to find my killer? Would he and Lina form a friendship as they got my story out there and put the clues together to finally find Mrs. Lamb?

I wondered what pictures they would use when there was a 60 Minutes episode about my murder. And would people want to listen to my music after I died? Nobody knew Vincent van Gogh, Emily Dickinson, or Edgar Allen Poe until after they died. Maybe I was the next Dickinson, and I would die young but my legacy could live on forever through my art.

The smoke was making me dizzy and the yellow flames were beginning to nip at the carpet near my feet. I felt like I only had moments left before I really was a goner and I was considering sending a goodbye text to my mom. But just as I was pulling my phone out of my pocket to text her, Manny pulled me by the sleeve of my jacket toward the window.

"Get up!" he yelled at me over the ringing in my ears, motioning to the office chair he had propped under the now-broken window with his jacket laying across the ledge to protect from the broken shards of glass. I didn't realize that I'd been crying until I felt the sobs weakening my body even more than it already was.

Still, he was able to hoist me onto the chair, but my body was so weak that he practically had to push me all the way out of the window until I toppled out the other side into the freezing grass. The escape from the morbid heat inside was like a breath of fresh air, but I only got to enjoy it for a moment before my lungs began exploding with coughs of smoke. I only had enough strength to stumble a few feet away to give Manny room to jump out as well before I fell into the grass and everything went dark.