At first, she just cut back on lunch. "A berger, bag of fries, and a coke every day at lunch for who knows how long would make anybody fat," she told herself. "Besides, I could never starve myself completely. I don't have the will power."
The girl was wrong. She did have the will power. She never ate breakfast in the first place, (not enough time in the morning), lunches were too fatty, and dinner slowly became completely out of the question. Before she knew it, she was going days, even a week or two at a time without an actual meal.
Also, she was starting to become suicidal. Not actually thinking about killing herself, but "why do I bother sticking around? No one would ever notice If I were gone. Most would probably be happy. This is pointless. Things are never going to get better. But what can I do?"
She was in a numb daze all day, every day, 24/7. Every day was just like the last. Nothing could make her happy. She only felt sad, empty, and alone. She had to keep it all tied up inside because she had no one to console her. She was deeply depressed and things were only getting worse.
Then, one night, as she was falling asleep to her radio, she herd a song she had never herd before.It was a very cool dance song that made her want to get up and do just that. Before she knew it, she was whispering "yeah" right along with the lyrics. The song she herd was "Everybody" by the Backstreet Boys. She couldn't believe it. That song made her feel something she hadn't felt in a very long time . . . happiness.
That song started a dramatic change for the girl. Every chance she got, she was listening to the radio in hopes of hearing that song. Whenever it came on in the car, she turned it up as loud as her mom would let her. She was "Everybody" crazy! But she needed that song. It was the only thing that could possibly make her happy. One day, her mother completely suprised her by handing her a small tape and asking, "Everybody . . . that's that song you like right? Well here, I bought you the single. I hope you like it."
The second she held the tape in her hands and looked at the front of the slipcover, she knew she was hooked for life. She can still remember looking at the picture of the Backstreet Boys on the front cover and thinking "Oh, so that's what the Backstreet Boys look like? Hmm, they're pretty cute."
A month later, she bought the Backstreet Boys' CD and has listened to it ever since.She wasn't suicidal anymore, but even the Backstreet Boys couldn't cure all of the girl's problems. She still wasn't eating. She was dizzy and tired all the time from starving herself. Then, during the summer, she lost ten pounds in a week by over-excersizing. But when the next school year started, things began to look up. She was a freshman in highschool, and she didn't see or hear from any of her old (so-called) friends or enemies anymore. And, she made some new friends (who also liked the Backstreet Boys; in fact, that was the first question she ever asked them). These friends didn't see her as a reject. They saw her as another human being who they would like to become friends with. And they did.
Her new friends did see one thing they didn't like though; their new friend never ate lunch. That bothered them. When they tred to offer her a fri or chip from their lunches, she refused.
"Are you anorexic?" one of her new friends asked her one day.
"I dunno," the girl said.
Her friends unanimously agreed that they had to get her to eat, and soon. So, they did the only logical thing they could think of; They bribed her with Backstreet Boys stuff. "You bring something to eat for lunch, and we'll let you borrow a video tape with some Backstreet Boy stuff on it," they would say, or "Bring a decent lunch and you can read this magazine article," etc.
Of course, the girl went for it. Backstreet Boys stuff was worth a piece of fruit or a small lunch, she decided. But the lunches kept getting bigger and bigger, and the bribes smaller and smaller, until her friends eventually weined her off starvation. After a few months, she was eating lunch on her own, without a bribe of any kind. And she was thin now (on account of the loss of ten pounds over the summer) so there was no reason to keep on starving herself.
That is the story of how the Backstreet Boys saved one girl's life. Their music Made her happy when nothing else could. She became friends with other Backstreet Fans, and the only way her new friends could get her to eat was to bribe her with Backstreet Boys stuff. Without the Backstreet Boys (and some credit to her friends), the odds of this girl being alive today are virtually nil. Even more proof of how great the Backstreet Boys really are.