On Friday, we saw the story in the Star accompanied by three photos.  The first photo, at the top of the page next to the headline HOW LONG CAN HEATHER HANG? and the subhead Drugs and starvation may have finished Floozie frontgirl at 16, showed all of us in the ICU waiting room right after the Leno show.  Krystal appeared to be crying, but I don’t think she was.  I think she was coughing.  Halfway down the page on the left was a shot of Heather on stage (one of the warm-up shows in Hollywood last year, it looked like), bent over, gripping her skinny knees, surely chatting with people in the front row but appearing ready to faint, or die.  The third and largest image, filling nearly a quarter page in the bottom-right corner, was of Heather wearing a pink baseball cap, huge sunglasses, tight black pants, an oversized Guns ‘N Roses T-shirt, and a million red and silver bracelets on her skinny arms (about two months ago, based on the shirt and style of pants she wore a lot around that time), waltzing out of the Starbucks near MindRoller in Sherman Oaks, more wasted than ever.

You had to hand it to those bastards: they’d take hundreds – or thousands – of photos and always find a way to dig up the ones that perfectly supported whatever lie they were telling that week.  It was a science, engineered to destroy people.

Robert, who’d seen it all before, was barely moved by the story.

 

Heather Price of the teenage rock band Floozie was admitted to a Burbank, Calif., hospital late Monday night after a drug overdose caused her to collapse on the set of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.  Sources say this isn’t the first such incident for the perpetually skinny 16-year-old singer, an only child who lives with her parents in one of the ritziest suburbs of Los Angeles.

Sources close to the band told the Star that since she was 13 or 14, Heather has suffered from anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder that causes some teenage girls to starve themselves in an attempt to have what they believe is the ultimate body.

Heather’s classmates at Shadowridge Academy, the exclusive prep school in Studio City, Calif., attended by all four band members, believe the Floozie frontgirl is determined to destroy herself.

“She’s totally skinny, and I know she does coke and everything,” one classmate said.  “But why?  It’s just stupid.  She’s going to kill herself.”

The band was taping a segment for The Tonight Show when Heather keeled over right on the set and had to be rushed to the emergency room at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center, where cocaine was found in her system along with a dangerous imbalance of electrolytes.  The parts of the show in which the band performed and spoke with Leno were not aired.

Cocaine mixed with a lack of food and fluids in the body is a deadly combination, said Dr. Alice O’Connor, a toxicologist at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.

“It’s a Catch-22,” Dr. O’Connor said.  “The cocaine decreases the appetite, and then the severe state of emaciation in the anorexic makes it impossible for her to metabolize the drug the way a healthy person would.  The result is an easy overdose.  We see it quite a lot, unfortunately.”

One of the country’s most-loved and at the same time most-detested heavy rock bands, Floozie debuted in 1997 and quickly built an army of devoted teenage followers through sexually suggestive song lyrics and on-stage antics that many say cross the line into child pornography.  The band just finished recording its third album, Am I Your Girl, but friends say they wouldn’t be surprised if Heather’s latest round of problems spelled the end of Floozie.

“At school, she just looks wasted,” one friend said.  “I’m surprised she’s lasted this long, the way she runs around on stage, screaming and yelling all the time.  I’ve never seen her eat at lunch with Celeste and Krystal and Lilly (Heather’s Floozie bandmates), and if she takes as much cocaine as I’ve heard, I don’t know how she can keep going.  We’re all praying for her.”

 

“We’re going to sue them, right?” I said to Robert.

“I talked to an attorney who specializes in this kind of thing, and he said the paper has the right to protect its sources, so we’ll never be able to nail them down.  Anyway, was there anything in there we can prove isn’t true?  That Heather isn’t starving herself?  That she isn’t on drugs?”

“No, but child pornography – where the hell did that come from?”

He gave me a knowing look.

“Specifically,” I said.

“Unbuttoning each other’s blouses on stage, Krystal running around with no top on in Japan, the panty tosses, the photos of guys’ girlfriends in Heather’s tights, the CD covers, the videos, the lyrics–”

“Oh, well, shit, if you’re going to count all that.”

He laughed.  I didn’t.

“But none of that’s child porn – it’s an act, a gimmick, and you know that.  And the girls’ parents know it . . . basically . . . so what’s the problem?”

“The problem is some people believe it’s real,” he said, “and the paper has the right to say what some people believe.  Krystal’s boobs were real, I know that much.  I still have the tape.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that one, but Heather’s going to absolutely freak, regardless.  I think we should sue, or try to, anyway.”

“If we go to court, it’s all going to get dragged out in the open.

“So what?”

“We don’t want that.”

“Why?  Isn’t it already out in the open after all this?”

“Yes, but people don’t look to the tabloids for truth, they look to them for sensation.  And sensation, if handled right, can only help the band.  The Star gets read by more than a million people every week – think about it.  That’s major exposure.  People look at court proceedings, on the other hand, as a legitimate source of truth.  No more fun and games once you get into court.  Why do you think all those Hollywood celebrities don’t spend their lives suing the shit out of these vultures?”

“But Heather’s a sixteen-year-old girl.”

“Heather’s also a household name in a very famous band.  She’s going to have to deal with the fact she screwed up and make the best of it.  She’s also going to have to get her act together, which is something I’m counting on you to oversee.”

 

Heather called me later at home.  “Did you see the story!”

“Yeah, I saw it.  It was–”

“When I find out who they talked to at school, I’m going to sue their fucking asses.  And there goddamn better not be any ‘sources’ at MindRoller that told them anything.”  She was cranked; no surprise.

“I doubt anybody over there–”

“I left a message for Jay, and he better call me back.”

“Jay’s our business attorney, not a civil attorney, and Robert says we probably shouldn’t go–”

“I don’t care, I’m going to sue those kids, whoever they are.  I have a pretty good idea who at least one of them is – a big-mouth senior bitch named Alyssa, who I don’t even like, and she knows it.”

“Don’t.”

“What do you mean don’t?”

“Robert talked to an attorney he knows.  If you go to court, they’re going to basically make you prove that you aren’t on drugs and that you aren’t anorexic and that the magazine made the whole thing up.”

“But they can’t just say all that about me!”

“They can, they did.  You started it–”

“I didn’t start it!  Oh, my God!”

“You passed out in public, and that brought in the police, and that made it public record.  Assuming you’re talking about just the you-part of the story and not the child-porn part in that one paragraph.”

“Fuck child porn.  Whose side are you on?  Jesus, Gary!”

“I’m on your side.

“Then act like it for once!”

“And I’m on the band’s side.  That’s why I think we need to let it wear itself out and not go jumping off the deep end.”

She paused.  “This is so messed up.”

“I know.  How’s your mom doing?”

She paused again, only this was a gearing-back-up pause.  “Oh, yes, I almost forgot – my mom is doing just fine!  How nice of you to ask about her!”

“Heather–”

 “No, let me tell you – we’ve all really been worried about her lately, what with the fact she had to cook dinner three nights this week and wash her hair twice.  I’m sure she’ll make a full recovery, but just in case, maybe I should quit the band to fucking help her out!  What do you think?”

“I–”  There was a crack in my ear.  I set the phone down on the table.

“Did she hang up on you?” Lilly said.  She was standing in the kitchen doorway, eating a Mars candy bar.

“Yeah.”

“I could hear her screaming."

“Yeah.”

“She’s all pissed off, huh.”

“Basically.”

“We need to do something.”

“Right now, she needs our support.”

“I can’t support her when she won’t even let me get close to her.”

“Then try to think support until she does.”