A/N: Thanks to everyone for the lovely reviews. This is the last chapter of this two-part saga and things take an… interesting turn. Read on!

Oddly enough Grady is the first to notice.

Though it's not so much notice as it is bring the issue to everyone else's attention while he remains oblivious to the Pandora's Box he's opened. It's Monday afternoon, the week of the party, and the five So Random cast members are hanging around the Prop House as they prepare for a new week of sketches. Their brainstorming session goes over lunch, and rather than stop everything and trek down to the commissary they agree to order in pizza.

Nico's phone is out before they've even finished the discussion, his finger poised over caller ID number two. "The usual?" he asks. Everyone mumbles their agreement. "Sonny what about you? Pepperoni?"

Sonny shakes her head. "You know what, I'm still full from breakfast. I think I'll pass."

"You didn't eat breakfast," Grady reminds her.

Sonny freezes.

"Yeah I did. I ate it at home," is her excuse.

"Uh, no, you didn't," Grady argues. "I remember because the cafeteria was serving your favorite, cheese omelets with those yummy hash browns—"

"Man, those are good!" Nico interjects, rubbing his stomach.

"I know, right? Especially when the lunch lady gets them all crispy and brown—" Grady interrupts himself before he gets lost in his food daydream. He turns back to Sonny. "And you said you didn't eat breakfast because you had a big dinner last night."

Tawni looks up from filing her nails, her gaze landing on her dressing room roommate. Sonny avoids her eyes.

"Breakfast. Dinner. Who can remember, really? Hey, Nico, weren't you gonna order?"

"I can cover for you if you're short on cash, no problem, Sonny," says Nico. Grady echoes Nico's sentiment. Zora nods as well, even though she has yet to glance up from her script, her ears covered by large headphones blasting the Indie music she's gotten into lately. Tawni remains silent, though her head tilts to the side. It's as if she thinks she'll uncover whatever Sonny's hiding if she simply looks the right way.

"It's not about money, guys," Sonny snaps, irritated that they won't let the issue die. "I'm just not hungry, ok?"

"Fine, ok." Nico turns to Grady and mouths something that looks suspiciously like 'mood swings'. Sonny lets it go. No need to get them any more suspicious than they already are.

It isn't until they're packing up to leave for the day when Tawni corners Sonny in their dressing room. She's shrugging out of her cheerleader sketch uniform and into a pair of jeans that lovingly hug her every curve. Sonny is trying carefully not to glance into the mirror as she throws her stuff into her purse. She doesn't need to be reminded again why she's going through all this in the first place.

"Hey, so, I know I'm not usually the caring one in this relationship." Tawni says the word 'caring' as if it is a curse. In Tawni's mind it very well may be. "But are you ok?"

Sonny plasters on her brightest smile. She hopes it doesn't look as fake as it feels and briefly wonders when it became such a chore to be happy. It's usually her default setting. "I'm fine, Tawni."

"You're not getting sick, are you? Because I can't go to Chad's party unless you go."

"It's probably a 24-hour bug. I'll be fine. I won't let anything keep you from that party, I promise."

"Good," Tawni says with a firm nod. She's halfway out the door before she leaves Sonny with one last thing to think about. "Because it would suck if anything bad happened to you. You know, because of the party."

Sonny is still puzzling out the hidden meaning behind that one by the time she gets home.

It's been one week. One week of intense dieting and exercising, of skipping meals and running until she feels sick and nothing has changed.

The number on the scale is four pounds lighter than the week before, but she doesn't feel any different. She certainly doesn't look any different. Her stomach is still too flabby, her hips still too wide, her butt still not toned.

She feels tears of frustration well up in her eyes and she furiously bats them away. Sonny Monroe is a lot of things, but she is not a quitter. She'll simply have to try harder. Five more days. She can do this.

Just five more days. And then she'll stop.

Only she doesn't make it to five days, because everything kind of goes to hell on Thursday.

It starts early in the morning, when she has the misfortune of running into Chad as she's crossing the Condor Studio parking lot.

"Why are you wearing a sweater?" Chad asks as he meets up with Sonny. "It's, like, 80 degrees today."

"I was cold, I guess." Sonny doesn't tell him that the bulky sweater is meant to keep people from noticing that her entire body is shaking. She doesn't tell him that her head is pounding behind her eyes and that the ground keeps swaying underneath her feet. She doesn't have to tell him, because he notices anyway when she stumbles right in front of the studio doors.

"Whoa. Easy there." Chad grabs her before her face meets the concrete. "I know you're still falling for me, Sonny, but…." He trails off when he sees the glassy look in her eyes. His grip on her arm tightens. "Sonny?"

Sonny takes a second to get her bearings, thankful for Chad's stabilizing hand. She shakes it off all the same. "I'm fine. I just tripped."

"Ok, I really wanna make a joke about catching you when you fall," Chad says with his familiar note of arrogance. There's a hint of concern there too, and Chad's not one to worry about others unnecessarily. "But it's not gonna be as funny if you faint first."

"I'm not going to faint. I told you, I tripped."

"Right. I always trip over nothing, too. Oh wait, no I don't." Chad looks over her carefully. "You're really pale. You're not getting sick, are you? 'Cause my party's this Saturday—"

"Why is everyone so worried about your stupid party!?" Sonny bursts out, jerking away from Chad. "I'll be there, ok!"

"Ok, geez! What is with you today? Usually you don't yell at me until after I've done something wrong."

Sonny brushes past him without another word and sweeps into the studio. She lets the door close sharply behind her, partly out of anger, irrational though it may be, and partly to put some distance between herself and Chad. The way he was watching at her was making her uneasy.

Her interactions with the rest of the cast of So Random are basically variations of that. At noon she yells at Zora for forgetting to cover up her vent when she leaves the room. Grady and Nico get chewed out for leaving their scripts in the Prop House while they're rehearsing on stage. And poor Tawni gets kicked out of their dressing room for talking on her phone for longer than five minutes. Never mind that she was talking to her mom.

Sonny's fuse is short, her temperament increasingly unstable. By the time afternoon rehearsals roll around, even Marshall is going out of his way to avoid setting her off.

She's walking off the So Random stage, ready to head home at the end of the day, when she misses a step. At least that's what her sudden case of vertigo makes it feel like. Black spots cloud her vision and all she can hear is the roaring of blood in her ears.

She's out before she even hits the ground.

Connie doesn't let Sonny out of her sight after they return home from the doctor's office, armed with various pamphlets on the dangers of calorie counting disorders. Both women are smart enough to know what that particular phrase is a euphemism for, though they are somewhat reluctant to say it out loud. It seems too early to be making any specific diagnoses, anyway.

She wraps her daughter up in as many blankets as she can find and pads her back with every throw pillow in the house. Offers her all the food in the house and promises to buy her whatever her heart and stomach desire. She alternates between fussing over Sonny and scolding her.

"I don't understand what would possess you to do this to yourself," Connie says. She sits beside Sonny on the couch, her arm behind the back of her head. "Not eating, even for a couple of days, is very dangerous, Sonny. Don't you know that?"

Sonny stares down at her hands. "I do."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I just… I didn't want you to worry."

"Oh, sweetie." Connie gathers Sonny in her arms. "That didn't really work out, did it?"

Sonny's lips turn up. "Yeah. I think fainting in front of everyone I work with was kinda a big giveaway."

"Maybe this was all too much too soon." Connie sighs, referring to Sonny's stint on So Random. "Maybe we should've waited until you were older before coming out here."

"No!" Sonny sits up. "No, I can handle it. I just got a little carried away. I promise I will never, ever do anything like this ever again."

Connie twists her mouth in thought. She reaches up to brush Sonny's hair out of her face. "Tell you what. How about I take you to talk to someone once a week for a little while and then we can decide where to go from there."

"A shrink, mom?" Sonny recoils at the idea.

"There's nothing wrong with talking to someone." Connie insists. "Especially about things you don't think you can share with me."

"It's not that I can't talk to you—" Sonny starts.

"It's that you don't think I'll understand. And maybe you're right." Connie holds up a hand to stop whatever protest Sonny is about to make. "You're under a lot of pressure to look a certain way and maybe I underestimated how tough that can be."

Sonny's head is starting to feel clearer, and the gnawing ache in her stomach is slowly subsiding. That may be because her stomach—after weeks of running on mostly empty—is finally full again. She can feel herself giving in inch by inch as she unclenches from these stressful last few days. Finally she gives the faintest nod. Not necessarily in agreement; more like in resignation.

"We'll go together," Connie says. "How does that sound?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Not even a little."

Sonny sighs, curling herself further into her mother's arms.

It doesn't solve everything. But it's a start.

Sonny misses So Random's taping on Friday, so she doesn't get to see Tawni again until she shows up at her apartment on Saturday evening, an hour before Chad's party is supposed to begin. She is surprised to see the blonde at her door in designer sweats, her eyes covered with Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses, her hair perfectly coiffed. She's that picture-perfect image of effortlessly flawless and Sonny feels the food she just ate turn sour in her stomach.

She forces herself to take a deep breath and slowly let it out. She's spent the last two weeks—longer if she's being completely honest—beating herself up over her weight and her figure. Over things she can't completely control. She's tired of being her own worst critic. It's a process, but over the last two days she's gotten better at hushing the self-doubt that creeps up every time she opens up a magazine or turns on the TV. Or stands next to her stunning costar.

"Hey, Tawni. Going to the party?"

Tawni strolls in without an invitation, a habit Sonny wonders if she'll ever break. "I just wanted to see how you're doing."

"A lot better, thanks." Sonny settles down on the couch. Tawni takes a seat one cushion over. "And I'm sorry. You know, for snapping at you all week."

"All anyone would talk about yesterday was you." Tawni continues, taking off her sunglasses. "I need you to get better so people can start talking about me again."

Sonny can't help but laugh. "I missed you too. And I'll be back on Monday. Oh, here." Sonny reaches over and grabs a gold envelope off the coffee table. She hands it to Tawni. "My invitation. I bet Chad'll still let you in if you bring this."

"You're not gonna go?"

"It's probably better if I don't," Sonny says with a small shrug. The last thing she needs is to be exposed to the very thing that set her off in the first place. Besides, with Chad's 100 plus guest list, she can't imagine she'll be missed very much.

Tawni stares at the envelope for a second before dropping it back on the table in disgust. "Ugh. Who wants to go to Chad's lame party and watch a bunch of gorgeous models walk around in little bikinis, anyway?" When Sonny raises her eyebrows, Tawni scoffs. "Don't let the hair fool you, Sonny. I can be really smart when I wanna be."

"Last week you told me 6 times 8 equals 68."

"When am I ever going to use math? This is important life stuff," she insists. "What I'm saying is that I get it. All of it."

Sonny's not so sure. "What exactly do you get?"

"Do I have to spell it out for you?" Tawni rolls her eyes. "Look, you may find this hard to believe, but I'm not always this confident, perfect, beautiful, amazingly talented superstar. Sometimes I feel..." She makes a face, "not-pretty, too."

"What? That's ridiculous, Tawni! What could possibly make you feel not-pretty?"

"Um, how about a new cast member from Wisconsin who everyone says is so funny and so cute." Tawni says it with a bite, but the twinkle in her eyes tells a different story. "That was always my thing! Why do you think I didn't want you in the first place? I didn't want you stealing my show."

"Don't you mean our show?"

"Whatever," Tawni says. "The point is, and this is really hard for me to say so don't ask me to repeat it, the point is I was kinda jealous. Sometimes I still am."

Sonny takes a second to let this new information sink in. She wonders why it never occurred to her that Tawni may just be going through the same thing. That the supposedly perfect actress also experiences the same doubts as she does. Maybe because Tawni hides her flaws so well, but if even she has moments of weaknesses... well it's eye-opening, to say the least. Sonny doesn't know how else to respond but with one word, "Wow."

"Yup." Tawni agrees. "But if you tell anyone, I'll deny it."

Sonny smiles. "So… you sure you don't wanna go to Chad's party?"

"Nah," Tawni says. She reaches for her bag and pulls out a DVD. The first season of Hex and the City. They share a grin. "I'd rather watch TV with the second prettiest girl in Hollywood."

It isn't until they're halfway through the first episode that Sonny speaks up again.

"Hey, Tawni?"

"Uh-huh?" Tawni responds.

"Thanks."

By Monday morning pretty much everyone has some idea of what happened to Sonny the week before. Most of it is wildly inaccurate, specifically the rumor that her body was briefly taken over by aliens. That particular story gets Zora far more excited than it should. The few people who correctly guess the general outline of events exaggerate the details immensely. By lunchtime Sonny has heard that she was in a coma all weekend, that she's being sent off to some rehab center in New Mexico and that Tween Weekly TV offered her $1 million to star in a TV movie about her life.

Unsurprisingly, the cast of So Random remains quiet about the whole subject, neither confirming nor denying any rumors. Surprisingly, the cast of Mackenzie Falls is fairly quiet as well. Sonny wonders who she should thank for that small miracle.

Shortly after 2 pm—while Tawni and Zora are in rehearsals and Nico and Grady are getting frozen yogurt in the commissary—Chad appears at her dressing room door. He's holding a white box with a red ribbon wrapped around it and he moves tentatively, a contrast from his usual overconfident swagger. It's a little jarring for Sonny to witness.

"Hey," he says. He takes a small step into the room "I heard you got… sick."

"It's ok, Chad." Sonny says from her place at her vanity table. She spins halfway around to face him. "You don't have to tip-toe around me."

"Well, I don't want you to bite my head off," he half-jokes. "Though I guess now I understand why you did. I get cranky when I don't eat too."

Sonny rolls her eyes. "Great, now you know. Who told you?"

"Beavis and Butthead." It takes Sonny a second to realize he's referring to Nico and Grady. Of course. "I kinda tricked them into talking, though. But you—I mean it's not—"

"I'm fine. Really." Chad's relieved smile makes Sonny's heart flutter rapidly in her chest. She changes the subject before she can say something embarrassing. "So, how was your party?"

"Eh, it was all right. Might've been better if you were there. Maybe." He tries to look casual and fails miserably. Sonny can't help but find this Chad infinitely more charming than suave, cocky Chad. "I brought you something."

He hands Sonny his gift. It's too heavy to be another autographed picture, but not heavy enough for her to discern exactly what's in it. She opens her mouth to ask but he's already heading back out the door.

"Anyway, I can't stay. I have a big, important, super-secret Mac Falls scene to shoot today." His smug smirk fades into a gentler grin. "But… I'm glad you're ok."

Sonny nods. "Me too. Thanks."

Once Chad leaves, Sonny unties the ribbon and opens the box. Inside sits a large slice of red velvet cake covered in thick white frosting. Etched in cursive, in delicate red icing, is only one word:

Beautiful.

A/N: So, being a teenage girl can kind of suck sometimes. Everyone always seems cooler than you, funnier than you, smarter, prettier, whatever. But when you get older, you realize that everyone else was thinking you were cooler, smarter, funnier or prettier than them. Life is funny that way.

So the ending was interesting to me for two reasons. 1. Because I didn't want to make light of a pretty serious situation. And 2. Because I didn't want to give the impression that all was perfect in the end. Nothing is ever really that simple after all. Everything's a work in progress. But Sonny's got friends and family and Chad, sort of, so I think she'll be ok.

I have another story ready to come out, much more light-hearted than this one. So look for that in a couple of days.