I cannot say why I thought like I did.  Why I became so obsessive.  I’d never had any…issues like that with any of my other roles.  Though, this _was_ my first main role after years of playing background characters with hardly thirty minutes of screen time.  Perhaps, then, it was something out of spite, or wanting to prove myself.  Or maybe I just really wanted to be a superhero.

Is that so hard to believe, coming from someone like me?

I remember the first day we spent on set.  After fourteen—nearly fifteen—grueling hours trudged by, and the only usable thing we managed to record was a single, imperfect scene.  I didn’t know what was wrong with me, why I couldn’t just connect with my character.  And every time Savannah, my director, furrowed her brow or sighed in my direction may as well have been a slap across my face.  

“Come on, Minerva,” she kept saying, tone a tense, failed attempt at cheerfulness.  “Can you try to bring out the _character_ of Splendor Girl?  I mean, show me the _super_ in _superhero_.”  Hearing those words honestly felt like hitting a wall, especially after pouring so many hours into my self tape to land this role.  I didn’t want to have come this far only to have this golden opportunity be ripped from my roughened hands and lost forever.

Though, I lost a lot more than the role, in the end.  

That night, I decided I was done messing around.  I would study Splendor Girl until my eyes bled, if that’s what it took.  I would know her as I knew my own mind, if not better, no matter what.

It became a sort of ritual.  Every night, after I got home from filming, I would read over each and every word of my paperback script so many times the little bold, black letters seemed to blur together like alphabet soup.  I outlined every aspect of Splendor Girl’s personality, backstory, _anything_ I could grasp about her.  I even started trying to act like her throughout my daily life, trying to think as she would, speak her words and not my own.  This would help me get into character, I thought to myself.  This would be the _super_ Savannah wanted.  

Looking back now, this was probably where the delusion started to grip me on the throat.  But I didn’t see it like that quite yet.  I merely considered myself an extremely dedicated actor, priding myself on the good work I was doing.  It was easy, particularly as each filming day ran more and more smoothly.  I was nailing out complicated scenes in just one take, while my colleagues all stared starstruck.  Even Savannah’s stubborn lips turned up into a beaming smile when she saw me in my purple spandex suit with its sparkles and grecian neckline.

“You were born to be a superhero,” she would say, and I would grin, face flushing with the unmatched joy of success.

Eventually, I began to lead something of a double life, sometimes as Minerva Ashbury, and others, Splendor Girl, though Minerva began to appear significantly less.  She was mainly reserved for conversations with family or colleagues, or whenever I had to give my name for an order at a coffee shop.  Besides, Minerva’s life was bland and obligatory, nothing like the exhilaration of being superhuman.  In fact, it only took a little while before I no longer felt like Minerva acting as Splendor Girl, but the other way around.  My colleagues started to give me strange looks sometimes, cocked eyebrows and concerned forehead wrinkles, though they seemed to just shrug my new behavior off and call it “method acting”.  

That is, until the first incident.

About thirty days into filming, an angry, decent sized fire broke out in the building next to us, yellow flames lapping against the windows and causing the concrete to warp and spall.  Luckily, the fire department was called immediately, and everyone made it outside unharmed within minutes.  So there should have been no reason for me to run into the smothering blaze.  But, I couldn’t shake the thoughts that told me someone hadn’t made it out, and that it was my responsibility to save them.  I had to be a hero.  

Turns out, my super-instinct was wrong, and truly, no one else was inside.  In the end, all I accomplished was nearly getting myself killed, when a massive chunk of the fickle, heat-worn ceiling collapsed not a foot away from me.  I did, however, manage to make it out relatively unscathed, with only a minor, reddish burn blemishing my left arm.  The hospital let me out into the waiting room after just a half hour, where Savannah sat waiting for me.  My eyes widened as she approached me with seriousness in her steps.

“Minerva, can I talk to you?” Savannah said, pulling me aside.  I nodded, asking her what the problem was.  She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it, shaking her head.  “You ran into a fire trying to save imaginary people who didn’t need help,” she explained.  “That’s not normal, or okay.”

“It’s part of my job,” I argued.  “As a superhero–”

“You’re not a damn superhero!” Savannah cried, cutting me off.  “You’re an actor!”  She took a deep, worried breath, and it cut through me like a hundred knives.  “Go home, Minerva.  Get some sleep.  Maybe…talk to someone.  We’ll resume filming in a week, once you’ve recuperated.”  

I should have taken this as a sign to slow down, or get some help.  Instead, I thought I needed to work even harder to impress Savannah, and make up for what I’d done.  I’d gotten unfocused, I decided, and let Minerva take the blame for what happened with the fire.  That makes no sense, I know, but it did back then.  Minerva became the scapegoat for everything wrong I’d ever done, the epitome of all my faults.  So I let what was left of her slip like water through my fingers, and became Splendor Girl full time.  “Fighting crime” took over my average hobbies of crocheting and playing pickleball.  I started wearing glittery purple tops regularly, calling them my “super suits”.  I became convinced that I could fly, could teleport, could move objects with my mind.  I was convinced, utterly _convinced_, that I was invincible.

That was what got me in the end, wasn’t it?

Just ten days later, there was a bus accident right outside my apartment.  I didn’t see the flip myself, but I did hear that deafening _crunch_, followed by the agonized screams.  Smoke from the wreckage choked the outside air, even at the eighth floor that I lived on.  Bright orange flames seemed to do a funeral dance around the people trapped inside the mangled vehicle, but no fire trucks or police cars had arrived at the scene yet.  They were going to die if someone didn’t come save them, and soon.  

This was a job for Splendor Girl.

A rush of superhuman adrenaline pulsed through my veins.  I quickly tied my hair back with a purple rubber band, and kicked the doors to my balcony open wide.  

“I’m Splendor Girl,” I declared, jaw set with determination, “and I’m here to help!”  I raced toward the edge of the balcony and jumped into the air, expecting to fly to the burning people and save the day.  I was a superhero, after all.

But of course, I couldn’t fly.  So, I fell instead.