It's been nearly a month since anyone saw Barbie Morgan. The 16-year-old wore a red party dress to a disco dance at Severna Park High School and invited girlfriends to sleep over at her house that night. But she never returned home.
The day after the dance, police found her car on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, not far from where her friend had jumped six months earlier and survived.
Barbie's parents spent Christmas and New Year's waiting for her body to wash up.
Monday, still without a body, they held a memorial service. Classmates and teachers filled Woods Memorial Church in Severna Park, no longer able to hope Barbie had just run away. Or been kidnapped.
Brandi Care, 17, a former Homecoming Princess and class president, may understand better than anyone the demons of popularity and pressure that might have driven Barbie over the railing of the bridge. The girls were both National Honor Society inductees and field hockey teammates who played the same defensive position.
In May, Brandi climbed over the same bridge railing that lured Barbie, looked at the water 130 feet below, then stepped off. Unlike most jumpers, she survived with only bruises.
"It got to a point where I felt all my achievements and hard work meant nothing," said Brandi. "At that point, the best I could do was to just go quietly and make a statement that life has pressures and to be yourself."
In some perfectionist teens, that kind of underlying depression can go unnoticed.
"The stars are so busy being successful and being rewarded for being successful, they don't either self-diagnose or communicate their depression to adults," said Dr. Lanny Berman, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology. "Their drives and strivings are problematic in that they are extreme."
Brandi remembers that the water of the bay felt like a floor of bricks when she hit.
"I remember my stomach dropping and I was screaming," she said. "My whole body was in pain, I was so confused.
"I was so sure that it would work. I was so sure I would die."
Authorities said the falling body could have been going 60 to 80 mph. Brandi lost feeling in her legs. Her back felt like it was impaled on a bed of sharp nails.
A boat -- part of the fleet of spectators for the Whitbread Round the World Race -- drew close and a life vest floated toward her. She hesitated, then reached for it, deciding to live.
