@TheEnd After tweeting about the alleged sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her father — and an investigation that came up empty — Ashley Billasano killed herself

[Beaver Fever]

http://www.houstonpress.com/2012-03-08/news/ashley-billasano-twitter-teen-suicide/all/

On November 7, 2011, Ashley Marie Billasano stayed home from school so
she could kill herself.
Ashley was very good at putting on a happy face.
Photos courtesy of Ayan
Ashley was very good at putting on a happy face.
Ashley's friends say she wanted the world to know she wasn't lying.
Click to enlarge.
Photo illustration by Monica Fuentes
Ashley's friends say she wanted the world to know she wasn't lying.
Click to enlarge.
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BLOH POST: Ashley Billasano: Her Final Thoughts, Before Suicide,
Shared in Tweets
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More About

Tiffany Ashley
Skyping Anthony
John Billasano
Sexual Offenses
Crime and Law

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The 18-year-old Rosenberg high school senior told her closest friend,
who drove her to school every morning, that she wasn't feeling well.
Then, from 6:44 a.m. to 2:08 p.m., she issued 144 tweets, many of
which alleged years of sexual abuse at the hands of her father John
Billasano, when she lived with him in Round Rock and Pflugerville.

At the urging of friends, Ashley had reluctantly told a teacher about
the alleged abuse in spring 2011. The teacher notified Child
Protective Services. The investigation would prove inconclusive. At
1:37 p.m. the day of her death, Ashley tweeted about a call she had
received from a CPS caseworker: "Weeks passed then I got the call.
They said, 'Sorry, but there isn't enough evidence.' I hung up. That's
when I changed. I didn't care anymore."

In addition to her tweets, Ashley left behind a four-page suicide note
that her mother, Tiffany Ruiz-Leskinen, has not shared with Ashley's
friends. Her closest friend read redacted excerpts at the funeral.
According to friends, Tiffany shared the note with the church
minister, who excised the profanity — there was apparently quite a
bit. After all, God's house was no place for cuss words.

But the entire content appears to be one big middle finger to the
world. In the note, Ashley thanked YouTube and Wikipedia for giving
her the tools to fashion her suicide kit: a pressurized tank of helium
and a plastic bag.

Ashley's body was barely cold before her mother rushed in front of
every camera she could to blame authorities for leaving her daughter
without hope. CNN. The Houston FOX affiliate. The Today Show (although
it never aired). Her father, who was barred from Ashley's funeral and
never saw his daughter's body before she was cremated, responded with
absolute silence.

The story of Ashley's final tweets struck a nerve worldwide. On a
Facebook memorial page created by her friends and mother, people who
never knew Ashley have shared their stories of abuse and despair.
(Despite the fact that Ashley very publicly, and very deliberately,
posted the awful allegations in what her friends say was an attempt
not only to warn others of a sexual predator but to prove that she was
not lying, the Fort Bend County Attorney's Office has sought to block
the release of records pertaining to her death based in part on
potentially "intimate and embarrassing details.")

The investigation into Ashley's alleged sexual abuse is still open,
according to Travis County assistant district attorney Melissa Douma.
Neither she nor prosecutor Dayna Blazey, who previously led the
investigation, would comment further, so it's unclear how an
investigation that apparently went nowhere in the seven months while
the complaining witness was alive can effectively remain open. John
Billasano has never been charged with a crime in these events, and in
the eyes of the law is presumed innocent.

Tiffany and her mother, Ema Cook, have worked hard to control Ashley's
story. Initially, Tiffany didn't tell interviewers that Ashley had
been sexually abused once before, at age six, by her stepfather, who
is nearing the end of an 11-year prison term. And according to Cook,
interviewers agreed to refrain from mentioning Tiffany's own five-year
stint in prison, which is how Ashley went to live with her father in
the first place.

In her 18 years, Ashley suffered a pain she simply could not handle.
She was determined to stop her suffering the only way she knew how; a
suicide attempt two months before did nothing to take the idea out of
her mind.

Her excruciating tweets, half-told in rhymes, seem calculated at least
in part to inflict some of that pain on people who loved her. "Hummm
wish somebody would text me," she wrote at 9:46 a.m., followed a
minute later by "Kinda lonely right now."

Two hours and 19 minutes pass after a tweet at 10:42 a.m. Two hours
and 19 minutes in which she could have called her mom, gone to a
school counselor, called a friend, called a hotline.

Then, at 1:47, there was a 21-minute gap before her final tweet.
Twenty-one minutes to check the pressure in the tank and the seal on
the bag, to get down to the actual business of suicide.

At 2:08 p.m., she tweeted: "Take two. Hope I get this right."

Unfortunately, she did.
_____________________

In addition to her media blitz, Tiffany Ruiz-Leskinen launched a Web
site called the Ashley Marie Just Breathe foundation 11 days after her
daughter's death.

She sold wristbands for $3 and T-shirts for $20, in her daughter's
memory. The money allegedly went to cover funeral costs and then into
a fund to help give a lifeline to other girls in Ashley's situation.

Tiffany has applied for nonprofit status and is seeking licensed
therapists willing to volunteer their services, which is why it's
confusing that the "foundation" also has an e-mail contact for
"individual and corporate sponsorship." The foundation's vague mission
statement is "to make a positive impact in the lives of children,
teens, and young adults."

Yet there is little in Tiffany's background to suggest that she is
qualified to make a positive impact on anyone's life.

Throughout Ashley's abbreviated existence, Tiffany continually
endangered Ashley's well-being — perhaps as a result of Tiffany's own
rocky childhood. (Tiffany did not respond to interview requests.)

When she was Ashley's age, Tiffany also accused her father of
molesting her. And Tiffany's mother — Ashley's grandmother — accused
her own father of sexual abuse. In each case, all three women waited
for years before speaking up. The silence stuck with all three women
like a disease. (Tiffany's dad was charged with criminal sexual
conduct, but the charges were later dropped; her grandfather died in
1973, and there is no record of charges against him.)

It's not clear if, after moving to Minnesota when Ashley was an
infant, Tiffany planned on Ashley ever seeing her father again. But it
seems unlikely that Ashley's father, John Billasano, would have ever
seen Ashley again had he not received a phone call from Tiffany's aunt
Amparo Ortega, instructing him to go to Minnesota and bring Ashley
back to Texas.

Somehow, according to family members, Ashley had nearly drowned in a
bucket of mopwater, and had to be rushed to the emergency room. She
was 11 months old. Hospital bills from the time show that Ashley had
received nearly $15,000 worth of undisclosed treatment.

As one of Ashley's cousins puts it, "He went all the way to Minnesota
to get Ashley when her mom didn't give a fuck about
Ashley." (Billasano declined to speak for this story, saying only,
"You can just do whatever you want, I have no comment." Ashley's
stepmother, Christina Billasano, did not respond to interview
requests.)

Ortega, Ashley's great-aunt, recalls Billasano bringing Ashley back to
live with her for a few months while Tiffany stayed behind at her
father's place. Ortega recalls Ashley looking wan and pale; Billasano
gave her regular injections, but she doesn't remember of what. All
Billasano would say, according to Ortega, was that he didn't trust
Tiffany with Ashley.

And Billasano had good reason not to. After Tiffany finally returned
to Texas, she made a series of disastrous choices that would affect
Ashley forever.

Court records in Nevada and Texas show that Tiffany managed to marry
two men in 1998; only one of them stuck around long enough to destroy
Ashley's childhood. (The other man, identified in Harris County Clerk
records, could not be reached for comment.)

Allan Oliver Leskinen was 28 years older than Tiffany. He had a well-
paying job at a Houston company that offered a variety of marine
shipping and storage services, and could provide for Tiffany and her
two children.

The union was short-lived. In 2001, Les­kinen admitted to molesting
Ashley "on three or four different occasions" the year before. Ashley
told an interviewer with the Harris County Children's Assessment
Center that Leskinen would come into her room, tie her hands, cover
her eyes and have her stand in front of him. Ashley told the
interviewer that Leskinen would "put something that was big into her
mouth and move it back and forth" until "some gooey stuff came into
her mouth and she spit it out."

(Leskinen, who declined to be interviewed for this story, is scheduled
to be released from prison in 2013. According to family members, he's
quite the craftsman and likes to carve ducks in the prison wood shop.
He regularly writes his father in Pennsylvania, and the two look
forward to a fishing trip once Leskinen is released.)

Tiffany separated from Leskinen shortly after the abuse, and she
divorced him in September 2001. She would remarry him in April 2002.
He was in prison at the time. She was headed there herself.

After her separation from Leskinen but before their divorce and
subsequent remarriage, Tiffany wasted no time finding another provider
for her and her children. While working in a strip club, she met a man
about Leskinen's age named Ron. Although Ron and his wife Frances were
separated, they were on friendly terms. But Tiffany wanted the woman
out of Ron's life for good.

According to court records, on the night of March 10, 2001, Tiffany
sneaked into Frances's home, armed with Saran Wrap and a razor blade.
Her plan was to subdue Frances, bind her arms with the Saran Wrap and
slit her wrists in order to stage a suicide.

Unfortunately for Tiffany, Frances was able to fight back and thwart
Tiffany's attack. After Tiffany fled, Frances made two phone calls.
One was to the police. The other was to Ron. She told him to "come get
his slut."

Tiffany was charged with burglary of a habitation with intent to
commit murder, which was later altered to "intent to commit aggravated
assault," and given five years' deferred adjudication. However, she
violated the terms of her probation by missing appointments with her
probation officer and failing to find a steady job, so her full
sentence was imposed.

On May 3, she went to prison. Ashley went to Round Rock to live with
her father.
_____________________

Despite — or maybe because of — the fact that she had already endured
so much, Ashley seemed determined to persuade the world she was happy.

Her MySpace, created by the time she was 13, is peppered with smiley
emoticons and moods of "bouncy" and "flirty." In 2009, by which time
the alleged abuse would have been well underway, she wrote "I ACTAULY
AM SURPRIZINGLY UBBER HAPPY!!!"

She hardly seemed dark or withdrawn. Her biggest dream at that time
"is to save a baby panda bear from Asia, name him Paco, and raise him
as my own." She described herself as a "pretty normal person, I'm
fairly good at school, no smarty pants, but just above the stupid
line." She wrote that "I love a lot and I love to love. If I know you,
chances are that I love (or have loved) you at some point...."

In 2007, her father moved from Round Rock to Pflugerville, and she
wrote about how much she loved her new middle school.

But Ashley's high school friends told the Houston Press that she had
confided in them how rough middle school was for her. The girls called
her "Ashley Bitchasano." Ashley herself, in her final tweets, would
confess that by sixth grade, "the kids called me fat even though I was
a double zero."

To cope, Ashley began cutting herself with razor blades, careful to
cover any visible marks with bracelets, Band-Aids and wristbands. She
starved herself.

"I began to watch my weight like it was a MTV show," she tweeted on
the day she died.

By the time she was 13 or 14, according to her close friend Ayan Ali,
she found new ways to cope: pills and marijuana. (It was also around
this time, 2007, that Tiffany was released from prison.)

Ashley's bad behavior progressed to the point where, in early 2009,
she suffered what her grandmother Ema calls a nervous breakdown. Ema
says that, when Ashley spent time with her that summer, she asked
Ashley point-blank if her father or his friends ever tried anything
with her.

Ema breaks down when she talks about how her own alleged abuse was a
catalyst for this worrying over all her grandchildren, and how she
told them all what her father had done to her.

"He didn't pay..." Ema says through choked sobs, "the only one that's
been paying all this time is me. And this is why I asked my
granddaughter if anything was happening..."

But Ema's alleged hypervigilance for her granddaughter is at odds with
the fact that, after Tiffany was released from prison, Ashley went on
family outings that sometimes included her uncle — Tiffany's brother,
Richard Ruiz Jr., a registered sex offender.

"Uncle Ricky" was legally restricted from being anywhere near a child
under 18 unless he had written permission from the child's parent and
his probation officer.

During the months of February and March 2000, according to Fort Bend
County court records, Ricky tried several times to force an 11-year-
old female family member to have sex with him. The first time,
according to the victim, was when he pinned her down to a bed, kissed
her on the mouth and asked her to have sex with him. Another time, at
a park, he fondled her bare breast. On still another occasion, while
driving the girl somewhere, he suddenly pulled over, parked, removed
his clothes, removed her clothes — except for her panties — put his
mouth on her breast, ran his hand under her panties, then grabbed her
hands and put them on his penis. For this, he would receive probation.
By the time he was sentenced to ten years' incarceration for failing
to register as a sex offender, he was already serving 40 years for
aggravated robbery.

When asked why Tiffany allowed her daughter, who had already been
sexually abused once, to be around a registered sex offender who had
already targeted another family member, Ema told the Press it was a
nonissue.

"He has nothing to do" with Billasano's alleged abuse, Ema said. But
when it was again pointed out to her that Ricky was a child molester,
Ema inexplicably replied: "Well, so? Are you?"

After Ashley's so-called nervous breakdown, John Billasano enrolled
her in a psychiatric care program and transferred her to a small
charter school called Harmony Science Academy.

Harmony's small classes fostered a communal atmosphere that seemed to
do Ashley good. Friends recall being instantly smitten by the bubbly
new girl with the infectious smile and the highly specialized favorite
color of seafoam green.

Ashley was in AP English and wowed both her teacher and peers with her
essays.

"She was extremely creative, and she had an interesting way of looking
at things," her English teacher at Harmony recalled. "...She would
always pick up on things that the other kids didn't."

In August 2010, Ashley met Ayan, who would become one of her closest
friends at Harmony. Ashley told Ayan that her mother was dead. To
Ayan, who had lost her father not long before, it was an instant
connection.

Along with two other girls, Ayan and Ashley formed a tight-knit group
that they christened with an acronym of the first letters of their
names: DAAY. It was these three girls who discovered Ashley making
herself vomit in a restroom during a field trip to San Antonio. When
they confronted Ashley, she just said "It's a habit that's come back."
She swore she wouldn't do it again.

Ashley also had a habit of serial relationships, lasting maybe a month
at a time, that inevitably ended in blow-ups. She'd come to school a
wreck for a day or two, and then her sadness was gone. It was
difficult for some to tell how much of her behavior was just an
affectation. Ashley loved theater; she loved dressing up in crazy
outfits and was, Ayan soon learned, brilliant with the waterworks.

Ayan, who sometimes lapses into the present tense when discussing
Ashley, said, "Ashley — she's a really good actress. She cries to get
attention. Like, when me and her would get into a fight, she would cry
so I could feel bad and not scream at her anymore." To Ayan, it was
one of her good friend's less-charming traits.

Ashley would sometimes cut herself or purge after one of these mini-
romances, but at the same time, she seemed to take a casual approach
to sex. Ashley told her closest friends she had lost her virginity
around age 14, and that sleeping with a guy was not a big deal. It was
almost perfunctory.

But then, on a church youth group trip to Waco, Ashley met Anthony. He
would change everything.
_____________________

On Facebook, Ashley wrote that Anthony, a fresh-faced boy with a
square jaw and friendly eyes, made her heart "go thump-
thump." (Anthony did not respond to a request to comment for this
story.)

"I'm rambling, I'm sick, OK, but despite the fact that my lips are
weak and chapped, all I can say before I go to sleep, is that I
absolutely, without a doubt, love [Anthony] with not a piece of, but
my whole heart. And I'm not afraid to tell the world. So, ummm, fellas
— don't waste your time. And girls, hold your breath, please. I love
this guy with my everything."

Although they met at a church-oriented weekend retreat, Ashley wrote
in her final tweets that "we met in my typical situation. We were both
undressed within a matter of seconds...But there was something
different about this guy. He returned the favor and actually said
goodbye."

Then, "on the bus ride home we sat next to each other. Talked for
hours on end. We held each other's hands and told each other our
favorite bands. He looked me dead in the eyes and asked if I would
please consider seeing him again. I went home filled with smiles and
cheer."

Things were good for a while — real good. And then one day, quite by
accident, Anthony discovered a secret that Ashley would later say she
fought so hard to conceal.

Since Anthony refused to speak with the Press, the only source for how
the allegations came to light is Ayan's recollection of a conversation
she allegedly had with Ashley. According to Ayan, Anthony was
innocently scrolling through photos on Ashley's cell phone in early
2011 when he came across a nude shot. Hurt, he asked Ashley who she
was sending provocative photos to. Her response changed not only her
life, but Anthony's as well. Ashley claimed the photos were for her
dad.

For years now, Ashley said, her father had been sexually abusing her.
Not only that, she claimed, he shared her with his friends. But all
Ashley wanted to do was clamp down, make it through to graduation and
go off to college so she could finally get the hell away from him. She
begged Anthony not to tell. In over his head, not sure what to do and
not wanting to hurt Ashley, Anthony's only response was to avoid her.
He knew she had to tell someone, and he couldn't stand being around
her as long as she enforced his vow of silence.

It was Anthony's distance, not the alleged abuse, that wore Ashley
down.

One day in physics class, Ayan recalls, Ashley burst into tears, and
not the fake kind. Ayan asked her friend what was going on. All Ashley
would say was that Anthony was avoiding her because of a big secret
she wouldn't let him tell. Ayan had to drag it out of her.

"She wrote me a letter because she didn't want to say it to me," Ayan
says, although she didn't keep it. "So she wrote it down. And I looked
at the paper. And then I freaked out."

And then Ashley's story came out. Ayan says Ashley claimed her father
caught her with drugs during her freshmen year, at her old school, and
he blackmailed her into performing oral sex on him. Soon, she said, it
became a regular thing: You want to go hang out with your friends?
Okay, but later tonight you have to give me what I want, Ayan
recounted Ashley telling her.

Ashley told her that she had tried once, and failed, to convince a
police officer that she was being abused. It had allegedly been a
little over a year earlier, when, during an ugly fight among Ashley,
her dad and her stepmom, Ashley said she had slinked away and called
the police. When the cop came, according to Ayan, Ashley told him
about the abuse.

Of course, Ashley had been through psychiatric care by that point.
She'd been using drugs.

"The police thought she was crazy, because of her background," Ayan
recalls Ashley saying. While, according to Ayan's memory of what her
friend said, Ashley's dad was apparently stunned into silence, "Her
stepmom was all like, 'What the hell is your problem? Are you really
this sick?...Just get out of the house if you really want to leave.'"

Ayan adds: "That's basically when she gave up on herself...That's the
only chance she had. And that chance, it blew up on her."

And now, after she had learned to just bury it, seal it off and live
with it, the only guy she ever loved found out about it. Now
everything was ruined.

But somehow, Ayan convinced Ashley to speak up. The girls went to a
trusted teacher's office. The teacher called CPS. Ashley called her
stepmother, who showed up at school, livid. Ashley went home with her;
Billasano spent the next few nights in a hotel. Caseworkers didn't
want him around Ashley while they checked out the complaint.

Ayan agonized for days over her friend's future. What was going to
happen next?

That's when Ashley made a mistake and forgot about a lie she had told
Ayan long before: Her biological mom was coming to get her, Ashley
said.

Ayan and the other two girls in their little group couldn't help but
wonder if Ashley was lying about the abuse as well. They went back and
forth on it. Ultimately, no matter what, Ashley was in pain.

"We just need to support her — I don't care if she's lying or not,"
was Ayan's conclusion.

Ayan only saw Tiffany that once, when she came to school to retrieve
her daughter.

"She seemed like a wonderful lady," Ayan says. Tiffany was in tears.
Ashley seemed happy to see her. Tiffany took Ashley to Rosenberg, and
Ayan never saw her best friend again.
_____________________

Ashley found her new best friend at B.F. Terry High School when,
during math class, the teacher called "Ashley" during attendance and
two girls stood up.

Ashly was instantly intrigued by this new, strikingly pretty girl who
shared her name. The next day, the teacher assigned them both to the
same math work group, and they hit it off.

From that point on, the girls were so inseparable that the whole
"Which Ashley?" thing became annoying. One day, while Ashley was over
at her friend's home, she came up with a nickname for herself:
"Billy."

But then Ashley's new friend, who, as it turned out, was even more
theatrical than Ashley, wanted her own nickname as well. A goth sort
of girl whose favorite holiday was Halloween, Ashly anointed herself
"Bats."

As "Billy and Bats," they shot themselves in silly movies they
uploaded to YouTube. To Ashly's mom Sylvia, Ashley became like a
second daughter. Ashley wasn't a guest in the family home — it was her
home. And Ashley also had her new friend over to her house whenever
she could. It was on one of those occasions, about a month after the
girls met, that Ashley shared her secret.

Ashley had started by saying, "I don't want you to think I'm crazy..."

Ashley's friend recalls her claiming that John Billasano "would
basically rent her out to his friends...he would leave the house
'available,' is how she put it, for her to earn...to go out with her
friends....To do anything. He would use it against her."

Ashley also alleged that her dad would press her for details of these
encounters and claimed that "sometimes, rarely, he would have her
record it."

The girls cried and hugged each other.

"That first day, I told her, 'I'm going to take care of you,'" Ashly
says.

Meanwhile, Ashley was on-again, off-again with Anthony. "Now think
about, like this," Ashly says. "This is the first man you've ever
trusted, ever thought you could love — really love — because all
you've been taught is just sex. You don't know what real love is. You
really love this boy. And he dumps you. To her, that means a lot more
than a regular girl. So it crushed her."

Then, in September 2011, Ashley received probably the worst news she
could have gotten.

As she would explain in her final tweets, a CPS caseworker called and
said there wasn't enough evidence in the case against her father.

That month, Ashley's Facebook friends were greeted with a macabre
update: Ashley posted a YouTube video of a woman describing how to
commit suicide with helium and a plastic bag. Ashley was checking out.

After it didn't work, a very shaken Ashley spent a week at Ashly's
house.

According to Sylvia, Ashley asked Tiffany if she could go to
counseling, like she had years before in Pflugerville.

"Tiffany didn't have insurance — she was waiting for the new insurance
to kick in," Sylvia says. "And I'm sure Tiffany blames herself because
of this, but Billy was asking the whole week before, 'Hey, I want to
get...I want to go to counseling. I need help.'"

Sylvia pauses. "The insurance didn't kick in on time, I guess — [she]
didn't take her."

The next month, October 2011, Ashley mentioned her father on Facebook
for the first time: "Fuck you, fuck you, FUCK YOU John Billasano for
fucking up my life. You can go fuck yourself. God, if anybody doesn't
know that piece of shit, they are blessed. I used to call that jackass
'father.' He can rot in hell for all I care."

That month, she also posted about how she looked forward to her minor
role in Hairspray at school.

"I sell my soul to the stage next week," she wrote. "I wish I could
stay on that stage forever, and I'm really gonna demand that spotlight
on my last line."
_____________________

On November 7, around the time she was tweeting a public suicide note
in which she said she was lonely and that she wished someone would
text her, Ashley was actually texting with Ashly.

"I didn't stay home 'cause I was sick," Ashley texted her friend.
Ashly wasn't surprised. She had had a feeling that something else was
going on.

"OK," she replied between classes. "Expected that. Why did you stay
home?"

"I was sad."

"Why?"

"Just a lot of stuff. I failed." Ashly knew what she meant, that
Ashley's grades over the past six weeks weren't good enough for her to
stay in the Hairspray cast.

"Oh. I see," Ashly texted back.

"Yeah."

"Well, I will miss you."

Ashly didn't get a chance to text again until after her next class:
"Just remember that I love you."

Ashly is still so horrified to think that Ashley was already dead by
the time of that last text that she can barely get out her next words
during an interview with the Press: "I don't know when she actually
did it, or what time, but...I don't think she got to read the last
note, because she never texted me back."

Ashly found out that night, during play practice. She still had her
makeup on when she flew to Ashley's house. Sheriff's deputies were
there, but no ambulance. That's when Ashly knew for sure that her
friend was gone.

She says Tiffany told her later that Ashley had been Skyping with
Anthony the night before.

"I don't know what they said," Ashly says, "but if I would guess, she
tried to get back with him again and he said no...I'm pretty sure
that's what drove her over the edge, along with everything else."

But, Ashly says, Ashley also wanted to prove a point. If there was no
physical evidence, if there were no photographs on Billasano's phone
or computer, if there was no confession, then there could at least be
the evidence of sacrifice.

"She wanted to be heard and she wanted the world to know that she
wasn't lying, and she wasn't playing around," Ashly says.

The secret Ashley claimed to hold onto for so long, finally expressed
through those tweets, connected her to countless girls and women on a
scale that she may have never even imagined. Her Facebook memorial
site is brimming with stories from people around the country who say
that they were abused and that they, too, were afraid to speak up.

Although her Twitter profile was deleted soon after her death, it has
been immortalized on other sites. Ashley's friends and loved ones also
have Facebook pages and the Billy and Bats videos to remember her by.

However, one video, viewed in hindsight, has perhaps taken on an
unintended bleak tone.

In it, Ashley is sitting on her bed, sucking helium from a smiley-face
birthday party balloon while Ashly records her. The room is dark and
Ashley's face is only visible when she tosses her head back to brush
the hair from her eyes. She's trying to get that funny, high-pitched
voice, but the balloon is old, and Ashley says, "I guess the helium
died."

She inhales to the point where the balloon implodes, and then there's
a long section of silence while she blows it back up again. When it's
finally full, she points the smiley-face to the camera and sings, "Put
on a happy face," followed by a loud giggle of absolute delight.

Then her voice drops to nearly a whisper, and her last words before
fade-out are hard to hear.

"Yeah, that's all I wanted to say...'Put on a happy face.'"