Fortunately for her, though, this is the last drama she'll ever have to go through.

For you see, the last bit of turmoil in the short, not-always-happy life of Nicole involves getting her buried.

There is no money for a funeral or a plot at Raleigh Memorial Park beside her mother and grandmother.

Few 21-year-olds are concerned with burial insurance. Even fewer think they're going to be gunned down in a drive-by shooting -- at least that's what Raleigh police think happened June 11. Fewer still have to grow up as quickly as Ryan Nicole did, her aunt Jerelena Kent said.

"Nicole was a sweet, innocent child, but she had to become an adult too fast, and her problems weighed her down," Kent said.

Those problems, Kent said, led her niece to adopt a favorite saying. "With all of the things she was having to go through," Kent said, "she would say 'No more drama. I'm tired of the drama.' "

That drama, Kent and others who knew Nicole said, involved her mother -- who died two years ago -- and being a struggling single mother herself.

For instance, Nicole was evicted from her apartment on Thanksgiving Day, as she cooked a holiday meal for her son.

Now, landlords aren't renowned for their softheartedness, and they understandably have to have their money, but is it ever really necessary, Ebenezer, to evict someone on Thanksgiving Day?

Wouldn't the next day have been just as good? Or bad?

Kent said Nicole had once worked at a Western Boulevard pizzeria but wasn't working when she was shot three times.

"She had no financial support coming in," Kent said. "She wasn't out in the street prostituting herself or anything like that.

"She was making good choices, and she was making bad choices. The day after she got killed she was supposed to go to The Healing Place to get herself together, until someone took that choice away from her," Kent said.

Police still don't know who took it from her. No arrests have been made.

Kent had planned to keep Nicole's 6-year-old son, Christian, while his mother was at the rescue and rehabilitation facility. Now she'll keep him permanently.

And how is he after finding out that his mother was killed?

"He has his moments," she said. "I told him. He cried for a moment. He's OK."

Don't bet on it. Anyone who has ever lost a mother knows you're never OK. It's especially hard to imagine ever being OK if you lost her in such a tragic way while so young.

Believe this: The tears on Christian's face may have lasted for only a moment, but the ones in his heart will last forever, even after his smooth, unlined cheeks have turned weathered and lined with age.

Bruce Lightner of Lightner Funeral Home is donating his services, but he said he needs contributions for a casket and cemetery space.

If you want to help put a final end to the drama -- at least until police find her killer -- of someone whose young life had way too much of it, send a donation to the Nicole Bryant Burial Fund, c/o the State Employees Credit Union, 1010 New Bern Ave., Raleigh, NC 27601.