by Jen Brady
He raised his eyebrows. “There’s drama to JoJo Plus Teddy?”
What did he mean by drama? Was it his subtle way of asking if Ted and I were dating? Why was the entire world obsessed with ’shipping us? We were never going to be in a romantic relationship, no matter how much our viewers wanted it to happen. Or was he back to being his usual condescending self and implying there was no substance to our channel? Like there was no way our funny videos could even come close to resembling real drama?
I hated that I cared what he thought so much. But I did.
“Well, I mean, not really drama. But we’re not always goofy and relaxed.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“We’re not,” I insisted. “Almost every decision about what we even film is a business decision. We fight all the time.”
“Ooh . . . trouble in paradise?”
I slugged him in the shoulder. “No, you doof. There is no paradise. Just a best friend who’s as stubborn and opinionated as I am. It doesn’t always work.”
“So it’s not the non-stop party you guys make it out to be?”
That sounded like I was throwing Ted under the bus, which I would never do, no matter how quickly he was to forgive Mya for her most heinous acts.
“I mean we have fun. He’s my best friend in the entire world. But there’s a reason we’re such good friends. We’re each like half of one complete person. Which means we see the world exactly the same but completely different, at the same time. There’s no balance. Hence the constant arguing.”
“What’s the last major disagreement you guys had?”
He looked skeptical, like he didn’t believe a word that was coming out of my mouth. I couldn’t blame him. Ted and I had done a pretty good job of showing the fun, playful side of our friendship while editing out any behind the scenes frustrations. After all, if the world had gotten to experience The Witch’s Curse, it would have seen the fair Lady Zara pining for her love and fainting like a delicate princess, not my sister seizing like a dying Chihuahua.
The last major disagreement Ted and I had had?
“That’s easy. Our latest big fight was about me working with you.” And him playing Mya’s chauffeur. But that felt too personal to tell Rick about.
Rick grinned and leaned in so close I caught a whiff of his cologne. It was earthy but with a hint of spice. Sandalwood and cinnamon, maybe? Whatever it was, I liked it, but it piled another layer onto the mystery that was Rick. Someone who looked like such a mess half the time shouldn’t smell so good.
“Let me guess,” Rick said, waggling his eyebrows. “He didn’t like you spending so much time with a college guy?”
I shook my head. “The opposite. He pushed me to do it. He knows I need—” I stopped just in time. I needed Rick to keep believing he needed me (and my camera) more than I needed him. If he knew how much power he had in this whole partnership, he’d be even more insufferable.
The grin slipped off his face. He slapped his legs with both palms. “I guess we should get this over with then, huh?”
He popped to his feet, then reached down for my hand to help me up. Part of me wished he’d lace our fingers together instead of just grabbing my hand to haul me to a standing position. What was it about his touch that made me so jittery but content at the same time?
I tapped my feet on the step. Why did he have to bring up that he was in college? He probably thought I was just this immature high school girl he had to put up with, and I was proving it by getting way too carried away by a hand-holding moment that meant nothing.
Way too quickly, he pulled away and started up the stairs, like touching my hand hadn’t affected him. He was just being nice, gentlemanly even, like he had when he’d carried his neighbor’s bags for her.
A wall had gone up between us. It shouldn’t have hurt so much how quickly he shut down the flirty teasing. I mean, I didn’t care, did I? He was going back to college in a couple of weeks. I didn’t even want a boyfriend anyway, especially not one who thought so poorly of the channel I’d spent so much time creating.
Wait—boyfriend? Get a grip, Joanna!
The B-word didn’t have any business as even a fleeting thought in my brain.
This was just Angry Scruffy Bench Guy—a (boring) fellow YouTuber I’d been forced into working with to salvage some sort of exposure from the Lights, Camera, Vance! competition.
My heart definitely shouldn’t have been skipping beats when we held hands long enough for him to help me to my feet. It wasn’t even technically holding hands.
This was all Mya’s fault. If she hadn’t ruined our movie, Ted and I would be happily finishing our application and getting ready to push “submit” on the official Lights, Camera, Vance! entry site. Instead, I was trying to make sense of my confusing feelings.
Christopher Columbus—Christmas break wouldn’t be Christmas break without Mya making my life a total mess.
16
RICK
IT WAS OFFICIAL: I was a complete idiot.
I’d thought she was flirting with me. The Joanna March. Because when a smart, fiery girl like her spends every waking moment with the rich, cool, charismatic pretty-boy all their fans drool over, she naturally finds herself attracted to some no-Gold-Play-Button-winning, boring college guy who has to beg her to loan him her camera because he can’t afford to buy his own.
Laurence found me so non-threatening he’d practically forced her to hang out with me to get their names on my entry.
I don’t know why I cared. She did have beautiful hair I spent most of our working hours forcing myself not to run my fingers through, but she was also the producer of complete drivel, and that was definitely not something I’d ever find attractive.
Except she wasn’t the producer of complete drivel. At least not really. JoJo Plus Teddy from YouTube might be silly and not worthy of hitting the “subscribe” button, but they were characters. Or if not characters exactly, just one small part of who Joanna and Laurence were IRL (in real life).
I unfolded the chair I’d brought up earlier and set it in front of my desk, next to my rolling chair. I considered offering Joanna my chair. It was way more comfortable than the metal folding chair, so swapping with her was the polite thing to do. But it was my entry we were working on, and I was the boss. Giving up the captain’s chair might imply giving up more control than I was willing to.
Just as I decided it would be a jerk move to make her sit on the folding chair, she solved the problem by flopping into it. Because why would she even care about power plays? This wasn’t her film. Despite the great ideas she’d shared last weekend, she wasn’t into it. She wouldn’t fight me for control over a project she thought greatly inferior to her own lost entry.
I tried not to feel guilty about the cushy seat I sank into and rolled closer to my computer. That also rolled me closer to Joanna, and her hair brushed my arm when she leaned forward.
I’d thought about taking my flannel off when I was babysitting for Luz earlier. Being the horse and enduring a four-year-old’s heavy metal dance party made for sweaty mornings. But then Joanna had arrived, and I was afraid the very activities that had made me want to shed my outer-most layer may also have left pit stains on my T-shirt, and I didn’t want to share that with her. She smelled like flowery perfume, which was just one more thing that surprised me about her.
It’s a good thing I hadn’t ditched the flannel; her wavy hair brushing my bare skin would have been way more distracting than it already was through a layer of flannel.
I wiggled my mouse to wake the computer up and keyed in the password to my screensaver.
“Hey!” Joanna exclaimed when the login popped up. “Your full name’s Frederick?”
“Yeah.” This was not the shocker she was making it out to be. “What did you think it was?”
“I don’t know. Richard or something? I guess I hadn’t thought about it. Fredrick’s kind of different.”
“My dad’s German,” I explained.
“Well, yeah, but I mean my dad’s actually from Germany. My grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins live there.”
“No way!”
I nodded and went back to pulling up my files.
“What’s it like? Have you been to Neuschwanstein Castle? I want to go there so bad!” She’d all of a sudden gone all fan-girl, talking a mile a minute. “And Mount Zugspitze! Is it as beautiful as it is in pictures? I bet it is, but Neuschwanstein Castle has to be the prettiest place on Earth.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
She looked at me like I was the biggest idiot she’d ever met. “It’s the Disney castle.”
“I’ve been to the one in Orlando.”
“No, not the fake one. The real Disney castle. The one it’s based on, anyway.”
“Oh, no, I haven’t been there.” Her dreamy look fell, like I’d disappointed her by being a German guy who wasn’t up on his German tourist traps. “But I’ve also been to Amsterdam and Brussels.”
“Really? That’s so awesome. Why does everyone get to go to Europe except me?”
“I haven’t been there since I was fourteen. And it was just to visit my grandparents. They had their fiftieth anniversary that December, so we went for a combo of that and Christmas.”
“Next time you go, you have to go to Neuschwanstein Castle. Ted’s been there, and he said it’s on this big mountain and they have bus rides and castle tours and it’s awesome.”
She sighed dreamily and sat back in the folding chair. Yet another side of her I hadn’t experienced.
“I don’t know when we’ll go again. My dad doesn’t own a harbor on Marina Bay. He’s a college professor. It’s not like we can afford to go to Europe just for the heck of it.”
“How’d you know Ted’s grandpa owns Sleepy Haven Harbor?” She gave me a suspicious sideways glance. “Have you been Facebook stalking us?”
I rolled my eyes. “No, I haven’t been Facebook stalking you. Everyone knows James Laurence owns Sleepy Haven Harbor.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed, like she wanted me to be Facebook stalking her, which made me wonder if she’d been Facebook stalking me.
“Speaking of James Laurence, if you want to see Disney castles in Europe so badly, why don’t you get your BFF and his grandpa to take you with them on their next trip?”
“Ted doesn’t go to Europe with his grandpa. He used to go with Fiona every summer, but then—”
She clamped her lips shut. Hmm. Whoever Fiona was, she’d never appeared on the channel, at least not any episode I’d seen. It appeared Joanna had let her guard down with me and had almost gotten a little too personal.
“Fiona?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light and not let on how intrigued I was.
She leaned sideways, putting some space between us. “I shouldn’t have said anything about Fiona. Even Ted rarely talks about her. Should we get to the video?” She checked her phone. “I want to get home in time to watch Great British Bake Off with Bethany.”
I groaned. I probably shouldn’t have, judging by the way she stiffened, but she wasn’t the only one who had let her guard down.
“What? Don’t tell me cooking shows fall under the drivel category, too.”
“Not cooking shows per se,” I said, trying to express my next thought carefully. We’d negotiated a sort of truce lately, and I wanted it to last longer than one day.
“But what?” she pressed, and I felt the wall going up between us again. “British shows?”
“I’m not into reality shows in general,” I admitted.
“Of course,” she muttered.
“It’s not that they’re bad. Or . . . drivel.” I snuck a peek at her to see if she’d found my joke funny. Judging by her pursed lips, she didn’t. “Not all of them anyway. Amazing Race is cool.”
A spark of warmth pierced through her cool, gray eyes. “I love The Amazing Race! All those exotic places. I want to go to all of them someday.”
I nodded. “But the problem with reality shows is that when I watch TV, I want to watch something someone created from their imagination. Quirky characters. Unexpected plot twists. Magical settings. Reality shows are . . . just . . . reality.”
“Some of them are scripted,” she said. “I’m sure of it.”
“I know. But I guess reality TV takes the fun out of watching a story.”
“They have the backstories and all. Sometimes too much backstory. Just get to the cake fail or ingredient challenge already.”
“Yeah, but there’s just something about fiction, you know?” It was hard to explain. “Especially the characters. You can have a movie with a sub-par plot, but if the characters are fun, it can save the story.”
She nodded slowly. “I know what you mean. Sometimes I struggle with characters. My plots are strong, but characters? It’s hard to know exactly how someone would respond to certain events, even if you created that someone.”
I stood and crossed the room to my bookshelf. I’d mostly streamed movies for the past couple of years, but I did still have one shelf of my favorite DVDs. I scanned the titles and pulled one out, then another. I turned and walked back to Joanna, handing the DVDs to her as I sat down.
She took them from me, her brow furrowing as she read the title of the top one. She looked up at me, her eyebrows still knit together, but one side of her mouth turned up in a hesitant smile.
“Are you trying to tell me something?”
“What?”
“I know we butt heads, but this is a little extreme.”
I had no idea what she’d find offensive about a comedy. Then I took in the title she held up: 10 Things I Hate About You.
I held my hands up. “No. No, that’s not what—”
She checked out the cover again and raised her eyebrows. “Only ten things, huh? I’m sure I could come up with more about you.”
“Sorry. I should have prefaced with an explanation. I don’t—”
“Rick.” She shoved my arm to get me to stop. Her smile was full and beautiful. It also looked like she was holding back laughter. “I’m joking. I realize it’s just the title of the movie.”
“Oh, good.” Why was I so flustered? She could be so intimidating. “Because—”
“Sheesh, you really are trying to tell me something.” She held up the second title, She’s the Man. “I’m not going to lie. Sometimes I wish I were a guy. Way less drama. And it’s so much easier to be a guy in this industry than a girl.”
“What do you mean?”
“A lot of people still think of female directors as bossy or micromanagers. That’s why my cast is usually my best friend and my sisters.”
“They already know you’re bossy.” I couldn’t resist the dig.
“Ha ha,” she said, but then she smiled to show she realized the quip was all in fun. “But seriously, I know I’m going to have to fight harder and in a different way than a male filmmaker would.”
“That sucks,” I said, because it did. “I’ve never thought about it.”
“That’s because you’re a white, middle class male.”
Her statement could have been fighting words, but her tone and facial expression made me confident she was just stating a fact.
“So these movies . . .” She held one up in each hand. “Good characters? Was that your point?”
“Yeah, great characters. Shakespeare was a master at character development.”
“Shakespeare?”
I couldn’t blame her for being confused by the covers of pretty teenagers wearing modern-day clothes (well, late ’90s/early 2000s clothes).
“They’re both based on Shakespearean works,” I explained. “10 Things is The Taming of the Shrew and She’s the Man is Twelfth Night.”
“Oh, awesome.” She looked more excited about the movies now. “We did Twelfth Night in English last semester. Loved it.” She flipped it over to read the synopsis. “How did I not know this was a
thing?”
“Anyway, watch them and let me know what you think.”
“Okay, cool. Thanks.”
I wiggled my mouse to turn the computer back on again, since it had gone to sleep while we’d been debating characters and television genres.
“I have a question.”
I turned to her. “What?”
She bit her bottom lip, which was very distracting because it made me wonder what that bottom lip would feel like if I ran my thumb over it and, worse, what her lips would feel like pressed against mine.
“Um . . . I don’t mean this as an insult.” Man, that wasn’t a good start, and it snapped me out of fantasizing about her lips. I braced myself for a good, old-fashioned Joanna March blunt accusation. “But I don’t get it. You don’t like reality shows and think fiction makes way better movies and TV. But you film documentaries and news features.”
I sat back. She’d stumped me. I’d never thought about it, and nobody else in my life had ever brought it up.
“I guess,” I said slowly, pondering it for the first time, “the things I like creating myself are different from the things I enjoy watching for entertainment.”
She studied me for a minute. Her scrutiny went on for so long that I fidgeted under her examination.
“Christopher Columbus,” she said in an impressed-sounding tone. Then she stared at me harder, squinting one eye a little, as if she were really studying me.
“Uh, Amerigo Vespucci?” I responded.
“What?”
“I thought we were naming random explorers.”
She let out a laugh. “It’s an expression, you dork.”
“What did I do to get ‘Christopher Columbus’ed?”
“Nothing. You’re a complex guy, Rick Bhaer. Much more interesting than I thought you’d be.”
And there was classic blurt-out-whatever’s-on-her-mind Joanna March from her channel. I guess not everything about her online presence was an act.
“Are you calling me weird?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. But weird people are my jam anyway. Normal people are lame.”
