by Jen Brady
I couldn’t help busting up laughing at that. Trust Joanna to sit on a cupcake at a school dance. Why didn’t it surprise me? It was too bad they didn’t have a video of that. I was definitely going to tease her about that later this evening. Maybe I could bake her cupcakes.
“We could hear the loud music even in the stairwell, so we danced. Only we made it fun by doing the Macarena and chicken dance to every song and taking turns videoing each other on my phone. That was the day I made my first friend in Concord.” He looked directly into the camera again, his face becoming more serious than I’d ever seen it before. “And it was also the day I fell in love with her.”
A big gulp of soda went down the wrong way. I started hacking as the fizzing burned my windpipe.
What had Laurence said?
I tried to suppress my coughing. I needed to hear this. I turned up the volume on my phone as loud as it would go and struggled to keep the hacking to a minimum.
“I didn’t realize it. I was a shy, twelve-year-old boy at a school dance I didn’t want to be at dancing the Macarena in a back stairwell with a cool girl. But I’m pretty sure that’s the exact moment I started to fall in love with my JoJo. And I’ve been falling in love with her ever since.”
Dang.
I sat down as my heart sank to my stomach.
I’d called it.
They were a thing. From the sounds of it, they always had been. The friend zone had all been an act for the channel, as I’d suspected.
And she’d denied it over and over and over again.
“Today,” Laurence said, and I picked the phone up. “I was ready to take our relationship to the next level, so I asked her to prom. And just like that—” He snapped his fingers. “—my entire life changed.”
I swiped YouTube away and tossed my phone onto my desk.
Stupid! I’d been so stupid. I’d believed her. I’d known they were involved romantically, and I’d believed her when she denied it. And then I’d let myself fall for her.
But why had she lied? What did it matter? Was it because they were building up to this big click-bait reveal? They didn’t want it getting out before they livestreamed it? But even if that were true, she hadn’t needed to kiss me. Why in the world had she done that? And done it so convincingly, too.
My entire body felt like a furnace heating up as I thought about the things I’d said to her, how much I’d trusted her with.
How could I have thought she was falling for me—a too-serious, scruffy, broke guy with a messy room—when she had rich, pretty-boy Laurence wrapped around her little finger the entire time?
She’d sold it well, too. Screenwriter . . . director . . . producer . . . and . . . actress? She thought she was a bad actress? That was another lie. She’d been an amazing actress. The looks she’d given me, her laugh, her touch. It had all felt so genuine, so real. And those kisses the other day in her attic . . .
The livestream was probably continuing by bringing Joanna onto the screen and holding up their JoJo+Teddy=TrueLove4Evah merch. They’d make a killing off it. The fans ’shipped them like crazy already. This was a Like-click bonanza. The views would be off the charts. They’d trend everywhere. It would go viral. I could picture the hashtags: #ToTo4EVAH or #JeddyMakesItOfficial. Merch with their faces and obnoxious little hearts all over it would fly off their shelves. Subscribers would flock. Other YouTubers would make reaction videos to the news.
Well played, JoJo+Teddy, well played.
I’d been right all along; she was a sellout. A sellout in love with Ted Laurence.
And they’d played me along with their other one million subscribers.
25
JOANNA
NO MATTER HOW HARD I tried, I couldn’t concentrate on finishing the video for the channel. Between the craziness that had happened with Ted and daydreaming about kissing Rick, boy issues kept invading my thoughts. See? Guys in high school are total distractions!
It also didn’t help that I’d been getting notification pings on my phone almost constantly for the last ten minutes, even though we hadn’t posted anything new for several days.
Christopher Columbus! The channel.
How was that going to work now? How long would Ted be mad at me? Would we film anyway? Or take a break? If we took a break, I would have to keep the channel going somehow or we’d lose the momentum we’d spent five years building. Bethany would film, I was sure, but what? Just me? I wasn’t as funny without Ted. He got most of the funny ideas.
Would I have to get someone else in on it? Megs maybe? Or Mya if I got really desperate?
But the channel was called JoJo+Teddy=BFF4EVAH. It couldn’t feature JoJo with no +Teddy, could it? This was such a mess!
I thought about texting Rick. He was a good listener. And he wasn’t a big hot-head like both Ted and me. Maybe he had some useful advice. Or maybe he could kiss me until I forgot the mess I was in.
I picked up my phone but then set it down before I even swiped it. Bringing Rick into this would only complicate things further. That was ridiculous, though, wasn’t it? It’s not like I had romantic feelings for Ted that Rick had squashed or stolen. There was nothing between Ted and me to squash or steal. At least, I hadn’t thought there was.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I had no idea what to do.
My phone pinged again. I wished it would stop. I needed to finish my work and upload the video so I could go to Rick’s.
The door slammed. “Joanna!” Megan’s tone was both winded and desperate. Oh, no. What time was it? Was I supposed to pick her up from work?
I rubbed my forehead. It had pretty much gone numb from looking out the window. Can you get frostbite from leaning your head against a frosted window in January too long? Because that’s something I’d totally do.
Footsteps thundered up the stairs, and Megan appeared, her chest heaving as she gasped for air. “Joanna!” she wheezed again. She hadn’t bothered to take off her coat or boots, and her hair was wind-blown and messed up. “You have to—” Huff huff. “—the channel—” She leaned over the banister and sucked in air like she’d run all the way from the Kings’. “Watch it. Video. Ted.”
“Watch what video? We didn’t post anything, and we might not for a long time. Oh, Megs, you’ll never believe what happened.”
“Prom, but you . . .”—more huffing—“said no.”
“How do you know that?”
She straightened up and staggered to me, grabbing my water bottle off the edge of my desk and sucking its contents down.
“Megs, did you run here all the way from the Kings’?”
“Yeah.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket, swiped it, and shoved it in my face. “Watch.”
An image of Ted was paused. From the timeline running along the bottom, it looked as if Megs had watched seven of the twelve minutes. I pressed play.
“. . . she says I should take someone girly who likes dressing up and doing her hair,” he was saying, looking forlornly into the camera.
“Is this on our channel?” I asked, Megan’s panic finally catching up to me.
She nodded, still panting. “Yeah. He went live.”
I looked back at the screen in horror, and I swear, those deep, dark eyes looked right into my soul. They had this brooding, tortured look that was even more chilling than the stare he’d given me right before he left the attic. “But I don’t want to take someone girly,” he went on. “I want to take Joanna. She’s the only girl I’ve ever been in love with, and the only one I ever will love.”
I gasped. “No. Oh, no, no, no, no.”
“Oh, yes,” Megan said. “He went on for at least ten minutes. I only saw the first seven and then I told Mrs. King there was a family emergency and I had to go home. Totally almost wiped out on the corner of Grant and Orchard, I was running so fast.”
Ted was going on and on about how I’d broken his heart. My phone kept pinging from my desk. I was too afraid to read the notifications. I hit pause and thrust the phone back
at Megan.
“I can’t watch this.”
My phone pinged three times in a row.
“Who’s messaging you so much?” Megan asked.
“No one. They’re notifications, probably to the video.”
“Oh,” she said, her eyes going big. She turned the phone in her hand and started scrolling, mercifully leaving it paused so I didn’t have to endure more of Ted’s heartbroken rant.
My knees felt weak and wobbly as my head spun. I sat down on the couch, dazed. The aroma of the now-cold pizza made my stomach churn. The last two apples I’d eaten that day felt three seconds away from making a reappearance.
Megan gasped.
I groaned. “What’d he say now?” The volume was still off, so she must have turned the captions on or something.
“Not Ted. The comments.”
I watched as her eyes widened, eyebrows raised, and pink lips kept making little Os of shock. Her eyes got even wider as they snapped up to meet mine. “You have to delete it.”
I leaned forward to grab my phone from my desk. “What are people saying?”
Lightning fast, she reached over and snatched the phone out of my hand. “Don’t read them. Just delete the video, and they’ll go away, too.”
With an order like that, the only thing I now wanted to do was read the comments. I yanked the phone back, pulled up YouTube, and clicked on our channel. I tapped the thumbnail, and Ted’s angst-filled face filled my screen.
“It’s been an . . . interesting day,” he began in this groggy, sore-sounding voice.
I only half-listened as he went on about how he needed to share something important with the viewers. I scrolled and scrolled past recommended videos until I got to the comments as Ted launched into the story of when he first moved in next door when we were in middle school. The blur of thumbnails turned to text, and I stopped scrolling.
There were already seventy-two comments.
Aww. I’m so sorry, Ted. (*sad face emoji*)
Ted, we love you!!! <3 <3 <3
What an awful girl! She doesn’t know what she’s missing.
Shes crazy to turn you down!
Super crazy!!! Like the queen of crazy!
“Queen of crazy” ROFL.
I can’t believe she doesn’t want to date you. I’ll date you. Is it ok if I PM you my number?
Who does she think will date her? She’s not all that.
Right? And Ted’s hot hot hot!
And sooooooooooo cool.
And hot!!!!! <3 *swoon*
What a witch! How can you say no to that face?
This sucks. I’m unsubscribing. I’ve been waiting for years for those two to get together.
Me 2. I can’t believe she said no! What a loser.
It’s not like a bunch of guys would want to date her. She’s not even pretty.
Hey Joanna why do u not want to date Ted? That maks me sad.
This is so sad. :( :( :(
I turned the phone around. “Megs.” I hated how small and pitiful my voice sounded.
“I told you not to look at the comments!”
“Well, what do you think someone’s going to do when you tell them not to look?”
“Just delete it.”
I rushed to the computer and pulled up YouTube. I was already logged in, so it didn’t take long to locate the file on our dashboard and click on “delete forever.” Some of the panic subsided as it disappeared from the dashboard, the squeezing around my chest easing a little.
“There. It’s gone. I think.”
I refreshed the page and breathed a sigh of relief. It was gone. And it had only gotten 3K views. It could have been much worse.
“Thanks, Megs.”
“No problem.” She hugged me. “That’s what sisters are for.”
“No, I mean thank you. You have no idea what that could have done. Our channel would have imploded if I hadn’t been able to get rid of that video so quickly.”
Megan sat back against the couch cushion, and I lay down and curled up with my head in her lap.
I could relax now. It was over. Ted and I had some major making up to do, but at least his tantrum was off our channel so we could work it out in private.
I needed to call Rick. He would know what to do, and I had to tell him before he heard about what happened from someone else. He would love the story of my refusing Ted going viral for a few minutes . . . probably a little too much. At least he wouldn’t waste his time watching our channel full of drivel, so he couldn’t have been one of the three thousand views it had gotten before I pulled the plug. I had time to calm down before I figured out what I wanted to say and called him. Maybe I’d go over to talk about it in person. I’d told him I wanted to hang out later anyway. I could go for one of Rick’s amazing hugs right now. That and his sensible, steady way of figuring things out. And a few kisses wouldn’t hurt, either.
I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. Megan’s rosy perfume filled my senses and helped relax the knot in my stomach and the tension in my head. It was going to be okay.
It was all going to be okay.
Footsteps pounded up the stairs.
“You guys!” Mya’s shriek shattered the calm I’d managed to restore.
I jerked to a sitting position. “Go away! I’ve had an awful day, and I don’t want you up here!”
She stuck out her lower lip in a pout. “But I have to tell you something.”
I lay back and put my arms over my face. “Go away, Mya.”
“But Ted posted a video, and—”
“I know. I already took it down.” My anger was rapidly turning into tears, and I didn’t want Mya around when they finally came. Megan could see me cry; she had several times over the course of my life. But not Mya. Anybody but Mya. “Please, just go away.”
Of course, she couldn’t for once in her life listen and do what I asked.
“What do you mean you took it down?” Her voice was coming closer, which was the opposite of what I wanted to happen.
“I mean I took it down. I deleted it. The whole awful, embarrassing thing is gone.”
“No, it’s not.”
My heart stopped, then thudded hard in my chest. I willed it to calm down because she had to be wrong. Brainless Mya didn’t have a clue as to how YouTube worked. I’d deleted it, which meant it was gone. It was a livestream, so it’s not like Ted had it saved on his phone and could keep posting it over and over. He’d have to record the entire thing again if he wanted to repost, which I was almost positive he wouldn’t do. Ted was passionate and impulsive but not a glutton for punishment. As soon as he calmed down even the tiniest bit, he’d realize it was bad for our channel to have it out there in such a brazen way. The video would stay deleted forever.
I inhaled and focused on the scent of Megan’s calming perfume.
“See,” Mya insisted as Ted’s voice sounded. The volume was low, but it was definitely Ted, and I caught a few phrases of the speech I’d deleted.
I sat up, rage starting to overtake the mortification.
“Did you download it?”
It would be the ultimate betrayal. Worse than anything she’d ever done to me before, worse even than throwing my flash drive in the river. Had Mya loved my public humiliation so much she’d downloaded it to her phone to torture me with?
“No!” she exclaimed. “I don’t even know how to download YouTube videos.”
“Then how are you watching it?”
“Look.”
She handed me her phone. Sure enough, there was Ted’s face, the same morose expression plastered across the screen as he told the world our private business.
“But, how?”
I scanned the info below the video frantically. It was called “Reaction to Shocking JoJo+Teddy Breakup” by InsideYouTubeWithCarly. Carly’s face was inset into the corner of the video, and she put on the full gambit of overdone expressions from shock to intrigue to disgust as Ted talked. Once, Ted’s image froze, and Carly sa
id, “Oh. My. Gosh. I can’t even believe what I’m seeing right now.”
We’d made one of the biggest YouTuber gossip channels.
I sank back onto the couch and buried my face in my hands, barely registering Megan’s arms surrounding me, squeezing my shoulders, attempting to comfort me.
This was bad. This was so bad. It meant the post would never die. It was out there for good, and, even worse, it was out of my control.
I stood up and hurried to the stairs.
“Where are you going?” Megan called, sounding worried.
Mya leaned over the banister. “Don’t kill Ted!” she shouted after me as I ran down the stairs.
She probably thought I was going to run across our yards, break down his door, and punch him in the face. And while the thought had crossed my mind, I needed something different in that moment.
Only one person could make this even the slightest fraction better. One person would understand. One person would take my side over Ted’s and believe that I wasn’t a complete moron for refusing him.
One person would take me into his arms and kiss me and make it all go away for a few minutes at least.
26
RICK
I SAT IN FRONT OF MY blank computer screen, numb. She’d played me. And I’d let her.
I’m not sure how long I sat there taking it all in before the doorbell rang. Nobody else was home so I considered ignoring it, but a few moments later, it rang twice in quick succession, making me worry it was Cristina or another neighbor needing something.
I got up and went downstairs to open the door.
Joanna stood on my front porch, her hair flowing in pretty waves on either side of her face. I hated that a part of me still felt the urge to run my fingers through it and draw her close, even knowing I’d been nothing to her but a ticket to subscribers.
She launched herself at me. My arms went around her waist out of reflex as hers encircled my neck and squeezed me, her entire body pressing tightly against mine. My face ended up buried in her hair, which was the last place I wanted it because the combination of her light, faintly rose scent and the silky strands that brushed against my cheek softened my will to push her away—and push her away was exactly what I needed to do.
