by Jen Brady
Our kisses from yesterday surged through my mind, followed by Laurence’s tell-all declaration, and I got ahold of myself enough to disentangle my limbs from hers. She clung to me, like she wasn’t ready to break apart, but I powered through and stepped back, placing my hands on her upper arms and gently pushing us apart.
Her eyes were filled with pain and worry.
She reached her hand out to cup my cheek, then leaned in and rose to press her lips to mine briefly.
I would have turned away or jumped back to avoid the contact, but kissing me was the last thing I thought she’d do, so I was unprepared for the shock of her warm lips brushing against mine. When she pulled away, she took all the warmth with her, and I shivered as the surprise of her being there wore off and the cold of standing outside in bare feet set in.
“I have to tell you something.” It was hesitant.
“Don’t bother.” I stepped back. “I know.”
“Then you saw it?”
I nodded. “Yep.”
The tension in her face relaxed as she let out a relieved sigh. A sharp pain shot through my left ear, and I realized how hard I’d clenched my jaw. The relieved look on her face irked me. She must think that since I’d seen Laurence’s we’ve-been-in-love-since-a-sixth-grade-dance confession, she didn’t have to pony up and tell me herself.
Yeah, I wasn’t going to let her get away with that. She also wasn’t getting contributor credits on my film. I had enough footage to make do without her camera. She didn’t get to mess with me and then benefit from her lies.
I felt my face contort into an angry smirk. “Well done, except you leaked it a little too soon.”
Her eyes went wide and innocent. “What do you mean?”
“If you’d waited another couple of days, you’d have your name and channel info on my entry. Instead, you get squat from me.”
She reached for my hand, but I shook her off of me and stepped backwards into my house, shutting the door enough so she couldn’t get in. Hurt and confusion crossed her face. Had she seriously thought I’d go along with our Lights, Camera, Vance! agreement after playing me that way?
“Rick . . . .”
“What?” I snapped. “You have an explanation for the games you’ve been playing the last few days?”
“Games?”
“That little click-bait, merch-hawking stunt you just livestreamed was awesome.” I lifted my hands to give her a few sarcastic slow-claps. “Well played.”
Her mouth dropped open and she shook her head back and forth. Evidently, she hadn’t thought I was smart enough to figure it out. I didn’t want to hear whatever half-truth she was frantically scrambling for now that I’d busted her.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You’re a sellout with a stupid channel, and we’re done.”
“But I thought you’d—”
“I don’t need you or your camera anymore. See ya, Joanna.”
I shut the door on her protests and lies.
27
JOANNA
THE DOOR SLAMMING FELT so final.
I didn’t even know what had happened. I’d gone to him for solace, for understanding and support.
And he’d stood in front of me, alternating between looking hurt and cynical and told me we were done.
He hadn’t even reacted to the kiss. He had to know how mortified I was, how it hurt far more than just my pride, how much our channel, and everything I’d worked for, would flounder because of Ted’s stupid video.
But he’d seemed more concerned with making sure I knew he didn’t need my help any more than being a shoulder to cry on.
Rick wasn’t who I thought he was. Or maybe he was exactly who I’d first thought he was: a self-centered YouTube snob who thought he was better than me because he made serious videos and I lowered myself to producing silly drivel the masses wanted.
He wasn’t my friend, and he didn’t have romantic feelings for me, either. He was an angry, scruffy guy sitting on a bench in the middle of the mall who thought the shots he wanted trumped everyone else’s.
And now that his entry was a few clicks away from being finished, he didn’t want anything to do with me.
How could I have let myself fall for him? I’d gotten to the second semester of my junior year without once considering dating someone, and I’d thrown my focus away over some college guy who didn’t even think the work I poured my heart and soul into was worth anything.
He thought our channel was nonsense and a waste of time, nothing but a game to get views and make money, and Ted’s livestream had just proven it.
Why had he kissed me? Why say all those sweet things to me? Was it a game to see how stupid I was? How high-school-naïve I was?
When I got home, things hadn’t gotten any better. The livestream had been up for fifteen minutes max, but in those fifteen minutes, viewers had managed to save it so it could be reuploaded. You’re not supposed to download YouTube videos (it says so right in the user agreement), but lots of people do anyway, and they’d had a field day with this one.
I couldn’t stop myself from scrolling through all the social media feeds as links to the train wreck popped up all over Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. #jojoteddybreakup was trending, as was #jojo-teddy=:( and probably others I didn’t know about.
The worst were the people, like Carly, capitalizing on it by posting their own reaction videos. They’d let Ted’s video play and then pause it at certain horrifying points to add their inane commentary, even though they didn’t know us or have a lick of inside info.
Of course, people started bashing me again in the comments of the reaction videos. Everybody seemed to agree I was a crazy person (or a witch or a witch that starts with a different letter) for turning Ted down.
Megs and Bethany were monitoring the situation from the attic, rapid-fire replying to comments, sending take-down notices, and making copyright claims. I tried to tell them to forget it, but they kept at it. They didn’t understand how viral posts worked, that they were fighting a losing battle.
I hid out in my room, scrolling and scrolling, like my life was a car accident I couldn’t avert my eyes from.
A knock sounded at my door.
“Go away!” I pleaded. I couldn’t deal with Mya at the moment.
Instead of walking away like a normal person, she cracked the door open.
“I said, go away!” I shouted, flinging the stuffed penguin Ted and I had won at the fair last year at the door. Ugh. Why did everything in my life have to be part Ted’s?
The door closed, then opened wider to reveal Mom’s face, not Mya’s. She bravely stepped into the middle of my outburst and picked up the poor penguin before approaching my bed. She was still wearing her pink scrubs and had her hair pulled back into a bun.
“Sorry,” I said, scooting over so she could sit down. “I thought you were Mya. What are you doing home?”
“Megs called me.”
And she’d come home in the middle of her shift, which meant Megan had also told Mom the whole story. Guilt crushed down on top of everything else. Ducking out of work early to check on me would be reflected in her paycheck. I wasn’t some helpless patient who needed her. I could handle this, just like I always handled every crisis that hit us.
She handed me the penguin, and I played with its tag while gathering my thoughts. Ted and I had stood at the ring toss tent for almost an hour in ninety-degree weather, throwing ring after ring to win him. At first, I’d just sort of wanted the penguin, but after several unsuccessful tries, our mutual competitiveness had kicked in, and there was no way we were leaving the fair without that thing.
“I can’t date Ted, Mom.”
“I know.”
Her understanding what everyone else didn’t was all it took. My heart started pouring out of my mouth in words.
“We’d kill each other.”
“I know.”
“We’re both stubborn and loud and annoying and . . . .”
“Sweetheart, yo
u don’t have to convince me.” She reached out and covered my hand with hers. “I’ve been dreading this day for a while now.”
I fixed her with a look. “You’ve been dreading the day Ted would go live on YouTube and declare some crazy, out-of-the-blue feelings and ruin everything?” I couldn’t keep the sarcasm from overflowing.
She gave my hand a squeeze. “They’re not so out-of-the-blue, sweetie. He’s always adored you.”
Always? Not possible. Ted and I had always been just friends. No, not just friends. Best friends. He’d been the sibling I’d always wanted—the one who wasn’t obsessed with girly things like clothes and makeup . . . who had the guts to do silly things on camera with me instead of hiding behind it . . . who never once mouth-breathed on me while invading my personal space . . . who understood the importance of besting rigged carnival games no matter how many rings it took.
He’d been everything my sisters couldn’t be. My partner in crime, my second half. But always as a brother.
He wasn’t supposed to adore me. He was supposed to fight with me and be there for me and share funny childhood stories with me.
“James always hoped you’d eventually fall for Ted, too,” Mom said, adding to this bizarre revelation. That might have been the weirdest part about it . . . getting ’shipped by someone’s grandpa. Mom shook her head, frowning. “But I knew you wouldn’t.”
Why hadn’t I seen it before? Who shells out for the twenty-six rounds of rings it takes to win a derpy stuffed penguin and stands in the sun throwing said rings so long he gets sunburn on the back of his neck for a girl he thinks of like a sister?
It was so painfully obvious now. Even Ted’s grandpa had seen it.
And what if I had eventually fallen for him? All of a sudden, a different future clicked into place. Maybe I needed to take one for the team. Team March needed a boost, and that boost had been delivered to me as a prom-posal on a pepperoni pizza.
I loved Ted, just not that way. He was the only guy who had ever “adored” me and probably the only one who ever would. He was my one chance. The only other guy who had ever said I was pretty or flirted with me was Rick, and that had been because he needed my camera.
And we were talking about Ted, who was basically my favorite person in the universe, besides maybe Bethany.
“It would solve so many problems.”
Mom leaned forward and narrowed her eyebrows. “What would?”
I swallowed. “Being part owner of the marina someday.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, goodness, Joanna.”
“No, wait. Think about it. I wouldn’t have to worry about tuition. You wouldn’t have to work. Megs could buy that purple Prada purse she’s wanted for forever instead of digging through the dollar store bargain bin. Mya could go to art camp not on partial scholarship. Bethany could . . . I don’t even know what Bethany would do. And—”
“And you’d be miserable. And so would Ted eventually.”
“But someone has to save us.”
She straightened, and her sympathetic eyes hardened. “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
It was incredibly hard not to blow up at her. If I hadn’t spent the last several weeks practicing temper-control by fighting the instinct to pummel Mya into the ground, I wouldn’t have been able to keep a lid on the anger that flared in that moment. I’d just offered to sacrifice by putting in motion something that would eventually make life easier for all of us, and she was looking at me the same way I looked at Megan last week when Megs took an online quiz called “Which Boy Band Member is Your Soulmate?”
“First of all, this family doesn’t need saving. We’re doing quite fine, thank you very much. Second . . .” Her face softened. “When you bring us fame and fortune someday, it’ll be because you crush the box office charts with a blockbuster hit, not because you take advantage of some poor, love-sick boy’s heart and your own. I’d expect this line of thinking from Megs or Mya, but not you.”
That’s how low I’d sunk. My mom had just compared me to Megan and Mya.
“But the contest—”
My door opened again. Thankfully, it was Bethany this time.
“There will be other contests,” Mom said.
“I’m ready,” Bethany announced. She glanced back and forth between Mom and me, smoothing down the wisps of hair that had escaped her side braid.
Mom nodded. “Good.”
Bethany and Mom exchanged conspiratorial looks.
“Ready for what?”
Mom leaned over and pulled a duffle bag out from under my bed.
“Pack.” The bag thunked onto my lap, smushing the penguin.
“What?”
“Pack,” Bethany echoed with a hesitant smile. “We’re going to the sea.”
28
RICK
FOR A GUY WHO HAD SPENT years happily working alone, it was amazing how quickly I’d gotten used to relying on a partner. I constantly found myself wanting to run an idea past Joanna or ask her advice about something. It really was true what they say . . . two heads are better than one.
Working on my project was also much less enjoyable without Joanna. I had my work playlist to keep me company, but it had nothing on her quirky comments and the sarcastic digs that both kept me on my toes and held me accountable.
I was so close to finishing. As rotten as I felt, as crushed as my heart was, I had to put the final touches on my film. I had to follow through. That’s what this had all been about, after all. I still had a competition to win if I had a prayer of changing my dad’s mind about letting me study film.
As I dragged the audio file of Mrs. Paulson talking about Christmas light safety to the perfect spot over the footage of the holiday scenery, it hit me how excited I should have been to be a few clicks away from completing my film.
My vision blurred a little as I watched the wheel at the bottom of my screen turn around and around as the editing program processed the change I’d just made.
Instead of exciting, it all felt hollow without her infectious laugh and beautiful, silky hair dangling in my space as she pointed something out that she felt she could do better.
I shook my head to clear it of the images that kept haunting me. My mind spun, just like the progress indicator on my computer. I had to move on. Joanna had been fun to work with, and I had to admit she’d made my film better.
But, man, had she duped me. I wasn’t sure why she had, either. She didn’t need anything from me that I wasn’t willing to give her. We’d discussed exactly what benefits we’d each get from our working arrangement. I wasn’t holding out on her. She hadn’t had to charm me or make me fall for her to get anything.
So had I just been a fun diversion? I’d buy that except for Laurence. She had him all along. So why pretend to be into me? She definitely wasn’t a two-guy, play-the-field type of girl. She barely wanted to set one toe on the romance field in the first place.
But if she a) wasn’t a player, and b) didn’t need to sweet talk me into anything, why the flirting? Why encourage me? Why let her guard down, as I’d sensed her do several times?
And those kisses . . . .
I had to get my mind out of the Joanna March gutter and back on my film. I’d already sworn off YouTube until my film was finished. If I even brought the site up, I’d get sucked down the rabbit hole of videos and I wouldn’t finish my entry in time. Plus, I didn’t want to chance getting a recommendation for a JoJo+Teddy video. I couldn’t watch them be all lovey and cutesy, the way I knew their videos would turn after Laurence’s big reveal. I wouldn’t do that to myself.
I focused on the computer screen and what I needed to get done.
The progress wheel still spun and spun. As a reflex, I clicked on File, then Save, hoping it would register so I wouldn’t have to redo something on the off-chance the wheel never stopped spinning and I had to close out of the program.
I’d pulled all of my files off of Joanna’s Wrap Up Pro account. I wasn’t going
to leave my work up there for them to swipe or mess with or whatever else they thought would be fun to do with it. But I was having trouble with the audios for the Mrs. Paulson interview, and Joanna had been right. Wrap Up Pro had amazing features. I’d uploaded just that clip to touch up. As soon as I was happy with it, I could pull it off, and then I’d be out of their account forever. I was actually surprised they hadn’t changed the password on me.
I waited a good three minutes before closing the web browser. I’d try opening the browser first before going through a complete re-login. But the browser wouldn’t close. I hit the X several times, and it just showed the same screen and the progress wheel spinning and spinning like some sort of never-ending optical illusion.
I tried to close the program with control-alt-delete, but that caused my computer to freeze on an error message. Great. Was my computer going to die on me now, too? I’d be a YouTuber without a working camera or computer. Perfect. That would just complete the last twenty-four hours of suckiness.
I turned the entire computer off, counted out thirty seconds, and turned it back on. Everything booted up like normal, so that was a relief. At least something was going right. I waited for the computer to catch up to the reboot, and then I opened my browser and logged back in to the Wrap Up Pro site. I opened my file and scrolled to the spot I’d been working on, crossing my fingers that the last-minute save attempt had worked.
No such luck. Mrs. Paulson’s voiceover was back to where it had been before I’d started dragging it around. Matching audio to video is one of my least favorite editing jobs. It’s time-consuming and meticulous. I end up second-guessing myself, too. Like . . . is the person’s mouth actually moving exactly at the same point as the audio?
I had one chance to grab what I’d lost, finish up, and never use anything that belonged to Joanna again. Some online software services provide an autosave that backs up periodically in another spot on their system. Hopefully, Wrap Up Pro had autosaved after I’d set the audio but before my computer had frozen.
