Three
I hit the repeat button. Again. It’s my ninth time watching Taylor Mears’s vlog.
When I got home, my first order of business was to switch on the electric kettle. Then I tore off my sweaty romper and threw on pajama shorts and an oversize T-shirt. I poured the boiling water into the biggest mug I owned, dunked a bag of Earl Grey, and sprinted upstairs to my bedroom. I pressed play on St. Vincent and turned the volume all the way up. Then I realized I couldn’t listen to music and Taylor Mears at the same time, so I nixed the St. Vincent and proceeded to watch “New and Notable!” eight more times.
Finally, after this ninth time, I tell myself I need to focus on something else or I will permanently break my brain. So I do what I’ve been half-craving, half-dreading since arriving home: I visit Seedling Productions’ home page. There are 48,063 subscribers. I click on the first episode of Unhappy Families , entitled “Stiva Jones Is a Mofo Cheater.” There are more than 80,000 views. Eighty thousand views . Sure, that number is a mere drip of water to someone like, say, Beyoncé, but for a humble web series, it’s huge. I click through the rest of the playlist. The view count decreases sharply at the second and third episodes, which is to be expected, but by and large stabilizes for the remainder of the playlist, hovering around 34,000.
Thirty-four thousand people have watched Unhappy Families through its most recent episode. Okay, maybe not quite 34,000. The first 500 or so views on all those videos were the result of me and Jack punching the refresh button for a half hour straight. But thousands of people have watched our web series. Our writing, our direction, our sometimes shoddy camera work. Thousands of people I’ve never met. Thousands of people not related to me. People all over the country. Maybe all over the world.
I am giggling uncontrollably. I grab the hem of my T-shirt and lift it to my chin in childish glee. Is this what people mean when they say “drunk with fame”? Or is it “drunk with power”? Whatever, I feel positively tipsy.
Still squeeing, I check on the other playlists—my personal vlog, Teatime with Tash , and Jack and Tony’s music collaboration channel, The Echo Boomers . Their music used to be the most popular of our projects, but they haven’t uploaded any new content since their breakup in February, after which Jack quietly took the playlist off the main page. The vlog and The Echo Boomers don’t have anywhere near the numbers Unhappy Families does, but there’s still a significant increase in views. And there are comments. More than the usual half-dozen comments we always get from our small band of devoted fans. There are fifty-two comments on my first vlog, which is just me sipping some English Breakfast and rambling incoherently about the Winona Ryder version of Little Women .
omg, she is the cutest!!!!!
Someone thinks I am the cutest. THE cutest. (!!!!!)
I spy a St. Vincent poster. Good taste. <3
Finally, someone who shares my devotion to St. Vincent. (Jack says she is pretentious. Paul says her lyrics are too cryptic.)
Then I notice the Like/Dislike counter. Four hundred thirty-two people have liked the video. Nine people have given it a thumbs-down.
Nine thumbs-downs?
There’s a tiny pop of panic in my stomach. Not just one random hater, but nine ? What don’t they like? Is my voice annoying? Are they not fans of Little Women ? Why would they go to the effort of disliking my vlog? This episode is just a silly ramble, really. Who wastes their time disliking silly, rambling videos?
Maybe I’m overthinking this.
I decide to return my attention to comments. So. Many. Comments. I start with the first episode of Unhappy Families and begin sorting through them chronologically:
Kitty/Levin IS a thing, right? Uuuuuuugh, now I’m going to have to read the book.
Omg, that look Dolly gives Stiva at 3:11. I know I’m supposed to be sad for her, but hahahaha
want Anna’s shirt. WANT . Where can I buy?
Stiva’s such a douche but I love him. Guess that’s the point.
who cares about Vronsky, give me Kevin, more Kevin.
Hit after hit after hit. I can’t get enough. Is comment reading a classifiable addiction? Is taking them all in like this, one after the other, at a breakneck pace, some reprehensible act of narcissism?
Though it’s not like these comments are about me . They are about the actors, and about a book by my dead Russian boyfriend. A book that Jack and I have adapted—quite cleverly, according to these commenters and Taylor Freakin’ Mears herself. An adaptation we directed. A project that is entirely our doing.
My phone rings. It’s Jack.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” I ask.
“I am if you’re looking at Tumblr.”
“I’m still on the main site. Have you read the comments?”
“Not yet, but have you checked our hashtag on Tumblr? People are already making GIF s. Legit GIF s. And there are all these new followers and messages. People want to know how long the series is supposed to last and if we’re going to post any bonus content and if there’s going to be a second season and if we’re going to do a Kickstarter. Someone actually asked if we’re going to do a Kickstarter.”
“Oh my God.”
“And we’ve got tons of mentions and retweets on Twitter. I haven’t checked the Seedling e-mail yet, but I’m sure it’s jammed with questions. Are we supposed to hire someone when it gets this big? I’m kind of panicking.”
“It’s not that big yet.”
“Uh, fifty thousand subscribers is pretty big. For people like us, anyway.”
“Are we sure this isn’t a shared hallucinatory experience?”
“Paul is being a total ass over here. He was like, ‘Wait, who’s Kevin?’ and I had to give him a crash course on shipping. He didn’t even know what shipping was, Tash. Can you believe that? How has he hung out with us this long and not picked up the art of naming ships?”
“That’s our Paul.”
“Effing clueless,” Jack agrees.
“Though you have to admit, Kevin is a pretty crappy ship name.”
“Still better than Litty. Something about Litty sounds . . . dirty.”
“Eh. Yeah. So, how do we want to handle this?” I ask. “We should come up with a game plan. Taylor posted that video last night, so we need to respond soon.”
“I’ll come over to your place tomorrow and we’ll figure something out. I want to run next week’s edits by you before I upload, anyway.”
“But we should at least e-mail the cast about it tonight. In case any of them haven’t seen the news.”
“Oh yeah, good idea. My God, can you picture George’s reaction?” Jack’s voice descends into one of her deep, malevolent cackles. “That effing prick is going to think he’s the next Laurence Olivier.”
I tell Jack I’ll take care of the e-mail. When I hang up, there’s a text waiting for me. It’s from my dad.
Hey there Sneaky Pete, dinner at 7 should you decide to emerge from your cave.
I check the time. Just after six o’clock. Maybe I will be calmer and more sated by seven. At present, I don’t feel like coming out of my cave for the next forty-eight hours.
I open my personal e-mail and hit compose. How to phrase this? Congrats, cast, you’ve become stars! ?
That’s when I notice the new mail sitting in my inbox. My eyes hook immediately on the one from [email protected] My chest spasms, then explodes, then collects its scattered pieces and reassembles itself. Thom.
I click open the e-mail.
Tash—
Okay, I know I haven’t responded to your last e-mail yet, but holy shit, I just saw, and I had to say CONGRATULATIONS. SO INSANE. Crazy proud of you.
Btw, I’ve been thinking . . . And you can totally say no. But would you want to exchange phone numbers? It might be nice to text in real time. But if that’s weird, I get it.
Anyway, huge congrats on the mention. If anyone deserves it, it’s you.
Thom
My chest has just sorted itself out when it explodes a second time. A grin takes over my face, holding my cheeks hostage. Crazy proud. That really means something coming from Thom Causer, a semi-famous vlogger in his own right. And he wants to exchange numbers. Thom Causer is asking for my number .
Though Thom is my age, he’s been making videos longer than I have. He first got popular when he was fourteen and he and his friend Wes Bridges made a series of prank videos at their school. Then he moved on to the more serious business of Beaker Speaker , a series of weekly ten-minute episodes in which Thom discusses the science in famous movies. He started the vlog about a year ago, the same time I began Teatime with Tash— a series of weekly ten-minute episodes in which I drink a new type of tea while discussing a classic book adaptation.
Thom’s vlog is much more popular than mine, since he already has a built-in audience from his prankster days. But one day, a couple months back, someone tagged both me and Thom in a tweet about fun movie-related vlogs. I was gratified to be mentioned in the same line. I definitely wasn’t expecting Thom to message me saying he liked my videos and asking how long I’d been interested in filmmaking. We exchanged e-mails, and we’ve been writing back and forth regularly for the past six weeks. It’s just blasé stuff, like our favorite fandoms and movies, but my chest still goes into self-destruct mode every time Thom’s name pops up in my inbox.
I haven’t told anybody about Thom. Not properly, anyway. I mentioned his first message to Jack, back when it happened, which earned a half-interested shrug and nothing more. I haven’t told her about the correspondence that’s followed—long, chunky paragraphs glimmering with wit and filled with parenthetical asides and even, on occasion, footnotes. E-mails that have recently begun walking the unstable tightrope between friendly and flirty.
I’m not sure why I never talk about him. It’s not like I’m ashamed. It’s not like I’m doing anything deviant. Maybe I feel weird because I’ve never actually met Thom in person, never even heard his voice. Well, okay, that isn’t technically true. I hear his voice every week when he posts a new episode of Beaker Speaker . But I’ve never heard his voice directed specifically at me . I’ve never even heard him say my name.
But now he wants to exchange phone numbers, and I can’t help but feel this is something big. Something significant. A Step in a very definite Direction. Texting seems so much more intimate than e-mailing. More immediate and personal. If Thom and I have been teetering on a tightrope, is this the shove that pushes us from friends over into . . . something else?
Again, maybe I’m overthinking this.
It takes me an embarrassingly long time to write a reply. I keep second-guessing my words, even my punctuation. I don’t want Thom to think I’m even remotely weirded out by his request for a phone number, but I also don’t want to come off as too desperate. Eventually, I settle on a cheerful little thank-you for his congrats and the assurance that I’d love—no, scratch that, really like— to text. Then I give him my digits. Then I click send. Then I bury my face in a pillow and groan, all wheezy and pathetic.
I need a distraction. Luckily, I have one. I click out of my e-mail—I’ll compose that cast letter later—and log into Seedling Productions’ Twitter account. I scroll through the notifications, favoriting mentions that only require favorites (Oh my god, just binged all of @Unhappy_Families, and you NEED this in your life. ) and leaving the ones that demand answers (@Unhappy_Families, PLEASE tell me you guys are going to adapt Dostoyevsky next? ) for later, when Jack and I have decided how we’re going to handle this almighty event.
It feels like I’ve only been weeding through notifications for a few minutes when Dad shouts from downstairs that dinner is ready. I blink at my laptop screen. I’m definitely hungry; I was too hyped up at the graduation party to eat a proper meal and only managed a forkful of cake. But my very soul is hungry for more, more, more comments and questions and general adoration.
Which means I might have a problem.
Which means I should probably join my parents for dinner.
I look at the wall facing my bed, where my 36-by-48-inch poster of Leo Tolstoy hangs. It’s a grainy black-and-white photograph of him at the age of twenty. Leo sits with his elbow propped lazily on the curved armrest of a fancy chair. He’s wearing a heavy, lapelled coat and thick scarf. He’s staring straight at the camera. Or, I should say, scowling at the camera. As though to say, “Why must I pose for this picture, I am so busy being a troubled and intelligent youth.”
I prop my chin in my hands and ask Leo, “Do I have a problem?”
Leo scowls at me from under his dark brows.
“I should eat dinner with my parents like I’m one of the living, huh?”
Leo scowls.
Gotta love that man.
“Yeah, I thought so.”
In a feat of admirable self-control, I close my laptop and hop off the bed. I head downstairs, and I don’t even bring my phone with me.
It’s probably a healthy break, but an hour later I’m back in my room. I stay up until four o’clock in the morning, scrolling through videos, notifications, and hashtag collections. It’s around one o’clock that I begin to devise a plan. I fall asleep with one hand still on the trackpad.