On my right, Victoria Priestly—the ex-lead singer of Edelweiss was laughing merrily at a joke that Jack Reese told her. Across from me, Ian Conroe was telling Trina and Chris another bizarre, madcap story about the early days of Axial Tilt. Next to me, Ryan had his arm around my shoulders and was absently stroking my hair.

Best. Birthday. Present. Ever.

After the disaster that was yesterday, the difference a day could make was unreal. I couldn’t believe I was surrounded with so many famous, successful, and talented people. The entire experience was utterly bizarre. What was probably most the surreal about the whole thing was how nice, welcoming, and kind they were being. They might be famous, but they were surprisingly down-to-earth, too. We’d given up bowling some time back and were now just talking.

Interestingly, the fact that Trina and I weren’t old enough to drink didn’t seem to matter. Chris had a beer, as did Victoria, Jack, and Isla, but neither Ryan nor Ian did. Ian was vocal and obvious about his issues with alcohol, but I wasn’t sure why Ryan didn’t have a drink. I wondered if Ryan didn’t drink out of solidarity with his alcoholic brother or if it was a personal choice he made for another reason. Maybe he wasn’t drinking because he was going to drive me home later? I filed the question away for later.

“Ian showed me your YouTube channel,” Victoria said, turning away from Jack and focusing in on me. “You’re really good.” I was instantly distracted from puzzling over Ryan’s Dr. Pepper.

Ian knew about my YouTube channel?! Ryan didn’t know about my YouTube channel. Trina barely knew about my YouTube channel. My mouth worked up and down in disbelief until it snapped shut of its own accord.

I’d set the channel up in frustration one day shortly after my high school graduation when I’d been particularly unsure that I’d ever get to play for anyone but my mom and my bedroom mirror. I’d been wondering how I would ever be successful as a singer if I wasn’t able to get gigs. The problem with getting gigs, you see, is that places only wanted to book you if you had a record. And the only way you made a record was by getting gigs until someone who made records noticed you. It was a horrible, circular, catch twenty-two.

But that horrible, circular catch twenty-two had opened up a whole new world for me once I turned online. The internet doesn’t care who you are. There are children with Fortnight streams that make bank on the internet. Surely, I could use the power of technology to help myself, too. So, I made myself a page and started posting videos of myself singing the songs I’d written when I was zoning out in Calculus class. It just sort-of took off from there. Now my channel was becoming a thriving, if modest, community of fans.

“Thank you,” I said haltingly. “That means a whole lot coming from you. I’m a huge fan.”

She smiled indulgently. “I mean it. You have real talent. What made you create a YouTube channel? That’s a clever way to get yourself out there.”

I blinked. “I can hardly claim that I developed the idea. It worked for Justin Bieber, after all.”

She laughed. “You’re a lot more talented than the Beibs.”

I gasped. “Do you actually call him that to his face?”

Her next laugh was even louder than the first. “I don’t call that talentless little weirdo anything. Thankfully, we’ve not met. Different circles, you know.” She smirked. “I intended to keep it that way.”

I smiled at her, and she smiled back. “Do you have any advice for me?” I asked, unwilling to let another minute go by without using this opportunity. It might never come again.

She looked at Ryan before she continued. I’m not sure what exactly passed between them in the wordless glance, but when she refocused on me, it didn’t seem to matter. Her attention was entirely on me. “I think you’re doing just fine Rosie, but I’ll tell you this much: keep at it. You’ve got a really respectable number of subscribers on YouTube. Start there. Figure out how to increase that number and start making money off it. Money talks in this industry. Meet everyone that you can, go to as many shows as you can, play as many shows as you can, and network, network, network. You never know who you might meet. Sometimes the most innocuous meeting can make the biggest difference.”

I nodded. I wished I had a pen, but in reality, I didn’t even need one. Her words were already inscribed on the inside of my skull in indelible ink. Someday an archeologist would find it and wonder what it meant. “Do you think I should change anything about my current act?” I asked. “Do you think there’s a market for my music out there?”

She cocked her head to the side and her orangey-red ringlets bounced. “As far as your look goes, you might go blonde. I think you’d look good as a blonde, especially with your exotic features. But that’s just my opinion.” She grinned. “Your music is your music. It’s your voice, and it’s great. Don’t let anyone ever tell you to change it.”

At my side, Ryan stirred. He was pulling out his phone and looking me up by my name on YouTube. A search for ‘Rosalind Ross’ produced no results.

“Do you have a stage name?” he asked me. His voice was low, but I could tell he was fascinated.

I felt my cheeks flushing so brightly they burned again. “I go by a version of my Korean language nickname on YouTube. It’s under the name Rosalind Soon.” I liked the name because it sounded like a sentence in English. Plus, one day it would look really cool on a marquee: Rosalind Soon, live in concert.

When he found it, his mouth fell open in shock. “Rosie, you have three hundred thousand subscribers.”

I shifted a little bit in the uncomfortable molded plastic seat. That was up about a thousand from yesterday. My new videos were doing really well. My momentum was starting to be self-sustaining and it felt fantastic, if a bit surreal. “Yeah, it’s really taking off.”

That silly YouTube channel which had started so humbly had become my primary creative outlet. I might not have a big enough name to go out and book big shows in front of live humans, but I had an audience of a sort. I had the people that watched my videos and listened to my songs. Sometimes the comments I received were cruel, or creepy, or racist, or even downright threatening, but mostly they were positive, encouraging, and kind.

“Rosie,” Ryan was saying to me, turning my chin to look at him, “this is incredible. You need to be setting up ads. You could be monetizing this. You could be making thousands of dollars a month off of these numbers…”

I could? That would… that would change everything.