Page 11 of So Not My Thing
“Going viral was a new thing back then,” Chloe said. “And memes weren’t much of a thing yet either, but our girl here waseverywhere.”
“Yeah. It was bad. Reporters would wait on the sidewalk outside of my school and interview every single kid walking off campus to see if they knew me. I had invitations to go on every show. All the major late-night shows. Every major morning news show. My mom wouldn’t let me do any of the late-night ones because she didn’t trust them not to be mean to me, but she said yes toLive with Laura, of course.”
“Duh,” Chloe said. Laura was a former local TV newswoman who’d made it big in Hollywood.
“So I go on Laura’s show, she’s super nice about everything, and she gives me a bunch ofStarstruckswag including a signed poster of Miles Crowe.” I’d burned that after his own appearance on her show. “Two weeks later, he wins the whole thing and doesLive with Laura. By then I was already a GIF that you sent to show you were really excited about something.”
“That must’ve been weird,” Jerome says.
“Yes and no? Social media was still pretty new, so I had no idea how big it would get and keep getting. Anyway, Laura asks him if he thinks my ‘moment’ helped drive up the votes to help him win, and he’s like, sure, yeah. And then...”
At this point, I didn’t want to tell the story anymore, so I turned back to the skillet, giving it a shake. Stupid onions, making my eyes sting.
“That boy did her wrong,” Miss Mary said. “Laura asked him if he had a message for his number one fan, and he said she seemed like a sweet kid but she so wasn’t his thing.”
“Dang.” Jerome shook his head.
“Made us all so mad,” Miss Mary continued. “But I wish you wouldn’t have quit music, Ellie. I miss it. She used to write her own stuff and put it on YouTube,” she explained to Jerome.
Chloe’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know that. How come I didn’t know that?”
I shrugged. “That was then. Lots of teen girls go through that phase. If it’s not songs, it’s bad poetry. I deleted my channel.” I still sometimes worked my feelings out in lyric form in a notebook, but I hadn’t put any of it to music in ten years, at least. “I outgrew it.”
“Did you, though?” Miss Mary asked. “Seems like it still sticks with you sometimes. Like when you stop singing the second you know someone is listening.”
“Any rejection you get when you’re fourteen is going to stick with you,” I said. “But I could have let this go if I hadn’t becomethememe for rejection after that. Like, that clip had ten million views on YouTube by the time I graduated from high school. I haven’t even looked at it since then.” I shook the pan to get the veggies moving and glimpsed Chloe pointing up with her thumb to indicate to Jerome that the views had gone even higher.
Whatever. I didn’t want to know. I broke the last two eggs into a bowl, single-handed like Miss Mary taught me, and scrambled them, the fork making an angry hiss as it scraped at the bowl over and over again. I could imagine how much higher the views had climbed based on the number of times I ran into my own face on the internet. Dylan had even brought me a Trivial Pursuit card once where I was an answer in the Entertainment category.
Apparently, America had been bored when I’d had my moment.
“I’m sorry that happened, Ellie,” Jerome said quietly.
“Yeah, me too. So now that the facts are fresh in everyone’s minds, maybe you’ll all believe I didnotchoose Miles Crowe as a client.”
“So how did it happen?” Chloe asked. “Did he recognize you? Was he trying to make up for being a jackass back then?”
“He didn’t seem like he did,” I said. “And he didn’t explain why he wanted me to be his agent. Brenda ended up being pretty cool about it, but I tried eighty-seven ways to get out of it, and he was basically like, ‘Nah, this is what I want,’ so that’s not super awesome.”
“What are you going to do?” Miss Mary asked. “Be the best real estate agent ever?”
I stopped whisking for a moment to stare at her. “Do you even know me?”
Chloe grinned. “You’re going to make his life miserable until he fires you?”
“No. Good guess, though. That was my first plan.”
“What, then?” Jerome asked.
“I’m going to find him the worst possible property for what he wants to do and negotiate the most expensive possible lease for the longest term possible.” It was the plan I’d decided on as I drove home.
Jerome sucked his teeth. “That’s cold.”
Miss Mary came over and gave me a hug. I waited for her to talk me out of it, but instead she said, “Good girl.”
And that made Chloe laugh all the way through the perfect omelet I plated for her.
