Live While We're Young

Chapter 8: Video (Killed the Radio Storm?)

Darcy: Niki knocked on my door. It was the third of July and today was the day I filmed my cover. “Hey girl,” she said, smiling. In her hand was her guitar, and in the other was a huge cosmetics bag.

“Hey,” I said, smiling.

“So you ready to shoot this video?” Niki asked.

“Yep,” I said, opening the door to my room. I sat down on my vanity chair and closed my eyes. Niki opened her makeup case and got to work. She worked much more skilled than I was. I was trusted at the age of 13 with lipgloss, mascara, and foundation. Niki, on the other hand, had years of practice of almost every piece of makeup she owned. So she worked with precision as I left my eyes closed.

When I opened my eyes, I saw a very, very pretty girl staring back at me. If there was anything Niki knew how to do, it was how to make green eyes stand out. My skin was even and fair, and my lips were a light pink. My green eyes, my dad’s green eyes, stood out a soft brown color and a deep mascara. She had lined the top water line to make my eyelashes look like they were miles long. My eyes looked so light, and so green. I smiled.

Niki went into curling my hair a little extra, then teasing it in the slightest ways. It looked awesome. And kind of reminiscent of my dad looking back.

The other girls showed up minutes later. Niki got them prepped. Today, we each were representing our dads. Of course I was the only one doing any singing, but we each had a feature (like our hair of course) to show our dads. Niki had left her platinum streaks their normal color, Carly had just slightly teased her normally straight hair so it had a little more volume, Amie ran oil through her hair to make it fall in little spikes that were tidy but messy at the same time. Taylor left her hair down for once, and it actually looked pretty good. Then we all dressed in their signature style, me in some khaki skinny jeans and a white shirt, Niki in a jacket and studded tank top to represent both of her parents, Taylor in a plaid flannel button up, Carly in a flat bill hat and a tee shirt, and Amie in the notorious navy blue striped tee shirt and bright red jeans. It was awesome.

The first scene was all of us on the bed, Niki strumming the guitar on one end and me singing in the middle. I just sang perfectly still there, so the video could be edited back into random parts later. Then we moved on to the park, just a few blocks from my house. We darted through the woods and sang in random placed in the wood. Niki strummed guitar, or banged on trees, or even played her keyboard set up in the middle of the woods. It looked pretty cool. Finally, we headed back to my place.

That night, we decided it was time for a sleepover. “Oh my gosh, today was freaking awesome,” Niki said, flopping down on the sleeping bag she had laid out.

“Who knew, a bunch of singers daughters would get together and really like doing music videos,” Amie said sarcastically. Niki stuck her tongue out at her in return.

“I’ll start on editing tomorrow,” Niki said. This was mostly to me. I nodded.

“Do you think it will prove your point?” Carly asked.

“If it doesn’t, it could at least get my name out,” I said, shrugging.

“Are any of us worried about the fact that I think a lot of, like, 30 year old women are going to watch this,” Taylor laughed. Niki shrugged.

“You never know what will happen,” she replied, simple as that.

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The video was up by the next day at 2:00. I watched the result. It looked awesome. Now all we had to do was wait. I shut my laptop and practiced my singing in front of the mirror.