GALLAGHER GIRLS

xviii. overthinking

"We don't have to talk about it. I could- I could read you her article?" Millie offered. Louis looked back to his phone and nodded. "Alright, yeah. Why not?" He asked, and Millie grinned. "Alright, just let me pull it up on my laptop-" Millie trailed off, now focused on something, most likely her computer, that was situated behind her phone's camera. "Alright! I have it up." Millie said, looking back at Louis. "Are you ready?" Millie asks. "As ready as I'll ever be." Louis says, leaning his phone against a stack of books on his desk so he didn't have to hold it himself. Millie began to read.

"When we first asked Evelyn Faye Bennett what she envisioned for this shoot, she replied simply with the word "color." We had never had a request before that sounded so simple, yet made so much sense when it came to fruition." Millie was smiling, knowing that was 100% something that Evelyn would do. Louis's smile never faded from his face as she read."But Evelyn had her reasons. "I've always loved color-" The 16 year old says during a quick lunch after the shoot, "-loved how certain colors make you feel different things, and they can symbolize different emotions. So many things in life only have 2 or 3 colors in it or just in black and white, but it never really made sense to me. Life isn't two-toned and neat, it's.. crazy and messy and beautiful and ..colorful. Kind of like me." 

Millie paused before moving on, and saw that Louis was now leaning forward on his chair, listening intently to every word she said. "And Evelyn certainly does try to make people see the beauty that is held everywhere in life. One of the reasons Evelyn started her YouTube channel "eviefaye" when she was 13 years old was to give a little more color to her life in her small town. "Everything kind of just got boring all of a sudden. It was like someone flipped the switch and didn't tell me, so I decided to start my channel as just.. a way to have fun outside of my little town in Northern Utah. I never in a million years thought that I would achieve everything I have." 

"Now it has been a little over 3 years later, and Evelyn has amassed 3.65 million subscribers and counting. She had a surge of subscribers randomly after turning 14, and the count hasn't stopped growing. Now, she isn't just a small town girl anymore; she has had modeling deals, sponsors, and pretty large roles in popular television. But, she is using her growing platform to advocate for mental health normalization and help.

""Growing up in a small town with ADHD, it was hard, you know? You look on TV and there's a character with ADHD so you're super excited, but their only personality trait is being energetic. There is so much more that comes with ADHD that no one talks about: the depressive episodes, the anxiety, hyperfixations, Rejection-Sensitive Dysphoria... I was very open about my illnesses on my channel because I wanted to make sure that anyone out there that was suffering and felt the same way could look at my channel and feel a little less alone. I never had any friends with ADHD or any friends that could understand, and I don't really even now, so I want to be the ADHD friend for others."" Millie looked at her phone to see Louis smiling like a maniac. She could tell that he had it bad for Evie.

"She started her acting career a few months after turning fourteen when she played the role of "Persephone" on the third season of Olympus, a seasonal anthology show about Greek Gods and Goddesses that had its final season in 2017. "Olympus was a show that meant so much to me and still does. I was so young when I played Persephone, but it was the first time that I felt like I was really doing stuff that I was meant to do, you know? And that's also how I met some of my best friends; I met my best friend Millie Bobby Brown during a press event for Olympus and she is honestly one of the best things to have happened to me. I met Lana McGregor, another really close friend of mine, because she played Harmonia on the show.. I met the entire casts of IT and Stranger Things and now they are some of my closest friends."