On the Road Again

Chapter 3

"Hey everyone! It's Mimi and Lindsay!" The familiar perky voices of my sister and her best friend greet through my laptop screen. It has been a year since my sister moved out and her YouTube channel has become a growing success with one million, three hundred and forty seven thousand, five hundred and eighty two subscribers and counting.

And for that whole year, Mimi and I made no contact. Not a single letter, text, email or anything like that was sent between us. The only way I was kept updated was through her YouTube videos and my mum.

Once a week, my mum calls my sister to check up on her and see how's she's doing. Then when she's done calling my sister she calls me and exchanges information. I know this might sound mischievous, but hey, my mum wasn't the only one who wanted to check up on my sister. And I'm sure my mum exchanges information to my sister about me every once in a while anyways.

So through my mother, I found out that my sister and Lindsay have received many sponsors and are in a partnership with a very high end fashion label which have their fair share of commercials at the beginning of their videos.

"Today we're going to show you how to have the perfect Summer!" Lindsay continues. I scrunch up my face. I am probably 'Mim & Linds' number one fan. Under the username of 'Cottage_Gal' I do everything possible to support their channel. I have watched, liked and wrote several comments on each of their videos.

But the one thing I can not stand about their channel, is Lindsay. I have a passionate hatred for Lindsay. Sometimes it makes me feel guilty that I hate her so much and honestly, for a few months I didn't even know why I hated her.

At first I thought it was her hair. Those perfect, blonde, curls can only come across as overly confident . But after realising that through all of primary school my best friend had blonde curly hair, I knew this couldn't be the case.

My next suspicion was her voice. All high pitched and giddy, it is just made to annoy the human race. But my voice is the exact same when I get excited so I knew that wasn't it either.

My last port of call was the way she did her make up. Her face caked with foundation, her lips smothered with pink lip gloss and wing liner stretching up the side of her face just makes her look like a complete and utter phoney. But many of my fellow Starbucks baristas do their make up the exact same way and that doesn't make me hate them.

Then after several more days of analysing Lindsay I realised the answer did not lie within her, but instead within me. I was and still am jealous. I was jealous that Lindsay was getting all the attention from Mimi that rightfully belonged to me.

Of course, this doesn't stop me from watching their videos. Every single week I am on edge, just waiting for a new video. When I get my lunch break at work, I am constantly checking my phone for updates from YouTube.

But my sister and Lindsay weren't the only ones becoming successful. I too, jumped on the success train and rode it all the way to the area of writing.

I discovered my secret talent about six months ago. I realised that when I was in high school each time I was assigned to write a short story for English I would struggle to keep it under the two thousand word limit. Also, every time I write out a shopping list it isn't your standard, milk, bread and ham all lined up in an orderly column. My shopping lists were more like poems: Milk for my little cat Sam, and bread will go well with some ham!

So I began to write a book. Nothing drastic, but a book nonetheless. I entered it into a contest and basically crossed my fingers for two weeks straight.