Viral

Chapter 2

The warmth from the overheating laptop on my legs combined with the coziness of my blankets sent me away to the Land of Nod, and I only awoke from my dreams when Molly got home a couple of hours later.

I heard the lock of the door click as she came in, and her voice moments later.

"Yeah, yeah, it was great! Okay, well I'll see you tomorrow then. Yeah, that's fine. Okay, bye!"

She hung up the phone and came into the living room with a spring in her step. Well. Someone was happy.

"So how was your day?" I asked.

"Pretty good, didn't do much," she said distractedly, picking at her nails.

I raised an eyebrow.

"I think that might be a slight understatement. Who were you chatting with on the phone?"

"Jeez, Elise, back off!" she said, feigning anger and a Valley Girl accent. "But okay, I'll tell you. His name's Michael, I met him at work the other day."

"So I was right about you having a crush!" I exclaimed triumphantly, fist pumping. Score one to Elise!

"No, I don't have a crush on him..."

"Yes, you do. You can't deny it!"

"Oh, fine," she sighed, "Maybe just a little, tiny one."

The eyebrow went up.

"Really!"

It climbed further up my forehead.

"Maybe it's a little bigger than tiny."

The eyebrow vanished into my hairline and disappeared from sight.

"Okay, okay!" She mimed holding up a white flag of surrender, and waved it.

"So I have a crush. Why's that such a big deal?"

"Because I like to make fun of you, and you're always happier when you have someone to obsess over."

Molly enveloped me in a bone-crunching hug, and I winced.

"Okay," I croaked, pushing her back, "You can be excited, but maybe tone it down just a little? That hurt."

I mimed twisting the dial on an old radio set, as if to turn down the strength of her hyperactive hugging.

Molly flounced into her bedroom, presumably to change, and I stood up from my cocoon of warmth on the sofa. Like it or not, there were things that actually needed doing. Such as dinner, for example, or cleaning the flat. It was my week to wash the bathroom floor and clean the porcelain king, a task I never really looked forward to.

As I scrubbed the tiles, I thought about my channel. It was probably just going to be another dead end, like all the projects I'd started in the past. My scrapbook, for example. I'd dedicated so much time to that during the six months I'd used it- and where was that now? Half finished, and in the bottom of a storage box in my mum's house.

With a sigh, I started cleaning the mirror, crumpling some supermarket's flyer into my hand. Not that many people even liked my videos anyway. And without some kind of miracle, I was just going to end up disappearing into the digital mists of the Internet, like almost every other aspiring YouTuber. Out of all the creators on the website, only a few made it big, and I definitely wasn't going to be one of them. Maybe I needed to stick to just one type of video? But no, look at Smosh! They uploaded all sorts, everything imaginable, and no one can say they aren't popular.

Finishing my work, I stepped back into the mirror and looked into it. As a little kid, I'd always believed that there was some kind of alternate reality in mirrors, exactly paralleling our own, and its inhabitants mimicked us to avoid being caught. However, when we turned our backs, that other world's inhabitants would come and wreak havoc. Even thinking about such a ridiculous theory brought a smile to my face- no wonder my mum had never believed me when I said the mirror people had put all my toys out again when I'd clearly tidied them up.