It's twelve o'clock in the morning. My hair is a knotty mess and my sweater sleeve is wet and streaked with snot. Ewww. I've been staring at my computer screen for hours, watching the numbers rise up and down and up and down again.
Why I haven't done it yet.? Each jump of a number makes my heart drop into by stomach like I am riding a roller coaster blindfolded. I've been keeping myself from looking at the messages pouring into my inbox. Because I know that I am a few words away from giving up and calling it a night. I can't do that now. I already gave them my answer.
I can't turn back now.
That's it. Take a deep breath and finally move that cursor to the delete button. If I can just press this button, it'll all be over. The humiliation, the pain, the stress would all be over. But if I press it, three years of work of hard work, fans, friends, money, clothes would be gone as well.
No, I can't think about that now. I can't.
I have to remember why I'm doing this, like he told me. What got me to this pitiful state.
Okay I...No, I'm not ready to think about that. I should go a little farther. Ok, It was Ian. It started with my breakup with Ian.
I remember when Wendy told me. I think I was by my locker and about to go to lunch when she was grabbed my shoulders to turn me around.
“Mikayla! Thank God I found you!” she yelled square in my face. I wiped the little spit droplets landed on my face. “Oh! I'm so sorry! But this is super important!”
“Ok?” I told her.
“Alright. First, I need to turn off your Indego,”
I knew then how serious it was. Wendy would never tell me to turn off my Indego. No one ever tells me to turn off my Indego unless it was extremely serious.
Back then, they would need a crane to get my Indego off. I was really hooked on that thing.
So, I held down the little button on the side of my Indego for a few seconds, watched the little screens retreat away from my eyes and then slid off the black band from my forehead.
“Ok. It's off,” I said.
“You sure? You know how hard it is to turn it off. I need to make sure it-”
“Wen! I'm the last person who wouldn't know how to turn it off. But if it makes you feel better, look,” I showed her the unlit band and she nodded calmly.
She slightly shoved me from my locker hole and stuck her pink Indego on top of my text books.
“Are you gonna tell me what this is about?” I asked, but she too was busy straightening out the pink band in a line.
“It's better if I show you. You wouldn't believe it if I told you, but it's about Ian.” She pressed the button on the side of her Indego. A screen of light shot out the band, moving up and across the band like a rising rainbow colored wave.
I always loved that part of the Indego. The strips of light dancing on the band to that cute little start up song always perked me up when I turned it on in the middle of the night. I'm going to miss that when I log off for good.
After the light screen stabilized, she touched the buttons that showed up on the screen and after touching a few buttons, a video showed up on the screen. The video wasn't the best quality since she had the video and sound settings on the basic calibration though I've shown her a hundred times how to make it as clear as my videos, but I clearly saw Ian on the screen and a girl run up and hug him. She looked sad and was saying something to him, but Wendy's freak out in the video covered it.
“C'mon, Wen. It's not that serious. Hugging doesn't mean anything. She could just be his friend or-”
“Just watch,”she said curtly.
I watched as she looked up, he pushed his face into her's and gave her one of those really cheesy dramatic movie kisses where the man lifts and tips the lady almost to the ground.
“Oh my God! Ian!” I nearly shouted out but I pressed my hands to my mouth.
I continued to watch the video with pressure building inside me like a shaken soda bottle. The kiss lasted a few seconds until Ian lifted her up and said, “How was that?”
“It was ok, but you almost dropped me,” she giggled. “Let's try one more time before any one comes and sees us,”
Wendy stopped the video and gave me an awkward hug.
“I'm so sorry, Micky! I can't believe Ian cheated on you! Are you ok?”
“Yeah. I'm ok. Wen,”
I was surprised that I was completely honest when I told her that. Usually when a girl says that they're ok, they really mean that they're ready to binge on half eaten tub of Blue Bunny's Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream covered in their salty tears. I was fine. I mean I wanted to kick him in the balls, but I was more shocked and angry than heartbroken.
Then again, I really stopped liking a month before that. At that point, I guess I was still dating him because people liked us together. He's pretty good looking with his messy black hair and blue eyes. He's a basketball player which is a plus for a lot of girls, but all he ever talked about was sports, himself and when my next show was going to be.
“Send me the video,Wen,” I told her. A wicked smile spread across her freckled cheeks.
“Are you going to put it on Micky's Life ?” she said.
“You know what? Yeah, I'm going to do. Everyone needs to know what kind of guy he is,”
It was a terrible idea.
I really ripped him apart on my video. I'm so glad that I blurred the girl out of the video. I could've really messed up her life. It wasn't so bad because I left it up for a week. Ian must have watched the video five days after I put it up because he was so pissed when he v-chatted me on my Indego.
“What the hell, Mikayla! Thanks to your video, everyone thinks I'm a sleezy jackass! I've had to change my shirt twice today because people keep throwing shit at me in the hallway!” he shouted. I nearly laughed at how red his face was. He was as red as a tomato. I composed myself before I answered him.
“Well that's what you get for being a cheater,” I told him and that just made him madder. I could see the veins bulging on his forehead.
“You stupid, bitch! I wasn't kissing her! I was pretending to!”
“Pretending to? How the hell do you pretend to kiss someone?”
“I was pretending because we had to do it for a play!”
“A play? What play?”
“I have to do a stupid play because I'm almost failing my theater class. Since you don't believe me, watch this,” He brought up a video and played it in front of me.
Once again, the video was terrible quality, but this time I saw the girl he kissed holding a blue paper booklet in her hands.
“Ok. You got it, Ian because I don't want to fall flat on my back like in rehearsal again.” she said.
“I got it. I got it. Last time was your fault anyway. Just don't yank my hair when I tip you back,” he replied.
“Ok. Ready, go!” she ran to him and hugged him like I saw in Wendy's video.
He shut the video off and continued to glower at me.
He was right. It was wrong of me to make that video.
“I'm sorry. I didn't know-”
“Yeah. You didn't know. You didn't even ask all you care about is racking up your view counts and that stupid show of yours! I'm done with you bullshit! I'm sure you have a bunch of nerdy little fan boys to be your boyfriend!” He then logged off v-chat.
I did feel bad about it. Even after I took the original video off, posted an apology video and was forgiven by all my fans, I still felt crappy about the whole thing.
Yeah. That moment started this whole mess. It's making me sick thinking about all the shit I caused.
Do I really want to think of the rest of it?