by Jen Brady
Not that I watched their “We Order One of Everything at the Drive-through One Item at a Time” video. It just popped up under my “Recommended” suggestions, possibly because I may or may not have watched the one called “We Raided a Thrift Store Bridal Shop” because who would turn down twelve minutes and twenty-six seconds of Joanna March looking gorgeous while trying on bridesmaid dresses? She always wears yoga pants and hoodies in her videos. I had to see what that silky, waist-length curtain of hair looked like when she wore a formal dress.
Sadly, they only tried on hideous outfits (like Laurence hamming it up in a frilly white shirt and pale blue tux from the ’70s) but Joanna somehow rocked a puffy-sleeved, bow-on-the-butt, lime green atrocity that made my curser hover over the “Like” button for a full half-minute. I resisted, of course, out of principle, but she made it tempting.
I sat in front of my computer, scrolling through footage, trying to figure out how to either a) PhotoShop the minute hand on the clock image from tonight’s footage to make it say 6:00 instead of 5:59, b) choose a different way of transitioning to each section of the documentary, or c) settle for the footage from last week’s practice run that had the Christmas decorations and the correct time but without Santa and Mrs. Claus.
Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I was probably going to have to go with option C. I had one more interview (set for January 5 with the elusive Mr. Matthews, who had rescheduled twice and forgotten to show up once) and some outdoor establishing shots to take. Then I just had to finish editing.
I’m not sure if it was because of the draining hour-plus I’d spent sitting on that bench or the mental exhaustion of having to deal with the ruined shot, but my motivation to work was at about a 1.5 out of 10. I’d deal with the transition sequence tomorrow.
I opened a new tab on my browser and hit the YouTube link on my bookmarks bar. My favorite film YouTuber, Vance Sanders, is always lecturing creatives about the need to continually “fill your well,” which means watching and reading things by other artistic people. Maybe if I spent the evening checking out works in my genre and turned in early, I’d wake up excited and ready to fix the mess I had.
I was about to click on my subscriptions to see if there was anything new from Travel Tales or BenCheyenneDocus, but the second thumbnail under the “Recommended” videos caught my eye. It was a closeup of an old guy’s surprised face. In a small box in the corner, Joanna March and Ted Laurence were frozen mid-laugh. The video was called “We React to Our Very First Video.” They had posted it yesterday, according to the date underneath the picture.
Does anybody else find it creepy when you talk (or even just think) about something, and then your computer starts showing you ads for that very thing? Or is it just me? My feed hadn’t recommended a JoJo+Teddy video in weeks, but now that thumbnail sat there on my screen, taunting me, daring me to click it.
I hovered my cursor over the clip. It wasn’t my genre or anything that promised to be particularly inspiring or “well-filling,” but its stupidity might give me a much-needed laugh for the night.
Why not?
I clicked.
An image of Joanna and Laurence filled my screen. Joanna’s hair was piled high on her head in a messy bun, which was unfortunate because it’s beautiful when she wears it down. She had on a green hoodie that said “impossible.” on it (yes, with a lowercase i and a period even though it wasn’t even close to a complete sentence) while Laurence wore his usual preppy ensemble of a yellow button-down under a blue cable-knit sweater.
“Happy Christmas break to our amazing viewers!” Laurence welcomed me with his I’m-the-greatest-and-I-know-it grin.
“Why, thank you,” I replied to the screen. “I am an amazing viewer. You dummkopf.” (Hey, Dad’s always on me to practice my German so I can Skype with my cousins, so I think insulting Laurence in the language counts.)
“I’m Joanna March . . .” Joanna said, tipping her head and smiling. The shot was close up enough that I could barely make out the light smattering of freckles on her nose and cheeks. They get much more pronounced in the summer . . . not that I’ve subjected myself to many of their summer videos since they mostly take place in or around the grandpa’s pool and usually feature a shot of Laurence in swim trunks flexing.
“And I’m Ted Laurence. And you’re watching . . .”
“JoJo plus Teddy Equals BFF Forevah,” they said together, Laurence pronouncing it “foe-ev-aaaah,” like he always does . . . like a big dummkopf.
“She makes me say that,” he added at the end, like he was embarrassed. He should be. He was a seventeen-year-old dude talking about being BFFs.
“So we’ve been super-busy working on our top-secret, super-special project,” Joanna said. I closed my eyes so I could listen to her without staring at Laurence’s annoying smirk. Her voice has this rich, warm tone that I could listen to all day. She should read audiobooks for a living. Too bad Laurence has to open his big mouth during the videos. “With that and Christmas taking up so much of our time, we decided that today we’re going to react to our very first video.”
“We haven’t watched this in years,” Laurence said. “Which means it’s going to be either really hilarious or really embarrassing.”
“Cringeworthy,” Joanna said, laughing, and I opened my eyes to catch the tail end of the pretty smile that accompanied her nervous laugh. “I guarantee it’s going to be cringeworthy.”
They looked at each other and shared a secret glance, the one they do that makes it obvious the whole “just friends” thing is fake, then laughed together.
“Okay, here we go.”
Laurence reached over, and the screen split so the majority of it filled with a younger version of the pair. The image of them from yesterday remained on-screen but moved to a smaller box in the upper right-hand corner.
Joanna-from-yesterday covered her eyes immediately. “Oh, my gosh,” came her muffled mutter.
Laurence hooted. “Look at your braces!”
She removed her hands from her face and gave him a mock-offended look. “Look at your haircut,” she shot back.
“Ouch. You had to go there?”
They stopped talking and focused on the video. Younger JoJo+Teddy were grinning and giggling into the camera.
“We’re going to play a funny prank on Joanna’s sisters,” younger-Laurence-with-a-terrible-bowl-haircut whispered. He was obviously holding the camera at arm’s length to get both of them in the frame, and it bounced around so much that I had to look away before it made me too dizzy.
“Yeah,” braces-wearing-Joanna said. “We hid a whoopie cushion on my sister’s piano bench. Now we just have to wait until she sits down.”
They giggled and the camera bounced again. When it finally straightened, I could tell they were now positioned behind a couch with the camera pointed across the room at a piano. The clip went on for a really long time. I’d have checked to make sure it hadn’t frozen if giggles and snickers didn’t keep coming from behind the camera.
“Oh, my gosh,” Joanna-from-yesterday said, sounding embarrassed. “Why didn’t we cut to the action?”
“We were so dorky,” Laurence said, laughing.
Finally, a girl wearing jeans and a pink shirt walked over to the piano and looked down at the bulging towel.
“Why is there a towel on the piano bench?” she asked.
I have no idea why they thought anybody would be oblivious enough to sit down on a huge, lumpy towel. Sure enough, the girl picked it up to reveal the whoopie cushion underneath.
“Why is there a whoopie cushion on the piano bench?”
The snickers turned into all-out laughter. They must have stood up, judging by the wiggly change in camera angle.
“You were supposed to sit on it,” younger Joanna’s voice said.
The girl gave her a weird look. “Why?”
“So it would go . . .” Laurence did his best impression of a fart.
“Wait.” The girl’s eyes widened
as she focused on the camera. “Are you videoing this?” She ducked down and grabbed the towel that had “hidden” the whoopie cushion and held it over her face. “Don’t video me!” She peeked one eye out from behind the towel. “I mean it! Don’t video me, Ted!”
“Well, that was a bust,” Joanna-from-yesterday said in the corner of the screen, laughing.
Laurence was busting up, too. “Bethany was too smart for the whoopie cushion.”
“I think anybody would be too smart for that whoopie cushion,” Joanna admitted.
The shot cut to a couch covered with a lumpy blanket (gee . . . I wonder what was under it?) and a little girl with blond curls.
“Oh, look, little Mya!” Joanna exclaimed just as younger Joanna’s voice said, “Hey, Mya, sit on the couch and watch TV.”
“Okay.” The girl was wearing a princess costume (Snow White if I had my fairy tales straight) complete with those fake little-kid bright-yellow high heels. She hopped onto the couch, and a loud farting noise sounded. She screamed and jumped up, falling to the floor on her butt and losing one of her plastic princess shoes. “What was that?”
Joanna and Laurence (both sets) had started laughing as soon as the whoopie cushion noise sounded.
“Oh, my gosh, that reaction was the best,” Laurence-from-yesterday said between laughs as the old video kept playing and the little girl started crying.
“Oh, Mya,” Joanna-from-yesterday said. “That was awesome.”
“I see why she doesn’t like our videos,” Laurence said, still laughing.
The video continued, and an older girl sat on the whoopie cushion when it was placed on a stool in front of a makeup mirror. She jumped up, spotted the camera poking into her room from the hallway, and chucked the whoopie cushion at them. They ran away, laughing.
The scene changed to a formal living room full of fancy furniture and glass cabinets displaying what looked like antiques. An older man walked into the room with a book in his hand. He sat down in a chair and immediately shot to his feet when the whoopie cushion sounded.
“Christopher Columbus!” he exclaimed before turning, fishing under the cushion, and retrieving the whoopie cushion. “Theodore, get in here! Now!”
Joanna-from-yesterday gasped and pointed. “Christopher Columbus! He just said Christopher Columbus! That must be where I first heard it.”
I’d watched enough of their videos to know that “Christopher Columbus!” was one of her common catchphrases whenever something exciting or surprising happened.
“He looks so mad,” she went on, sounding genuinely remorseful. “Now I feel bad. I think we really scared him.”
Laurence was snickering like a dunderhead. The larger screen froze, the video apparently over. The picture of the older version of them took over the full screen.
“So that was our very first video,” Joanna said. “What did you think, Ted?”
“That was awesome,” he said, which proved that Laurence had no taste because that may have been the dumbest YouTube video I’d ever seen.
There was only about a minute left of the video. Probably some laughing and their outro, so I clicked to pause it. I scrolled through a few of the comments. After spending fourteen minutes of my life watching that stupidity, I was looking forward to reveling in remarks about how horrible it was.
Their fans didn’t share my opinion, though. Most posted laughing face emojis or sentiments along the lines of “That was hilarious!”
Loved seeing you react to your first video, one comment read. Do the one where you guys put all of Teddy’s grandpa’s books upside-down on his big bookshelf next. That one makes me laugh so hard every time.
You guys are the best! another claimed.
My favorite YouTubers of all times!
Show Bethany more. She’s an awesome camerawoman but we never get to see her on screen.
I love JoJo+Teddy=BFF4EVAH but tell us the truth about dating. are you guys dating? If not ill be so sad bcuz you belong together 4eVah.
Somewhere along the tenth comment praising that gibberish, I found myself grinding my teeth. Seriously? This is what the masses adored? Someone should tell all those adoring fans just how insufferable these two were in real life.
Hmm . . . .
I tapped my index finger on my mouse as a plan started to form.
Did I dare?
I shouldn’t.
But, somehow, I couldn’t resist.
I typed a quick quip into the comments bar:
Ran into these dummkopfs at Concord Crossings. Got in the way of my one-chance shot. You’re not the only YouTubers around, you know. Next time common courtesy, please. Some of us have more than useless drivel to film.
Then I added the peace sign emoji, and before I could lose my nerve, hit “post.”
Immediately, an uneasy feeling settled in my stomach. You’re not supposed to engage trolls, spammers, or other YouTubers. I know this. It’s YouTuber Etiquette 101. No good can ever come of it. Unless you’re friends in real life or purposely doing an approved and coordinated appearance swap to get more subscribers, you don’t comment on other YouTubers’ videos unless it’s something positive. It’s bad form and can cause a lot of unnecessary drama.
I don’t know what came over me. It might have been the frustration of having to change all my transition sequences while on a time crunch. Or it could have been the way Ted Laurence kept flicking his head to the side to flip his obnoxiously preppy hair out of his eyes.
Or maybe it was because I hoped Joanna March would reply.
5
JOANNA
TED AND I REALLY NEEDED to invest in a lock for our studio door. Or even just a door in the first place, since the stairs led right up to the attic floor. The railing that lined the stairs wasn’t exactly soundproof.
But we at least needed a “NO Obnoxious Sisters Allowed” sign. One with a big red slash through the words to emphasize our point.
We’d been filming all day and editing late into the night for most of Christmas break, and at least once a day, Mya barged in, ruining takes of Megan’s witch scenes (of which we had precious little time to film due to her busy baby-sitting schedule) or plunking herself down near us to watch me edit over my shoulder, which was the very definition of an obnoxious sister, especially given her tendency to mouth-breathe in my ear while I worked.
Today, for example, I was sitting on my favorite spot on the old, comfy couch my parents had gotten from Aunt Deb when they moved to Concord back before even Megan was born. It had long since been deemed too unsightly to reside in our living room and banished to the attic, but I loved it. Ted lay sprawled across the rest of the couch, resting his head on a pillow on my leg while he played Fortnite on his phone, occasionally craning his neck around to glance at the laptop screen and answer one of my questions about the movie.
Mya had perched herself on the arm of the couch under Ted’s feet and kept blabbing on about how famous she’d be when the contest was over.
“Think about it,” she said, gazing dreamily off into the distance, as if picturing her future fame. “Vance Sanders presents . . . the winning movie . . . The Witch’s Curse . . . starring Mya March.” Her hand went to her nose as her eyes darted to me in a panic. “You’ll CGI my nose, right? I’d die if there were any close-ups of it looking like this.”
I rolled my eyes at her silly request. “I’m not fixing your nose with CGI.”
“Why not?” she whined.
“One, CGI is expensive. Two, I’m not wasting time on that. Three, there’s nothing wrong with your nose.”
“Nothing wrong with my nose? It’s hideous!”
Mya’s nose is the slightest bit long. It’s the only part of her body that isn’t cute, petite, blond, and/or perfect, so she obsesses over it to the point that we’re all sick of hearing about it. I didn’t have time to CGI a nose that didn’t even need CGI help in the first place.
“We should totally get a CGI program,” Ted put in, as his Fortnite character, a
guy wearing a suit who, inexplicably, had a banana for a head, fired at a scantily-clad-but-tough-looking, tattooed woman in the game.
“We’re not getting a CGI program.”
“Why?”
“Because we can’t afford it.”
“I can afford it,” Ted spoke up, “and I’d gladly pitch in for it if it can take Mya’s hideous nose out of our movie.”
“Ha ha, Ted,” Mya said, swatting his leg.
He grinned up at her and shrugged one shoulder. She opened her mouth and let out a disgusted noise, as if he’d offended her, but then she smiled to show she knew he was kidding. She even let out a little giggle. They were coming dangerously close to flirting. Gross. He’s like our fifth sibling.
“Not even you can afford a CGI program.”
He very deliberately toggled from Fortnite to Google on his phone. “We’ll see about that. I’m going to look it up.”
Ted lives with his grandfather in a three-story, colonial-style house with brass furnishings, a sweeping staircase right inside the front door, an extra wing, and an attached garage that boasts his grandpa’s Mustang, Ted’s Porsche Cayman, and a practical, all-wheel-drive truck they share during bad winter weather. He has a pool, hot tub, movie room, baby grand piano, and the version of Hulu that comes without ads, so it was very possible he was about to prove me wrong about him not being able to afford CGI software.
“It would be a lot more helpful if you scrolled through recent comments and replied to a few,” I said, trying to distract him. Ted’s a big gloater when he’s right, and I needed the comments to get read anyway.
“On it,” he said, but I immediately heard the sounds of the suit-wearing, banana-headed avatar shooting at more people.