by Jen Brady
The scene switched to a speeded-up montage of Sallie creating a bald cap on a foam mannequin head with liquid latex and powder, then fitting it on Joanna’s head. Joanna’s hair was now shoulder-length somehow, even though she’d just had her usual long curtain of hair in the previous clip.
“Perfect,” she said, leaning forward and examining herself in the mirror when the time-lapse montage slowed to regular speed. She turned and gave the camera two giddy thumbs-up. “This is going to be so funny.”
The scene cut to what must have been the Marches’ hallway. A lot of giggling and “shh”ing went on in front of a closed door, and then Joanna knocked and called, “Hey, Megs?”
A muffled, “Yeah?” came from behind the door. Joanna and Laurence looked at each other and snickered quietly one more time, then Laurence clamped his lips shut and Joanna fanned her face with both hands, like she was trying to calm herself down.
“Can I come in? I have to ask you something.”
The door opened, and the pretty brunette sister from the Sword of Serenity video appeared. I expected her to freak out the way their mom had, but she just looked back and forth between the two of them. When nobody said anything for a moment, she held both hands out in a small shrug and inclined her head.
“What is it?”
“Seriously?” Laurence asked. “That’s all?”
“Megs, we’re bald,” Joanna pointed out, which was so obvious I started laughing.
Megan reached out and turned the hallway light on. She studied first her sister’s head, then Laurence’s.
“Huh. You guys are bald. Cool. See ya.”
She retreated into her room. Joanna wedged her foot in the door so she couldn’t close it.
“Megs, what the heck? That was a horrible reaction!”
Megan grinned and pointed at the camera. “I got you! It was so hard keeping a straight face, you guys.”
“But how did you know?”
Megan held up her phone to reveal the selfie Sallie had taken with them post-cut. “You know Sallie can’t keep a secret. She sent me this two hours ago.”
“She promised!” Joanna exclaimed.
“Go show Mya,” Megan said. “She doesn’t know.”
They shuffled down the hallway to a door that had a glittery, lopsided sign that said “MYA & BETHANY” on it. The younger girl who opened it when they knocked took one look at them and started screaming. She flew back into her room and slammed the door, still screeching like she’d seen Freddy Krueger standing over her with a bloody knife in his hand.
Joanna, Laurence, and Megan laughed uncontrollably. So did the person behind the camera. Between giggles, Megan turned the doorknob and cracked the door open a couple of inches.
“Mya, relax, it’s just Joanna and Ted.”
Megan opened the door wider, and they crept in. The girl sat on her bed, her back against the wall. Her eyes were saucers, and her face paled as Megan approached, but when Joanna and Ted got closer, she started screaming again and ducked under the covers. They all laughed again, and Megan climbed into bed with the scared little girl.
“Mya, it’s JoJo and Ted,” she kept saying. “Mya, come out from there.”
The video cut to all four of them sitting on the edge of the bed, Megan between the bald pranksters and her little sister.
“Okay, so it took a little while, but we finally calmed Mya down,” Ted said to the camera. “Now that she realizes it’s us, we want to know what she thinks of our new look.”
Mya, clutching Megan’s arm, leaned around her to peer at them. “I don’t like it,” she declared, then buried her face in Megan’s shoulder.
“Sheesh,” Joanna muttered, “tell us how you really feel.”
Mya looked up again. She turned to the camera, and it zoomed in on her distraught expression. “Bethany,” she said, sounding betrayed. Her bottom lip quivered. “How could you let them do this?” She burst into tears as she looked at Joanna again. “Your hair is the only thing that makes you pretty!”
Laurence let out a whoop followed by, “Burn!” but Joanna glared at her sister. “Thanks a lot, Mya.”
The scene changed to some posh room that must have been in Laurence’s house. A library maybe, judging by the rows and rows of books. Joanna and Ted repeated the sit-there-and-act-natural routine when Ted’s grandpa walked into the room. He freaked out as much as Joanna’s mom had until Joanna peeled the bald cap off and showed him her shoulder-length hair underneath.
At that, the older man put his hand over his heart and sighed in relief. “You almost gave me a heart attack. School pictures are next week.”
“Oh, mine’s real,” Laurence declared, and his grandpa’s face turned red on the spot.
“Theodore!”
“Gotta go,” Laurence said to the camera.
The video ended with his grandpa chasing him out the door. A thumbnail to another video popped up on the outro that was titled “Joanna Cuts Her Hair.” I clicked on it before it could disappear on me, and another video filled the screen.
“Hey, guys,” Joanna said with a wave. “I didn’t have to actually shave my head like Ted did to pull off this prank, but when Sallie first tried to put the bald cap on me, she couldn’t get it to look natural because of all my hair, so we have to cut it. I haven’t had short hair since I was three or four, so this is going to be almost as crazy as actually shaving it would have been, but we’re going to show you how to donate to HairTies when we’re done. They’re a great organization that makes wigs for kids who have cancer.”
Another fast-motion montage started, this one of Sallie cutting Joanna’s hair into a cute bob. I scrolled through to the end where Joanna held up the hunk of hair she was going to donate, all bundled into sections, probably by Sallie.
“Next up, we’ll walk you through the process of how you can donate your hair.”
It cut to a screenshare of the HairTies website as Joanna clicked the donate button and showed what the screen looked like. They also demonstrated how to wrap and package the hair and make out the address.
The video ended, and the autoplay to the next one started to count down. I hit pause so I could check the comments. I scrolled through a bunch of one-liners like Awesome! and Cool!
A thumbs-up with the number 724 next to it caught my eye, and I paused my scrolling to read it. If 724 people had Liked the comment, it must have been interesting.
Hi JoJo and Teddy. My name is Jessica. I’m eleven and I have leukemia. I just started chemo and I’ve been really really scared of losing my hair. I thought I would look ugly but then I saw Joanna pretending to be bald and she still looked pretty just with no hair so I’m not as scared anymore. Thanks for this video! And for donating to HairTies. I have a wig from them. It’s really long and pretty but its blond not brown like yours. I love you guys!
Joanna had replied from the account.
Hi Jessica. It’s Joanna here. Ted and I think you are super brave. You have a big, brave, beautiful heart. You don’t need hair to be pretty. We’ve decided to donate all the money we make this month off our channel to cancer research so someday other kids won’t have to go through this. Also, when you’re feeling up to it, we’d love to visit you and have you as a special guest on our show. Love you, too!
I sat back in my chair. My heart was full, but I also felt like I’d been punched in the gut. Everything I thought I knew about her felt wrong now.
Maybe she wasn’t such a sellout after all.
15
JOANNA
I PULLED UP TO RICK’S house a few minutes early. I hadn’t successfully been able to convince him to use my Wrap Up Pro account for more than passing individual clips back and forth between us, so I resigned myself to having to work in his messy room.
Rocking music got louder and louder as I walked up his sidewalk to the front door. I rang the doorbell and waited. After several moments, I rang the bell again, then pounded on the door while peeking in the skinny window. He had to be there; his car wa
s in the driveway. The bottoms of my feet vibrated as a particularly harsh bassline rang out.
The wind picked up, stinging my ears and hands. I tried the doorknob. I know it was rude since I’d only been there one other time, but I wasn’t going to subject myself to frostbite just because Rick had decided to play death metal at the decibel of jet engine. It wasn’t locked, so I opened the door and stuck my head inside. The music now blasted me full-force, indistinguishable screaming that surprised me. I’d figured him as more of a Nirvana guy. I guess you couldn’t judge someone’s taste in music by their collection of flannels and weathered Converse shoes.
“Hello?” I called, my voice barely cracking the thrumming. “Rick?”
A low baritone of chuckles rang out, accompanied by adorable, high-pitched giggles. I followed the laughter to the left and ended up in the Bhaers’ empty living room.
“Hello?” I tried again.
I was answered by a horse barreling into the room, neighing like crazy and bucking his tiny rider off. I gasped as Rick, playing the part of horse, launched a little girl off his back. She tumbled off, giggling. I covered my face with my hands and waited for the crash of her hitting the ground and the ear-splitting wails that would accompany a broken arm or twisted ankle.
But all I heard over the music was the little girl’s continued giggles. I peeked between my fingers. Rick had somehow caught her, and he was now tickling her ribs as she let out a gasping peel of laughter. He laughed, too, and it struck me how genuine his laughter was. He was having as much fun hanging out with this little girl as she was.
“Stop!” she cried between giggles. “No more tickles!”
He removed his fingers from her sides immediately, which scored him a few points in my book, even though the piercing of my eardrums had already lost him points. Most adults aren’t so quick to stop a tickle-monster attack.
“Okay, Luz, I think we’d better calm down before your mom gets home. She was kind of crabby last time I got you all riled up and then sent you home.”
“No! Horsie again!”
He collapsed, face-first on the floor, all his limbs spread out. He shook his head. “Too tired,” came his muffled reply.
The little girl poked at him, yelling, “Horsie again!” a couple of times, then sat back and looked up at me for the first time. She had rich, coppery skin, even in the middle of a Massachusetts winter, and dark, wispy hair that hadn’t yet lost its baby-fineness. She couldn’t have been more than three or four.
“Why is a lady here?”
“A lady?” Rick lifted his head from the carpet, gave her a confused look, then glanced up. His face immediately reddened, and he popped to his feet. “Joanna, hey.” He rushed to grab his phone off the coffee table, and the music coming from the wireless speakers around the room stopped mid-scream.
He had this ridiculous hat made out of folded newspaper stuck on his head because, in their world, apparently, horses wore paper hats. I have no idea how it didn’t fall off when they were goofing around.
“We were just . . . um . . . this is my neighbor, Luz.” He nodded at the little girl. “I’m baby-sitting. Her mom should be home any minute. Are you early? You must be early. What time is it?”
Flustered Rick was adorable.
“We’re playing zoo, lady,” Luz said. “Rick’s the horsie, and I’m the zookeeper.”
“Her name’s Joanna,” Rick said.
“I didn’t realize zookeepers rode their horses,” I said. Or had horses in zoos in the first place, but that seemed a little too picky to mention to a preschooler.
“They do!” Luz launched herself at Rick, ending up attached to his side, her hands and ankles locked together.
He grunted as he tried to peel her off of him. “Sorry. I’m sure Cristina will be here really soon.” He stumbled and had to catch himself on the back of an easy chair. “Luz, let go.”
Luz giggled, and I found myself laughing along. She was such a cutie.
“You can go up to my room. I’ll be there in a sec.”
“No! I want the lady to stay!”
“Joanna,” he corrected again.
She let go of him and ran to me, grabbing my hand in both of hers. “You can be the hippo.”
“Luz,” Rick said, facepalming. “Girls don’t like to be called hippos.”
I laughed. “It’s fine. I can be the hippo. I’m not the most graceful person in the world, so it fits.”
I set down my backpack, got down on all fours, and lumbered around, opening my mouth as wide as I could. Rick started laughing, which I thought was pretty ballsy for a guy pretending to be a horsie while wearing a newspaper hat.
I was just trying to figure out what noise a hippo makes when Luz pointed out the window. “Mamá!” She took off on her little legs for the door with Rick hot on her heels.
“No, Luz!”
She reached the door first but couldn’t open it, so Rick was able to catch up and take her hand before twisting the doorknob. The cool air rushed in as she dragged him outside. I followed. Their interactions were so cute. I needed to see more.
The woman next door was walking from her car to the front door, her arms loaded with grocery bags.
“Mamá!” Luz cried, running to her with open arms. Rick let go of her hand when they got closer to the woman.
I stood in his doorway, poking my head out into the cold to watch.
“Let me get that for you,” he said, scooping both bags out of her arms.
Luz threw her arms around her mom and started jabbering a mile a minute in Spanish. The only words I recognized were Rick, Mamá, caballo, and gato. So much for retaining freshman year Spanish vocabulary. All three of them disappeared into the house. Less than a minute later, Rick reappeared and jogged back over to his house.
“Just a sec,” he said to me. “Sorry.”
He grabbed a tiny pink coat off the couch and jogged out the door. This time, I headed to the stairs and sat two steps from the bottom to wait for him. It felt too intrusive to go upstairs and make myself comfortable in his room without him.
The door opened a minute or two later, and he rushed inside, rubbing his hands together. He spotted me sitting on his steps and flopped down next to me before I could stand up, still rubbing his hands. His stairs weren’t exactly wide, so our legs bumped. Cold radiated from the arm of his flannel where it touched my sweatshirt sleeve.
“It’s cold out there.”
We sat for a minute in semi-awkward silence.
“So . . .” I raised my eyebrows at him. “Heavy metal? I thought you’d be more into Nirvana.”
“Nirvana’s great, but I’m more of a Pearl Jam man. The metal was Luz’s choice.”
My jaw dropped open. “Luz? A little kid picked that screaming song?” I scoffed. He had to be messing with me. “I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it. She loves the stuff. The louder the better.”
I shrugged. “I mean, any zoo worth its salt plays loud death metal.”
“Right?”
We both laughed, and the awkwardness dissolved. Silence overtook us again, but it was comfortable this time.
I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. His wavy hair peeked out from under the paper hat that was still somehow attached to his head after roughhousing with Luz and running back and forth between yards in the wind. He wore a red and black flannel that looked newer than the other ones I’d seen him wear over a Soundgarden concert T-shirt, and a couple of days’ worth of stubble had grown back on his cheeks and chin since the interview with Mr. Matthews.
“You’re not what I thought you were at all.”
He nudged my shoulder with his and gave me a joking, smarmy smile. “You thought I was the same clean-cut professional I am on Bhaerly Believable, didn’t you?”
“I’d never seen your channel before we met.”
“Burn,” he muttered, clutching his chest with one hand, but his eyes smiled, despite the put-on injured face.
“I though
t you were this crabby guy who sat on benches at the mall and freaked out for no reason when people walked by.”
His eyes flashed for a heartbeat. “It was a very important scene.” He looked as if he’d like to say more about our first meeting, but then his expression softened and he leaned toward me, looking right into my eyes. His gaze was intense, our faces so close together. His beautiful brown eyes made my heart do strange flippy things. I swallowed under his scrutiny. “But . . . I’m sorry I freaked out on you like that.” The corner of his mouth quirked up into a partial smile. “Looking back on it, I’m really embarrassed about throwing a scene in public.”
I wasn’t used to getting such easy apologies, given that I lived with Mya, who could be just as stubborn as I could. We still hadn’t called a truce over the flash drive.
“I don’t really freak out much,” Rick added, his sheepish grin broadening.
“I get freaking out,” I admitted. “I kind of freak out a lot.”
“You don’t say,” he muttered.
I shoved his arm. “Shut up.”
He laughed. “My point is, you didn’t know I was filming, and I could have handled my reaction more maturely.”
“I’m sorry, too,” I said. It was surprisingly easy to say. I hadn’t realized it until this moment, but I did feel genuinely bad about what had happened. “You had your scene all planned out, and then Ted and I barged in shooting our drivel—”
“It’s not drivel.” He said it so quickly I almost believed him. “At least not all of it. And you’re a lot different than I expected, too.”
I felt myself getting defensive. “How so?”
“Real life Joanna March is way more intense than YouTube JoJo.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “What did you think I was? Some airhead?”
“No, but you and Laurence always act so goofy and relaxed. Like your whole day revolves around punking someone or doing something silly for reactions.”
“Because it’s supposed to be funny. We’re trying to make viewers laugh, not drag them down. There’s enough drama in real life.”