Whisker Wizard

by Jennifer L. Holm

  I looked at Penny, who nodded approvingly.

  “Give the people what they want,” she encouraged.

  “Uh, well,” I began, “I found this recipe for a whisker serum online.”

  “Where?” the second girl asked.

  “And what was in it?” asked another, tapping me on the shoulder.

  I was starting to get overwhelmed. There was so much to explain, and so little time.

  As if Penny had read my mind, she pulled me through the crowd to my locker.

  “Check out Whisker Wizards tonight,” she told everyone. “Babymouse will post a tutorial explaining exactly how she does her famous Twist.”

  “Will you really, Babymouse?” a voice asked.

  I nodded.

  The warning bell rang, and the crowd scattered. As everyone walked away, I heard “Yay!” and “Hooray!” mixed with one “Eh, I thought it looked better online.”

  “Talk later, Babymouse,” said Penny, giving me a thumbs-up.

  Stunned, I struggled to open my locker. It took me several tries. Finally, it clicked open just before the final bell sounded.

  Ring!

  I watched a flurry of papers float to the hallway floor and tried to process what had just happened. Then it started to dawn on me what was going on.

  People wanted my opinion.

  People were actually looking up to me!

  The day had taken an interesting turn. (Get it, Twist joke?!)

  Less excitingly, I was late for homeroom.

  Typical.

  * * *

  Students came up to me during the day to ask about my whisker look. I gave them as many tips and tricks as I could. Everyone listened intently. Some even took notes!

  In health class, someone passed me a note. I passed it down the line, as usual. But then something weird happened: the kid next to me passed it back.

  Was this what it felt like to be popular? I was so excited, I wasn’t even worried about getting in trouble.

  In fact, I wanted everyone to know. I tried to cough and sneeze a lot to subtly call attention to myself, but the teacher just sent me to the nurse.

  It happened again in science class, and then in math.

  I even thought someone was passing me a note during gym class, but it was just the baton for a relay race. Oops!

  By lunch, I was completely exhausted from explaining the Twist so many times.

  I couldn’t wait to get home and try to make the tutorial. I ran from the bus to my house, bounded up the stairs, and closed my bedroom door.

  I was ready!

  Until I realized…I didn’t exactly know what a tutorial was.

  Penny called me right away, and I picked up on the first ring.

  “You just take a video of yourself explaining how to do something, and you post it on the internet,” she said.

  “Got it!” I replied. “That sounds easy.”

  “It is,” she said. “I watch them all the time. I’ll send you some links. I’d come over and help you, but I have too much homework tonight.”

  “No worries,” I replied.

  As soon as I hung up with Penny, she sent me a bunch of tutorials.

  I watched all the videos. Each one made it seem so easy! There was even a tutorial by a five-year-old on how to braid whiskers.

  Anyone can do this, I thought. I can do this!

  I wrote myself a script, got all the ingredients ready, and set up my camera.

  That’s when I realized that filming was going to be harder than I’d thought.

  To start off, I couldn’t hold the phone because I needed both hands to style my whiskers in the tutorial.

  (Believe me, I tried lots of alternatives.)

  I tried propping my phone up in different spots in my room. But every time I started to get the hang of filming, it would fall over, or only half of my face would be in the image, or my voice would sound muffled and far away.

  It soon became clear I would have to bring in outside help.

  There was only one thing for me to do: I would have to ask Squeak to be my videographer.

  * * *

  I found him downstairs in the living room, watching cartoons. In exchange for his name in the credits and a week of me doing his chores, Squeak agreed to record the tutorial for me.

  But it didn’t end there. He printed a professional videography contract and made me sign it right in front of him! He even added a clause that said I had to give him a pack of gum for every take, and two packs of gum for every take more than five.

  “Gum overtime,” he explained to me. “Industry standard.”

  I shook my head. The whole thing was ridiculous, but what choice did I have? I couldn’t show my (perfectly whiskered) face in school tomorrow without having posted the tutorial tonight. Everyone would be so let down.

  I reached into my backpack and pulled out three sticks of gum.

  “You’ll get the rest of the pack when the job is done,” I told him.

  He nodded and popped all three into his mouth.

  * * *

  I’ll tell you one thing: Penny was wrong about tutorials being easy. There were so many things to do at once, and Squeak wasn’t making it easier by putting the pressure on.

  The first take ended up sounding kind of like, well, this:

  #Facepalm

  The second time, I looked in the wrong places entirely!

  So much time passed that the sun started to go down. My room got too dark, so we had to add more lights.

  What a headache! And this didn’t even include perfecting the demonstration itself!

  It was so simple to create my Twists when I was just having fun and playing around. But now that people were depending on me and there was a time limit—not to mention a slowly disappearing bubble gum budget—everything was so much harder.

  My hands shook as I tried to create the perfect spiral over and over again.

  Most times, one side would come out looking good, and then the other side would be a total disaster.

  Sometimes, I thought I’d fit in better at a haunted house than a beauty salon.

  I ended up having to record the whole thing about nine times.

  But finally, I completed a near-perfect take. It was a whisker miracle! I didn’t flub my lines even once, and my whiskers came out really well!

  I grabbed my Whiz Bang™ from Squeak so I could play the recording back. I searched the videos on my phone, but the last one was just a video of Squeak with my voice floating in the background.

  My stomach dropped.

  “Oh no!” I yelled, realizing what had happened. “Did you have the camera set to selfie mode during that whole video?”

  Squeak shrugged.

  “Technical difficulties,” he said. “Call my agent.”

  He took the open pack of gum from my backpack and walked off.

  Typical.

  In the end, I had to cut and paste a bunch of different videos together to make a tutorial I could actually post. It came out kind of weird, but at least my whiskers looked good!

  Finally, I posted the video on Whisker Wizards. Now all I could do was wait….

  My tutorial had finally gone live on Whisker Wizards. I couldn’t believe how exciting it was to have my whiskers out there!

  One thing I had noticed on all the videos was how many “luvs” and comments each one got.

  The more people who viewed your videos, the more popular you became online. I was really hoping to get a big following ASAP.

  As I waited for more views and followers, I realized I could get the ball rolling by watching the video myself as many times as possible. (I guess that makes me my own biggest fan!)

  I then sent the video to the girls who’d mobbed me that morning. When I had gotten up to twenty-one views (nineteen from me and two from randoms), I decided it was time to go to bed.


  After what seemed like forever, I finally fell asleep.

  Of course, I dreamed all night about being a famous tutorialist. Paparazzi took pictures of me, reporters stood outside my house with camera crews, and my fans chased me down the street.

  * * *

  In the morning, I woke up late and had to rush off to school without even checking my video stats.

  Not surprisingly, school was just like the day before.

  Everyone crowded around my locker, commenting on the Whisker Wizards video and asking me for advice.

  “We loved your tutorial, Babymouse!” said the girl who passed me the note the day before.

  “Yeah, I watched it three times in a row,” said another. “Check out my whiskers!” She plucked at one of her whiskers, and it sprang perfectly back into place. Boing!

  “The only weird thing,” said a boy from my homeroom, “was that chewing and popping sound in the background the whole time….”

  SQUEAK! I thought. But I kept my teeth clenched in a smile.

  “Anyway, can’t wait to see what you do next,” he continued.

  Me neither, I thought.

  I couldn’t concentrate at school. I was trying to think of ideas for a new video tutorial, but coming up empty.

  The more I tried to think, the more my mind went blank. Of course, that made it even harder to brainstorm ideas. What if this was it for me? What if I never had another creative idea for as long as I lived? Would I become a washed-up has-been, hopelessly living in the past?

  I couldn’t let that happen, so I finally began to brainstorm new styles.

  During math class, I tried to think of what “protractor” whiskers would look like.

  In science, I daydreamed about an “amoeba” style.

  Gym class had me wondering about a “dirty sneaker” look.

  I was scribbling in my notebook so much that my teachers actually complimented me on my “newfound love of learning.” Little did they know it was just ideas for my new vlog!

  I got home and dumped my backpack out onto the floor of my room. I picked up my notebook and flipped through the pages. Surely, I had come up with something good after thinking nonstop for a whole day.

  Maybe I could do a variation of the Twist?

  I got out a notepad and jotted down ideas.

  ARGH.

  All the looks were basically the same. Was I a one-whisker wonder?

  I got up and began to pace around my room.

  “Ouch!” I exclaimed.

  I had stepped on something sharp. I looked down to see a metal paper clip.

  Hmm. Now, that was an interesting shape.

  What if I could make my whiskers look like a paper clip? I wondered.

  Without any better ideas, I decided to try it out.

  I played around with my whiskers until I had a look that kind of, sort of, maybe resembled a paper clip. And, to my surprise, it actually looked…awesome!

  I immediately began working on a video! After enlisting Squeak’s help—he told me his rate had gone up to two packs of gum per take—I was ready to go. (After I made sure the camera wasn’t on selfie mode, of course!)

  A couple of hours later, my whiskers were on point, and the video was ready to be released to the entire World Wide Web! (Or at least my five subscribers….)

  I uploaded it, shot a quick FYI text to Penny, and tumbled into bed, exhausted.

  This time, I had no trouble falling asleep.

  When I woke up in the morning, I had 104 subscribers!

  That got me motivated! If I could get to 100 subscribers, maybe I could get to 1,000, and then 10,000, and then 100,000, and maybe even 1,000,000! I had always been convinced I was destined to be famous. Maybe this was my big break!

  Now that I had a new goal—kind of the same one I’d always had, becoming rich and famous—I decided to repeat the same process every day.

  My new schedule went like this:*1

  I must admit my teachers were not exactly thrilled that I hadn’t done any homework in a week, and were threatening to give me detention. But instead of worrying about that and kick-starting my work again, I only thought about what “detention whiskers” might look like, and whether they would go viral.

  This wasn’t the only obstacle I had to overcome. Slowly, my parents were starting to notice all the missing ingredients from their pantry.

  I was going through three jars of mayonnaise a week. (I told Dad I was really into egg salad so he wouldn’t be too suspicious.)

  Coming up with different looks and doing a new tutorial every day was really wearing me out. It had been so much fun in the beginning, but now it was feeling like real work.

  (Not to mention that I pretty much owed Squeak an entire gum factory!)

  But still, I made tutorial after tutorial.

  I came up with the “heart-shaped” whisker style.

  The “bow tie” whisker style.

  The “swirl” whisker style.

  My fan base was still growing, but not as quickly. After each upload, I watched for the number of views and read all the comments. It was like an obsession. Most of the comments were really nice, but there were some mean ones, too, and they stuck out to me the most.

  It drove me crazy! I might get “I luv you!” like thirty times in a row, and then “Meh, her whiskers are basic” once—and that was all I could think about!

  Hmm. Well, if I couldn’t respond to this troll, I could still do something creative to show them I didn’t care what they thought.*2

  And it led to a video idea!

  If this person thinks my whiskers are basic now, I thought, I should show them just how basic my whiskers can be!

  The next morning, I created a tutorial called “The Basic Babymouse.” It showed my messy whiskers after I rolled out of bed.

  It took just a few minutes to create, and I didn’t have to get help from Squeak.

  I uploaded the video, ran to the bus stop, and forgot all about it. I was too busy catching up on the latest posts from Fabi. She was always posting videos online. I followed her religiously (well, Fabi was a goddess). It was incredible to think that Fabi had once been someone like me—ordinary. Now she was Fabulous.

  When I got home from school, the first thing I did was check my new stats. That was when things went from lowercase amazing to uppercase AMAZING!

  Skip Notes

  *1 I also ate, brushed my teeth, and went to the bathroom at some points during the day, in case you were wondering. But these are unimportant things in the life of an internet celebrity.

  *2 (Even if I did care what they thought, a lot, and stayed up all night thinking about it.)

  Things just kept getting better and better. The next morning at school, a couple of girls from my grade ran up to me in the hallway. They were jumping around excitedly. I thought they had to use the bathroom or something, but then I realized they were excited to see me.

  “How does it feel?” one of the girls asked.

  “How does what feel?” I replied. Could they tell I was wearing two different-colored socks?

  “How does it feel to be noticed by Fabi?!”

  “Huh?”

  “You know, Fabi—the famous actress, singer, and dancer?”

  “Of course I know her!” I exclaimed. “I’ve been watching her videos all week. But what does that have to do with me?”

  Just then, Penny came running down the hall, totally unconcerned with getting a slip from a hall monitor.

  “Babymouse!” she squealed. “You’ll never believe this! Fabi—yes, the Fabi—made a post on social media about how she loves your new look! She even took a picture of herself with twisted whiskers. She calls them twiskers!”

  Penny pulled it up on her phone and showed me the proof.

  I was too stunned to even think about getting to class on time. Penny gave me a high five and ran o
ff just before the bell sounded. Moments later, the hallway was empty.

  Ring!

  I didn’t move. A hall monitor approached me with a piece of paper.

  Oh no, I thought. I’m going to be in big trouble.

  But when he handed me the paper, instead of being a detention slip, it just said:

  Confused, I didn’t say anything. I just grabbed my things and hustled to class. What a wacky turn of events!

  As soon as I got home that afternoon, I logged on to my computer. My mind was racing with thoughts and questions. Did this mean Fabi and I were friends now?

  I kept checking my phone to see if I had any unusual texts or voice mails from numbers I didn’t recognize. Usually, I don’t pick up the phone if I don’t recognize a number, but that day, I was picking up every call. I talked to three robocalls in a row before I turned my spam blocker back on.

  How else can I connect with Fabi? I wondered.

  I figured getting her attention online had worked once, so maybe it could work again. I reached out to Penny for advice. She always knew what to do.

  Such a great idea!