“Not a big drinker?” I ask.
“More like not a big fan of Cody, Noog, and Ben drinking,” Lainey answers for him, though Legs doesn’t disagree.
“People without a lot of inhibitions to start with shouldn’t guzzle down things that loosen their inhibitions,” Legs adds, and Z laughs.
Legs turns to Lainey. “Want to get out of here before the drinking starts? Maybe go down to the water? Or out for dinner?”
She’s staring at the camera in her hand—the one she got for Cody earlier—like it’s some precious jewel. She pulls her eyes away from it and looks at Legs. “I wish I could, Legs, but I ended up telling Cody that I’d handle his vlog camerawork for him.”
“You did?” His eyebrows furrow in confusion and surprise. Honestly, I’m surprised, too. Volunteering to do extra stuff for her brother doesn’t seem like her thing.
“You could stick around here, though,” Lainey suggests.
Legs stares at her for a long moment, as if he’s trying to figure out how to get out of the alternate universe he’s somehow slipped into. Then, as though he’s realized he’s trapped and there’s no way out, his shoulders sink. “Nah, I don’t think I could handle it right now. I’ll catch you later, okay?” He touches her arm, gently, then disappears out of the room, leaving Lainey staring after him like she wishes this were the climax of some rom-com and she could go running after him.
“I didn’t think you were going to do the vlog camera stuff,” I say.
“I have every right to change my mind, okay?” she snaps.
I throw my hands up in surrender. “Sorry. Of course you do.”
“So, what toppings do you guys want on the pizzas?” Z asks, jumping in to save me from any further Lainey wrath.
We’re still in the kitchen, debating pizza toppings, when Code and the rest of the guys get back. As soon as Code steps into the room, hefting a case of beer onto the counter, Lainey opens the fridge, pulls out a cold one, and hands it to him. Whatever she said earlier about how obnoxious he is when he drinks, she must have been joking.
With Code and Noog and Ben and Wolf all back, the noise level increases exponentially, and as we all move out of the kitchen and into the living room, Z has to shout to be heard: “Pizza toppings! What do you want for pizza toppings?”
“Pineapple,” Wolf says, at the same time that Ben says, “Anything but pineapple!”
And then pizza toppings suggestions are flying around the room.
“Pepperoni only!”
“Every kind of meat they have!”
“Mushroom.”
“Bacon.”
“No mushroom.”
“Bacon!”
“Green pepper.”
“I don’t believe in veggies.”
“Bacon!”
Z hops up on the arm of a chair, almost hitting his head on the not-very-high ceiling. “Enough!” He holds his arms out, a king waiting for his subjects to quiet to a silent reverence, which the guys actually do. “You have all lost your right to choose. I am going to order whatever I want to order, and y’all will live with it.” He taps on his phone, apparently putting in the order.
Code laughs. “The king has spoken!” he says. Apparently we’re both thinking of Z standing up there as a king. Another reason we might be good together, right? Great minds and all that.
Before I can approach Code to try to strike up some flirtatious banter or something, Lainey grabs his arm and takes him to a corner, where they talk quietly for a couple of minutes. It’s too loud in here to hear the whole conversation, but Lainey holds up the vlogging camera and Code grins widely in response. And I do catch Lainey’s suggestion that she film some candid shots for the vlog, in addition to the normal vlogging camerawork she’s already doing. Code gives her a thumbs-up, and then she slips quietly into a chair in the corner and pulls out the camera, apparently ready to vlog it up.
Code, on the other hand, marches across the room and plops onto the couch.
Noog plops down on the couch beside Code before I can snag the seat.
I’m tempted to go over and chat with Lainey for a bit, but then Noog says, “What’s this stuff?” and waves at the grocery bags I left on the coffee table.
“Oh, I picked some snacks up. Canadian stuff.” I move to the coffee table and start sorting through the bags, pulling all-dressed chips, Aero and Caramilk chocolate bars, and ranch Crispers out of the first bag. “Since you’re in Canada, I thought we could do a video of you guys trying Canadian junk food.”
Code’s brow crinkles with displeasure, and my brain jumps with a panicked thought that maybe I’ve crossed a line by daring to suggest a video idea. Code frowns. “I don’t know about—”
“That sounds awesome.” Wolf snatches up the bag of all-dressed chips. “What do these taste like?”
“Like all-dressed chips,” I say.
“That’s helpful,” Ben says with a laugh.
“I don’t know. They taste like themselves. How would you describe the taste of . . . I don’t know, cheese, to someone who’s never had cheese?”
“I’d say it tasted like a cow was milked in heaven. I’m trying it.” Wolf starts to open the bag, but I grab it before he can pull the seams apart.
“Not until the video!” I kneel beside the coffee table and shove the chip bag back into the plastic grocery bag.
“Then you have to tell me what it tastes like,” Wolf says.
“Fine, let me think.” I settle cross-legged onto the floor. “They taste like . . . like a barbecue chip and a salt-and-vinegar chip had a baby, sprinkled it with maple syrup, and hung it over a fire to be smoked.”
“Gross,” says Wolf.
“Awesome,” says Noog at the same time. “Clearly we need to do this video.” He leans forward and starts looking through the bags.
“Oh, I have an idea!” Z pipes up. He’s still standing on the arm of the chair. He slides his phone into his pocket, apparently done ordering our pizza, and hops to the floor with a thud. “We should combine it with the bug-eating challenge. We could play Mario Kart or something, and if you win, you try a Canadian snack, if you lose, you eat a bug.”
“Ooh, I like it,” says Wolf. “It adds something unique to a challenge that’s been done before. Though Mario Kart might be too long of a game for this type of a challenge. Viewers will want us to hurry up and eat the gosh-darn bug already. Is there something else we could play?” He grabs a beer off the side table, then flips around one of the chairs by the computer system in the corner and settles into it.
“We could just have a spinner that lands on something good or bad,” Ben says. “That’d be quick and easy. I mean, aside from the fact that we don’t have a spinner. I guess we could draw slips from a box or something instead?”
“What about Pictionary?” Z suggests.
And as the ideas start to fly around, I start to understand what Z was talking about earlier on the panel, about the benefits of working with other YouTubers. If I was doing this myself, I’d have sat in my basement and done a basic Canadian snacks video and a different bug-eating video, and they’d have been fine. But this is better than fine. They’re taking my idea and making it better, building on it, making something exceptional.
I tune back in to Wolf saying, “We could do video game trivia. Get it right, try whatever Canadian thing you want. Get it wrong, eat a bug.”
“No way,” Noog says. “You’d destroy us.”
“It’s not Wolf’s fault he’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of all things video game,” Z says.
“What if we answered trivia questions about each other?” Ben suggests. “We could each write a handful of questions about ourselves, then toss them in a hat.”
“Good one,” Z says, settling onto the floor beside me.
“Viewers are going to want to see Willow and me answer questions about each other,” Code says, and my neck flushes with its inescapable heat. “Could we make that happen?” He waggles his eyebrows at me in mock sed
uctiveness, and I wonder if he has any interest in me beyond wanting to please his viewers. Should that thought make me sad?
Lainey’s been sitting quietly in the corner, intermittently lifting the camera to take what I assume is potential vlog video and lowering it back into her lap. I wonder if she caught Code’s eyebrow waggle on camera, and if it’ll make it into his channel’s vlog. Is it wrong that that thought makes me happy?
“I’ve got it,” Wolf says, and he explains to us his idea. We’ll each write five trivia questions about ourselves with increasing difficulty. On our turn, we’ll pick someone to answer a question about, and that person will read the next question on their list. Get it right, choose any Canadian snack to eat. Get it wrong, and that person will choose a bug for us to eat.
“I love it,” I say, and I mean it. This is what happens when you throw a bunch of creatives together. This is what happens when I get to work with people so much further ahead in the business than me. Gold. Pure gold.
We spend the next while getting set up. When the pizza arrives, Code yells at Lainey to hurry up and go answer the door, and instead of yelling back at him to stop being an asshole, she presses stop on her recording and trots off to get them.
I can’t help myself. I lean over to Code and say quietly, “Maybe you should treat your sister better.”
“She’s working for me,” he says, and apparently he thinks that’s a good enough reason, because he hops up to go scarf down a dozen slices of pizza and doesn’t say anything more about it. For a split second, I want to smack him, but I push the feeling away. Nobody’s perfect, right?
We continue setting up while we eat. Wolf passes around paper and pens so we can jot down our questions; Noog loses his questions for a while and then finds them in a pizza box on top of the Hawaiian pizza. By the time we’re finished eating, we’re ready to go.
A table is set up on one side of the room, with the snacks and bugs spread across it, and we squash in behind it, settling into chairs that are so close together they’ve become a bench. Code slides in after me from one direction and Noog from another. Z follows behind Noog, and the thought that I’d rather have Z’s leg pressed against mine than Code’s skips through my brain before I shove it away.
This is about Code, not Z, and I can’t judge Code based on the way he and his sister fight. Conventions are stressful, and if someone walked in on me and my brothers fighting, they’d think we were all terrible human beings. And besides, Code’s thigh and shoulder feel warm and soft against mine, and it’s kind of nice.
The camera is set up across from us, on a tripod, and Wolf’s fidgeting with it to make sure the lighting’s right and we’re all in view. Lainey’s back in her chair in the corner, still intermittently filming things for possible vlog footage, looking more and more disgruntled over the course of the evening—perhaps because Code has been treating her like a servant robot instead of a human.
Ben slips in on Code’s other side. “Is this whole bug-eating challenge overdone? There are so many videos about it.”
“Uh, maybe a little too late to be pointing that out, dummy,” says Noog.
“We’ve got a ton of unique stuff in ours,” Wolf points out. “The Canadian snacks and stuff.” He nods at me, an acknowledgment of my awesome idea, and my heart fills with rainbows.
“Confurzzle did one recently, and I think it’s already at a million views,” Z points out.
“Yeah, but he’s black,” Code says.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Z asks, taking the words right out of my mouth.
“It means that everyone’s so excited about this ‘black gamer’ that he gets a free ride because he’s black, while the rest of us have to work our butts off to get a few views,” Code says, making air quotes around “black gamer.”
What in a bushel of overripe bananas is that supposed to mean?!
There are so many things wrong with Code’s statement, and judging by Z’s raised eyebrow, he thinks so, too, but Wolf announces, “Aaaaannnd we’re rolling,” and presses Record on the video before either of us can say anything. He rushes into his seat, and then he and Ben start into an explanation of the game and introduce me as a special guest, while Code and Noog interject with random crap.
I study Code as he jokingly tells Wolf to get to the point already. Maybe he didn’t mean his comment about Confurzzle like it came out. After all, it’s true that there’s a lot of excitement that there’s finally a mainstream YouTube gamer who’s black in a world full of white guys and the odd white girl. And it’s true that it’s made his channel very popular very fast. Everything else probably just came out wrong. I hope.
I glance over to where Lainey was sitting to see if she had a reaction to Code’s comment, but she’s gone.
There isn’t more time to think about it, because Wolf’s explanation is done and it’s Z’s turn, and he’s twirling his finger around like his hand’s a spinner, then halting it in my direction. So like I do a dozen times a day or more, I take my annoyance and I push it away and I put on a smile.
“Me?” I ask, perhaps a little too flirtily, because Code’s forehead crinkles, then immediately smooths over. Even though I know my questions by heart, I make a show out of cupping my hands around my paper, trying to hide it from Code and Noog as I unfold it and ask my first question: “What do my viewers call me for short?”
“That’s too easy,” complains Code.
“It is,” Z agrees. “They call you Shadow.”
Code frowns. “No, they—”
“That’s right!” I cut Code off with a cheery grin before he can say something awkward again. I’m not trying to embarrass him; I’m just trying to set the record straight. “From time to time, I get called Willow, but most people call me Shadow. It’s what I prefer.”
“Nailed it!” Z says, then reaches across the table and snatches up the Caramilk bar, breaks off three whole pieces, and pops them into his mouth. “Mmmm, caramel-y. I’m buying a dozen of these to take back home with me.”
Noog is up next, and he chooses Ben.
“How old am I?” Ben asks.
“A million and—”
“If you get it wrong, you have to eat a bug,” Wolf reminds him.
“I mean, not a million. You’re twenty-nine. Which is basically the equivalent of a million.”
“Correct,” Ben says.
“I want this,” Noog says, grabbing up a Kinder Egg.
“What is it?” Wolf asks.
“It’s a Kinder Egg,” I say. “I can’t believe you guys don’t have them down south.”
“We do now, but they’re different,” Ben says.
“Do we?” Wolf asks. “I’ve never seen them.”
“Well, they were a staple of my childhood,” I explain. “They’re a chocolate eggshell with a toy inside.”
“Hey!” Noog says through a mouthful. He’s somehow ripped the foil wrapper off and shoved the entire egg-sized candy into his mouth. “There’sh shomething in here.”
“Yeah, a toy, you doofus,” Code says. “She just said that.”
I laugh. “I guess I understand why they’re outlawed in the US now.”
Wolf smacks Noog’s arm. “This is why we can’t have nice things. Our entire country, I mean. Because you’ll eat them.”
Noog spits out the smaller orange egg from inside the chocolate shell. It lands on the table, coated in chocolate Noog-spit.
“Dude! Gross!” Code says.
“Let me just . . .” Noog snatches up the egg and struggles with the saliva-slippery thing, finally popping it open and pouring out a few green and white plastic pieces onto his hand. “What the heck is this?”
“You have to put it together,” I say.
“Well, screw that.” Noog drops the pieces on the table, and we all laugh.
It’s my turn next. “Hmm, let’s go with . . . Cody,” I say, purposely using his first name instead of his username.
He twists his body to look at me, squishing Ben out o
f the way. “Okay. What’s my favorite movie?”
“Your favorite movie? Have we talked about this? How am I supposed to pick your favorite out of the billions of movies that exist?”
He tries to give me a clue by lifting his arms in an upside-down biceps flex and making an angry face, which could mean about a thousand things.
“No cheating!” Wolf says. He’s holding a tiny roaring dinosaur, put together from Noog’s Kinder Egg pieces.
“Uh, The Hulk?” I guess.
“No!” Code says, sounding genuinely put out. “Nacho Libre!” He flexes his arms again. “I’m Jack Black! I’m a wrestler.”
“Dude, you totally looked like the Hulk,” Noog says.
“I’ve never seen Nacho Libre,” I admit.
Code’s eyes bug out at me. “What?! World’s funniest movie. Jack Black’s a monk turned wrestler and he runs around in this leotard and cape, and look, you’re just going to have to watch it with me.”
Honestly, it doesn’t really sound like my type of movie, but a million people are going to watch this and that’s probably not what they want to hear, so instead I say, “You name the time and place.”
I mean it as a Hamilton reference, but Noog goes, “Ooooh,” which I guess means it’s working as some kind of sexual innuendo, too, so good job, self.
“You got it wrong,” Wolf points out. “That means you eat a bug.”
“Pick a big one!” Z shouts.
“Shush, you!” I point my finger at him, and he scrunches his nose at me, and I scrunch mine back before turning back to Code, who’s got the bowl of bugs in his hand.
Code reaches across and holds it up to the side camera for a closeup before drawing it back and turning to me. “I’ll go easy on you,” he says, and his implied “because you’re a girl and I’m a gentleman” makes me want to roll my eyes.
He picks out a salted and seasoned ant that’s no bigger than my thumbnail and tastes like a potato chip, but I make a big deal out of eating it anyway.
We continue on like that, tossing trivia questions around. Code gets my favorite color right—in retrospect, that one was probably too easy, since I wear my favorite color every day on my head—and tries out dill pickle potato chips, and then Ben gets one wrong and has to eat a centipede and looks about ready to faint, but somehow he forces it down and then guzzles an entire bottle of water.
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