I got home that day, exhausted. Amanda was already waiting in my room—she’d gotten off earlier—, waiting for me to say something. I told her everything, this time being able to withhold tears.

  “Ah shit, this is bad,” she responded.

  “You think?!” I shouted back.

  “Aight, calm your tits,” she was going to grab the camera, “we’re making a follow-up video.”

  “So soon?”

  “Do you wanna just wait it out? Or delete your videos?”

  She had me there. Deleting my videos would be an act of cowardice on my part.  I got changed into my usual attire for my videos: grey hoodie, black sweatpants, a beanie. I checked my phone for Instagram (I was slowly starting to use it more frequently) when I got this:

Let this be a warning to you… if you insult with me or come for any of my friends again, you will be sister sorry. Also, stare at your own ass, not mine.

  I dropped the phone instantly. I started shaking. I lied down on my bed, trying to shake the feeling off. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work.

  Amanda walked back in and rushed over when she saw how I was acting up.

  “The… The text… DM… whatever the fuck...” I muttered.

  “This is a fucking threat,” she growled. “She’s threatening you. I’m calling the police—”

  “Wait!” I warned. “What are they gonna do?”

  “Well, they better do something; this bitch just—”

  “Okay, let’s think about this rationally,” I’ll run this down by everyone at home: The text was from Alana’s twin sister, Chloe. Chloe’s another close friend of Madison. I used to like Chloe. You know, in a like-like way. The same way I liked—had liked—Madison. One problem: Chloe had a boyfriend. I still liked her regardless. See where the problem lies? Around two months ago, I told Madison about this because I needed to tell someone or else I’d slip up and blurt it out in a conversation. I wasn’t thinking of telling Chloe for various reasons; we were never that close—barely acquaintances, really—, I was afraid of what she was gonna say or think of me, and I didn’t want to face the wrath of her boyfriend, Cliff.

  The looking at her ass part is something I’m willing to admit that it was maybe a misunderstanding. But even as I first read, I thought she just meant staring at her period and she just added “ass” to seem all edgy and shit. But as lame as it sounds, my eyes do sorta just look about and stare into space. The most logical explanation was that I was looking at the ground or someshit and Chloe was inconveniently there. I eventually told my parents and my counselor about this whole experience.

  “But, how sorry is sister sorry?” Amanda cautiously asked.

  “That’s why I’m freaking out!” Shaking intensifies.

  “But, she wouldn’t normally do this, right?”

  She had a point, “Yeah, you’re… you’re right. It’s really—”

  “Out of character.”

  “Almost as if—”

  “Madison told her to do it!” we said in unison. Now, I’m unsure if that’s true. But given how Madison was that day, it didn’t seem too out of question Besides, Chloe isn’t really a bitch; she never was, as a matter of fact. She just… acted on impulse. Almost like Madison.

  Almost.

Stolen story; please report.

  I picked up the phone and screenshot the DM. I sent the DM to Bee, a few guys in my class, and made a PSA on my Quotev page about not sending people creepy shit. After I calmed down, I came up with this realization: Chloe probably doesn’t hate or appreciate me any more than she did before and we’re cool.

  After I did that, I grabbed the camera and marched down to the studio. I set up the table, chair, yatta yatta.

  Amanda got the camera set up and gave me a thumbs-up to go whenever I’m ready.

  “I just don’t know…” I said.

  “Ah shit,” she replied as if she’s heard this numerous times, “you have to do the video, Enzo. Unless you want other people to kill themselves.”

  “It’s not that… I mean, it’s just, how’s Madison gonna think of me?”

  “Why do you even care so much about what she thinks of you at this point? Weren’t you worried about how Delilah thought of you?”

  She had me there. I shook off the feeling and took a minute to think of what I was going to say before letting the camera roll.

  “You didn’t care when Naomi found your video about her after you thought about, right? If anything, you used it as a stepping stool to popularity!”

◄◄◄

  I think I should explain the whole Naomi situation right now. I know it’s right in the middle of the best part, but I’m gonna be referring to it—and have—so I should just get it out of the way. Naomi was, simply put, my best friend. She had been for a year. Even back when I first talked to her, I was sorta desperate for someone I could call a best friend. The type of friend Bee is. My other “best friend,” who was sometimes my “boyfriend” at times, wasn’t the nicest guy. He had the same mental problems I went through. The difference between him and me was that I found a way to cope with my problems and got myself back on track; he took longer to do so because he was very reluctant to receiving help. I teased him about it all the time.

  You’ll learn more about him later. But just to put a name in your head so you don’t forget him, his name is Kells.

  Okay, back to Naomi: She was pretty cool. She was a dorky, a tolerable nerd who was quiet by day, louder that same day if you put her with a different group of people. It was a weird trait. A typical Cancer trait, though.

  I mean, that was never a problem. The only other Cancers I could compare her to, though, were my mom and Bee. It proved to be very difficult as to predict how she may react to anything since almost every Cancer I’ve encountered up to this point was completely different.

  Still, we were besties. At first, I thought it was gay, then I knew it was okay to be gay. I mean, as long as people know you're straight, right? Anyway, this new guy from across the border—I mean… from another school, came to our school. Naomi immediately fell for him. At first, it was a funny joke, but then it was actually really serious.

  I was getting jealous. I never realized I was jealous until I talked to Delilah about it once. Now, it’s not Delilah’s fault that anything that ended up happening happened. She just helped me realize something: I liked Naomi. Well, more like I thought I liked her; the feelings were never definite. I’d started to question if I did even before Delilah and me talked. I talked to Amanda about it and she seemed pretty split on the idea, too.

  I ended up doing what I saw as the most mature thing to do: Tell Naomi the possibility that I might like her and try to work it out. Maybe she’ll even talk me out of it!

  I was wrong.

  She spazzed out when I told her. It was understandable, I came to realize… eventually. Apparently, she thought I was gay, though… Never understood that part, either. She knew I liked girls. Too many, sure, but I did. I mean, I’ll give her credit where it’s due: I was a walking stereotype of a gay person. Literally: I had the scarf, the attitude, and the ability to insult someone within ten seconds.

  It still hurt that she just… kinda avoided me for some time after. That drove me insane. I just wanted to try and work things out rationally and she just kept running away. I eventually just accepted for what it was for a while.

  I never ended up hating her, though. I tried to for a while, but it made me feel bad. I just couldn’t make myself do it. I guess a part of me wanted to keep going, wanted to strive for a better outcome.

  So, I talked about her in my video. It was basically my way to cope with how conflicted I was. It was also one of my earlier videos where I hid my identity. It was ominous, to say the least. She found it a few days later—she still holds the record for the fastest person to find a video of mine made about them—and thought it was creepy, but, as far as I know, she never completely flipped out as Madison did. Other than talking about on the bus, but that was pretty normal. Even then, she mostly just went on about how she thought I was gay and how I was “chasing” her.

  So, yeah. That’s the story. Considering how short it all was, you can prolly figure out why it couldn’t really be a fleshed out story.

  So I made it a flashback.

►►►

  I gave Amanda the signal to hit record, and I started to apologize for everything I did. Talking about people for the sake of gaining more subscribers and viewers, talking about people without their permission, talking about people in general. It was different from a lot of my other videos. I was really shaky when making it. I felt some weird urge to cry, but Amanda kept giving me dirty looks, so I had to keep my cool.

  This is when I realized Amanda was changing.