Chapter 21
LOLA
“Oh my God!” Maisie screams from the other room, her voice muffled through her cracked door.
I’m sitting on the couch, my laptop open in my lap, an email pulled up that’s going fuzzy in front of my eyes.
Over the past few days, I’ve gotten so many sponsorship offers and collaboration requests that I nearly missed this one.
My heart leaps when Maisie comes running into the living room, her eyes wild, a toothbrush hanging from her mouth. Around the toothbrush, she says, “You’re almost at a million views, Lols!”
Last night, when I was falling asleep, the view count was hovering around seven hundred thousand.
For a video that’s nearly forty minutes long, that many views is breathtaking.
“Well?” Maisie prods, then, thinking better of it, she holds up a finger and spins around, running back into her bathroom before returning, sans toothbrush. “What are you thinking? What are you feeling? Should we get some champagne?”
I summon a meager smile for her, clearing my throat and sitting up from my place on the couch, which is, coincidentally, where I slept last night. Something about sleeping in the living room, on the couch, felt cozier than being alone in my room.
Maybe the obvious fact of someone missing in your bed, my mind supplies. I shush it and focus on Maisie, who’s started to look at me like I’m missing brain cells.
“Yay!” I try, but it doesn’t come out right, my eyes flitting to the laptop screen, which is still open, but has dimmed now.
“Come on, Lols,” she says, dropping onto the couch next to me, hiking one leg up next to her. “I’ll skip class today. We should do something to celebrate. Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted?”
I haven’t showered since yesterday. The video has been up for six days and has already garnered serious attention.
Since I started doing influencer stuff, I’ve mostly focused on short-form videos, little mini-blog posts in my Insta captions. For a while, I tried making long-form weekly vlogs, but they never really caught on like my other stuff.
But this video isn’t a vlog. It’s… well, it’s something else. Not a glamping tutorial. Not even an I survived in the woods alone for days video, though that probably would have done pretty well.
No, this is more like an essay. A verbal recounting — through the voice-over — of what it was like that first night. The torrential rain. The drone footage flickering out.
I even included that first awkward shot and all the mistakes; each time I tried to stick to the bubblegum, sweet script and fell off, my voice going back to its normal tone. A focus on the difference between who I am on the camera and who I am off it.
They’re both me, but the performance of being an influencer makes me feel like an actress who never leaves the role.
And then, the video shifts to a recollection of what it was like to disconnect. To not think about which parts of my life I could monetize. To no longer agonize over getting an invite to a new restaurant.
Rather than ending with some profound, meaningful statement about life, I instead left the viewer with a question: is it possible to completely disconnect?
Is it possible to balance some of the ‘real’ world with what we’re biologically wired for?
Can we have both the life out in the mountains and an acai bowl recommendation from our online besties?
It combined all my footage — none of which showed anything that could identify Rowan, or where he is.
The video pulled straight from my heart, and from all my deepest insecurities. And, after the first time she watched it, Maisie had turned to me with tears in her eyes.
“You’re good at this, Lols,” she’d said, voice quiet. “And this means something. It’s like… seeing you.”
Now, Maisie waves her hand in front of my face. “Girl, hello, are you, like, in shock or something?”
When I blink at her blankly, she shakes her head. “Oh, I see, you’re thinking about your mountain man.”
“I’m not.” I laugh, but my voice doesn’t sound quite right. “I mean, yeah, it is a lot to have so many comments and… everything.”
“Everything?” Maisie parrots, deadpan, and when I glance down at the laptop again, she takes it, turning it around. “What are you— holy shit, Lola!”
I watch her eyes move quickly back and forth, watch it register on her face what she’s looking at. When she looks up at me again, it’s with the glee of a kid on Christmas morning.
Maisie is genuinely happy for me. Not for the first time this week, I feel a rush of gratitude that I have a friend like her.
“You got the sponsorship!” she says, her whisper high, her eyes wide. “The stars are aligning for you right now, girl!”
She pushes the laptop to the side and wraps me in a hug.
Ecotra is everything. This is the opportunity of a lifetime — to travel around the world, see everything, all completely free. And the exposure would launch my brand in a completely new direction.
Except when I think about it now — even knowing it will get me away from the city, away from the pressure of my mother’s other family encroaching on my space — it just feels exhausting.
Checking in and out of hostels. Talking to new people every day.
Moving and moving and never getting the chance to sit still, take a moment.
“… and you’re not happy about it,” Maisie says, pulling back and crossing her arms, looking me up and down. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m pulling all the weight in this conversation right now.”
“Sorry.” I laugh, scrubbing both hands up and down my face. “I’m sorry. I just— I’ve wanted this for so long. My stuff blowing up, the sponsorship, and now that I have it, it feels wrong.”
“Because you want the mountain man.”
I let out a strangled sound and Maisie laughs, pushing against my shoulder. “No offense, but I think you need to get over yourself and talk to him.”
“He’s the one who told me to leave.”
“Yeah, and men are stupid.” Maisie rolls her eyes, tossing some hair over her shoulder. “He probably got scared. He’s probably even convinced himself you don’t want to explore this thing between you, either.”
I sit in the quiet of that for a moment. Maisie wasn’t there. She didn’t feel it as he and I walked to my car. Didn’t have to try to breathe through the cool silence.
She wasn’t there to see the look on his face when I came out and found him there with my stuff at the door.
“In other news,” Maisie says, clearing her throat. “You’re not the only one who got a good email this morning. I got into the summer program!”
“Oh!” I remember her mentioning, vaguely, a program that she’d applied to but would never get into. Something that paid very well.
“So, the thing is that, if you decide you need to leave…” She tips her head toward the laptop, toward the Ecotra email. “I’m ready to take over the lease myself. I’m totally going to use your room as a workout room.”
That makes me laugh — like Maisie is a mother taking over my childhood room — and she reaches forward, hugging me again. She smells like rose and mint, and I breathe it in, trying to calm the dizzying thoughts swirling around in my head.
She’s right; the stars are aligning for me. I’m getting everything I ever wanted.
And it doesn’t feel right.