Finally, I was alone again in my hotel room checking behind the shower curtain and trying to convince myself that I loved having time to myself. Even so, it might be a good idea to check in at home. Neither Mom nor Abi answered my texts. I was about to text Rachel when my phone buzzed with her call.
“Rachel,” I said in relief. “I was about to text you to see how everything was going.”
“Well, I’m calling you to save you the text.”
My heart closed in on itself. “What’s going on?”
“I mean, I thought I told you to not make any more videos about me.”
“I haven’t! I promise.”
“Have you taken down the one with our makeovers? The one where you say Rachel needs her own bottle of Schramsberg?”
“Oh, no. I had already posted that one,” I said.
She sighed. “I talked to my rep this afternoon. You’ve got to take it down. Just in case.”
Silence stretched between us. The stillness of the hotel room almost had a sound. “I can’t take that one down, Rachel.”
“Oh, yes you can.”
“No, really. I can’t. The video was a condition of going on this trip.”
Rachel said a few words I’d never heard her say before. “Well, then you need to figure out a way to edit me out.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. My job is on the line, and yours is to figure out how to fix that video.”
Then she hung up on me.
I got why she was mad, but couldn’t she understand that I was trying to find a way to liberate myself from Mitch? I had to make YouTube hay while the sun was still shining. I guess I hadn’t thought there would be collateral damage for ... a video.
I still had so much more to learn.
With trembling fingers, I texted Abi again to see if Barney had shown up. I got a simpleNot yet.
Was she mad at me, too? Should I ask if she wanted my help?
I didn’t know. I just didn’t know.
So I took a look at my YouTube channel and the hundred thousand subscribers Dylan had mentioned. Most people wanted to know when Mr. Always would be back.
Probably never. After all, he was mad at me, too.
Many comments about the Cinderella Badge were positive, but more negative ones had started creeping in. Some people wanted to know why I was wasting time and money on something as frivolous as clothing and shoes. Some said I looked fat in the bustier dress. Some made derogatory comments about Abi and Rachel—I painstakingly deleted each and every one of those.
It was past time some people earned their Internet Etiquette Badges.
I exhaled when I saw OneBadMother49 hadn’t left a comment. I shouldn’t care, but I did. Maybe because whoever it was seemed to know me, really know me. No doubt it was a trick, just the sort offalse familiarity only the internet could breed, but I couldn’t shake the feeling.
A quick sweep of my email showed another sponsorship opportunity as well as more invitations to special events.
But a careful look at those emails showed they weren’t all expenses paid. As it was, the Busy Mom’s event hadn’tmademe money. I’d have to be on my guard against people who wanted to take what little money I had. Sure, some businesses might fly me—and maybe even Abi and Rachel—to some posh place and treat us to all sorts of luxuries in exchange for promotion, but those were just things. What good did having a pair of Louboutins do me? I couldn’t eat them. I supposed I could hock them, but I wasn’t famous enough that people would buy them for the privilege of owning something that had been on my sweaty duck-shaped feet.
Even worse? The strings attached to this trip had become quite the knot: I had to keep the video up or risk losing a possible sponsorship from Busy Mom, something that would make me money, but I also had to edit Rachel out of the video.
I’d never edited a videoafterposting it to YouTube, but a Google search suggested it could be done. Maybe. Hopefully. I sure didn’t want to lose any views or comments or numbers that would affect monetization.
