Page 6 of Ravaged By Lust

But who am I kidding? There wouldn’t be a movie of my life. Not in a million years. There might be a movie of my brother’s life, that’s for sure. I would probably even appear in it, as a fleeting background character in a single scene.

But no movie for me. No movie for the failed sibling to a world famous rockstar.

I’m still into music. That’s the one thing that hasn’t changed. Axel and I share many things… our green eyes… our stubbornness… our loyalty…

And especially our love of music. It’s my dedication. It gives me joy. Whenever I pick up my guitar and start to strum, I feel a sense of purpose that makes everything all good in the world. My minimum-wage job and my minimum-fulfilled life drop away, and I am at peace.

The day I go viral on the internet is the same day my brother’s girlfriend gets pregnant, and it is the same day I have a nine-hour shift as a cashier at said discount department franchise store.

Not exactly the best beginning for a movie of my life.

There has been a lot that’s happened today that it’s going to take me a minute to unpack it all.

First, going viral on the freaking internet…

I don’t actually know that I have gone viral until I’m standing behind that till and see my manager disappear for a sneaky cigarette break.

“I’m going to check the accounts,” she tells us.

Sure.

Karen, my manager, has made it her New Year’s resolution to quit smoking and has decided to make it pretty public in my hometown of Crystal River exactly what she was doing. Hence why she tiptoes off outside at the back by the dumpsters every hour to spend a squirreled-away five minutes puffing away. Checking the accounts.

She thinks she’s being so secretive, but everyone in Crystal River knows it. Small town gossip flies around fast. But the good thing is that when she does sneak off, us employees are granted a few precious minutes to take a little impromptu break ourselves without Karen’s beady eyes on the camera monitors. We grab something quick to eat, sit down for a bit, read a magazine. Anything to momentarily escape the dullness of our minimum-wage job.

Over the years, I’ve gone from the wild-eyed optimist of my teenage youth into someone my mother likes to call a cynic.

This particular time Karen’s gone out back for her little unofficial break I mindlessly check my phone, expecting the usual deluge of spam emails and your average Monday’s dry social media feed, but what I didn’t expect was for the video I quickly uploaded online late last night to have nearly a million views.

I mean, I can literally see the view count rise up and up as I stare at my phone in sheer disbelief.

What the hell…

956,100…

957,341…

958,287…

Rising and rising every freaking second.

The video is a song that I wrote. It’s just me in it. Me in my bedroom. Performing with my guitar in front of my crappy little webcam.

Surely this is a mistake.

A million views. And growing. This is definitely not a drill.

Holy shit.

I’ve been posting videos of my songs online for years - for nearly a whole damn decade – but barely anyone has watched them. I’ve been considering a few hundred hits on a video as a success.

But this video from last night? It turns out some influencer shared it, and then another did, then another, then some big music influencer. All within the space of a morning I’m rapidly seemingly on the front page of every social media platform. All while I’ve been standing behind a till.

“Get off your phone, Chloe.”

Ah, it’s Karen. Back from her little break, and she’s already bearing down on us like a managerial eagle.

“I’ll dock a formal complaint if I see you on it again, Chloe. Back to work.”