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  To this day I still feel a little queasy any time I’m about to do something scary like go onstage or begin an important business meeting. But I just take a few deep breaths and remind myself of how far I’ve come. And then I’ll call or text Shelby if neither of those works. If you don’t have a Shelby in your life, here are some things to think about to help you get over being scared about the first day of school. (I’m just using that as an example since it caused the most anxiety in me—this technique can apply to just about anything, such as hanging out with a new group of people.) Chances are, everyone else in the room is probably just as scared as you are. Even the person who seems the bravest is harboring a little bit of uncertainty deep inside. That’s human nature. You are not alone in your feelings. Take a look around and remember that.

  When it comes to scary moments like an audition for the school play or band, think of it this way: Nobody wants you to fail. The director might seem scary, but he or she just wants you to do your best. You’re in the situation together. And hey, even if you projectile vomit into the audience (like Aubrey did in Pitch Perfect) at least you’ve made a memorable impression.

  CHALLENGE

  #PUKEPRANKFORRICKY

  Get some fake rubber vomit, leave it somewhere surprising, and film the reaction! Can’t find fake vomit? Make your own with stuff from the kitchen, but be sure to leave it on an easily cleanable surface. Vomit too nasty for you? Get creative and invent your own gross prank!

  CHAPTER 3

  Ambition

  CHALLENGE

  #COSTUMESFORRICKY

  Dress up in an elaborate Halloween costume and go grocery shopping as if everything is normal. Make sure the date isn’t within two months of October 31.

  FAMILY

  Remember how I said I had no friends back in college? That isn’t exactly true. I’d been friends online with my future O2L members Jc, Kian, Connor, Trevor, and Sam, as well as other YouTubers like Jack Baran, Andrew Lowe, and Andrea Russett for months before I ever met any of them in person. We all liked each other’s videos, subscribed to each other’s channels, and chatted via Skype and IM all the time, and even though we weren’t hanging out in person I still felt that same chemistry you get from being in close proximity, those invisible threads that link you to someone.

  So I was super pumped to finally meet them all in person at VidCon during my sophomore year of college. The future O2L boys and I all planned to share one tiny hotel room! It was pretty cool that people who had physically never been in the same room together could click as fast as we did. You could almost hear our future snapping into place when we all met up for the first time. We spent the entire conference wandering around, freaking out over our favorite YouTube stars and asking to take selfies with them.

  I think our first big bonding moment happened at VidCon’s annual District Lines party—which we weren’t invited to. District Lines is this huge YouTuber merchandising company, and every year they throw this fancy party that only the biggest YouTubers and their friends and managers are welcome to attend. So of course we tried to get in, strutting up to the front door and pretending we’d lost our invites. The bouncers were not having it, and we got, well, bounced.

  Getting turned away from any party is always a huge bummer, but we’d been having such a good time so far that we refused to let getting rejected bring us down. We were determined to get into that party, one way or another. So we scoped out the perimeter and realized that there was a back entrance through the kitchen.

  Here’s the only real trick you need to know in order to sneak into an event. Act like you belong. We sauntered right through the kitchen like we owned the place and before we knew it we were inside. (Side note: I don’t think there’s any way this could happen nowadays. Security is MUCH tighter!)

  The party was everything we could have hoped for. It was filled with YouTube megastars. I was constantly like, “OMG, there’s Jenna Marbles! There’s Grace Helbig!” And then I’d run over to them and snap selfies. I’m sure they were thinking, Who is this annoying kid? Funny thing is, everyone I acted like a total fanboy over and asked for pictures of is now a good friend! It’s kind of embarrassing to remember how I acted when I first met them.

  My friends and I stalked the room that night, trying to chat up as many people as we could, having no idea that the following year we’d be the ones on the special guest list!

  The conference was so much fun that we didn’t want it to end. Sam and Kian lived in San Clemente, which is just a little over an hour away from L.A., and we all ended up staying at Sam’s house for an entire week. And that’s where Our2ndLife began.

  I’m assuming that most of you reading this know what O2L is, but just in case you don’t, it was a collab channel that we all formed together, a sort of super collective. Each of us was responsible for posting a video on a different day of the week (mine was Tuesday), and since we each individually had decent followings, once we combined forces O2L became a ridiculously huge success almost overnight.

  Everything happened very fast with O2L, especially after I moved to L.A. (that story’s coming up). There were tours, photo shoots, red carpet appearances—it was all almost too much to absorb. But it was the most fun I think I’ve ever had in my life. More important, I realized that I’d not only created a collab channel with these guys, I’d created a second family. Even though O2L is done now, these guys are my brothers for life.

  I have a lot of viewers who send messages to me about not getting along with their families, or worse, being totally estranged from them. Coming from a place of such security myself, it’s difficult for me to even fathom what that must feel like. But it makes my heart ache to imagine. What’s important to remember is that family comes from where you decide to make one. Just because you’re related to a person through blood, that doesn’t automatically make them family. Okay, well, technically it does, but what I’m saying is that many people have found their true families outside the ones they grew up with. Family means unconditional love, no matter what. If you’re not getting that from people who raised you, look for it somewhere else and create your own.

  On a more upbeat note, even if you already have an awesome family, you can still have a whole separate one with your friends! I would do anything for people in my life like Shelby and Connor, just like I would do anything for Tara or my parents. My love for all of them comes with no strings attached, and I know they feel the same way. That’s what having a real family is all about.

  CHALLENGE

  #THROWBACKFORRICKY

  Post a throwback picture of you and one of your closest friends from around the time you first met.

  CHALLENGE

  #BALLOONSFORRICKY

  Get a bunch of friends together and blow up hundreds and hundreds of balloons inside a room. Get them at least one foot deep so you have a personal ball pit!

  SELF-EMPOWERMENT

  Whenever I was in my college apartment, I’d have anywhere from two to six different chat windows open, carrying on different conversations with the O2L boys and other YouTuber friends.

  Kian was just getting started making music videos, so I’d give him tutorials on how to edit. More often than not, though, we’d all just hang out over video calls. I’d do my homework while they did their own thing in their house. We didn’t even need to be having a conversation; it just felt nice having someone in the room with me. Well, someone’s voice and image with me. Sometimes we’d even have iChat sleepovers! We’d stay up super late talking and then all leave our computers on when we went to bed.

  After we had all finally met in person at VidCon and decided to form O2L, I knew it was time to make a real change. College was making me miserable, and I knew in my heart that YouTube was my future. Switching to film hadn’t really changed much for me. If anything, it was making things worse. It was like I was close to doing what I wanted, but not quite there. I wanted to be in front of the camera, not just doing lighting and editing and camera work. I was already doing a
ll of that stuff on my own.

  I started to put my secret plan into action. I knew I wanted to drop out of school and move to L.A., but I also knew there was no way my parents would go for that. I needed to figure out a way to get out there, so I asked my dad if he could help me research internships.

  “All the serious film stuff is in L.A.,” I told him. “The only way I can get real experience is if I’m out there.” He agreed, and helped me apply for a few different internships, but I only heard back from one production company, which for privacy’s sake I’m going to call West Coast Productions. WCP was run by a guy named Greg (again, fake name), and I talked to him on the phone a few times about the job before my dad agreed to sublease a small one-bedroom apartment for me. My parents’ rule was that as long as I was in school and studying or doing an internship, they would support me. I felt a little guilty, since I had an ulterior motive, but I also fully planned to work my butt off at WCP.

  Connor Franta and I had become really close at this point and were texting every day. We’d both been dreaming of moving to L.A. for a while, so when I got my internship I asked him if he wanted to come with me, and he said yes! I was psyched to have not just someone to share the journey with but a guaranteed roommate when I got there. My parents had moved to Florida at that point, so Connor flew down to meet me and we packed up the car and started driving. And driving. And driving.

  Florida to L.A. is a serious trek, and I don’t think there’s any way I could have done it on my own. Connor and I took turns driving, got pulled over for speeding, and stayed in the sleaziest motels I’ve ever seen in my life. We stopped in Texas to pick up Jc, who decided at the last minute that he wanted to come to L.A. too. We somehow found room for all of his stuff along with our own inside my tiny Kia, and made a little cave for him in the middle of all our bags and boxes in the backseat. We got back on the road again and drove until we ran out of gas in the middle of the desert.

  I was waiting for the opening credits of a horror movie to start rolling in front of my eyes when I realized I had one bar of cell service on my phone. I was able to call AAA and have someone come rescue us. Crisis (and possible death) averted.

  Once we got to L.A., we discovered that the apartment my dad had found was pretty small. Connor and I took the twin beds in the bedroom and Jc claimed the couch in the living room.

  We acted like totally dorky tourists for the first few weeks. We hit up every single tourist trap you can think of—the Santa Monica Pier, Huntington Beach, Disneyland, Universal Studios, you name it. If it was pictured on a postcard, we were there.

  The reason I had so much time to spare is that my internship only lasted for two weeks.

  I dressed up really nice for my first day, thinking that I was heading to an office filled with fancy matching wood and chrome desk sets. Nope, Greg worked out of his house. He wasn’t sketchy or anything, but WCP didn’t exactly feel like a real company either. It was more like this dude who just sort of picked up freelance gigs whenever he could. He was perfectly nice, though, and we mostly sat around that first day while I showed him my YouTube videos. He said he’d call me the next day and tell me where to go for a shoot that he wanted me to help him with, but I didn’t hear from him for six days. I finally got a call and he asked me to come over, but then he just had me sit there on his couch while he fiddled around with camera equipment.

  We ended up going off-site on two different days that week, where I was able to help him set up some lighting while he shot an interview for some random online segment. A couple of days later Greg called me to say he was moving his company headquarters and would need to close down for a bit, but he’d call me once he got settled. I never heard from him again.

  I was kind of psyched about it. Everything worked out better than I could have hoped; I suddenly had all the free time in the world to work on my videos. I kept my parents updated on the internship—or lack thereof—and prayed that they wouldn’t yank me back to the East Coast since I continued to not hear back from Greg. I knew that if I used the free time wisely, I could make enough money to support myself once the internship was technically supposed to be over. And I did!

  CHALLENGE

  #ASKPERMISSIONFORRICKY

  Tell your parents something you’ve always wanted to do or try but have been too nervous to ask because they might say no. They still might say no, but who knows! Film their reaction or write about it on Twitter.

  CHALLENGE

  #DRAWMYLIFEFORRICKY

  This is a classic for many YouTubers. Narrate your life story so far using a dry-erase board for the pictures.

  SOCIAL

  Oh, Miranda Sings. I love you. I love Colleen Evans, the woman who plays her, even more, though.

  I’d been watching Miranda’s crazy videos for years, and was borderline obsessed with her. She and Shane Dawson were my everything. Like Shane, Miranda has no boundaries, and I think it was that freedom of creative expression that first drew me to her. Well, that and her penchant for wearing grotesque amounts of red lipstick.

  Right around the time I first moved to L.A. with Connor, we got an invite from YouTuber Sawyer Hartman to go to Disneyland for the day with him. We said sure, and that’s when he dropped the bomb that Colleen was going to be coming with us. I just about died. DIED.

  I had to play it cool. I couldn’t come across as just another fan, because I knew in my heart we were destined to become friends, and if I acted like a shrieking geek around her that was never going to happen. I was just going to be one of the gang, no big deal. And somehow secretly get her to know and like me.

  When we met up at the front gates and were introduced, I was all, “Oh, hi, nice to meet you. Anyone know the way to Space Mountain?” I pretended she was just any normal person, even though I was doing everything I could not to puke from nerves. That would have been a terrible time for my childhood affliction to flare up again.

  But the thing is, she was just like any normal person. As we all walked inside the park we began chatting about regular everyday stuff like the weather and traffic. Although, and this is inevitable whenever any two YouTubers get together, the subject of our channels quickly came up. I casually complimented her on hers, trying to keep my voice from cracking with excitement. She, of course, had never heard of mine, but was super interested in talking about it. And I didn’t get the feeling that she was just being polite. She seemed genuinely interested in what I was doing and what I had to say.

  “We should collab sometime,” she said, like it was no big deal.

  “Yeah, that would be awesome,” I replied, trying not to pee my pants.

  The rest of the day flew by. We sat next to each other on all the best rides, like the Haunted Mansion and the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, and bonded by screaming our heads off. By the time we had to leave I felt like I had made a true friend. But even though we exchanged numbers, a part of me still thought that since she was so cool I’d probably never hear from her again.

  Wrong! She reached out almost immediately and invited me over to her house to shoot the videos. When I got there we hung out and gossiped for a little while before getting down to business. It was SO WEIRD to watch Colleen become Miranda! One minute she was the regular, cool girl I’d met at Disneyland, and then before my eyes she transformed into my idol—the narcissistic, clueless yet highly opinionated horrible singer that I loved. The strangest part was seeing her slip in and out of both personalities once she was in Miranda drag. Hearing her character talk in a normal voice was really bizarre and I couldn’t get used to it! It sort of felt like seeing a mall Santa in the parking lot taking a smoke break. The illusion was shattered, but then just as fast she’d slip right back into being Miranda.

  The collabs were so fun, but I was definitely nervous at first. I didn’t know if I should really amp things up for her to try to make a good impression. Like, do something really crazy. In the end I decided the best road was to just be myself, which ended up being pretty easy—I hardly had to do
anything except honestly react to her craziness. She was lightning fast with all her dialogue, which she always ad-libbed on the spot. We’d have to stop the camera a lot because we’d crack up and she would break character. It almost got hard to keep filming because we laughed so much.

  For her channel, she taught me how to put on makeup, and of course she did a totally ratchet job. For my channel she gave me a singing tutorial, and I’m sure you can imagine how that went.

  I don’t even know how many collabs we did after that day. I immediately became part of Miranda’s fake boyfriend posse, an honor of the highest degree. We still work together all the time, but even better, I can count Colleen as one of my closest friends. Sometimes she’ll invite me and other YouTubers over to her house and we’ll spend the whole night playing hide-and-seek in the dark. It’s more than sixteen-year-old me ever could have hoped for.

  The coolest thing Colleen has taught me is to stay true to myself whenever I’m working with someone on a project. I was still shy around her when I first arrived at her house, and I could have messed things up big time if I had tried to act like someone I wasn’t to try to impress her when we collabed. By acting like myself I got a dear friend and a bunch of new viewers, since we combined audiences. Best of both worlds! Ever since that day there have been many times when Colleen and I have hung out and had the best talks. We can literally sit around for hours and the conversation never gets dull. I don’t even know if she’s aware of this, but she’s given me such great advice and encouragement about so many different things when I’ve needed it. She’s a true friend whom I know I can count on, and even more so, just a wonderful, down-to-earth person. Not to mention one of the hardest-working and most creative people I’ve ever met.