1
The tripod stands ready, camera mounted, primed to capture the next round of staged authenticity. Behind it, the ring light blazes—too bright, too harsh. Its glare drills into my skull, and every time I blink, glowing halos swarm my vision.
I dream about them sometimes, chasing me through some warped
Sonic the Hedgehog horror world.
Vlogging has taken over my life. The only break I get is at school, and that’s only because we’re not allowed to record on campus.
Mom doesn’t care how it affects me or my sister, Isla. As long as we get filming finished and give the viewers what they want. She’s obsessed, honestly. They have to keep watching, liking, subscribing, commenting. Even if some of the commenters have nothing nice to say—and that’s being kind. A lot of the comments are inappropriate. Some of them are downright creepy.
She doesn’t care about that either. Rage bait can make more money than a regular day-in-thelife, and Mom sure knows how to piss off strangers on the internet.
Vlogging our life was fun at the start, when it was days out and trips away. Now it’s more like a prison.
I blink, the light beginning to burn my freaking corneas, and stifle a yawn. Yawning on camera would not make Mom happy.
This shouldn’t take too long. We started later than she wanted, but she’ll need to get the editing done tonight so she can upload first thing in the morning. Early is the goal, so that she can reply to comments as soon as she’s back from her run.
Ever since she discovered you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars from filming every single thing you do—everything your
children do too—it’s
all she’s thought about. It started as a hobby, but it wasn’t long before she was able to quit her job as a dental assistant.
Now she eats, sleeps, and breathes lifestyle vlogging. In the past year she’s attended countless conferences for content creators. When she comes home, our “daily routine” changes based on what she’s just learned. Last time was the introduction of Mom making us packed lunches.
I hate every second of filming. I try to ignore the comments on each video, but I can’t get away from them. My classmates watch and use the videos as ammunition to mock me in the hallways.
My whole life revolves around a camera. Today’s vlog is a Q&A, just us answering questions that people have asked on the vlog or Instagram. It’s something that’s been requested a lot over the past few weeks.
We can’t disappoint the fans.
Mom sits between me and Isla, a huge white toothy smile on her newly filled lips. I can’t tell if she likes this or not.
Her smile has been getting scarily similar to Isla’s. We both look like her, with the same pale, porcelain skin tone and big dark eyes, though Isla and Mom have black hair and mine is fair. But with all the work Mom has had done, she’s starting to look more and more like Isla’s twin. Not her mother.
The thought sends a shudder through my body.
At least they’ll both be going away soon on a West Coast college tour to visit ten schools. Ten. Isla is only interested in three, but that wouldn’t make the best viewing. The title of that vlog is already prepped, their stops meticulously planned around different activities they can do to show how fun Mom is.
All things she’d never have done with us before the cameras rolled.
“Okay, Sophie135 wants to know how you’re feeling about leaving us for college, Isla.” Mom pouts like it’s a tragedy, like her eldest daughter going away is a knife to the heart.
I think I’m dreading it most. When she’s gone, I’m the last one left—just me and Mom, stuck filming. LouPlusTwo. Her name front and center, her ego the main character. Isla and I are just props, proof of her greatness.
We don’t even like the salmon and cream cheese bagels she films herself making for breakfast. I pick the fish off before I eat it.
“I am super excited! I mean, leaving my mom and sister is going to be the hardest thing I have ever done, but they both inspire me daily. I’m determined to make them proud.”
I almost throw up in my mouth a little. Keeping my eyes from rolling is a full-time job.
“I’ll miss you so much . . . but I’m totally moving into your room,” I say, adding the humor that always gets a great reaction.
Connie’s the funny one. Still, I will miss her.
I stick to the script to a point, but I don’t want the people who know me in real life to say I’m a different person online.
Unlike my mother.
Mom and Isla laugh and turn back to the camera. Mom pushes her hair behind her ears. “Sisters, huh! Okay, the next one is for you, Connie. FluffyBunnyMom—cute name, by the way—wants to know if negative comments ever bother you.”
Mom looks me dead in the eye, the smile growing but so false it’s laughable. It’s a warning, one that tells me to read from the script. We’ve been prepped on this particular question dozens of times. She drills the response into our heads daily, as if saying it constantly is enough to stop hate from penetrating our soul.
Shrugging takes effort. Lying wears me down, and lately, it’s all I do.
“No. I scroll straight past anything like that. I don’t have time for negativity.”
“Great answer, honey,” Mom says, all warmth and practiced concern. “I do try to delete anything that is too personally critical before they see it. They’re human, remember, just teenagers. But unfortunately, a few slip through. I will say I’m incredibly proud of how well they handle it.”
She lies so effortlessly, I doubt even a trained agent in the CIA could catch her.
We’ve all seen the messages. Particularly the ones from homeboy666, blueqb, and Roz, with homeboy666 the most passionately critical one. They started out harmless, comments like “your daughters don’t want this” and “this doesn’t happen when the camera stops rolling.” Things I actually agree with. Only now, five months on, they’re saying things like “your children need to be removed” and “someone in that house is going to snap.” Yesterday, it was “we all know where you live.”
Mom films everywhere—our street, our yard, all over town. The town name, road signs—everything is in her videos.
Jules, Mom’s best friend and, oh yeah, the sheriff, warned her to keep filming inside or at least stay out of our immediate area. She doesn’t listen. Too late anyway—the damage is done.
“Mom has always been fantastic at protecting us from hateful comments on our vlogs,” Isla says, backing up Mom’s lie.
I nearly snap my neck whipping around to look at her but catch myself just in time, smiling as if I agree. Does Isla ever laugh inside her head too?
“Aww,” Mom coos. “I have to protect my babies.”
I can already hear the haters ripping that one apart.
As soon as a vlog is live, I look. I can’t help myself. The majority of comments are nice, and it makes me wonder if I’m in the wrong. But the haters, those are the people I find myself agreeing with more and more. We shouldn’t share our whole life. We should have privacy. We should be able to choose whether we want to film.
At least she’s not dragging us along to the vloggers convention at the end of the college tour. I’ll get fourteen glorious days without Mom, twelve without Isla. When my sister returns home, I’ll have two days to get inside her head and find out if she’s genuinely happy with all this or just playing along for all the perks.
Mom reels off more questions, obviously skipping the ones that ask if she’s happy with herself for exploiting her children.
The answer is yes.
“Okay, this question is for me.” She lowers the phone with the vetted questions. “LauraBanks says, ‘Louise, how do you keep yourself motivated every day?’ ”
Money.“Great question, Laura. It’s definitely a choice I make every morning. I decide that I’m going to get up early and upload, that I’m going to run and make my girls breakfast. One day I’ll look back on this time and I’ll want to know that I did my best for my family every day.”
Oh jeez.I smile but it takes great effort.
Copyright © 2025 by Natasha Preston. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
