In Real Life: My Journey to a Pixelated World Read online

  “I know,” she said. “Let’s go lurk nearby until we get a chance.”

  So we did, and the second there was a lull in her conversation with the other group of people, we pounced. “WE LOVE YOU!” I said.

  “Seriously, you’re our favorite,” Brittany said.

  “WinterSpringPro!” she said, her eyes growing wide. “I love you guys too! Your videos are so funny!”

  I just about died. I couldn’t believe she even knew who we were, let alone thought our videos were good. We talked for a little longer before she had to rush off to a panel. “I’d love to get back in touch with you,” she said before she left. “Can I get your e-mail?”

  “Of course,” I said, and entered it into her phone when she offered it to me.

  “Awesome. I’m going to be in touch. I promise.”

  We figured it was just politeness, so it was a shock when I got an e-mail from her inviting us out to Maker Studios for a tour. Good thing we’d thought to tack a couple of extra days onto our trip.

  When we got to Maker, I was surprised at how tiny the operation was. Back then the building was pretty small, with offices on the first floor and costume wardrobes on the second, so the tour didn’t take very long.

  “You could be a part of this, you know,” Lisa said while we were there. “The two of you are so cute, and we’d love to work with you.”

  Again, it just seemed like something she was saying to be nice. We couldn’t imagine that she would want to work with us. We seemed so rinky-dink compared to the people they were working with, like Shay Carl, a YouTube personality and comedian with five different channels and millions of fans whom he calls his “Shaytards.” We played it off like, “Yeah, that would be cool someday.” But we never dreamed it would actually happen.

  We met up with iJustine later for coffee, and talking with her was like catching up with a long-lost friend. We all just clicked immediately.

  Brittany was checking Twitter on her phone—probably getting ready to brag that we were hanging out with iJustine—when she saw a post that Fred was shooting a music video in the Valley. He listed the address so people could show up and act as extras.

  “Should we go?” Justine asked. It made sense, since she had been a part of the video we had done when Fred reached 1 million subscribers.

  “Let’s do it!” I said.

  We piled into her car and drove out to a Target parking lot in the middle of the suburbs. It was over 90 degrees that day, and we were all dripping with sweat. None of us really felt like dancing, but the idea of finally meeting Fred/Lucas in person seemed like an excellent cap to what had already been a perfect trip.

  As we joined the throng of extras, Lucas walked by. He looked just as cute and baby-faced in person as he does when playing Fred. Justine called his name and he ran over, immediately recognizing her. Then his eyes wandered to us.

  “Oh my god, it’s WinterSpringPro!”

  He had to rush off right afterward, but it didn’t matter. He had recognized us. I couldn’t imagine ever getting tired of that feeling. We danced our butts off in the boiling heat in front of the cameras for a few hours before heading to the airport.

  Leaving Los Angeles was depressing. We’d been shown a world that we knew we belonged in. Once we got off the plane back in Boston, I had another e-mail waiting for me from Lisa, this one formally asking us if we’d be a part of Maker.

  “Brittany, this is legit,” I said. “We could do this for real. It could be our actual careers.”

  “This is insane,” she said.

  “You know what it means, though, right? We’d have to move to LA.”

  “Done,” she said. “I’ve got nothing for me here.” She was about as happy at her community college as I was at Fitchburg.

  I realized that I didn’t have anything on the East Coast for me either. I wasn’t about to apply to Emerson for a third time, especially now that I was being offered a chance to jump into real life. Plus everyone we’d met at VidCon had been amazing. We had finally found our tribe—people who understand how absurdly fun it is to walk around with a camera everywhere and make silly videos, people who understand how exciting it is to make people laugh and connect with strangers from around the world. In Massachusetts, Brittany and I had been living in a bubble with WSP. Having friends like Meghan and iJustine online had been great, but now there was a chance to be friends with them out in the real world.

  We e-mailed Maker Studios and told them that we were in. Bob hired a lawyer, and there were a couple of months of back-and-forth contract negotiations, and then it was done. During that time, the video we’d filmed with Fred premiered on Nickelodeon, and we saw ourselves in the background. We could officially say that we had been on television. It felt like a sign that we were making the right decision.

  Brittany and I both officially dropped out of college and began to make a plan. Surprisingly, our parents were cool with our decision. They’d seen how much effort we’d poured into our channel over the years, so it didn’t seem that we were just chasing some random dream. We knew we needed to make another trip to Los Angeles to line up an apartment, but we decided to wait until January before making the actual move, so that we could save up enough money to keep us afloat for a while once we got there.

  That fall we got an e-mail from Luke Conard, the musician we’d met at VidCon, and he invited us to a show he was playing in Boston. We went and had a blast, and he ended up asking us out to dinner with him and his friends after the concert. We all piled into their tour van, which is where I met Luke’s roommates, Jason and Alex. They were the first people I’d ever met who loved World of Warcraft as much as I did, and it felt really cool to finally have some guy friends. We nerded out over the game for hours, and all I could think was, How come I didn’t have guy friends like this in high school?

  Brittany and I went back to Los Angeles that fall to look for an apartment to live in, and Luke offered to let us crash at his place for a few days.

  “I made up the porch for you guys so you can have some privacy,” he said when we arrived. I stayed in the living room and caught up with him while Brittany headed to the enclosed area outside with our bags. She came back right as Luke went into the kitchen to fix us something to eat. She was pale.

  “We can’t sleep in there,” she whispered.

  “Why not?” I whispered back.

  “The bed is full of spiders!”

  “WHAT?” I yelled and she shushed me, grabbed my arm, and pulled me out to the porch.

  “Lift up the pillow,” she said.

  There were two of them, propped up on a dingy-looking mattress half-covered by a sheet. I gingerly lifted up one of the pillows, and, sure enough, about six big, hairy spiders went scurrying all over the place.

  I jumped back quickly and looked at Brittany. “What the hell are we doing here?” We both started giggling uncontrollably at how absurd the situation was. We had almost no money, were planning on moving to the other side of the country to chase a dream that could possibly tank, and now we had to sleep in a spider bed.

  We slept on the living room couches without any blankets. We didn’t want to embarrass Luke, so we lied and told him it was because we didn’t want to share a bed. We were both freezing all night and headed to Target the next day to pick up some new pillows and sleeping bags.

  Meghan showed up in town a few days later to stay with Luke as well, to attend a party for a charity called Project for Awesome that was being hosted by John and Hank Green (John’s the guy who wrote the movie The Fault in Our Stars; Hank runs cool science and ecology vlogs). Justine was there, and once she heard our spider story, she insisted that we pack our stuff and stay with her for the rest of the trip. She became our Los Angeles mentor and tour guide, but while we looked at a ton of apartments, nothing in our price range was remotely livable.

  Finally, on our last day, we drove to Culver City to check out a development called The Meadows. The buildings circled a huge pool with a fountain at one e
nd of it, and we saw an apartment that had a great layout, with a balcony and bedrooms on opposite ends of the space so we would have a lot of privacy. We’d even each get our own bathroom. Best of all, we could afford it as long as we stayed on a pretty strict budget. We signed a lease for January 2, and made it to the airport just in time to head home.

  Tips on Being a Good Houseguest

  1. Bring a small gift as a thank-you.

  2. Clean up after yourself.

  3. Offer to help with cooking.

  4. If your friend has a dog, offer to take it for a walk.

  5. Don’t write about your host’s spider-infested bed in a book. ;-)

  My Favorite Spots in Los Angeles

  The Getty Center. This huge museum is located on top of a big cliff that looks out over all of Los Angeles. You take an air tram up the side of the mountain to get there, and there are beautiful gardens all over the property. I always feel like I’m floating above the city when I visit.

  Third Street Promenade. It’s basically a big outdoor mall in Santa Monica. The shops are great, but I love people-watching there even more.

  Runyan Canyon Park. Covering 160 acres, this park has loads of hiking trails for beginners and experts. Going there is like working out without actually realizing that you’re working out.

  Urth Caffé. This small chain is mostly known for its organic coffees, but trust me that the green tea–blended boba is where it’s at. It might look like a McDonald’s Shamrock Shake, but it’s pure health and sunshine.

  Whole Foods. I know these are everywhere in America, but I’d never been to one before moving to LA. Now I can’t live without it. Whole Foods is where I do 99.9 percent of my grocery shopping.

  Chapter 12

  La-La Land

  I had no idea how I was going to get all of my stuff to Los Angeles. I researched movers but quickly realized that it would be cheaper for me to just buy all new stuff, like a bed, once I got out there. I packed really light, just a couple of boxes. I liked the idea of bringing a small amount of stuff with me—it helped hammer home the idea in my mind that I was leaving my old life behind.

  The plan was for us to leave around midnight so we could get a huge head start on the trip without hitting any traffic. Brittany arrived in her little blue Toyota Yaris, and I discovered that she had stuffed the car almost entirely with her own things.

  “There’s only room for one box!” I said as I peered into her cramped trunk.

  “Sorry,” she shrugged.

  So I pared my possessions down even more, and my mom promised to mail the rest out to me. Since we were leaving so late at night, I’d already said good-bye to Jett before he’d gone to bed. I promised to be back to visit soon, and while I’m not sure if he fully understood what was happening, he hugged me extra tight. I tried not to feel too guilty. A part of me felt that I was abandoning him, but I knew Bob would be watching out for him.

  When it came time to leave later that night, I hugged Mom and Bob good-bye. I tried hard to act carefree, but the truth was that I was terrified of leaving my family behind. As hard as everything had been, it was the only life I knew. I was positive that there was something bigger and better waiting for me out there in the world, but even that knowledge couldn’t stop the feeling of vulnerability that came with moving so far away. And not only was I feeling scared about that, I felt responsible for my mom’s well-being, even though I knew that leaving was probably the healthiest thing I could do for myself.

  When we stopped by my dad’s house to say good-bye to him and my sister, the level of emotion went into hyperdrive. I’d never once seen my dad cry before, but he had tears streaming down his face as he kissed my forehead. There’s nothing more intense than seeing your father cry for the first time ever because he loves you so much.

  “I’m so proud of you,” he said. “Just promise me you’ll be safe, and call me when you get there so I know you arrived in one piece.”

  Nicole was sobbing too. “I know you’re going to kick butt out there,” she sniffled. “But god, I wish it wasn’t so far away.”

  “I’m going to be fine,” I assured them, even though I had no idea if that was true. I managed to hold it together as we said our final good-byes, but as soon as we got back into the car, I started bawling my eyes out. Everything hit me at once: I was leaving home and everything I knew. I’d dropped out of college to take a chance on a dream that millions of other people have chased and failed at. It was a very focused awakening that I was entering a whole new chapter of my life. Even when we had gone out there to apartment hunt, it still hadn’t felt completely real. But now everything felt crystal clear. Brittany let me finish crying it all out, and I recovered pretty quickly. I knew that I was strong enough to succeed.

  That first night we drove for ten hours straight, switching turns at the wheel every three hours. We decided to take a southern route to avoid any potential snowstorms, and we didn’t pull over to sleep until we had reached Virginia. We got up early and listened to Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream album over and over and over as we began to make our way west and belted out the lyrics: “We can dance until we die / You and I will be young forever.” We ate more McDonald’s food than I’d ever eaten in my entire life, and since many of the roads we took were cross-country routes for tractor-trailer trucks, we invented games to play with the drivers. Our favorite was pretending that Brittany’s Pillow Pet, a unicorn named Penelope, was a horny animal with boobs. We’d scrunch up her chest and shove her out the window, like she was a dirty college girl flashing someone. It was just Brit and me at it again, the wind in our hair as we laughed and laughed and laughed.

  We kept up a steady schedule of driving twelve hours a day. We made it a rule to stay only at Holiday Inn Express hotels, since they were super cheap but also clean. Well, most of the time. There was a night in Texas when we couldn’t find a single one that wasn’t booked solid for the night. We eventually found one with an available room in a really seedy area. The door handle fell almost completely off when we walked in. The overhead lights kept flickering, there were nasty stains all over the bathroom walls and towels, and we found hair in the beds. But it was the middle of the night and we’d already exhausted all other possibilities, so we sucked it up. At least the beds weren’t full of spiders. (As far as we could tell!)

  We made such good time that we ended up in LA two full days early. We had nowhere to go, so Lisa Nova let us crash at her place while we negotiated with our new landlord to see if we could move in a bit ahead of schedule. He was cool with it, so the day before New Year’s Eve we arrived in Culver City and waited for the building manager to come by with the keys.

  It was raining, just like the first day I’d set foot in Los Angeles. I thought it was a weird coincidence, since it hardly ever rains here, but I considered it good luck since our first visit had turned out to be so amazing.

  Once we got inside the apartment, we were speechless. It was almost unfathomable that it was ours and that we could decorate it and paint it however we wanted. We hadn’t gotten a really good look at the place when we’d visited during our last trip, and it was even nicer than we remembered, except that we didn’t realize just how unfurnished it would be. We knew we’d have to buy beds, a sofa, and a dining table and chairs, but we didn’t realize we’d have to supply our own refrigerator as well. We’d have to build everything from scratch, and I couldn’t wait.

  We spent the first night driving around and exploring our new city. We found a take-out pizza place, headed back to the apartment, and piled a bunch of our clothes on the floor of the living room so we could sit in comfort while we stuffed ourselves. Luke had invited us to a party at his house, but we just wanted to spend time in our new place. At first we were too giddy to sleep, imagining all of the ways we could decorate the place, but soon all of the excitement caught up with us and we conked out, not even noticing the hard floor underneath us.

  The next few days were a whirlwind of painting walls and buying furnitu
re. We still didn’t understand just how spread out Los Angeles is, so we ended up driving over an hour to buy furniture, when we easily could have picked up stuff fifteen minutes away. We spent the next week and a half painting all the rooms and assembling Ikea furniture. We got a huge, comfortable sectional sofa for the living room. I painted one wall of my room black and added my name in Japanese and drawings of Totoro, a character from one of my favorite anime films. It was starting to feel like home.

  Once we were settled in, it was time to get to work on our first WSP project with Maker Studios. We had met with Lisa and some of the other producers, and they asked us what we wanted our first video to be. We decided on a parody of the Britney Spears song “Hold It Against Me,” and we wrote a version where we changed all the lyrics so it was about sleazy douchebags using awful pickup lines to try and get laid. We arrived early on the morning of the shoot and were shocked at how huge the crew was. There was another producer to help us out, a cinematographer to do all the camera work, a cast of extras to use as background dancers, and other YouTube personalities to play the unfortunate victims of our cheesy come-ons. For the first time in our lives, we were considered the talent.

  It was intimidating at first, but I immediately went into professional mode. The way I saw it, if these people thought I knew what I was doing, then I sure as hell better at least pretend to know what I was doing. I turned all of my nervousness into confidence. I wanted to prove to them that I was the best lip-syncher in the world; that I could do anything they asked of me without having to do more than one take. We went out into the streets of LA to shoot a bunch of scenes, and I pretended to ignore the people walking by who gawked and craned their necks to see what the film crew was shooting. It felt like the entire city’s eyes were on us, and it felt natural. I’d been making these kinds of videos and acting like a fool in public for so long that it was second nature to me, and once I got over the initial butterflies about performing in front of so many people live—instead of it just being me and Brittany—I was in my element.