Love, Comment, Subscribe by Cathy Yardley

CHAPTER 5

The Chrysalis launch party was just as crowded, just as opulent, and just as over the top as Lily expected it would be . . . and then some.

She was wearing what she considered her signature “look,” albeit geared for a dramatic evening: smoky eye, contouring, a dusky but subtle lip, everything from shimmery pearl-pink highlights to dusty rose lows. But as she looked around, she noticed everyone else seemed to have taken a cue from the new palette. Called PEACOCK, it was filled with shocking teal, electric blue, and glitter-filled gold. The people around her were wearing bright colors, their makeup and clothing as dramatic as Carnival in Rio.

Apparently she’d missed the memo.

She forced herself not to hunch, to hold her head up. She had a look, and she stuck to it. Confidence, she scolded herself, as she wove through the crowd.

“Lily!” She saw Mikki, waving to get her attention. They’d arrived separately, and judging by his tipsy smile, she guessed he’d gotten here early. She hadn’t wanted to, knowing that it was the mark of an amateur, but Mikki said he liked to “pregame” before the bar got too crowded. Now, he was at a high table, next to another YouTuber she was friends with, Val. She gave them both hugs.

“I didn’t know you were going to be here,” she said to Val.

“I wasn’t going to be,” her friend Val said, giving her a tight hug. “But I wanted to see the palette, and it’s always good to hear what people are up to. I scored an invite through their publicist.” Val, short for Valkyrie on YouTube, was a self-described “big ole lesbian” and a lifestyle YouTuber. She and her girlfriend filmed clothing and makeup content, especially for plus-size women who wanted to be more fashion forward. It was a niche that worked for them. That said, it was just that . . . a niche. Her viewership was respectable, but not stratospheric, just a couple of million subscribers.

“Shot?” Mikki offered, nudging one of the small glasses at her. The liquid inside was just as vibrantly colored as the rest of the party. It looked like the Capitol from The Hunger Games in here.

“You know that’s not really me,” Lily said. “I mean, I did take a Lyft here, but I’m not going to be here long. I’ll probably try to get a little more work done tonight.”

“Tonight?”Mikki said, rolling his eyes. “It’s a Friday night, and you’re at one of the biggest parties in LA! Why in the world would you work?” He sounded like the college student he was, Lily thought indulgently. Maybe not her, when she was in college, but other people.

Tobin Bui came to mind, strangely.

“And this is why your subscriber numbers aren’t growing, Mikki,” Val murmured, tossing back her own shot. “Making it as an influencer is a dog-eat-dog business. You gotta work.” Mikki leveled an irritated glare at her in response.

“I’m trying to come up with some new content,” Lily interjected, before they could start sniping at each other. “My manager suggested that I need to mix things up a bit more. She also said I should be thinking about more collaborations.” She bit her lip.

“I’ll collaborate with you,” Mikki volunteered instantly. “Although I’ve got midterms coming up, so it might be a little while.”

“Midterms?” Lily blinked. “Isn’t it summer?”

“I needed to make up that management class I tanked last semester,” he muttered. He was still attending UCLA, pursuing a bachelor’s in business economics at his parents’ insistence. She’d even helped him with some homework, since she’d breezed through her degree in the same major.

“She doesn’t mean us, Mikki.” Val smiled, shaking her head. “I think her manager means collaborating with somebody with bigger numbers and less of a niche audience.”

“That does make more sense,” Mikki agreed.

Lily felt a burst of relief. She didn’t want to turn down Mikki—and she’d probably collab with him plenty, schedule permitting—but she really needed more star power than his channel would bring.

“We are at a party with some of the most popular BeautyTubers in LA,” Val pointed out. “Get out there. I’m sure you could find a big collab.”

Lily nodded. “That’s the idea.” Her mouth suddenly felt dry, her throat scratchy. Her heart and stomach both fluttered with unpleasant nerves.

“Well, go on, then,” Val nudged her. “Look! Chrysalis and Daisy are right there. You should totally talk to them!”

Lily choked. “That’s ambitious,” she said, trying not to let her fear show. “I mean, this is their launch party. Chrysalis has fifteen million subscribers, and Daisy has at least twelve. I was thinking of starting a little smaller. Bigger than me, but not quite so . . .”

She could imagine their derision—their judgment. And she felt her stomach drop even more.

“That’s perfect,” Mikki said, oblivious to her fear. Probably because she was used to masking it, even with her friends. “You could go over there and say hi and congratulations and stuff. Go on, go on!”

Lily looked over to where Daisy and Chrysalis were laughing, surrounded by friends and fans and hangers-on. It suddenly seemed very daunting.

Unbidden, it reminded her of that dreadful time, senior year, at Ponto Beach High. When the so-called popular girls had neatly and coldly dismissed her. That was what was holding her back, she realized. The idea of being rejected, all over again, was hamstringing her—even now, when it really mattered.

Lily closed her eyes for a second, the remembered shame warring with fury. Sometimes she felt like if she’d just gotten over that hump, if she’d just gotten closure from that awful, stupid incident, her life would be so much different. So much better.

She needed to get over that high school shit now.

With an icy determination, she reached over, grabbed a neon-green shot Mikki had in front of him, and downed it. It tasted like honeydew and lighter fluid, and she winced.

“All right,” she said. “I’m going in.”

She barely registered Mikki’s and Val’s hoots of encouragement. She walked up to the small crowd sitting on couches talking to each other.

Chrysalis was tall, around six feet, and looked . . . well, like a stunning, larger-than-life demigod, wrapped in a Technicolor rainbow. They wore short-shorts and go-go boots and a silky-looking blouse, all in the signature PEACOCK palette, complete with peacock-feather details. Their makeup was flawless, but that was to be expected. Their hair, which was famous for how often they changed the color and style, was a long, waist-length wig tonight, an iridescent waterfall of blues and greens and purples.

Daisy, on the other hand, would have fit in with Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s circle. She was wearing PEACOCK colors, too, but her outfit was flapper inspired . . . her signature. Her red hair was cut in a bob with pin curls. She even had a beaded headband and a small peacock-feather detail. She looked different from anyone else in the mansion, and she owned it.

What was it like, to have that? To feel that? Lily was determined to find out. She edged closer to the group, leaning against a couch arm, trying to figure out how to enter the conversation without making a fool of herself.

“God, everything is so boring anymore,” Chrysalis complained, holding their empty glass out to a waiter, who promptly exchanged it for a full one. “Everything’s been done.”

The crowd murmured its agreement.

Boring. So boring. No originality.

“I know,” Chrysalis echoed. “I have to wade through tons of crap to try to find things to share with my followers. Same clothes, same makeup, same tutorials. It’s ridiculous!”

“It’s getting harder and harder to make an impact,” Daisy added. “I’m just glad you have this new palette. And I’m trying to brainstorm new ideas for content for my channel and Instagram.”

Lily’s heart started beating fast. This could be her opportunity. But how to break into the conversation without looking like a total douche? At the very least, she could hear about what kind of content they were trying . . .

“I mean, I’m trying out a makeup line from the princess of . . . Monaco, I think?” Daisy continued. “Or maybe Norway? Do they have a princess?”

“Is that the stuff that’s, like, sixty-two thousand dollars for a tube of lipstick?” Chrysalis asked.

“Swear to God, it truly is,” Daisy agreed, rolling her eyes before grinning with a little cruelty. “Fifteen ‘exclusive’ colors and an eighteen-carat-gold box? Can’t wait to tear that apart.”

Lily winced. No way could she afford to do that kind of content on a regular basis. Besides, bad-mouth reviews weren’t her brand or her style. So that wasn’t helpful.

“Say, have you seen that viral video that’s going around?” This from Daisy’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Todd. “The one with the wiggly-arm things.”

Chrysalis laughed. “Yes! Now, see, that was clever. Seeing those things go up like dominos over a couple of miles and dance around. That took coordination.”

“I didn’t get it,” Daisy said dismissively. “So there were those dumb inflatables. So they were going up one after the other. What’s the big deal?”

“It’s a Lord of the Rings reference,” Lily said without thinking. “Actually, a Return of the King reference.”

All conversation on the couches stopped for a second as all of them stared at her for interrupting.

Well, you wanted their attention.

“In the movie . . . I mean, it’s a fantasy kingdom—they don’t have cell phones or anything—and they need to send a signal from one side of the continent to the other, and there’s this dramatic scene where they light a big bonfire, and then you look across the landscape, and more and more beacons are lit. That’s what they were doing,” she finished. She straightened her back, hoping that she looked more confident than she felt.

Chrysalis tilted their head, studying her. “Huh. I just thought it was impressive because the guy obviously shelled out a good deal of money, and did a bunch of planning, to make it work.”

Daisy sniffed. “I never saw those movies.”

“Also,” Chrysalis added, “that guy? GoofyBui? He’s cute.”

Now Daisy’s interest was piqued. “Oh?” she added, causing Todd to scowl. She quickly opened her phone, obviously looking him up immediately.

“That video’s gotten a crazy amount of views in a short period of time, got picked up everywhere,” someone else chimed in. “He’s creative, and funny.”

“Hmm,” Daisy mused, tapping her chin with blue-polished nails. “He is cute. And those stats aren’t bad either. Does anybody here know him? I mean, know him know him. Like, enough to text, private number?”

Lily cleared her throat. She couldn’t believe that this was how she was cracking into their inner circle, but . . . now or never. “I know him.”

They went quiet, staring at her again.

She hadn’t anticipated that her entrée to BeautyTuber society would be Tobin Bui, but at this point, she needed to use whatever leverage she could.

“Really,” Daisy drawled.

“We went to high school together,” Lily said. Where he annoyed the shit out of me. Still, he’d been one of her friends, beyond the irritation.

Nerd Herd for Life.Before, it had seemed like a sentence. Now, it looked like a saving grace.

Daisy rolled her eyes again, something of a habit, it seemed. “Oh. So you’re, like, Facebook friends or something, right? Like, you haven’t talked to him in years? You don’t know him.”

“I still see him when I go back to my old hometown,” Lily countered, not admitting that her trips to Ponto Beach were infrequent at best, especially since her parents had moved to the Bay Area. “We hang out in the same circles.”

Do not tell these people about the Nerd Herd.

“All right, sweetie.” Chrysalis patted the couch cushion next to them. Feeling strange, Lily gingerly sat down next to the towering beauty icon. “If you know GoofyBui . . .”

“I do,” Lily reassured them.

“Prove it.” Daisy’s smirk turned sharp as she flanked Lily, boxing her in. “Let’s video call him and say hi.”

Lily swallowed.

Video call Tobin?

Shit.