The Flynn Effect

35 | elynne and fellie

Jo

AT NIGHT, I sit back and lean against the headboard before sitting my opened laptop on my thighs. King is sleeping in my room tonight, so I place my earbuds in so he won't wake up.

I move the cursor to the search bar and type in the words 'Elynne and Fellie' and even before I'm done typing, some results come out already. I click on the first one and a familiar face comes into view.

It's a YouTube channel with nineteen videos and close to a hundred subscribers. The first video starts to play and a girl's face is the first thing I see. Ellie. Flynn's sister and absolute lookalike. They're so identical, it's hard to believe they're four years apart. It's dated six years ago so her babyish features explain a lot. She's seated in front of a piano and her dark hair is up in a loose ponytail. She adjusts the camera and gives a shy wave.

"Hi everyone. I'm Ellie and this is my brother, Flynn." She points at the empty space beside her and then she sighs and turns her head.

"Flynn, come on," she whines with a pout. "You promised."

Very slowly, a head and then the rest of a twelve year old boy comes into a view. I can't stop the smile that bursts out on my face. Twelve year old Flynn is the cutest kid I've ever seen. He barely looks at the camera as he sits next to her and his mop of hair flops to the side.

"This is my brother, Flynn and this is our YouTube Channel," she beams. "Sorry, he's a little shy."

Flynn looks up and sighs before rolling his eyes and looking away. Ellie doesn't mind though. If anything, she smiles even wider.

"I play the piano and he plays—" she pauses and stretches a hand to him to complete her statement.

"The guitar." He says in an unenthusiastic tone. He looks like he wants to run away.

Ellie nods. "Correct. His guitar isn't here right now so he's just going to cheer me up while I play a song for you. Right?"

Flynn nods and then he turns and whispers something in her ears. She stares at the screen once he's done whispering and then she says, "He said if I let him leave now, he'll get us ice cream later."

"You didn't have to say that out loud."

She blinks once. "Oh. Anyway, my answer is no. Come on." She drags him closer and he pinches his nose in frustration before reluctantly doing what she wants. She plays a very familiar Elton John song and it catapults me to a memory where my dad would waltz out of tune with my mum on a Saturday morning to it while Drew and I pretended we were throwing up in the distance. There was love in their eyes when they gazed at each other and suddenly, my dad was gone without an explanation.

I blink and return my attention to Ellie's performance but she's rounding off already and Flynn seems more relaxed than how uptight he looked few minutes ago. I go ahead and watch the rest of the videos, laughing at some and internally gushing at how cute they are and how similar their mannerisms are. Flynn plays his guitar in some of the videos and I admire how they match so well as siblings. They have the same smile, the same frown and similar things amuse them.

The last video was uploaded three years ago and when it starts to play, I notice how forced Flynn's smiles are compared to how they were in the previous ones. They're dressed in funny looking costumes and crazy hair.