Survivin' - [B.C.]

Chapter 39: Showtime, Baby

Fucking Hell.

I was famous.

========= SURVIVIN' ==========

A month had gone by like the blow of a whistle since I found out about my internet fame. So far, I hadn't done anything about it. But people were blowing up with tags and mentions of me, Ben, and Martin. I had even seen an edit of me on YouTube. Yes, an edit! Unreal.

It was me, in different places playing variations of the piano/keyboard, most of them with smiles of my face. It was set to the part of Piano Man that goes;

"Sing us a song, you're the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody
And you've got us feeling alright..."

I showed it to Ben and Sophie, and I posted it on my Snapchat story so my friends could see it. Rylie was astonished. I was losing my mind. This felt like an entire chapter of my life that I wasn't even supposed to see yet. Like I had been catapulted into a parallel timeline.

Two weeks of March didn't show any signs of wavering press. I was still all Gen-Z fan people could talk about. I had even started accumulating my own little cult of followers.

There was more fanart of me each day. I saw that there was one art account that kept popping up in my feed. There were so many different raw expressions of me and my feelings when playing the piano — it was like they had been inside my head each time I ever did so.

Then there was one that almost made me cry.

It was a digital drawing of Doctor Strange's hands, laid out to where you could see the lines and the scars from his procedures. Then mine were placed next to his, almost mirroring them and their healed wounds.

When I showed it to Ben, I could tell he was trying to fight off something. He looked up at me with starry eyes and then set my phone down, gently grabbed my hands, and then kissed them.

So now it was the 18th of March; the day before my 15th birthday. I was jittering with excitement. It would be my first one with Ben and Sophie and, seeing as how they always went all-out for their celebrations, I couldn't wait to see what they were gonna come up with this time.

"You choose," Ben said when I asked him what we should do for my birthday. I had been tentative in asking the question; the prospect of arranging my own sorts of things still a fresh wave of anxiety in my chest. But all Ben had to reply with was you choose.

"What?" I asked, trailing behind him as he went into the laundry room to switch out the clothes.

"You choose," he repeated. "Sophie and I are willing to do anything — within reason. It's your birthday, so you get to choose what we do."

"But I'm so indecisive!" I argued.

"Then don't choose." Ben faced me as he stood up and closed the window of the dryer. "We don't have to do anything big. We can just make you a cake and have a small familial celebration."

"But that's so boring..."

"Then choose!"

I let out a loud groan and trudged into the living room, where I promptly collapsed next to where Sophie was reading a book on the couch. She laughed and sat her book down, then gently turned my head so that we could face each other.