Gone (Ianthony)

One Month, Three Weeks, Four Days, and Two Hours Before

Anthony:    

When I was a kid, I used to always spend my free time lying in bed. It was stupid; on the weekends, other kids my age would be hanging out and going to parties and going to concerts and meanwhile I laid under my covers and stared at the ceiling and thought. I was usually so busy with schoolwork and the pressure of making friends and coping with the torture that was high school that I rarely had time to sort out everything running through my head, so I just let it build up and build up until the weekend, when I ignored my few friends and laid in bed for two whole days, trying to temporarily organize my mess of a brain.

And I had been having the same problem for a while now; I was so busy working on Smosh stuff all the time, I never had a free second to think about everything else. But now, I had plenty of time.

And I'll admit it: I was lonely. God, I was so lonely. I hadn't not had a roommate since I was, what, eighteen? And that roommate had always been Ian. But now, Ian was God knows where, and I was alone in a house built for two.

But the worst part? I'd finally learned to let those problems out instead of bottling them up until they shut me down for a few days after I had gotten really close to Ian, so for the past many years, I went to him with everything. And he'd always listen and give advice and tell me everything would be okay. But now I had no one to tell again. So I was back to shutting down for a few days.

And that's exactly what I was doing right now: laying in bed, well, Ian's bed, and thinking about everything. Life. The universe. Ian.

And I hated it. Because I knew I should have been up, looking for the next clue or trying to talk his mom out of the funeral or doing something to get my mind off the world, but I couldnt. I was plastered to that bed. So I thought.

I missed Smosh. I missed staying up late to read comment after comment, smiling at the good ones and scrolling past the bad. I missed having twelve-hour shoots once a week. I missed getting to live my dream job every day and call it "work."

I thought about how the FBI were now involved in the Missing Best Friend case. How they were really investigating murder. How they had the right to show up at my house at any given moment and search everything because they really thought I murdered the person who mattered most to me.

I thought about how I had been avoiding everything since Smosh ended; social media, other YouTubers, fans. It was hard, just letting them off with a simple "hey, we can't make videos anymore because of something we can't really talk about. Maybe we'll be back someday and maybe we won't, but for now, goodbye." I tried to put myself in their shoes; I thought back to when I was fourteen and my favorite band broke up and I felt my life crumble down around me. I felt sick.

I thought about how Ian was in love with me. And how I wasn't surprised, nor disgusted, nor happy, particularly. It was just... there. I mean, something so big really should have been slightly more thought-provoking, but it just wasn't. It was just my best friend being in love with me. And I had no idea why it wasn't such a big deal to me and maybe I would never find out, but it didn't change the fact that I wanted to find him more than anything in the world, and I would do everything possible until just that.

||

Later that night, I forced myself out of bed and made some eggs and thought about what the next clue could be.

I made a list while flipping possibly-expired eggs around with a possibly-dirty spatula in a possibly-dirty pan:

could be something in his old house - that was where he figured it out
could be related to the movie we were watching    
could be something he gave me for my    

I ended the last sentence halfway through because that was it. The second one. The way she had looked at me when she said 'I can't remember what movie it was,' like it was part of the clue. It was the movie. I had to figure out what movie it was.

I was so satisfied with myself, I was actually able to fork down some of the eggs.