Bye, I Guess... (Sequel and Third Book Included!)

Trente-cinq

Abbie's POV

"Hey, mom? I have a question," I said, coming into her room and sitting on her bed.

"Sure, What is it?" She responded, still folding her laundry.

"I want to sing professionally," I said.

She paused for a second.

"Yeah, sure, but how are you going to do that?" She asked me.

"Maybe I can start with singing some covers on YouTube and making music videos for them, like you used to when you were sixteen. I wanna do some old songs though, like maybe ones from when you were my age. I like the old songs better than the ones in this age," I said.

"I like your idea," mom smiled. "Do you have any songs in mind?"

"I have a few," I said.

I pulled out my phone and started playing the first one, which is Riptide by Vance Joy.

"I can play this one on my ukulele and sing with it," I said.

"I think you'd be good at it," mom said.

•••

I put the camera on the tripod and started recording, then sat on my bed and picked up my instrument. I started strumming the notes.

"I was scared of dentists and the dark. I was scared of pretty girls and starting conversations. Oh, all my friends are turning green, you're the magician's assistant in their dreams. Oh, oh, and they come unstuck.

"Lady, running down to the riptide, taken away to the dark side, I wanna be your left hand man. I love you when you're singing that song and I got a lump in my throat 'cause you're gonna sing the words wrong.

"Is this movie that I think you'll like, this guy decides to quit his job and heads to New York City. This cowboy's running from himself, and she's been living on the highest shelf. Oh, oh, and they come unstuck.

"Lady, running down to the riptide, taken away to the dark side, I wanna be your left hand man. I love you when you're singing that song and I got a lump in my throat 'cause you're gonna sing the words wrong.

"I just wanna, I just wanna know, if you're gonna, if you're gonna stay. I just gotta, I just gotta know, I can't have it, I can't have it any other way. I swear she's destined for the screen, closest thing to Michelle Pfeiffer that you've ever seen, oh,

"Lady, running down to the riptide, taken away to the dark side, I wanna be your left hand man. I love you when you're singing that song and I got a lump in my throat 'cause you're gonna sing the words wrong. Oh, lady, running down to the riptide, taken away to the dark side, I wanna be your left hand man. I love you when you're singing that song and I got a lump in my throat 'cause you're gonna sing the words wrong."

I let the last chord ring out, still looking at the ukulele, then looked up and the camera and smiled. I stopped recording, then I took the camera and connected it to my laptop and transferred the footage into Final Cut Pro and edited out the parts where I sat down from turning the camera on and stood up to turn the camera off. At the end of the video, I put some links to my social media pages and my channel. I saved that version and uploaded it to YouTube.

A few hours later, I checked back and saw that it had a ton of views! I mean, our family channel's fame helps a bit with that, but it was more than any of my other videos. It actually had nearly more views than our second most popular video. Nothing will ever beat our first, which was the vlog from when our plane crashed in the woods. My siblings and I were so little back then.