The Return Of TikTok

【Chapter I】

NARRATIVE

"Hey sweetie, how was school?" a voice yells from the kitchen. The voice is stood in front of a stove, keeping one watchful eye on pasta that's close to bubbling over, and the other eye on the young child running around the kitchen island like a maniac. "Baby, slow down please, you'll hurt yourself." The child stops automatically, shoves a thumb in its mouth, turns around with reproachful eyes and flops down onto its padded backside.

A child is heard coming through the hall, but is stopped suddenly when the voice says, "Uh, stop. Shoes off please, I don't want mud being trailed through the house, I've just cleaned it for when people come round later." Muttering is barely audible as the culprit turns around and heads back to the front door. "Sweetie, you'll have to speak up, I'm in a different room, not right next to you!"

"I said," the child shouts, "Who's even coming round later? And why didn't you tell me!"

The voice sighs, "Honey, I did tell you this morning, you'd just come down."

"Yeah, well I was half asleep and clearly wasn't listening, was I!"

"Your nanna, grandpa, Auntie Charli and Aunt Madi," the voice turns around and her face is finally revealed. It may have been fifteen years, but there's no mistaking just who that voice belongs to. Fifteen years later, her hair's just as dark, and her freckles are just as prominent. Formerly Dixie D'Amelio, now known as Dixie Beck.

Yes. Miss Dixie D'Amelio became Mrs Dixie Beck in 2029, when she was twenty-seven. Despite everyone thinking she was the bisexual in the family, her sister Charli came out when she was eighteen, began dating Madi Monroe a year later, and they've been together ever since.

"Oh, that's fine I like them!"

"I sure hope you do, they're your family!" Technically, by blood the D'Amelio's aren't related to this child. Sophia was adopted when she was eight, five years ago. However, now aged fourteen, you wouldn't be able to tell if you saw the family in the streets. Her hair is half a shade darker than Noah's, her freckles just as obvious as Dixie's.

"Anyways, what did you do at school honey?" Dixie enquires, reaching down and picking up the small child. Dixie had had it in her head since she was young that she wanted to adopt, and when she told Noah this, he had agreed. So, it had come as shock to them, three years after adopting Sophia, to find out that Dixie was pregnant. Now two years old, little Amelia, commonly called Mimi, is the spitting image of her mother at her age. Her hair is the same colour, as are her freckles, and not to mention her energy levels.

"Not much, it's close to summer so we don't really do anything. We did get given like a 'fun' project to do though," Sophia rolls her eyes, making it blatantly obvious what she thinks of the project. She reaches into the fridge, only to close it almost straight away. "Mom," she whines, "Where's the Dunkin?"

Dunkin Donuts. Fifteen years later, the company's still going strong. Dixie and Noah like to joke and say that they're sure Sophia must be related to Charli somehow, because she has the same Dunkin obsession Charli did when she was her age.

"I didn't get any, but," Dixie hastens to continue after seeing Sophia's mouth open, ready to complain, "your dad said he'll get it on the way back from his meeting. What's your project on?"

"Were you on an app called TikTok before it got shut down?" Sophia asks casually, reaching into a cupboard and grabbing a box of lucky charms, "Or were you too old?"

Dixie's eyes widen in shock when she hears the first question, but her face quickly changes to an indignant one. "How old do you think I am? Yes, but I think you should ask Dad, Char and Madi later. They know more about it than me."

When TikTok shut down fifteen years ago, the hype and sway house still continued on YouTube. However, it quickly became clear that their audiences just weren't as big as they had been on TikTok, and so, after a year of YouTube and Instagram, both houses decided that it would be financially better for everyone to go their separate ways.

The Hype House kept in touch for the first year, but soon after, conversations became less and less frequent, until it got to the point where they just stopped talking.
Dixie, for example, despite having been such close friends with Addison, stopped communicating with her in February 2022.

Obviously, she regretted this. When she wanted someone to talk to about absolutely nothing, Addison was always the person Dixie turned to. They used to stay up until the early hours of the morning, or occasionally stay awake the entire night, just talking about random things they'd seen that day, or sending each other memes, even though they were right next to each other. Their friendship was one of the closest friendships Dixie had ever experienced, bar Kate, obviously.

So, Dixie being Dixie, had let all of her emotions out in one short burst, and had tried not to think or speak about TikTok and everything that had happened at all. Her and Noah tried to put everything behind them and live their life like nothing had happened and like they had never been famous.

They decided that it would be best for their children that they didn't know, which is why Dixie was so shocked when Sophia had asked about TikTok. They knew the day would come where everything would have to be explained, whether they're ready for it? Now that's a different question entirely, and is something that the Beck's had been avoiding.

AUTHOR SPEAKS
first proper chapter!
this book will also have
social media in, i just
wanted to start on a
narrative!

don't forget to vote
and comment!
see you in the next
chapter!