Silver Lining

15. Disney marathons

17 days before

My eyes slowly open, and I see Theo leaning over me, looking concerned.

"What happened?" I mumbled, closing my eyes again.

"You fainted. Are you alright? Does your head hurt?"

I shook my head, and that's when I heard it. "I believe in you, that you'll make the right choice," Michael said, his voice coming from our bedroom. I screamed, covering my head as if to protect myself and burying my face into my knees.

"Madison! It's not Michael! It's not him!" Theo said loudly, reassuringly. "It's a recording of him. On a CD player. I would of turned it off, but we can't touch anything before the police get here."

Theo placed his hand on my shoulder, and I jumped at his touch, but then uncurled from the ball I was scrunched into in the corner of the hallway and let Theo wrap his arms around me.

9 days before

We hadn't heard from Michael for over a week now, which was a relief. It had made me really jumpy, and I was constantly checking over my shoulder.

As if I needed more stress, social media had blown up because of the car accident. Although it was ages ago, someone working for one of the newspapers said (and published!) that there was now evidence that I was in the wrong. Although the reporter that published that was fired and the newspaper formally apologized on TV, the damage had been done and a lot of people had tweeted me asking why I did it. Even if it did get a lot of people angry at me, I felt terrible that the reporter lost his job over that. A story on the news about the "Mad drivers' as it was called in the media, a play on my name, said that the reporter probably wouldn't get a job in the industry again, and I felt terrible.

It was a Tuesday, and even though me and Theo both had jobs to do, we decided to cancel our plans and just have a pyjama day around the house. I didn't even brush my hair for the whole day, and it was ace. Mostly we just lay on the sofa, having a Disney movie marathon, which you are never to old for. Around lunchtime, Laurel sent me a text saying Congratulations on eleven million subscribers! Xx

Well that was a shock to me. I ran to our bedroom and grabbed my laptop, and logged into YouTube. Sure enough, eleven million. Eleven million people watched my videos. That was just so mind blowing, I couldn't even comprehend it. "Hey, Theo! I hit eleven million subscribers!"

"Congratulations! I'm so proud of you, bub." He kissed my forehead, which was probably all gross and oily.

"You must be at nearly five million on instagram, right?"

Theo nodded. "Five million yesterday."

"You hit five million and you didn't even tell me? We could of celebrated! Well, we still can."

"Five million isn't as big as eleven million," he said with a shrug.

"No, but it's a major milestone! It goes one mil, then five mil, ten mil, twenty mil, so on. We'll do something celebratory tomorrow, yes?"

"Celebrating both of our achievements, though."

"Yes, yes."

***

For dinner we had bacon and egg pie that Theo made, possibly the best comfort food there is. We ate it in the living room in a blanket fort made out of the couch cushions and blankets, and we found the Christmas tree lights and put those around the fort to make it look pretty. We decided that neither of us would check social media or our phones, it could wait no matter how urgent it was.

After we finished watching The Little Mermaid, I got up to put the plates on the bench, and grab two bottles of water out of the fridge, and Theo got a tub of cookies and cream ice cream out of the freezer. We lay down in the blanket fort again, and opened the carton of ice cream.

"Oh. Neither of us got spoons, did we?" Theo asked.

"Whoops. I'll go grab them." I made my eyes go all squinty at Theo. "Don't eat any."

He did squinty eyes back. "No promises."

I was wearing a fluffy pair of bedsocks that slipped on the polished wood floor, so I did that run and slide thing up the hallway to the kitchen. I grabbed two spoons out of the drawer, and slid back down the hallway towards the living room. Theo had spread out a bunch of movies in front of the fort, trying to decide on one. "Aladdin!" I told him, pointing towards the DVD case as I climbed over Theo into the fort. I sat criss-cross on the floor in the middle of the fort and looked around. "We have such a nice fort."

"It is a nice fort. Scooch, please." Theo said, shoving me over so there was room for him.

I wiggled over, and wrapped one of the blankets around myself before grabbing a spoon and digging it into the ice cream. "Ha, I got a big lump of cookie," I said, showing Theo the ice cream. This was our favourite flavor; therefore the only flavour we ever bought. It was a never ending contest between us of who could find the biggest lump of cookie. I think they were Oreo's, but I'm not sure.

Theo leaned forwards and ate the ice cream right off my spoon! "Hey! Get your own ice cream!" I told him, playfully punching his arm.

"He shrugged, and lightly punched me back. "Your bit had cookie." The movie started, and we snuggled into the blankets with my head resting on Theo's shoulder.

***

We decided to finally go to bed at eleven o'clock. I wanted to quickly check my laptop before I went to sleep, to see if anything major had happened.

I had five new emails, and I scanned my eyes over the list of people who had sent them. Four of them were boring stuff, like offers from shops and Facebook notifications, and the last one was from Logan. I clicked on it.

Hey Madison!
How are things in Australia? Mum and I got back to Los Angeles yesterday and it's very weird going back into the cold again, lol.
I just wanted to tell you that thanks to your donation to the Children's Hospital LA, the hospital could improve it's education program a lot. It's actually so much more fun now, so thank you!

Love, Logan
Beneath are a bunch of other kids who wanted to say hi and thank you as well; they all typed their names. :)
Rose Perry Jackson Allen Tara Williams Sarah Gray Lara Brooks James Stone Matt Hudson Ella Nichols Jessica Ray Harvey Palmer Alfie Burr Molly Grant Shay Ellis Tom Patterson

I had the biggest smile on my face as I read the email. I started to type a reply, but then figured it was pretty late so I turned off my laptop, and promised myself I'd reply first thing in the morning. I set the laptop down on the kitchen bench and went into the bedroom, climbed beneath the covers and rested my head on Theo's shoulder.