When I wake up, I realize the following:
1. I’ve had the worst night’s sleep ever, mainly because I kept checking my phone every five minutes. I now have 1,086 likes on my bike photo and 859 views of the panda vlog. This is what it must feel like to be Erin Breeler. It’s good. I like it.
2. I am wearing Aunty Teresa’s Christmas pudding beanie because this is actually a fridge pretending to be a house.
3. Dave is staring at me from the end of the bed.
4. Lauren is also staring at me from the end of the bed.
“Who let you in?” I love my friends, but I don’t expect them to actually be under the duvet with me on a Sunday morning.
“Er … no one,” Lauren whispers. “I just let myself in.”
I should have remembered. This is not Mum’s house, with its supersensitive burglar alarm and multiple locks. This is Granddad’s house; there might as well be a massive human cat flap where the front door is.
Lauren is giving me her full-on serious face. She looks like an aye-aye lemur—cute but slightly terrifying.
“Mills. This is … this is … right … this is…”
“This is what, Loz?”
Lauren’s cheeks twitch because her face is allergic to being sensible. If eyebrows could do Pilates … I’m expecting something life-changing, because she looks like she’s about to burst.
“This is a bit epic, Mills. TITANIC.”
And then she makes a movement with her hands like something has exploded in a microwave and covered the kitchen in baked beans. And no—not even I cover my baked beans with cling film when I’m microwaving them. Like Dad says, “Life is too short to give food an overcoat.”
All this makes me giggle.
My laughing makes Lauren cross. “Seriously, though, Millie. LOOK at your exercise bike pic. Someone even said, ‘This is everything. Give me more of your life hacks,’ and LOOK at who liked that comment!”
I scroll through them again. Danny Trudeau thinks it’s a good idea. The new boy has noticed me.
This is not a massive deal. How many random things do you like in a day? Bet you can’t name them. I can’t. Besides, I’m not about impressing men. I do silly stuff for me.
Lauren won’t be stopped. “You could be a major Internet star. I’ve been thinking about it ALL night. You should do … something. I just can’t think of what.…”
Dave jumps into Lauren’s lap and lies on her back with her paws straight in the air. She truly does not care about anything or anyone. She does what she likes when she—
It’s then that it hits me. I grab Dave. “CATS!”
Lauren starts shouting, “Yes! Let’s make Dave a vlogging superstar! Cats always get likes.”
“I’m not sure Dave will, though, Lozza. I don’t think she understands vlogging. But let’s have a go anyway?”
I get my phone out, look straight into the camera, and start recording.
“This is Dave, and I’m Millie. You see a lot of entertaining cats online. But Dave isn’t like the cats you usually see.”
At this point, Lauren catches on and pulls a bag of Doritos from her bag. She tries to balance a Dorito on Dave’s nose. Dave just lies there with her legs still in the air. Lauren then piles up a cuddly llama (Aunty Teresa’s), a science textbook (mine), and a chicken marengo sandwich (Lauren’s—it looks vile) around Dave.
Dave still just lies there. I carry on.
“As you can see, if you want to make your cat go viral, get one that at least reacts to bread.”
At that moment, Aunty Teresa bursts into my bedroom with her masses of black curly hair and her very neon spotty shirt. She’s like a big cloud of slightly manic. She’s also really loud. She takes one look at Lauren and Dave and shouts, “I’m sorry to barge in, Mills, but I heard what you’ve been talking about, and all I’m saying is: VEGETABLES!”
I pause the recording. I don’t want to look completely stupid. Suddenly, you can see that what I’ve been saying about Aunty Teresa makes quite a lot of sense.
Lauren looks puzzled for about half a second, then she and Aunty Teresa start jumping into the air, shouting, “VEGETABLES!! VEGETABLES!!!”
I sit there, zombielike.
“Haven’t you seen it?!” Lauren is staring at me like I’ve suddenly grown four extra heads and an arm.
The worry rises in me like a tight anxiety burp. Usually “Haven’t you seen it?!” means something involving you that everyone else knows about and you don’t. I whisper, “Seen what?”
“MILLIE! Where have you been?!” Lauren says, getting her phone out. She shows me a cat jumping thirty feet into the air after being ambushed by a cucumber. Apparently this is a thing—this cat has had over five million views and four figures of likes.
A cucumber. Probably the most un-terrifying vegetable except for turnips, and they are pathetic AND unpopular.
Aunty Teresa dashes downstairs and brings back a real-life cucumber, three potatoes, a mandarin, and a cauliflower. We remove the sandwich from Dave, and for the next twenty minutes, we film Dave with vegetables.
This includes:
1. Lauren putting a cucumber by Dave. Dave cuddles it.
2. Aunty Teresa rolling potatoes in front of Dave. Dave ignores them.
3. Lauren giving Dave fake eyebrows with mandarin segments. This is quite funny.
4. Lauren making a small helmet for Dave from cauliflower leaves. Dave pulls them off in a really undramatic way.
Then I get a message that the storage is nearly full on my phone.
“There you are! How NOT to make a cat vlog with me, Millie Porter, Lauren, and Aunty Teresa!”
As I press STOP, MUM thunders into the bedroom like a really cross elephant in gym clothes, and Dave decides to rear up on two legs, leap six feet into the air, do a somersault, and land perfectly. The camera is OFF.
Lauren is very impressed. “Wow, Mrs. Porter, can you just do that again so I can turn the camera on and … get…”
You can tell by my mum’s face that it really is time to totally shut up. Aunty Teresa has a rare moment of being a bit sensitive and grabs Lauren. “Anyway, do you want to go and increase our brain bandwidth with some more vlog ideas?”
Lauren says, “Er … yeah,” and they disappear really quickly. It’s just me, Mum, and Dave.
“Millie,” Mum says, “I’ve brought some more of your stuff around. I thought you might want your school things sooner rather than later. And why have you got a piece of holly on your head?”
“I’m a Christmas pudding—it’s cold,” I snap. It’s very difficult to be taken seriously when you are a dessert or a panda.
Mum shakes her head and leaves. She shouts, “I’m going to unload the car.” I hear her muttering as she trips over something on the stairs. That would never happen at her house.
I should be using this time to go and help her, but I’m not. I’m going to keep my stupid hat on and edit and upload my new vlog. I think the bit with the cucumber was actually quite good. Family can wait a bit. It’s vlog o’clock.