Three

Mom’s eyes grew wide as she surveyed the mess. “What are you doing? What is all this? You need to clean it up. Now!” She took a salt-laden brownie and bit into it. “Wow, this is terrible!” She placed the brown square back in the pan, then spit the chewed-up brownie bits into the sink. Mom paused and looked down. “Did I step on a melted stick of butter?”

My dad’s mouth fell open as he took in the immediate setting: his seventeen-year-old daughter standing in the kitchen, filming herself in her never-meant-to-be-seen exercise bra when her parents were away. I had to admit, it didn’t look good.

“It’s complicated” is all I managed to squeak out.

Low-pitched and barely audible, Dad growled, “Go upstairs.” His voice, acrid and tinged with fury, sent a shiver down my spine. Dad never got this mad. Not even on that fateful night at Olive Garden.

Even so, I wasn’t done in the kitchen. “Hold on. I need to do one thing.” Rafa’s message. What did it say? In the half-naked frenzy, I’d misplaced my phone.

Dad bellowed, “No ‘one more thing’! No more YouTubing.” He grabbed my phone from the countertop. “This has become a real problem, Sunny. First the principal’s office, and now…this? Aeeeesh!” He nodded toward the dirty dishes and the oil-splattered counter, then waved his hand from my neck down to my toes. “Look at you!” He shook his head slowly, his anger seething. “Does this look normal to you? You’re grounded! All summer!”

In Korean parent-speak, grounded meant we were done talking and there was no opportunity for rebuttal. Even if I hadn’t done anything wrong. It didn’t matter. In this case, the conversation was over because they thought I made an R-rated cooking video while they were at a piano recital. End of conversation.

The oven timer beeped.

The brownies.

Before being banished to my room, I pulled out the pan with my slightly charred Williams Sonoma oven mitts. “I made a new batch,” I said with one last attempt to reopen the dialogue. Met with cold stares from all members of the household, I trudged up the stairs, calling out, “Someone throw out the old ones!”

The first thing I did in my room was put on a fresh T-shirt. Then, flopping backward on my bed, I closed my eyes and replayed the recent events in my head. The livecast had gone pretty well, given the circumstances. I had crept up another thousand followers give or take, inching closer to one hundred thousand. That was when I could unlock new monetization opportunities, and companies would really get interested in working with me.

Improvisation was typically out of my comfort zone, but if doing something different was what it took to keep me from plateauing, or worse, falling, there was no question. I’d do it.

But first, I needed to get ungrounded. And get my phone back.

* * *

Dad’s earlier words echoed in my head during my few hours of quiet time. My mom yelled at me a lot—okay, pretty much all the time—but never Dad. Mom always said he and I were cut from the same cloth—we were easygoing, introverted geeks. Mom and Chloe were similar to each other: stubborn and argumentative, partial to schedules and routines over spontaneity.

Dad’s disappointed, woeful eyes haunted me. I’d really messed up this time.

Even though my phone had been confiscated, my messages could be accessed through my computer.

I could see what Rafa wrote.

Rafa

Hi.

That was it. I’d freaked out about a stupid two-letter word.

Meanwhile, Maya had sent me at least a dozen messages, and scrolling through them was hard because she wouldn’t. Stop. Texting.

Maya

That video was hilarious

So many new subscribers, wow

You need a new wardrobe tho

LOL

Seriously, you do

Rafael just messaged me OMG

He said he tuned in for the first time today

He was impressed

He told me to tell you to message him back

why are you not writing back

Your video’s getting shared with the hashtags #BROWNIEPORN #BROWNIEGATE

Um, you’re trending?!

WHY U NO WRITE MEEEE?!?!

Oh no

Rafa said that Dylan’s mom sent the video to Mr. Lyons

My unintentionally racy one-pot brownie summer video had exploded in the worst way possible. This was #GoggleGirl level viral all over again, but a million times worse, because now it was not cute. #BrowniePorn. Why did the dumbest things always get picked up by everyone? And I didn’t have a single clue about how to undo any of this damage.

Think, think, think.

Damn, damn, damn.

I did the only thing that came to mind. I logged into my YouTube channel, clicked on the video that had gotten me thousands of new followers, and made the video private. Only I could see it, but I didn’t delete it. Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Lyons wouldn’t be able to view the link in time.

Chloe messaged too, from her bedroom down the hall.

Chloe

OOOOH YOU’RE GONNA BE IN TROUBLEEEEEEE

When my mom’s phone rang with the ringtone I’d programmed two days earlier as a joke (“ALERT! ALERT! MELTDOWN IMMINENT!”), my heart thudded hard against my rib cage. I opened my door to eavesdrop.

“Hello? Mr. Lyons! Good evening. I didn’t expect a call from you after our meeting. How can I help you?” She’d switched to her corporate lawyer professional voice. The really obviously fake one.

Pause.

“What do you mean hashtag brownie porn?”

Oh no.

“Hold on. I’ll go check my email now.”

Oh…nooooo.

A long, uncomfortable pause.

“Yes, we understand. I have no words to describe my disappointment. And if this is your recommendation, my husband and I are fully on board. We want to keep Sunny in school.”

WHAT? I tiptoed to the staircase so I could hear better.

“Thank you. The second we get off the phone, I’m giving them a call. I’ll mention you referred me. My sincerest apologies, and thank you again for giving Sunny another chance.”

Pause.

“Much appreciated. Take care.”

The murmurs of my dad’s voice clipped the tail end of my mom’s conversation with Mr. Lyons. He sounded calm.

Mom snapped, “Ed! Not now! I need to call this person right away, or Sunny can’t go back to Westminster next year. SHE. WILL. BE. EXPELLED. They’re waiting for my call!”

“Who is it? Who is they? Who are you calling?” He barked back, so loud that I shivered. Dad rarely raised his voice, and if he did, never twice in the same day. That was more of a Mom thing.

“Shhhh!” she hissed, then switched modes to instantly chipper robo-mom. “Oh, hi! Is this Sunshine Heritage Farms…Camp? Am I calling too late? Oh…okay…good! The headmaster at Westminster Prep referred me to you. He said you might have an opening for one of the digital detox sessions? Oh…oh, thank God. We need an intervention.”

* * *

“I can’t believe I’m spending a whole month in Iowa.”

Maya flopped onto her back on my bed, her black curls splayed on my pillow. “Whyyyy did this have to happen before our senior year? This was supposed to be our summer. Both of us. Hanging out.”

Maya was the only friend my parents allowed to come over during my grounding. They said she was a good influence on me, with her straight As and admissions-worthy hobbies like debate and community volunteering. A self-starter, she’d founded the Black Student Association and the Westminster Coastal Cleanup Club. She was also a social media logistics whiz who helped run my account. I’d offered to pay her, but she said I could be her first business reference when she applied for jobs. Leave it to Maya to already be thinking about stuff like that.

She continued moaning. “Now I’ll be all alone, nerding it up in summer immersion at UCLA without you.”

“You won’t be by yourself. You’ll be with Rafa,” I said, joining her on my bed, staring at the ceiling.

She snorted. “He’s more your friend, or should I say your forever crush, not mine.”

“Hey, it hasn’t been forever. I’ve had boyfriends!”

“Two. Two guys you dated a few times. And that doesn’t mean you weren’t still hung up on Rafa. It just meant you were…distracted for a while. Maybe going away to Iowa will help you get over him.” Her body jerked, and she shot up to seated position. “Oh! I forgot. I did some research on your digital detox camp! I printed some things.”

Because I had limited access to the internet now, Maya googled Sunshine Heritage Farms for me. Scrambling off the bed, she pulled a thick stack of paper from her messenger bag and handed it to me.

I sat up. “Thank you!”

Wow, the camp website was antiquated, and not in a kitschy, nouveau-rustic farm sense. The copyright at the bottom of the page was five years old, and the events page listed activities from when I was in junior high. From the home page description, Sunshine Farms was a year-round organic farm but had educational tours where they dressed up like people from the olden days to teach kids how they used to churn butter, milk cows, and salt meat. Like Little House on the Prairie, but creepier because it was with real people. During the summers, Sunshine Farms had opened their residential facilities to become a long-standing Christian camp. Now that it was almost July, it made me wonder what the deal was with this place. Would it still be a church camp in tandem with the digital detox camp? Would us detox kids mix and mingle with the Christians? Maybe things would get ugly and territorial and we’d all rumble in the cornfield after dark.

I muttered, “Oh God, one whole month in farm hell.”

“With a name like Sunshine though, how bad can it be?” Maya pressed her lips together and stifled a laugh.

At the bottom of the stack was a printout that wasn’t camp-related. “What’s this?”

“I didn’t know whether I should share it or not.” She peered over my shoulder. “Sorry the ink faded. My toner is low. There’s a search going on for the next ‘it’ influencer.” She showed me the same article on her phone. “Starhouse, a collective of content creators, is looking for their last member.”

I grabbed her phone to look it up. “Starhouse sounds a lot better than Sunshine Farms.”

“One of the members dropped out. There are rumors, but I think she was charged with possession of a controlled substance, although it’s still unclear if it was prescription or not. Anyway, the door just opened for you, my friend. They’re looking for an up-and-comer. Someone who has a lot of followers but has room to grow. Don’t be mad, but I already submitted you yesterday. The only requirement was to submit the most popular video on your Goggle Girl channel.”

I sighed. That Goggle Girl video was both a blessing and curse. Posted nearly ten years ago, it had over twenty-six million views and still received comments from people discovering it for the first time. I hadn’t made my brownie video public again, but other creators had copied the video and tagged me. I was secretly hoping it would overtake the popularity of the Goggle Girl one. I’d rather be known for #BrownieGate or even #BrowniePorn, which spoke volumes about my feelings toward my old content.

“They’re looking for someone who posts high quality content often. But honestly, if they look at your account and see the brownie video memes you’re tagged in gaining traction, you’ll be a shoo-in. It shows you can go viral more than once.”

I smiled. “There’s one other problem though. I’ll be heading to farm camp this weekend. And that means no more posting.”

“Well, that’s where your brilliant friend comes to the rescue,” Maya said with a smirk. “Let’s work on some content ideas this week before you leave, and I can be admin while you’re away. People won’t even know you’re gone for a whole month.”

This was a great opportunity. Influencer houses were cropping up all over the place, and being part of one was a surefire way to score high-profile collaborations and brand deals. And if I had some money saved up by the end of my senior year, I could make the decisions about what I wanted my future to look like. Not just do what my mom and dad wanted for me.

And why wouldn’t Starhouse want me? I was like one of those child actors in Hollywood who made a comeback later in life but cooler. My brownie livestream had been liked, shared, and memed. Winning this contest was a long shot, maybe even one a mile long, but it was still a shot. I clapped my hands together. “Will you be my business manager when I get super famous?”

“Yes, and you need to buy me a fancy dinner if you actually get selected. And I’ll need you to promote all my future businesses someday.” She threw a pillow at me.

I caught it before it hit my face. “Deal.”