Chapter 1

The Isabelle White YouTube Channel:

“Hi everyone! Izzy here. Thanks for watching my channel and supporting me. Click over here for my new album...and over here...for tour dates. Can you believe it? I’ve been asked to go on tour with other famous YouTubers. So exciting! I hope we’re coming to a city near you, can’t wait to meet you all. Remember to click on the link below to subscribe to my channel so you don’t miss any new posts. See ya around the ‘tube…” And cut.

“Izzzzzzy?! Where are you?” Ack. I pulled my headphones off my ears and that’s the first thing I heard, my mom screeching through the house. Doesn’t she know I’m recording when I don’t answer? You’d think she’d get it by now.

“Up here, Mom.” Where I usually am, I mumbled under my breath so she couldn’t hear. I got up, set my headphones down, turned off my equipment, and closed the sound room door. I started toward the door to my bedroom to try to head her off, but then mom’s footsteps were on the stairs so I knew she was almost here anyway. I quickly picked up a pile of clothes from my floor and dumped them on an open suitcase that sat on top of my bed.

“There you are,” she said, on a whoosh of air as if she sucked up all the available oxygen on the way up the stairs and had to let it all out. I saw her eyes travel around my room; taking in the messy floor, the closet doors hanging open with clothes falling off the hangers, the opened, over-stuffed dresser drawers. I can never get those things shut. True, half the contents have been there since the 5th grade, but still.

Then her eyes hit upon my pristine recording studio that took up exactly one half of my room, a room that was basically the whole third floor of our townhouse. The soundproof glass of my studio sparkled. There wasn’t a speck of dust to be found anywhere. Everything was in its proper place. In stark contrast with the rest of my room, but hey, we can’t be perfect in every aspect of our lives, right? Her tour ended with eyes on my bed, quilt thrown to one side, pillows coming out of their cases, and my suitcase piled with who-knows-what on top. She raised one eyebrow. You know that look parents get? How do they do that anyway? The one eyebrow thing? Like you can see the little bubble cloud over their heads with a big fat question mark. I reminded myself to practice not raising the single brow in the mirror. I smiled and gave the ol’ classic teenage shrug in response.

“Is this what you call packing?” She finally decided to speak. I kept my eye on the eyebrow, wondering how long it could stay up there. Maybe she’d set a world record. Dang, I should remember to set the timer one of these days.

“Err, yeah. Suitcase, plus clothing, equals packed.” I mentally high-fived myself. I’m so good at math.

“Izzy...” Uh-oh, not that tone in her voice. You know, the “disappointed” one. Where they cross their arms and look down their nose at you. “We’re going to be in France a whole month. Surely you’d like to look your best? The French are very fashion-minded as you well know.”

I mumbled some sort of yeah, yeah, blah, blah, I’ll pack for real, and clean up my room. Whatever she wanted to hear so she’d leave. Because the truth is, no, I didn’t want to look my best. In fact, I didn’t want to go to France at all. I wanted to walk around in my comfy, faded sweats and ratty UGG boots, topped off with a T-shirt sporting a giant waving American flag. But I was being forced. That’s what happened when the fates decided to align against you. Or rather, when your parents were history professors at the U of Penn and had been invited on an ancestry tour of the Loire Valley. And when you’re 16 and still needed parental consent. And lastly, when your YouTube channel hit more than 5,000,000 subscribers and you’d been asked to go on tour, but your parents insisted on holding you hostage for a month in France under the guise of a “family trip” before giving said consent. Obviously, I knew it for what it was. Blackmail.

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I uploaded my first YouTube video when I was fourteen. To be honest, I didn’t even know what I was doing. I was finally allowed to get my first iPhone, after begging and pleading and babysitting enough times to be able to afford it. Believe me, I had to wipe a lot of snotty noses to get that phone. Anyway, my best friend Anne was hanging out with me in my room and I started strumming a song on my guitar. I’m always playing a musical instrument of some sort. Mom tells people I was playing the piano before I could walk. I’m not so sure about that, but whatever. I seem to have some sort of musical gift that completely baffles my brainiac parents. I can pick up practically any musical instrument and learn how to play it. Whereas my parents, well they’re not musical in the least, and no one in their families are either. My Dad did say that way back when (I’m sure he rattled off a date, but I don’t remember), we had some traveling minstrel in our family line. Minstrels, not to be confused with menstruals, because yeah, I had a weird picture in my head when he first used the word.

So these minstrel people were musicians who would entertain at royal courts all over Europe. I thought that sounded pretty cool, so I looked it up on Wikipedia to get the lowdown. They were basically actors, musicians, storytellers, entertainers, you name it. I also found out, while Googling all over the web, that some were even paid as spies because they traveled from court to court and learned secrets as they went. Sometimes my parents can go on long tangents about our ancestors and where we come from and it can get boring as all get-out. But in this case, I was glad to finally have a musical connection somewhere in my family, even if it was way back in the 16th century (yeah, I looked up the year, or years rather). Until then, I’d been wondering if I’d been switched at birth because I’m nothing at all like my parents. Except, as you see, I can get sidetracked on a stray tangent once in a while myself like a true academic.

So there Anne and I were sitting in my room, me singing a song and she said, “Hey, we should do a video of you singing and put it on YouTube.” I told her she was crazy, who the heck would want to hear me sing? But then in the end, I thought, why not? So I sat back and lost myself in the music, doing my own cover of one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs. Because what fourteen year-old doesn’t sing Taylor Swift songs? The song was one of her earlier ones called “Invisible” all about teenage angst and the boy who will never notice you. Yeah, T.S. totally gets us! Anne loaded it up on YouTube, and well, that was that. We forgot about it. Until one day at school my long time doesn’t-even-know-I-exist crush sat across from me at my lunch table and said, “Hey, Izzy, isn’t it? Aren’t you the one singing in that YouTube video?” I’m pretty sure I had the “deer in the headlights” look going spot on, as I felt the burning blush creep up my neck to my face.

“Wha-what video?” I stammered. Seriously, I sounded like an idiot. And why did my throat feel like I’d been wandering for a week in the Sahara without water? Wait, he knows my name? He knows my name!

He shook his chocolate milk back and forth, popped the straw right in and took a long pull of chocolate goodness before answering. I tried not to salivate. Not that I could have...desert dry mouth, remember?

“The one that’s all over Facebook of you singing a Taylor Swift song. What’s it called, “Invisible” or something? It’s got a ton of likes and everyone keeps passing it around. No one knew you could sing. Everyone’s speculating on who you’re singing about.” He wags his eyebrows at me. Ugh, if only he knew! Words from the song start to scroll across my brain and I could feel my face getting even hotter.

Oh crap, does he know? Please don’t let him know! I’m pretty sure the blush turned purple at that point. I might have been breaking out in hives even. Thank goodness Anne came upon us at that moment, or I think I might have self-combusted or something. She threw her backpack down and started hugging me and jumping up and down at the same time. Hard to handle when you’re sitting, trying to protect your lunch and look cool for the cute boy in front of you simultaneously.

“Did you HEAR?” she practically screamed in my ear. “You’re like, FAMOUS!” Then she threw an “Oh hi, Zeke” across the table. Like she talked to him every day, which she didn’t. She grabbed my phone, since she was still in the runny-nose-wiping business to earn her own, and clicked on the YouTube channel we had put up for me. Wow, 500 people had watched my video. WHAT! How weird is that? Then she scrolled through all the comments of people asking for more. Zeke took the phone from her hands, Be still my heart, he was holding MY phone, and pulled up Facebook to show me the comments there. Next thing I knew, I was looking into Zeke’s blue eyes and he was smiling at me. I think my heart dropped to my shoes and bounced right back.

“Hey,” he said, “I know a lot about video editing and stuff. How about I help you with your next video? We could choose, like, a cool place to shoot it outside or something.” I guess I replied yes, although I think it sounded more like Yoda, and croaked out something like, “Me, yes, you.”

That was the day I became UN-invisible.