Mom and Dad were happy thinking things were finally picking up for me, especially when I’d gotten the sponsorship offer from SnapGoGo last month. They were a travel company and had noticed I was always posting about my dream trips. Ha. That was another reason to get my followers up. Stop them from realizing I never actually made any of them happen.

How did Dove make it look so easy? She was in my grade, and I didn’t know her, know her, but I didn’t need to know her to know she was legendary status. I’d figured that out before I’d even been shown where the restrooms were. Dove Moore had everything: friends, followers, a family who didn’t move every two years… Sure, I’d never heard anyone actually say anything nice about her, but someone like her didn’t seem to care what anyone else thought.

Since I’d started in September, we’d spoken, let me count them, yeah, zero times. Not that I expected her to—just because I’d followed her for years didn’t mean she would have any clue who a lesser mortal like me was. Rumor was that she’d earned enough from all her sponsorship to book Shawn Mendes to do an acoustic set for her next birthday. Ha—for mine I went bowling with Mom, Dad, Nick, and Grams. So similar.

But Shawn Mendes wasn’t what everyone was talking about. Nah, for Dove, this kind of thing was no big deal. The big news was that she’d launched a side account with her best friend, Morgan—@thingsthepeakgirlsdo. She was always doing new accounts and getting them huge. This one was challenging each other to do funny stuff, and even though it had only been up a few months longer than mine, it was already at 50,000 followers. Not that I checked. Every hour. And they’d just announced they were planning some kind of big competition with it and had lined up four people to take part.

It had been a BIG surprise when I’d seen Dove’s follow come in on @OneElleOfATime a few weeks back, and an even bigger one when she’d just liked my post.

“This way.” Mom turned up a path, bringing me back to reality. “Oh, and did Nick tell you his band just got booked for some more gigs? Thought maybe we could check them out. Family trip?”

I tried not to laugh. How much would my brother like us all showing up? We’d all seen my dad dance, and that was something even Nick’s social life couldn’t recover from.