Adopted by The Sidemen

Chapter 11

Rob jumped, looking up at me and then back down at his hands. Lachlan leaned over to look at my computer and saw the photo I had been looking at, a photo of the five of them and a shorter Indian boy who, for just a moment, I thought I recognised, but that was quickly banished from my mind in favour of the more important information I had just received.

"That's from Minecon a few months ago." Lachlan said, answering one of my unanswered questions.

"And yes, we are um- what did you say? Famous...? I wouldn't say famous." He pointed at the picture and I opened it into a bigger view, only to see 6 other accounts tagged into the photo, one of which simply read 'Lachlan'. I pointed at it.

"I assume that's you?" He nodded.

"MrWoofless is Rob, PrestonPlayz is Preston, JeromeASF is Jerome, BajanCanadian is Mitch and Vikkstar123 is Vikk, our friend from England."

I nodded, clicking on Lachlan's account and grinned, seeing the little blue check mark beside his name. I read through his description and smiled at the little word, YouTuber.

"So you guys are YouTubers?" Jerome nodded.

"Yeah, we've been doing it for a good while now and we've managed to get a good audience and you know how the nurse said we were on a ski trip? It's like our annual holiday together, to catch up."

"Good time to catch up I suppose, I'm assuming you all live in different countries?"

"Yeah."

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Conversations over pizza and YouTube were the best, we spent hours talking and laughing and just letting me get to know them. I had mentioned that I really hated alcohol, it made me nervous because of what it could do. I had seen the effects of it on people, teenagers, adults. It was terrifying. As soon as they heard how afraid of it I was, they put away the one drink they were holding, and fizzy drink came out instead.

Slowly but surely, I got to know who they were are people, and about their jobs as YouTubers, and about their lives at home.

Lachlan lived in Brisbane in Australia and had thee siblings, two sisters and a brother. He had reached 3 million subscribers the previous year and tried to keep a constant upload schedule, although sometimes he didn't work. He lived with his friend Jay, who was a fellow, although not quite as popular, YouTuber.

(P.S.- author editing this as of Lachlan hitting 12 million subs and he lives with his brother now, not Jay. This was written well over 3 years ago but I won't change the numbers to be genuine to the time this was written in. I was 13, nearly 14 at the time of writing this, so be aware of that when you read this.)

Preston lived in Texas, not far away from his family who he went a visited often. He had fours brothers and one sister, and he was right in the middle with two of the brothers older than him. He had two channels, one for Minecraft and one for everything else, which were both reportedly very successful, according to the others.

Jerome and Mitch lived together, in Florida, and frequently collabed with several friends who lived in the area. They had been friends for a long time, since fourth grade actually and had remained together ever since, even through the break up of a previous YouTube group.

Rob lived in Canada, although I had heard from Preston that he spent a lot of his time in Texas with him. He was the oldest of 'The Pack', which is what they had dubbed the group, by quite a few years, but he was the one everyone turned to when they needed help. Rob seemed to be that sort of person.

Vikk, the only person who wasn't there, I was told was a very smart child, had two brothers and lived with a group of other YouTubers in England called the Sidemen.

It was interesting to learn about their lives, but by 11 o'clock, I was exhausted. I had shut down my laptop a few hours beforehand, and Lachlan had taken it back to my room and plugged it in for me when I didn't want to get up.

"I'm gonna- gonna go to bed now." A yawn cut me off in the middle of my sentence, and Mitch looked at me sympathetically.

"See you in the morning then?" I nodded.

"Yeah."

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When I awoke the next morning, it was just past 10'o'clock and there was no noise in the house. I tiptoed out into the kitchen to see Lachlan, extremely tired looking, with his head resting on the bench. He didn't notice me coming in, at least not until I spoke.

"Mornin' Lachlan, you look tired." He turned his towards me, not pulling it up from the bench.

"Yeah, I got no sleep." I looked around the kitchen, looking for food, maybe toast or cereal.

"I thought your time zone was only two hours off?" He nodded.

"It's ment to be, but I'm on England's time zone anyway."

"Oh. Are you feeling okay? Your head's not sore?" I paused, before rubbing the cut, stitches and cloth on the back of my head.

"Just a bit sore, but I'll live."

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A few hours later everyone had had breakfast. Rob and Preston had gone out to the supermarket before either myself or Lachlan had awoken and had brought back stuff for breakfast, including cereal. A lot of cereal.

Jerome and Mitch both appeared about an hour after I had originally got up, both looking exhausted. Mitch collapsed onto the couch and was fast asleep in a matter of minutes, but apparently this was normal for them because they just left him and didn't question it.

"He wasn't feeling very well last night, so neither of us got a lot of sleep." Lachlan and Rob both looked sympathetic, while Preston just smiled tiredly at Jerome before digging into his breakfast.

I jumped as the sound of a Skype call rang through the room, emitting from Rob's laptop, which he had placed on the arm of the couch and unfortunately right beside Mitch's head. He stirred and looked up at us and the laptop, glaring at everyone sleepily before Rob moved it away and answered the call.

"Oh! Hey Vikk!" I snuck around behind Rob curiously, I assumed it was the same Vikk we had been talking about the night before because it wasn't exactly a common name. It was, because Vikk had his face cam on and I could just make out his bedroom, I assumed it was his bedroom, in the background.

"Hey Rob! Who's behind you?" He had noticed my head peering out from behind the couch and Rob turned to me, grinning and dragging me further into frame.

"This is Lily, she's staying with us because someone hit her with a car yesterday and she can't stay at her home." I nodded, but Vikk looked a little unsure. He was observing me carefully, and I noticed some similarities between us that I hadn't been able to pick out in the photos I had been shown.

We had the same build, short, slim and rather wiry, with similar thick style of hair and in a similar hairstyle too, but the thing I noticed most was the nose and eyes. We were both almost identical in terms of face structure, a thin nose with no dip in the bridge and deep brown eyes with crinkles under them from when he smiled.

He seemed to have picked up the similarities too, and even Rob was looking back and forwards between us, looking for some sort of conformation. I thought for a few seconds before uttering one word my brother would have known very well.

"Mouse?"