Take Two

2║Filling the Holes

T W O;

When I was fourteen, I had this slight obsession with YouTube. YouTube is a video sharing website, where people posted clips of anything from people falling on black ice to videos of them singing.

I spent three days trying to pick my username. There were some really creative ones out there, a creativity level that I couldn't possibly match. So, I pulled out a notebook and filled three pages -back and front- with username ideas. I finally settled on SimplyZoe.

I wanted my first video to be something original, not a cover of an overplayed song or anything along those lines. So my first post was something unique, something that had 'Zoe Finley' written all over it.

It's funny; I had all these ideas for what my first video would be. Maybe I would sit down and do one of those '50 Things about Me' tags, or maybe I would show off my best painting. This, at that time, was nothing more than a painting of our house with a rainbow in the distance. To be honest, a five year old could have painted something much better.

Mine and my brother's fourteenth birthday had rolled around while I was in the process of choosing my first video, and for the birthday party I had decided to have a pool party. Everyone was doing it, and at that age I would do whatever was considered cool at the time.

Mark had told me that he was going to have his own birthday party at the local arcade rather than share the party with me. So I wasn't surprised when I go up the morning of my birthday party and saw a card from my brother lying on the kitchen table along with a note saying that he would see me later that night.

I was surprised however when I felt two strong hands pick me up and throw me in the pool; and never in a million years did I expect it to be my brother. But it was him; he told me that he had been planning this since I first picked a date for my party since he thought that him and I sharing our party was better than any present he could get me. Of course he told me this after I had gotten out of the pool with my white t-shirt nearly see-through.

My first video ended up being a mistake, nothing that I could have ever planned out. Mum had a camera rolling and caught Mark's surprise on film. Two days after my birthday party, I uploaded it. The video went viral, gaining 100,000 views within the first twenty-four hours. I think it was my screams that gathered all of the popularity.

I took the video off of YouTube on the day of Mark's funeral, wanting to keep the moment for myself. Even though nearly two million people had already seen it, I didn't want any more too.

It's funny really, because I haven't watched the video since he died.

║

I used to hate books. I hated the smell; I hated the words upon words that would blur together when I looked at them for too long, I hated every single aspect of books. The only type of book that I would consider touching would be textbooks and that was only when my parent's threatened to take away my car if I didn't pass my next test, therefore meaning that I actually had to study.

My brother, on the other hand, spent the majority of his free time wrapped up in one fictional story after the other. His room was littered with books, shoved into every nook and cranny. It was Mark's guilty pleasure that only myself and my parents knew about.

Shortly after my brother died I found a book underneath my bed with a note written in the front cover. It had read;

                To Zo,

                Maybe this will be the one that changes your opinion? Happy birthday sis,

                Mark