Chapter Text
Anne looked around her room, a nauseating combination of nostalgia, deja-vu, and disconnection threatening to bring her to her knees. She hadn’t been here in five months. That wasn’t… that much, yet, she still felt like everything was different. Or rather, she was different.
She wasn’t the same person now that she had been the last time she had stood here. Far from. That girl had lived a safe, happy, secure life. She hated responsibility, and didn’t have a care beyond getting a bad grade on a test. The person standing here now was a little jaded, she’d faced death and despair, injury and grief, and had spat in the face of danger. She had so much on her shoulders that she was sure her past self wouldn’t have crumbled under the weight.
It was weird .
The Plantars were downstairs, being entertained by her parents, leaving Anne to re-explore her old life on her own.
She drifted over to where her laptop was plugged into the wall, just as it had been five months ago. Her parents had barely touched any of her stuff… and she wasn’t sure how to feel about it. After a whole five months, they’d have probably assumed that she was…
Anyway, Laptop. Yeah, that felt like a better thing to focus on.
Youtube studio was the first thing that greeted her when she logged in, and she snorted to herself. She, Sasha, and Marcy had made a youtube channel together a few months before Anne’s disastrous birthday, which they used to upload amateur videos of them all having fun together.
Anne clicked on one of their videos… against her better judgment. It probably wasn’t healthy to torture herself with this, of them all being perfectly idyllic together like this.
The video she’d chosen was a simple one, of them playing truth or dare without the truth at one of their sleepovers. Sasha had done most of the filming, and Marcy had done the editing. It wasn’t terrible, even if it made Anne’s heart hurt.
She frowned, noticing the video’s view count. This video had 17k views.
Since when had any of their videos received more than a few hundred views? Anne knew they had some classmates who watched their channel, but still, before this their most popular video had only four hundred views, nothing in the ballpark of seventeen thousand .
She checked some of the other videos, and discovered that seventeen thousand was actually on the low end. What in the world had happened while they were gone to make their little youtube channel blow up like this?
She furrowed her brows, and tucked her tongue between her teeth in concentration. She opened up a google tab, and typed her own name. As expected of google, the results were instant. There were news articles, and speculation pieces, their school’s website and some forums she knew her classmates trolled. It was a whole lot more than she’d been expecting, really.
As depressing as it was, people went missing all the time. There was no reason that she and her friends should have attracted this much- ah.
She’d ignored it on the first scroll, thinking it was one of her own videos, but close to the top was a video titled ‘Three teen girls vanish without a trace, runaways, or something more sinister?’. It looked a heck of a lot more professional than the videos on their own channel, so it was worth checking out.
She recognized the channel name. She’d watched a few of their videos with Sasha and Marcy at a sleepover once. This channel’s forte was true crime videos, and Sasha had dared them all to watch some of the gnarliest ones and then try to fall asleep. Sasha had been the only one to manage it.
Wow , Anne had been featured on a true crime youtube channel. Not exactly a life dream or anything, but it was kind of cool. Still, it explained where all the attention was coming from. The video itself gave their channel a shoutout, since it used clips from their videos in its argument that they hadn’t been runaways.
Anne leaned back into her pillows. She’d just thought of a terrible idea.
The channel actually belonged to Sasha, since they’d made it under her Gmail account on her thirteenth birthday, but all three of them knew the login, and could upload videos. They’d all gotten a bit of a habit of recording those few months, and Anne knew that she hadn’t exactly stopped once she got to Amphibia.
She’d mostly forgotten about it, but when she’d first arrived in the other world, she’d recorded her experiences with the intention of uploading them once she got home. The last four or so months of her trip though, she’d mostly thought of it as a digital diary, since only she could really watch it.
She could always go back to plan A, though.
They had tons more subscribers, all of whom had come from that true crime video. Their comments were flooded with well wishes, and even some well meaning eulogies. All those people were waiting, hoping for them to return.
Oh, this was such a bad idea.
Mentally reprimanding herself all the while, she clicked open her video editing software…
—-
Anne’s Thirteenth Birthday!
The Sharps
The camera opens on the grinning face of Anne Boonchuy in her room, early morning sunlight streaming in through the window.
Anne: “Hey guys! Guess what? It’s my birthday! I’m officially a teenager, how cool is that!? Ah, I’ve been waiting for this for so long . I’m the last one of our trio to have my birthday after all. I’m meeting up with Sasha and Marcy at school later, and I’m sure they have something planned for me! I can’t wait to see what it is! Muurp!”
Anne covers the camera with a hand, and it transitions to a shot of her and Sasha sitting on a bench in a park somewhere.
Anne: “So, apparently that thing that was planned was ‘skipping school’.”
Anne rolls her eyes.
Sasha: “Oh c’mon Anne, it’s your birthday! Now we can do so much more cool stuff!”
Anne: “I am so lucky my parents don’t watch our channel.” she sighs .
Sasha: “Let’s goooo!” She whoops, throwing her hands in the air.
The video transitions, light music starts playing along with a montage of Sasha and Anne doing various activities together. Sasha is seen filming too, but no footage from her phone is used. The video slows down every once in a while to show one of the girls doing or saying something funny.
The video transitions again, and the music fades out. Anne is walking while filming herself, Sasha bobbing in and out of frame. It is noticeably later, with the sun starting to go down.
Anne: “So, My family party is starting soon, but first Marcy messaged us telling us she’d found the perfect gift for me, so we’re gonna go pick that up before I head back home.”
Sasha can be seen rolling her eyes.
The video hard cuts to footage looking in through a window. Inside there’s an ornately carved wooden armoire, and on top of it, the focus of the camera, is a shiny golden music box, covered in stylized images of frogs with three brightly colored gems on top. The girl’s voices can be heard offscreen, and it seems they’ve been joined by Marcy.
Anne: “Really Marcy? A box with frogs on it?”
Sasha: “Oh my gosh yes, it’s perfect, Anne you remember when we were in second grade and we took that field trip to that pond-”
Anne: “YES I remember, please don’t bring that up.”
Marcy: “C’mon Anne! You’ll love it, I promise!”
The camera flips around, showing the three girls.
Anne: “And how are we gonna get it? Sasha and I spent all of our spending money having fun today, and if you had any money you would have already bought it by the time we got here.
Marcy: “Ehehe, It was that obvious, huh?”
Sasha: “We could just steal it.” she shrugs .
Anne: “What? No!”
Sasha: “And let the Perfect birthday gift get away? Heck no. What’s a little crime for a birthday girl?”
Anne: “Because it’s crime Sasha, the graffiti earlier was bad enough but… stealing?” She cringes away from Sasha . “Come on Marcy, back me up.”
Marcy: “Actually Anne, I’m gonna side with Sasha on this one. I really want you to have that box, and besides, the lady at the till is asleep.” Marcy points offscreen, but the camera does not follow her finger.
Sasha: “C’mon Anne, you know you want it. Just pony up and do it already.” she glares at Anne .
Anne: “I… I- fine. Fine, I’ll do it.”
Marcy: “Yes!”
Sasha: “That’s my girl.”
The scene hard cuts again. The camera shows the box from before sitting on Anne’s lap, before flipping around to show Anne’s uneasy face.
Anne: “I can’t believe I let you guys talk me into this.
Sasha and Marcy duck into frame. Marcy is also filming, but none of her footage is used.
Marcy: “Ahhh I can’t believe we have it! Isn’t it so cool?”
Sasha: “If you like your stuff gaudy. Seriously, that is a lot of fake gold.
Anne: “Sasha you do like stuff like this, and also, how do you know it’s fake?” Sasha raises an eyebrow. “Can I just open this already so I can go home?”
Marcy: “Yeah yeah, sure.” She grins , and Sasha rolls her eyes.
The camera flips around again, and shakes a little as Anne shifts it into a single hand.
Anne: “It’s a music box, right? I wonder what song it plays…”
Anne’s hand can be seen grabbing the lid of the box. She lifts it open. Light explodes from within in many colors. Screams and static can be heard as the light overwhelms the camera, blocking out everything else. The static becomes visual as well, and it seems the video from here on out is corrupted.
The bright, glitching screen continues for a few seconds even as the screaming falls quiet.
The video ends.
|Comments|
Eloise Wright - Woah hang on since when was there a new video? Weren’t they supposed to be missing?? This is insane…
xXGamerGirlXx - Fake
PeonyBlue - Oh my gosh are they okay?? Are they back??
GabbieEllen - ARE YOU GUYS HOME YET?? Everyone misses you! PLease tell us you’re back!
Dinasaur - Hey these were those missing teens right
Chosen One - Didn’t they go missing on Anne’s b-day tho?
Replies
EdgeLordie - Yeah dude it’s a new video
Chosen One - OH NO WAY WHAT
LosyFouny - Yo is anyone gonna talk about that creepy a** box tho
Freeweet - After five months of radio silence they drop this
Calypso’sGF - ths id so fake i cnt even wit you al
OllieBoy - That??? Light??? They were screaming???????
HoseDelgato - Anne Boonchuy Did Nothing Wrong
Dezzie - Someone has called the police about this already, right?
Roochelle - Is this some sort of ARG?
YellowBean - I’m so glad they’re posting again, their story made me so sad
Replies
JacobMilner - Not like this is that reassuring tho
Tetrisss - I hope they’re okay fr
__________
Yeah, posting the video may not have been the smartest move on Anne’s part, but what could she say? She had changed a lot, but she was still impulsive… ignoring the two hours she spent editing.
Yes they were supposed to be hiding from the cops and stuff, but it’s not like they would see the video anyway. It wouldn’t hurt to post the footage she had, right? And it certainly wouldn't hurt to take more. She wouldn’t post any recent stuff until she was done with her backlog, anyway. It would be fine.