Sparkle Club (eBook)

2
Canceled or Consequences?

Melissa

Not even halfway through the morning session, Mark interrupted his own defense’s presentation by answering a video call. People on the other end were screaming at a party somewhere. Mark’s lawyer snatched the phone away. If he still had his YouTube channel, Mark would no doubt have made a vlog about it. Story Time: I was assaulted in court!

“Jesus, it’s just FaceTime. Nothing’s recording.”

My parents were speechless. Almost as a reflex, I did that pseudo-laugh of snorting out through the nostrils. Shawna used to say that scoffing made people think I was bitchy. His lawyers were fed up. They were hoping to get the settlement wrapped up in one day. I’d never felt bad for a lawyer before.

“Please stop making this harder,” said one of the suits. “Do you have any other phones or devices we need to take?”

At this point it wouldn’t have been surprising if Mark whipped out a Nintendo Switch and started playing Mario Kart. They specifically asked us to turn our phones off, or at least set to Do Not Disturb. Of course Mark’s kept buzzing from inside the lawyer’s bag.

After Shawna died, I quickly got in the habit of keeping my phone on Do Not Disturb. In homeroom, they called it electronic hygiene. Nice of them to touch on mental health and all that. My phone’s hyperactivity wasn’t because I was Miss Popular. The media had been reaching out, but their inquiries were mostly directed at my parents, since I was still technically a minor. The calls, texts, WhatsApp, and other DMs were all coming from one person; my ex-boyfriend Trey. Something about being surrounded in scandal was making him more aggressive, like he was hoping to get in on the attention. He’d been calling the house line, emailing mom, and even creating dummy Instagram accounts after getting his main blocked. Real creepy guy energy.

The defense team hit play on another Mark Thompson video. A cartoon tyrannosaurus crossed into an otherwise dark frame. His nose twitched and he sneezed out the glittery snot letters making up the usual Markle Sparkle intro logo.

A chorus of frenzied chipmunk voices chirped, “It’s the Markle Sparkle show. Yay!”

The voices overlapped.

“Woohoo!”

“Get it, get it!”

“Let’s goooo!”

“Slay!”

I got sucked into Mark’s fruity, politically correct universe the night before the hearing. It wasn’t easy to describe his style. The editing in most of his videos was fast, phrenetic, and disjointed. It was like someone turned up the speed twenty percent, a world where everyone snorted Adderall. “Howdy guys.” Mark beamed, full theater kid posture, “Guess who’s joining me today…” The sidekick jumped out of nowhere onto the davenport.

He or she, I wasn’t sure, wore puppy ears. “It’s me! Fleek!” Mark scratched Fleek behind an ear, “Oh yeah, right there!”

Mark continued to scratch as Fleek’s leg twitched in appreciation. “Today we’re going to our favorite animal shelter!” Fleek snapped a selfie from Mark’s lap. A special effect flash-transitioned into a selfie video of the duo in the shelter.

Thirty seconds into the vlog and Mark was already advertising cheap garbage. Shawna called it Sponcon. “You must be wondering how we’re getting such fabulous selfies with our new furry friends. It’s with the help of a treat-holding camera attachment called Yo Doggo. Get yours fifty-percent-off using promo code SPARKLE, or visit Yo Doggo dot com forward slash Sparkle.”

Maybe I skipped too much, but they didn’t even mention how viewers could support their host shelter until a transition at the end that buttoned the video. It was a quick clip of Fleek, artificially energized and pointing to text overhead, “Click HERE for adoption information!” The image faded out, giving way again to their fiscal sponsor’s message, “Click here to buy Yo Doggo.” Trash. Next.

“Hey there, Sparklers.” Mark was shirtless in this one, holding hands with his girlfriend Rachel and showcasing a gory halloween mask as if it were a severed head. “Today we’re gonna be doing some…”

Fleek popped out from behind the couch and blew a rape whistle, startling the couple. “Scare prank compilation!” The screen smashed to yet another animation. I skipped through as Mark terrorized his family and friends. From the camera phone POV, Mark barged into a sleeping Fleek’s room in that nasty mask. Fleek shrieked as Mark hurled an object roughly the size and shape of an Easter egg. It exploded on impact into a burst of glittering confetti. Without delay, a card popped up on the video with information on where the viewer could buy their own Sparkle Bombs™ for ten bucks a pop. You had to click the almost microscopic X in the corner to make the ad go away, otherwise it would hang around for the rest of the video.

As someone who was practically raised by Netflix, I’ve been consistently shocked by just how much of basic cable’s programming time was dedicated to commercials. Beer, tampons, pharmaceuticals, politicians, and junk food claimed twelve minutes of every half-hour of broadcast. The younger generation, consuming mostly YouTube/Instagram/TikTok, somehow had it worse. Advertisement saturation varied wildly from one post to the next, since each creator could decide for themselves whether to allow ads before, during and/or after each video. Sometimes the whole video ended up being #sponsored. It was possible to watch a sponsored video, bookended and interrupted by commercials, all while having to click out of various pop-ups overlaid throughout. Even George Orwell didn’t see that one coming.

The scare prank video cut to Rachel’s house. Fleek held the camera while Rachel slept on Mark’s lap. He donned the nasty mask and gently woke her, “Babe…” The editor blurred Rachel’s mouth as she screamed and cussed him out. Just as she raised her hand to hit Mark, Fleek caught her with another exploding Sparkle Bomb.

I swear to God if someone threw a glitter bomb inside my home they’d be leaving with one of my shoes up their ass.

Near the end of the video, Mark was at his dad’s McMansion. Wearing the mask, he motioned for silence and snuck up to the bedroom atop a flight of stairs. Fleek followed, holding the camera. Mark put his ear to the door, as if doing recon, but suddenly it jerked violently and sent Mark tumbling down the stairs. Fleek dodged Mark and kept recording, then zoomed in for a closeup. “Mark, you okay?”

“No. I’m literally dead.”

“I think you mean figuratively.”

“Go to bed, dumb ass,” his dad shouted, slamming his door.

“Sparkle Bomb!” Fleek got Mark in the face.

Next up: an unskippable ad for the Facetune app. After clicking past the tyrannosaurus, I found Mark and Fleek cosplaying as anime characters at a YWCA gymnasium. Mark’s outfit was from Dragon Ball Z, Fleek’s from Naruto. They were again joined by Rachel who was wearing an actual Karate gi cinched with a brown belt. She and Mark were demonstrating a move. He was the assailant. The video was titled Self-Defense Against the Dark Arts (1/5).

“So when they try to throw their punch, you simply…” Rachel flipped Mark over her shoulder, working the centrifugal force and slamming him down to the mat with an explosive thud. Mark sucked, but he did hang out with fun people.

“Don’t forget the catchphrase,” Fleek offered.

Rachel cocked her elbow, hand on hip, as the camera punched in like in those old glam-cop shows. “Later, hater!” There was a lens flare and chime noise added in, buttoning the clip.

Rachel helped Mark up. “My back is literally broken.”

“Figuratively,” Fleek and Rachel corrected him in synch, surprising themselves.

After consuming enough of this saccharine content to cause brain cancer, I went up to Shawna’s room for the first time in weeks. She owned a bunch of Markle Sparkle merch, including a hoodie displaying the catchphrase ‘Later, hater!’ It was chalky pink with lettering straight out of the Lisa Frank universe.

Her stupid Ken doll was still front and center on her desk, wearing only a pair of green swim trunks. One of our dogs had been chewing on his legs. The left foot was nearly gone.

The defense team queued up the meatier videos after lunch. First was Mark and Fleek’s Boyfriend Tag. Since almost everyone in the room was charging per hour, they skipped through chunks in order to highlighting the relevant stuff.

The Boyfriend Tag was one of those Q&A-style video formats that every YouTube personality (and aspiring YouTube personality) did at some point. Shawna shot and edited one for her friend Kristy a few months prior. It took a solid week of work and ended in drama. Kristy demanded five rounds of notes on the edit and then wanted to reshoot. Not even two days after posting, Kristy broke up with the boy and took the video down.

Mark interrupted the screening to ask if he could be excused. “I hate watching these on such...