Introduction - We just ruined our careers

For the first few seconds, the camera was set in an empty room with only a pastel pink chair in the center of the frame to keep the image looking like something rather than just a blank screen. Then, a girl sat down in the chair, tossing a clear water bottle to the side before looking over at the camera again. Her eyes glanced around slightly, jumping from one place to another. It wasn't like she couldn't focus, though that might be the case, but more like she was checking to make sure everything was working. Biting her lip-gloss covered lip, she glanced over at the camera again and let out a halfhearted smile, one that didn't quite reach her normally cheerful eyes. It looked as if whatever she was going to talk about was going to be hard. That much was obvious.

There was a visible cut in the video since now she had her hands over her face and was leaning her elbows on her knees. She let out a heavy sigh, not out of annoyance but most likely out of nervousness, before sliding her hands to the side of her face and taking a deep breath in.

"I can't believe I'm doing this." She looked like she was only about college-age, probably only an underclassman. The way she moved around, hiding her face in her hands and glancing around the room like she couldn't keep eye contact with a camera, really didn't help the situation all that much. Instead, it showed really just how nervous she was about posting this video. That was the strange thing. Normally, she looked very calm about these sorts of things and if she didn't, she had someone else with her, considering the size of the people on the channel was quite large. So why was she so nervous?

The video cut again, showing her sitting normally in her chair again, but tapping her hands repeatedly on her knees, like she was trying to get all that nervous energy out. "Hey, guys! It's Jas here!" She put on a confident smile as she brought her hands up, waving them both. She looked convincing, if it weren't a show of her nervous behavior before. "Welcome back to Lonely Hearts Club and if you can't tell, we're in the bedroom today so it looks like it's another story time." Jasmine Ender was just as stubborn as everyone that watched their videos knew her to be and that's why she was pushing through the video. However, the way she brought her arms up to herself, rubbing up and down her left arm with her other hand, was a dead give away of how little confidence she really had in what she was making. "Since we all love a good story time, you guys know the drill at this point. Today, I'm talking about something that's happened to us and we've created this community to be a safe place so I don't want to see any hate. So please, don't make me take down your hate comments. It's really just a lot of unnecessary work that doesn't need to be done."

The video cut again and this time, Jasmine held her head in her hands, slumped forward onto her knees, and appeared to be mumbling to herself. None of what she was saying was really coherent, and most people would wonder why the editor had left it in, but they could catch a few things like "Why am I doing this?" "This is a big mistake" and the ever classic "I think I might just end myself now." Then again, they could have just misinterpreted what she had been saying all along. That's when the video cut again, this time with Jasmine in the same position, just with her hands off her face and folding in front of her.

"I dunno if Sebastian is editing this or if it's someone else, but frankly, I don't want to live through this video again, so it certainly won't be me." She let out a dry laugh, reaching out to pick up her water bottle and taking a sip of it. When she was done, she flipped it, letting it fall to the wall to give her something else to look at other than the camera before continuing. "Which is weird to say because most of what I'm going to talk about really isn't all that bad." She shrugged her shoulders, but it was clear that she was still really uncomfortable. "A lot of the others want to talk about their own pasts in future videos, so a lot of this won't go into details about their lives. It'll honestly probably be me saying that something happened and then moving on so that they get that luxury of telling you themselves." She shrugged again, as if she forgot that she had just done it only moments before. "So, I guess I'm making this alone? I would have asked Mark to come over and help me but he's working on something at his own house so you're stuck here with me, alone. It's probably for the best." She started to fidget with her hands, squeezing and pulling at them with really no reason or rhyme to it.

"Then again, it might be better that I do this by myself? I dunno I guess if I start crying or something, no one's going to see me do it. Well, I guess they will when they edit this and then everyone who watches this video will get to see me cry. So, you know, it'll be on the internet forever then." She sighed as she spoke, but she stopped fidgeting with her hands, like what she was saying was giving her some confidence to keep speaking. Maybe the idea of her crying on camera and being relatable made it easier for her to think about this video. That was how she worked. "I dunno. I guess it'll be nice to be able to speak and process what really had been such a trying time in my and everyone else's lives. And who knows? Maybe it'll help someone out there who really needs it. So, I guess this is for you, viewer, who doesn't know it yet, but needs this video. I hope it's what you need."

Jasmine reached up and tugged at one of her blonde braids, nervous again now that she was about to start the main part of her video. "So, here we go. I guess I'll be telling you our story as a channel. You'll know a bit more about who we are, how we came to be, and why exactly we started up Lonely Hearts Club. So, here we go."

There was another cut in the video and while most people expected it to start the actual video, it just showed Jasmine in another outfit, indicating that it was another day. Not only that, but she was outside as well. The camera quality was different, meaning that this wasn't planned and she was most likely on her phone to record this. She looked like she was in a much better mood than before, since her eyes had their shine back to them and she seemed to be unable to quit smiling as she looked back at the other two people on the screen, her blonde curls spinning with her as she turned her head around to see them. She was known to mess with makeup, but the pink makeup that she had done to match her shirt really made her blue eyes pop, which was good because that was just as much of an icon of hers as herself. The three of them talked in a quiet tone, like they were discussing whatever they were about to talk about.

The first was a girl, and everyone immediately recognized her as Monet Ivory. Even with a small glance, it was easy to recognize her because of her signature choppy bangs, ones that she cut herself. It wasn't like she was a rebel or anything, though the black clothes she was wearing didn't really help much, but more like she was just independent and didn't really care much about how people saw her. She grabbed onto the last person's arm, the one everyone knew unmistakably as Mark, like the camera made her shy, but then again, she could have just been a little nervous about whatever they were talking about.

Mark Nijer was the most identifiable person on the channel, besides Jasmine of course. Not to say that no one on the channel was iconic in their own way, but Mark had been on the channel almost as long as Jasmine herself had been making videos so for people who had watched her since the very beginning, they knew Mark almost as well as they knew Jasmine. He reached over and patted Monet's hand, like he was trying to comfort her. He was known to be the middle ground and to always make sure everyone was comfortable so to see him interact with Monet like that wasn't so unusual for them.

"Remember when I said I was going this by myself literally, like, two seconds ago on this video?" Jasmine started, chuckling nervously to herself. She was silent for a second as she let that sink in before speaking again. "Yeah, so, I lied." She glanced back at the others for a second and smiled before turning back. "It was, like, an hour ago that I texted everyone about the video to see who would edit it and now everyone wants in on all the action so y'all better be prepared for a novel. Everyone's videotaping their own parts to this and judging on how long I was in there for, this is gonna need to be a series at this point." Mark chuckled and nodded his head.

"Why do we call it 'This is a huge mistake' because this is probably going to be a mistake," He pointed out. Jasmine giggled and nodded her head, looking back at him. Monet smiled a bit and fiddled slightly with Mark's hoodie sleeve.

"Or we could call it 'We just ruined out careers' because, let's be real, we just did," Monet replied softly. Her voice was often too quiet to be heard by the camera, especially a phone camera, unless she was right next to it, so the editor had to add subtitles for her in order for people to understand what she was saying. Jasmine nodded her head at her and looked back at the phone camera again, smiling at the screen.

"Yeah, so basically, we're making this some big thing for our channel, so we're about to leave the apartments to head over to my place so that they can use my set up for their part of this video series because someone broke theirs." She didn't look back at them, but she glared at them through the camera, causing Mark to laugh slightly. "So, yeah. Just be prepared for this huge video series that's going to be happening on here, because honestly, high school is a lot of things that we've got to unpack. So, yeah, here it goes!" And with that said, it was time for the actual video to start.

It didn't start with Jasmine, like everyone thought it would. Instead, the video started off with someone else. She was sitting in the middle of what seemed to be a darker room, with black walls and lavender decorations. She wasn't alone, like how Jasmine had been. Instead, she was sitting on the white couch with another girl, who was leaning down, doing something on the floor. The first one, known as Kyra Kingsly, played with her white hair slightly as she waited for the other, the one and only Cleopatra Blackheart, to sit up. No one really knew why Kyra was the one starting, mostly because they weren't expecting it. After all, it was Jasmine and Mark who had both started the channel and the club where they all met so why was it Kyra starting? Just as Cleopatra smoothed out her black dress, Kyra started to speak.

"I think it was the first or second week or so of school when I got the invite...