Van Life (a short story)
The second hand ticks and it’s 3pm. Go time. My coat is already on and I slide my headphones from their resting spot on my neck up over my ears. I slam my textbook shut and throw it in my bag. I am the first one out of the lecture hall.
I swerve through the quad, narrowly avoiding death upon impact by a group of lanky cross country boys, only to slam into a short, plump professor with circular wire-framed glasses. His coffee completely empties out onto his white button down. There is nary a drop left in his cup, but I don’t have time to rectify the situation.
“Sorrysorrysorrysorry!” I plead with a tone that displays the dissonance of I know I’m an asshole but I also really don’t cope well with anyone being displeased with me and I wouldn’t normally do this but I just really have to be somewhere. I’m in too much of a rush to dwell on his stained dress shirt and possible third degree burns for more than the five seconds it takes to pass the poor flustered man.
My key card is ready to go and I’m flying up the stairs the second I hear the beep that tells me the door is unlocked. I start sweating while I get stuck behind a dude taking up the whole stairwell trying to haul a massive guitar amp up four flights, but as soon as we’re at my floor I squeeze behind him and I’m sprinting down the hallway, key card, again, ready to go. I barge into my dorm and don’t even clock weather or not my roommate is there. I slide into my desk chair and whip my computer out of my bag.
His page is already loaded on my web browser, so all I have to do is hit refresh, and there it is. Uploaded 15 seconds ago. I click on the new video and my shoulders drop. The stress of my three minute sprint from art history leaves my body.
The shot is of his van at what looks like the edge of a cliff. The sun is starting to poke over the mountain ranges behind the 2015 white Dodge Ram. He opens the passenger door and hunches over to exit the vehicle, shutting the door behind him. He walks up closer to the camera.
“What’s up everyone, it’s your Boy in a Box living in the unreal Sierra Nevadas. I mean - just look at this.” He steps to the side of the frame and gestures with his arm to the scene behind him. Wow. I quickly avert my gaze away from the screen and out to my view of another brick building with icicles hanging from the window sill tips. I hear shuffling from the twin bed next to me that reminds me that I am, indeed, living in a small dorm room with a stranger who naps constantly.
“I mean, come on! Come. On. Not a day goes by where I don’t feel so extremely lucky to live this life.” He smiles, closes his eyes and takes a loud inhale through his nose, and his nostrils whistle a little. He exhales, “so lucky,” he repeats in a whispery tone. He runs his hands through his hair, pushing it on top of his head and a small lock bounces bounces down in front of his right eye. My vagina quivers.
“And I’m so lucky to have all of you guys here with me. Thank you to all you beautiful humans for tuning in week after week. I’m seriously eternally grateful to all of you. And I want to give you something in return for your dedication.” I’m quite literally on the edge of my seat.
“This Valentines Day, I want to find my special someone from the comment section in this video. You’ll get to spend the night right here parked in the Mountains with yours truly. It’ll just be me and you in the DreamBox. Paradise, baby.”
My stomach is speeding down the runway, ready for takeoff.
“So drop those comments! Introduce yourself, make me laugh, whatever, man. I’ll know it’s you when I see you. I trust the universe will find my perfect match this VDay.” My thoughts are darting like the a Brick Breaker game at a high level. I have to win BoxBoy’s heart.
“Peace and love to all of you watching! Like, comment, subscribe. BoxBoy, out.” He flashes his signature peace sign and dimpled smile while reaching out to turn the camera off.
Ho. Ly. Shit. A date with BoxBoy! In the DreamBox! I am shaking all over. It could be because I haven’t eaten anything except a half frozen toaster strudel at 7am, but how could I possibly eat anything else now? I can’t put any more food in my body until this competition for BoxBoy’s love is closed.
I chew my fingernails off instead. What could I possibly say? I stand up, pace back and forth the three strides between my bed and where my roommate sounds like they’re choking on their own spit. I sit back down, my knee bobbing up and down. I open my notes app.
I’m Addie. I’m 19, born and raised in Iowa. I’m a Sophomore at Iowa State and I watch your videos every week.
Delete delete delete. Boring. BoxBoy spends his time parked in deserts and on beaches, taking in the wonders of the natural world, being all spiritual and loving in order to free himself, breath by breath, of society’s handcuffs. Why would he want to spend the night with a girl who couldn’t afford to go to school out of state?
hey sexy. ur van is perfect but it’s missing 1 thing…me
I cringe. Too much, too desperate. Plus, I’d show up and he’d expect me to be the kind of girl that pulls of an oversized sun hat and does perfect yoga poses. Despite my hardest attempts, I am not that girl. I hold down the backspace, and try for something more earnest.
hi boxboy. long time fan here. you inspire me week after week and to get to experience you irl is fr a dream of mine. plus, i’ve always wanted to hike in yosemite.
I examine my work. It’s good, I think. Casual, but not too nonchalant. Stroking his ego a bit can’t hurt. And then I show off some personality. I haven’t actually always wanted to hike in Yosemite, but it seems like something a girl he’d be attracted to would want. I take a dramatic deep breath and copy and paste my three sentence pitch into the comments and feel like I’m going to vomit.
~
The air in California is only slightly warmer than back in Iowa. I’m waiting for BoxBoy and the DreamBox outside of the Fresno airport. I don’t feel real anymore. The past three weeks I’ve been continually pinching myself: literally squeezing the skin on my hands or forearms, often with nails, sometimes drawing blood. I never understood the whole ‘pinch me, I’m dreaming!’ thing, but now I get it. I have to check that this is all happening; that BoxBoy chose me out of all 2,633 comments on his Valentine’s Day sweepstakes video. He responded to my comment on January 17th at 2:04pm PST asking for my number. He texted immediately.
him: hey, it’s jake (boxboy). u wanna come hang on vday?
me: hey boxboy! 100%. packing my bags already lol
him: lol
him: fly into FAT on feb 14. send ur flight info i’ll pick u up
me: omg. u serious?
him: ya
him: ur gonna be my boxgirl
I responded with the heart eyes emoji. A week later I completely depleted my bank account on a roundtrip ticket to Fresno. February 14th to 15th. A middle seat, no checked bags or add ons to the flights. $638 gone with the click of a button. But it doesn’t matter that I’m broke now, because I’m going to be Mrs. BoxBoy.
I hear and smell the DreamBox before I see it. BoxBoy’s videos never mentioned how bad he needs a new muffler. He passes slowly, looking around for me. Behind the wheel, in the flesh, it’s him. The van sputters and screeches to a stop a few feet in front of where I am frozen, gaping, clutching my backpack straps. He hasn’t see me yet. I watch as his ringed fingers turn the key counter clockwise and the car stops wheezing. He disappears into the back of the van and comes out with a paper supermarket bag. He does his signature duck to step out of the van and flicks his hair back. I let out a small gasp.
He walks right past me with the trash bag and begins to attempt stuff it into the tiny hole of the airport’s trash can. Something is leaking out of the bag. Wrappers are flying out. I squirm a little watching my longtime crush fight a trash can. When it’s clear he’s not going to be able to fit it in, he just leaves the bag on the ground next to the receptacle. He wipes his hands on his pants as he walks away. He then looks up and right into my eyes. Mortified, I quickly put my head down. I just watched BoxBoy fail to dispose of a bag of what very well might have contained his bodily fluids.
“Hey — Addie!” It’s too late. He must have recognized me from my profile photos. And I just pretended not to recognize him. I’ve completely fudged it. $638 spent for absolutely nothing.
“Oh, h-hi BoxBoy,” I blush.
He laughs, “call me Jake.”
I just nod, too nervous to say anything. He’s standing right in front of me, the 6’2 boy with the dimples and beach-y blond hair that I’ve been watching every week since I was sixteen. I tuned in for over three years as he saved up to buy his van, built out the inside, fixed up his engine, and drove it up and down the California coast. He’s wearing the signature outfit - white T-shirt, baggy light blue jeans held up by a worn brown belt, and scuffed up adidas Sambas - that he wears in his videos. And now he’s coming in for a hug. BoxBoy is squeezing me.
I tense up because he smells very sweaty. I’m still paralyzed, but I manage to lift my arms up to reciprocate. We pull away after what feels like just slightly too long. He’s nodding vigorously and smiling as if we were old friends and everything is right again now that we’re reunited.
“Thanks, for um, inviting me.” I manage, to break the awkward silence.
He pulls out a Go Pro and points it at me. “Man, it’s nice to meet you!” He turns the lens around to face the van and starts walking over to it. I follow. “Thanks for making the trip out. Come check out the DreamBox!” His vocal inflections are exactly the same as they always are on YouTube.
I feel the need to pinch myself again, but refrain. I’ve seen the van on video, but not for a while. He did a lot of van-tour content at the beginning, but lately his channel has been more about documenting his travels. I follow him inside.
My heart sinks immediately. It’s dark. He must have gotten rid of the fairy lights, and the curtains, much rattier than they looked years ago on video, are drawn. Up close, I see the poorness of the paint job on the van walls. His clothes are everywhere, and splayed across the counters are empty ramen containers and plastic spoons that didn’t fit in that singular paper bag of trash he ‘disposed’ of. The bed is unmade and has dirty rags on it. The van smells like mildew and, vaguely, pee.
I’m honestly repulsed, and shocked that BoxBoy didn’t clean up for his BoxGirl. I’m even more shocked that BoxBoy lives in squalor.
~
BoxBoy has been setting up the shot for forty-five minutes now. I can tell he’s getting frustrated, because he keeps grunting. He runs back and forth from the camera to where I sit on the grass. He sits down next to me for thirty seconds, then goes back to the camera, tells me to move or adjusts the angle, then tries again. We’ve done this at four different spots.
“The sun’s gonna set soon, I gotta get this right.” He’s huffing and puffing. We’re in a field in the Sierra Nevadas, at a campground. There’s lots of people everywhere, some of them doing the same dance to get their sunset scenes right for their own channels. But BoxBoy sets up his camera to make it look like we’re the only ones here.
“Yes, got it!” He watches the last test shot. He then comes back and sits down next to me, lets out a big sigh and shakes his head, giving me a look that says we were in that fiasco together, and we did it.
We each pull a can from the plastic six pack rings holding the Modelos he bought at the gas station along with $80 of diesel. He asked if I had any cash on me to pay for the tank, since he had to drive an hour to pick me up from the airport. I blinked at him, thrown by the audacity of the question, for what felt like five minutes, then replied that no, the flights wiped me clean.
“Well, cheers!” He says now, and holds his can up really high so the camera can see, clearly, the toast.
I have to get up on my knees a little bit to clink my can to his. “Cheers,” I reciprocate. I just about chug my first beer. BoxBoy keeps taking really theatrical inhales and looking up at the sky with his eyes closed before letting out the loudest sigh accompanied by a satisfied smile. I pull another can of Modelo from its plastic ring. With half of the second beer down my gullet I decide to pull out a metaphorical ice pick.
“So, like, where are you from BoxBoy?” I know the answer - Orange County, LA - but it’s the only question I’ve got.
He looks at me with a soft smile, then throws his head back and let’s out the fakest laugh I’ve ever heard. He didn’t even seem to process what I’d asked, only that I said something that the video could register as us having a Good Time. I’m so in shock that I don’t even have time to hide the reaction on my face. He doesn’t seem to notice my furrowed brows and generally offended expression, and goes back to smiling and sighing. Is he a NPC? Placed in this weird simulation where he all he can do is look at the sky and sigh and smile and laugh at nothing?
The sky is blushing pink and the sun is about to touch the tip of the mountain range. BoxBoy scoots closer to me. Oh, no. He leans in, eyes closed, lips puckered. I don’t even feel like I’m in my body anymore; no amount of pinching will make this moment feel like it’s actually happening. Only now, it’s not fun or exciting. Now, it’s deeply uncomfortable. I watch from outside of myself, as if I’m seeing it on my 13 inch computer screen days later on his channel, as my head tilts and my lips meet his.
~
It’s 3pm and everyone begins to pack their bags and file out of the lecture hall. I slowly put the cap on my pen and put it in my pencil case. I close my spiral notebook. I stack the pencil case and the notebook on top of my textbook and neatly slip all of the materials into my bag, careful not to crumple any of the other books in there. I stand up and put on my coat, hat, scarf and gloves and walk back to my dorm. I stop my stride and move out of the way to let the cross country boys pass. I reach my dorm, calmly remove my key card from my wallet, and make my way up the stairs.
I open the door to find an empty dorm room, my roommate’s bed unmade and unoccupied. I sit at my desk and pull out my computer to start in on an essay that’s due next week. But, out of sheer habit, I open my web browser and type in YouTube instead. Uploaded 14 minutes ago. I click on it.
“What’s up everyone, it’s your BoxBoy living it up in the gorgeous Sierra Nevada mountains. Life literally could not be more of a dream.” I roll my eyes.
He’s at the same spot where, a month ago, our terrible kiss happened. Where I stayed up, wide awake in the stench of the trashed Dodge Ram until the alarm went off and it was time for him to drive me back to the airport. I know there are people parked all around him, but all the camera captures is BoxBoy, the DreamBox, and the Sierra Nevadas. Since Valentine’s Day, he’s uploaded three videos, including one vlogging our ‘date’. I have told nobody about my trip, and have hardly processed it myself. It is going to take me a long time to come to terms with the fact that that video will exist on a server somewhere until the end of time.
He’s added a new signature line to all of his videos since I went to visit.
“This video goes out to my BoxGirl. Love you, Addie.” He blows a kiss. I slam my laptop shut.
