Prologue

After we finished uploading the Knight videos and then got the press from solving the Captain Cutler case, the YouTube channel went ballistic and we crossed 10,000 subscribers and had 22,000 views in one month. YouTube credited $1,100 to our account. We were actually making money.

Daphne was indifferent to what she considered a paltry sum and Shaggy and Scooby voted for mounds of obnoxious food combination but Fred and I discussed our plans for what should be done with the money.

Fred started. "We should save it until we can afford our own vehicle like an SUV or a van. Something big enough for us all to sit in comfortably."

That was not illogical, but I countered with "We need equipment right now, like motion-sensitive go-pro cameras or body-cameras which would give us more content without having to stop and pull out our phones."

He relented to my superior logic and to the desire for the instant gratification we could get from buying something right away. We ordered the cameras. If I had realized how much it would add to my editing time, I would have voted for the van.

To give you some idea of the logistics (yes, Agnes, I know, more exposition), our original mystery at the school, which is now known as Mystery Prime created twenty five-minute podcasts which I uploaded twice per week for ten weeks. Our first YouTube mystery What a Night for a Knight created nine ten-minute videos which I was only able to put out once per week due to all of the editing. The second YouTube mystery A Clue for Scooby Doo was also nine ten-minute uploads.

You can do the math and figure out that we were coming up on Spring Break and were within two weeks of uploading our last video of A Clue for Scooby Doo. We were about to run out of content.

We needed a mystery.

That wasn't to say that I wasn't finding my whole life as a mystery at that time.

First of all, there was the talking dog. This speaks to the resiliency of the young mind. Were I to first meet Scooby Doo now in my mid-twenties, I would immediately check myself into the nearest asylum. But fifteen-year-old me simply accepted that a dog could talk. When you're young, every day holds a new miracle. What's one more?

More amazing to me at the time was that I was spending almost all of my free time with a socialite, a jock, and a stoner: three social groups that I had traditionally abhorred and they had returned the favor in the form of indifference. The person that I had assumed would be my best friend, Marcie Fleach, became something of a school day friend but my evenings and weekends were spent with Daphne, Fred, Shaggy, and Scooby Doo. If we weren't meeting face-to-face, then we were on a group text or a group chat going over the next YouTube upload.

But the biggest mystery to me regarding my life at that time was that I was enjoying it. I was looking forward to my time with these people with whom I had nothing in common. Shaggy seemed to share my surprise and enjoy the relationship. Fred loved the mysteries and the opportunities to flirt with Daphne. Daphne was, to me, inscrutable. I'm allowed to say inscrutable since I'm the one with the Japanese grandmother.

Daphne never seemed to actually enjoy being with the rest of us and seemed to accept our company as the price she had to pay to avoid boredom. She all but quit speaking to the mean girls and even stopped running to Danforth on weekends. Her nonchalance about a relationship that was growing more and more important to me was off-putting but she was Daphne. And I was not in a position to be questioning anyone's social quirks.

My parents were thrilled that I was hanging around with a Blake, Fred's father seemed nice although we rarely met him since he worked long hours trying to keep his plumbing business afloat. Shaggy's father always seemed scary but his mother became polite over time.

Daphne's parents were another story.

It was on a Friday night a week before Spring Break and I was at home on my computer. This was not news. What was unusual was that an instant message from Fred popped up on my screen addressed to Daphne, Shaggy, and I.

Fred: Is everybody available to talk about the final upload for A Clue for Scooby Doo?

The real shocker popped up on my screen within a few seconds.

Daphne: Sure. Why not?

Daphne Blake was at home on a Friday night and available for a computer chat at a moment's notice?

Shaggy's face and bloodshot eyes coming immediately on line was expected. His father gave him leeway when he was with The Gang since none of us used drugs but, otherwise, Shaggy stayed on house arrest.

"Rerro." Scooby entered Shaggy's screen.

"Hello Scooby Doo." I tried a fake smile. It seemed appropriate.

Fred came in next. "Hi guys. Is Daphne on yet?"

On cue, my screen divided into quarters with Daphne's face in the lower left. "It looks like we're all here." I wanted to get right down to business. "I know that it will be two episodes in a row but I think that Daphne should narrate the finale. She seems to get more views than Fred or I." Shaggy narrating was a non-starter. His usable lines all came about five hours after we started and he was coming down. We would have about thirty minutes before he would get a headache and then fall asleep. If we lost sight of him for more than five minutes, he would come back high. The narrator carried the episode and Shaggy couldn't be relied on.

Fred agreed. "That retro micro-mini-skirt that she wore for the last episode probably added twenty percent to our viewership by itself."

The emancipated woman in me wanted to argue but the logical part of my brain knew he was right. I let it slide.

"I may not be a part of this much longer." Daphne sounded disinterested. I looked closely at the screen. She was actually painting her nails.

Fred reacted immediately. "What?! Why?!"

"Father says that I should be doing something more useful with my time and doing it with more useful people."

"It rakes ree glad Rye'm not a reople." Scooby gave his trademark giggle. That wasn't fake. He really laughed that way. Especially when he was telling a dad joke.

Shaggy spoke for the first time. "Like, what?"

Daphne never looked directly at the screen and remained focused on her fingernails. "He says that Fred will probably grow up to be a plumber like his father, Velma may make it to underpaid college professor, and Shaggy will probably OD before he reaches thirty."

Shaggy reiterated. "Like, what?" He wasn't really latching onto the conversation.

I was angry. I was confused. And I was confused about being angry. College professor was exactly what I wanted to be. Why did it now seem like a bad thing?

Fred's voice was quiet and steady. "If I grow up to be anything like my father, then I'll be proud." Fred was a misogynistic doofus part of the time and a trap-setting goombah part of the time. But he also had times when he showed why he deserved to be our leader. It was unfair to him that the network always edited those parts out for time.

Shaggy and Scooby looked at each other and, once again, I knew that non-verbal communication was passing between them but as always, could decipher nothing from it.

Daphne's voice took a serious tone. "I guess there's only one thing to do."

Fred stepped up. "What's that?"

She turned on the smile that launched a thousand Mercedes. "Road trip! What's everybody doing for Spring Break!"