CHAPTER 11

Ben

Something felt…off the entire night. Honestly, I wasn't really getting a good night's sleep. I couldn't quite pinpoint exactly what was wrong. I wasn't feeling any particular illness. I didn't have any loss of appetite while I was drinking my morning protein shake, and I didn't feel light-headed while I was working out. Yes, it seemed like a regular morning, but I just could not, for the life of me, shake the feeling that something had upset the atmosphere or something. I was also pretty sure it wasn't work-related, otherwise Eric would have called me by now.

Maybe I was overthinking things. It wasn't in my nature to do so, but then again, most people had their off days every now and then. I tried not to think much about it anymore and proceeded to go shower instead.

But even as I got out and started to get dressed, I still wasn't feeling quite right. I even took a long look at myself in the standing mirror, checking every single area of my body in case there was something wrong. Fortunately, I didn't find anything unusual, but the feeling was still there.

Once Gerald was driving me to the OVT building, the feeling of uneasiness only grew more, and by then, I was pretty sure now that something was going to happen today. I never gave much thought to predicting the future or listening for the signs from the universe or anything of the like, but this was just too much to ignore. There was an unspoken tension in the air, and I wanted it resolved as soon as possible.

Upon arriving at the top floor of the building, I could hear loud and fast footsteps coming from the direction of my office.

"Ben!" Eric's voice reverberated throughout the hallways. "Benjamin Oviatt!" He called out once more when I was in view, proceeding to sprint as fast as possible.

"What on earth is going on?" I asked him, kind of surprised at seeing someone run up to me so early in the morning. But I also got the feeling that this was what the tension was leading up to.

"We went viral," Eric said, trying to catch his breath and huffing from running so fast.

Admittedly, I was more perplexed than I was thrilled.

"Viral? Do you mean one of the politicians went viral?" I asked. "If one of them has a new scandal or is getting canceled, then we have to get on top of it immediate—"

"No! No…" Eric interjected, leaning over with his hands on his knees, pushing out the words in between his breathing. He looked up at me from his pained position. "I meanwe'reviral. The network."

He then hurried to bring out his smartphone from his blazer to show me an OVT story that was published on the official website at two thirty in the morning.

"Olivia, she… she…"

My eyes widened as I realized it was Olivia's roller coaster feature piece, and my mouth dropped upon seeing the number of interactions it had.

"Three… Three—"

"That's right! Olivia got us three million views in just six hours!" Eric bellowed.

Olivia

There was a constant beeping that was absolutely annoying me. I was simply just trying to have the time of my life at Zendaya's birthday party, but it was just so incessant that it was distracting. By the way, where did Zendaya go? I would love to have a picture with her. Wait—

The beeping alarm blared through my Hollywood dream, waking me up. It was so loud that I actually sat up with a racing heartbeat. Goddamn, I needed to set a better alarm tone on my phone.

Now fully awake, I snatched my phone off the bedside table. There was nothing more that I wanted to do than to turn it off and get some sleep. I stayed behind for extra hours until after midnight. I actually deserved this bed time. I was pretty sure that missing one day of work wouldn't actually kill me, and I could just call in sick—

My phone went off again, just when I was lulling myself to sleep. Irritated now, I snatched my phone once again and looked at the screen this time.

All of my sleepiness immediately vanished once I saw Lucy's message.

[Lucy 8:04 AM]

Where are you? You need to be here. Now.

My heart started pounding, palms sweating. Was I fired? Or was I gonna get my first election season story?

My phone buzzed again.

[Lucy 8:10 AM]

Your story has gone viral. Ben is looking for you.

I blinked. Then I blinked again. Then I blinked once more. There was no way that I was reading the right message right. There was just absolutely no way. I couldn't simply just go from unknown new girl to viral news reporter overnight, right?

Pinching my arm, I realized I must still be dreaming. Maybe I actually had fallen back asleep. Was Zendaya around? But as I looked around my surroundings, I was clearly in my room. And now my arm hurt. I guessed there was only one way to find out.

I could feel my pulse in my ears as I opened the OVT News app. The first story that popped up was the one I published at two in the morning. It all looked very normal. It was the footage of me reporting while riding a roller coaster that me and Mark worked on. I didn't quite see what was up with—

Hang on. Something was wrong. I looked at the numbers under the post

Views: 5.7M. Likes: 1.2M. Shares: 740K.

I blinked. Then I blinked again. I then squinted hard. That… That couldn't be five million views. It must have five thousand views. I must be seeing things. But no matter how many times I blinked and rubbed my eyes, the numbers remained the same. Actually, it was increasing with each refresh. My heart was definitely pounding now. Nearly six million people saw me ride that roller coaster?

My phone buzzed one more time with an incoming email. Mindlessly, still shocked by what I just saw, I tapped on the mail and fought the urge to hide under the blankets when I saw the message.

From: Ben Oviatt, President of OVT Broadcasting Network

Today was about to get interesting.