Page 27 of Breaking News

“I set aside a little desk area for you in here,” I said, nodding at a clear space on the long counter at the back of my cubicle. “There’s a drawer there for your purse.”

“Thank you,” she said, nervously moving forward to put her purse in the filed drawer. As she stood up, she paused to look at all the pictures I had taped to the cabinet doors above my desk. It took her no more than three seconds to zero in on a selfie of Xander and me at the comic convention. “Is that your boyfriend?”

I yanked the picture off the cabinet and tossed it face down onto the desk. Xander hadn’t pissed me off enough to warrant ripping the picture in half, like I would have for any other ex-boyfriend. “Not anymore.”

Olivia smirked, her eyes shifting to a picture of Meghan and me, also at the comic book convention, posing inappropriately with a cardboard cutout of Jason Mamoa. Her eyes widened. “Wow.”

“You know what? Just don’t look at any of the photos hanging up there.” I giggled in embarrassment, covering that photo withmy hand. “And listen, I really hope this doesn’t make it seem like I’m brushing you off on your very first day with me, but my producer—Marco, you’ll meet him—just piled some extra work on me, and I’ve got a full plate this afternoon. I’ve got a job for you, though, in the meantime.”

“What is it?”

“Think you can do some social media scouting?” I asked her, sitting in my desk chair. She followed suit, sitting in the chair on her side of the cubicle before turning toward me.

“What do you mean?”

“I need you to check the local Facebook groups and Nextdoor for anything newsworthy—community events, complaints, weird police scanner reports, anything that might make a good local story. Then, compile it all in a doc. Can you handle that?”

She nodded, already pulling her phone out of her pocket. “Yeah. Concerned Citizens of Woodvale, here I come.”

“Just don’t engage. It’s bad for the soul,” I said, turning around and opening my laptop. I skimmed through the notes I’d already jotted down for potential stories, trying to find something worthy of filling the open slot. A puff piece on the new family-owned print shop that just opened? A follow-up on the library’s summer reading program? God, I was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Behind me, Olivia was glued to her phone, her fingers moving at lightning speed as she scrolled through Concerned Citizens of Woodvale and whatever else she had pulled up. Every now and then, she’d let out a quiet huff or an amused snort, but she was otherwise silent.

I continued working, keeping one ear on her, waiting for questions that never came. Maybe I had underestimated how much handholding she’d need.

Thirty minutes later, after I got off the phone with the owner of the new print shop, an email notification popped up. OLIVIA HARLOWE HAS SHARED A DOCUMENT WITH YOU.

I opened it and blinked at the screen. I hadn’t even given the girl my email address, but she’d figured it out. With just one quick scroll through the list, I could tell it wasn’t a rush job. Fast, yes–but I was staring at a list of potential stories, and at least half of them were newsworthy.

“I’m still working on that,” she said, “but I figured I’d share what I had in case it helped.”

I turned my chair around to face her and slapped the long counter I called my desk. “Olivia!”

She raised her eyebrows like she feared she was about to be reprimanded. “I’m sorry, did I not understand what–”

“Where have you been all my life?!”

Her shoulders relaxed. “Oh,” she said, tucking her hair behind one ear. “It wasn’t that hard.”

I tapped my fingers on the desk, realizing I had nothing else for her to do. She worked more efficiently than I’d expected, and I made a mental note to add to her workload next week. “Damn,” I said, closing my laptop and spinning my chair slightly. “That was supposed to take you at least an hour, so now I have to figure out what to do with you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I love it. This is a great problem to have, trust me.” I tapped my pointer finger against my chin, trying to come up with something for her to do now.

“What else do you usually do in the afternoon?” she asked, as though she could read my mind.

I rattled off a few things—making calls, checking sources, reviewing police reports, crafting the perfect thirty-second segment. Olivia nodded along, but I could tell she wasn’t exactly on the edge of her seat.

I tiled my head to the side. “And sometimes… I prank Bernard.”

Olivia leaned forward in her chair, propping her chin up with one fist. Her eyes narrowed with interest. “I’m listening.”

Despite my mounting workload, I pushed all of the afternoon tasks aside to focus on the ultimate prank with Olivia. We had to involve our graphics operator and another intern for the shenanigans we had planned, and before long, the entire newsroom—excluding Bernard—was in on it. Marco caught wind of what we were up to and rolled his eyes, admitting that if our stunt went viral, it might be good for WWTV.

Our plan didn’t come to fruition until the following morning. As Bernard stood in front of his green screen, letting Woodvale and the surrounding areas know what kind of weather they could expect that weekend, he was met with something else: we’d given every town in the area a different name.

Like Bikini Bottom.

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