“Now we can both say hello.”
Before she can argue, the call connects.
“¡Hola, chicos!”Cam says, her voice carrying that slight Puerto Rican accent that gets more pronounced when she’s excited.“Weekend warriors, are you ready to raise the tide for our flippered friends?”
Cam (aka Camila Morales) fills half the screen with that warm smile that could convince terrorists to lay down their weapons. Her chestnut hair is pulled back in a messy bun secured with a hot pink scrunchie. Behind her, sunlight spills across what I know is the Dare4Change headquarters.
Then Reece pokes his head into frame.
ReecefreakingDare.
The man, the myth, the reason I got into this business. With his sharp jaw and dark unruly hair, he’s the most followed guy on the planet. 250 million subscribers and climbing. His viral charitable campaigns rewired the way nonprofits think about content. The man can blink and generateLikes.
I still can’t believe I work for him.
For years now, they’ve owned digital activism. Cam’s the sunshine, Reece is the grump, and Blaze—Reece’s best friend—is the human hurricane who famously crashed his fake honeymoon in Hawaii with influencer Astrid Montclair(Yes, that fake honeymoon. No, we don’t talk about it. But rumor has it, someone wrote a tell-all book).
Together their stunts go beyond disrupting the internet; they rewrite the rules.
“Where’s Blaze?” Reece asks. No greeting. No fluff. Just blue eyes staring with expectation.
I open my mouth.
“Oh! He’s at the beach,” Ivy cuts in, “You know how important it is to set the stage for the main event. Gotta build that anticipation.”
My head turns slowly.
Those are my words.
She punctuates it with a pinch to my thigh. I catch her wrist, move her hand firmly back to her lap, and release it.
Her eyes stay glued to the tablet.
“He’ll be ready when we need him,” I say, grinning. “Good producers workwithtalent, notagainstthem.”
Her elbow jabs into my ribs, the iPad wobbles, but she steadies it.
Reece leans back, arms crossed, and even through the screen, his energy somehow owns the room. “Let’s talk promotion. You’re both on the hot seat. Show me leadership, show me strategy, show me you can deliver when it matters.”
Cam leans closer to the camera, her voice softening but her eyes sharp. “This weekend decides who will become the Director of Strategic Campaigns. Everything, and I mean every choice, every move counts. And Blaze will be our eyes and ears.”
“We’re looking for impact that lasts,” Reece adds. “Not noise.”
Those last two words go straight to my nervous system, like a drone hitting a power line.
Suddenly the bench shrinks.
I’m back in that conference room six months ago, staring at a laptop while our “Books for Every Block” campaign numbers climbed past eighty million views. The last time Ivy and I worked together. The last time I proved I didn’t deserve her trust.
I’d brought the creative vision—middle schoolers rewriting classic fairy tales to reflect their own neighborhoods, their own struggles. Raw stories that hit you square in the chest and leave you reaching for your wallet without thinking twice.
But Ivy?
Ivy built the machine that made it run.
She mapped the rollout to the minute. Wrote donor sequences that moved people before they realized they’d been touched. Designed retention systems, forecasted problems that hadn’t happened yet, and created contingency plans for every possible fuckup.
I would have uploaded the video and hoped for the best. She engineered the whole damn thing.
