Now too annoyed to sleep, Natalie grabbed her phone and opened her Twitter feed to see how the world was reacting to the piece. She read messages from strangers that ranged from You RULE to Stupid cunt, racy dating profiles, and a DM from a personal trainer offering to share his patented interval training workout guaranteed to thin your thighs. But the vast majority said some version of ATN reports FLOTUS was kidnapped. Who has her? There were at least five hundred tweets guessing where she’d been taken.

Her phone buzzed with a text.

MOM: Great story, dear! You looked more flirty than usual. Much improved.

MOM: When do you get the ratings? Think they’ll be on TVBuzzster soon?

Natalie searched her mind, trying to remember when she’d told her mother about TVBuzzster.

She was about to check Ryan’s feed when she saw a text from the Chief’s personal cell. It was all emojis. Positive emojis.

Excited in a hazy, buzzy kind of way, Natalie held the phone between the seats to show Matt. “That’s good, right? I mean they are all positive emojis.”

Matt nodded. “I guess. I’d say the Chief is giving us two thumbs-up. Although that’s the only emoji he did not actually give you.”

“I think he’s post-language,” she giggled.

“I think you’ve had too many Xanax.”

Ho ho, Matt was hilarious. But she had to admit he’d been right. Not about the Xanax but about how to fight Ryan. The straight hair, the push-up bra, letting someone else edit the piece, doing what the Chief wanted had paid off. Their segment had been terrible by the standards of journalism, but amazing TV by any other measure. And in her relaxed state, she was starting to see that maybe this wasn’t selling out. The truth is, she had to get people to like her, to care about her personally before they’d care about what she said on air. Once they were invested in her, Natalie, as a reporter, a character on TV, then they’d pay attention to her reports. Ryan had a platform. And if she kept playing by the Chief’s rules, she could, too. For the first time since the competition started, she felt like she was getting traction. She was on solid ground again and well on her way to...

To what? she demanded of herself.

Time will tell, her self responded as she closed her eyes and dozed off.

THE EARLYBIRD™/ FRIDAY / 5:53 A.M.

THE E-NEWSLETTER TRUSTED BY WASHINGTON'S POLITICAL ELITE

Good morning, EarlyBirders™. Here are the morning’s need-to-know stories:

EARLY EXCLUSIVE: A TOP WHITE HOUSE SOURCE, tells EARLYBIRD™ that the FIRST LADY is recovering from exhaustion at a SILENT RETREAT in New England. No ETA on her return. Anyone have a second source? A sighting? Email: [email protected].