The Power of a Glimpse

Sabreena Rene Rodgers

Description

Oaklee finds herself thrust into a social media alternate reality. Will her connections to the outside world be powerful enough to pull her back?
Oaklee Drake is that girl, you know the one... the friend thats always obsessed with her online world versus whats happening in the real world. One day she finds herself in a setting where the lines between real life and social media are blurred. Will Oaklee discover the true meaning of organic connections? Will her connections to the outside world be powerful enough to save her?

Sujets

• Glimpse
• Fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 18 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665735216
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Power of a Glimpse
Sabreena Rene Rodgers


Copyright © 2023 Sabreena Rene Rodgers.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
 
Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3495-0 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3521-6 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022923151
 
 
 
Archway Publishing rev. date: 01/03/2023
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19

Thank you to those who encouraged me to go for it, and to those who made this adventure possible.
CHAPTER 1
Oaklee
The alarm sounds wake me from a dead sleep, they are coming from somewhere, and they sound muffled but stabbing at the same time. Finally, they stop. The silence is nice I immediately fall back into a deep sleep. Dreams come fast for me, I’m on a boat floating in crystal clear waters drinking champagne and eating strawberries. Suddenly the alarm sounds start again pulling me viciously from the happy surroundings of beautiful waters and waking me to a room of darkness. I realize that the alarm is my phone and not whatever dream world I had slipped away to. I start reaching all the normal places my phone would be to make the stabbing sound stop. Finally, I find it, tucked under my side tangled in the covers. I must have fallen asleep with it in my hands again, which is just great because I have to go to work and won’t have enough time to fully charge it. As I turn off what must be my 5 th alarm, I realize that I only have 20 minutes to be dressed and out of the house. I have got to start going to bed earlier. I know I tell myself the same thing every day, but one day I plan to actually listen.
My name is Oaklee Drake, and I am going to be late for work! I drag myself from the comforts of my fluffy bed knowing I have zero time to lay around procrastinating. I rush to the bathroom and shove the toothbrush in my mouth while reaching for my favorite can of dry shampoo. I have no time to wash my hair this morning. I finish my routine of scrubbing my teeth, making a messy bun out of my long dark hair, and applying the bare necessities of makeup – mascara. It’s not cold outside yet, but the office can get chilly, so I throw on some leggings, flats, and a crop top with a sweater over it. I check myself in the mirror making sure only the parts of myself that are pleasing to the eye are showing, I do a quick glance at the reflection of my backside and head out of my room. As I’m grabbing my keys, I see Gunther sitting on the couch staring at me like I forgot something. “Oh, Gunther I’m sorry, you know sometimes I oversleep and have to rush, I will make it up to you when I get home, I promise,” I say to him as I pet him on the head and ruffle up his hair. Gunther is my dog, he’s my sounding board, my snuggle buddy, and my TV partner. I double-check and make sure the doggy door is not locked where he can get outside, and fill his food and water before heading out.
I make it out the door with 15 minutes left to make it across town to work. It usually takes me 20 minutes to get there but I can shave some of that off if I take the backroads. I turn the radio on so that for the next 15 minutes I can get lost in whatever music my playlist says I need to hear today. I try to use my drive time as a come down from the rush of getting out the door. I pull up to work and have 3 minutes to spare so before I get out, I grab my phone to check in on my own personal life. I scroll looking at the profiles of my friends, seeing who has liked my page or commented, and before I know it, I have spent 5 minutes scrolling and I am now 2 minutes late to clock in. “Great” I mutter while grabbing my stuff and rushing from the car. I walk into work and apologize to the boss who is standing at the coffee pot in the front lobby telling her my mother called as I pulled into the parking lot, and I couldn’t get her off the phone. She smiles and lets me know she knows how that is. Come to think of it when is the last time I talked to Mom? I will call her tonight and see how she and Dad are doing.
I share a cubicle with Chloe Spencer, who is one of my closest friends. We went to school together for digital art and design and have been together ever since. Chloe is about 5’3’’ with bouncy blonde hair and a petite figure. She is always bubbly and positive in regard to most things in life. Whenever I need a pick me up for a down mood, Chloe is the person to go to. I haven’t seen her date, anyone, since back in college, and that relationship was a generic one at best. She is such a wonderful person to be around, its odd that she is even single. Chloe is punctual, with everything in life. So of course, she is already in the cubicle before I am, excited about the work day and ready to fill me in on all life’s happenings before coffee can even hit my mouth.
“Guess who finally landed the Daniels account?!” Chloe shrieks at me right as I make it to our shared cubicle. “You will never believe it, I got it on my project list this morning” she says smiling from ear to ear. “Ok, the suspense is killing me,” I say laughing at her. “Clint. Freaking. Daniels.” She says in her almost cheerleader voice. Chloe has had a huge fan-girl crush on Clint Daniels for some time now. Mr. Daniels is the owner of an organic farm that harvests different types of mushrooms and herbs for medicinal purposes. Chloe is a little bit of a hippie herself and loves any type of natural remedy over mainstream medicine. It also helps the crush factor that Clint Daniels is drop-dead gorgeous. “I’m happy for you! Do you know what the first project is already?” I ask her. “Sort of, they say he wants to promote more education and that each week he will give information on a specific product, and I will then make it into something that will catch the eye of those who may not normally pay any attention to the topic, I think I’m working on the Reishi mushroom first but I’m waiting on Carry to give me the specifics,” she says. “Soooooo…. Does this mean you will get to meet him?” I ask. Chloe turns pink all over her chest at the thought. I can always tell when she’s excited or embarrassed by the red splotches that pop up. She starts giggling and excitedly says “YES!!! He is coming tomorrow morning for a brainstorming meeting and since I’m the lead designer….. I’m required to be in the meeting!”. I smile at her and give her a high five just as Carry comes out of her office. Carry is our boss, she’s tall, blonde, thin and supermodel pretty. She is also my friend, but she does not take well to work not getting done. I turn from Chloe and get my workstation ready for the day as Carry passes by. My email on my work computer has both my personal mailbox and my work mailbox set up in it. Our work is pretty flexible as far as personal things go. They do not mind if we check our phones, surf the web, check personal emails, and such as long as our work gets done. Since we work in social media promotion it is sort of an unspoken rule to keep your eye out on social media anyways, that way we are up to date on the current trends. I silently sigh to myself when I see the notification on my personal email “2,069 unread messages”. I try to keep my inbox cleaned up but it is an everyday task between the hundreds of robo-spam emails and notifications. The majority of the notifications are from my social media accounts, mostly letting me know someone liked my post and then the occasional comment. I don’t open these since I look at that on each account, these are just “notifications”. As I select and delete them I remind myself that I need to reset the settings on these accounts to not send me these notifications….. I always forget. I move the emails for my automatic payments over to the saved folder and respond to a couple of emails that actually require replies.
I pull my phone out and open my Glimpse app to change my notifications. Glimpse is probably the app I use the most. It’s just an app with lots of short videos that people post, some are funny, some can be educational, and some are just boring. Most videos are really short and easy to scroll through. My personal profile is mostly videos of my dog, some videos of outfit styles, the occasional lip-sync video – I don’t really have one genre on my account, it is just a mixture of my life. Of course, it’s only the pieces of life I want others to be able to see. I currently have 10.2k followers on my account so I end up with a lot of notifications. In the social media world, followers are everything. You can actu