Chapter 72: The best sore loser in the country

Jamie

The Amazing Show is a trivia game show featuring celebrities from all industries... well, mostly entertainment and sports. Johann is our game master who doubles as an MC, and there are four main contestants who appear every week, composed of Veronica as our resident pretty girl and upcoming diva, Donnie as our resident hot actor guy, Abby as our resident funny girl, and me as our resident smartass. Yes, I'm on this show not because I'm cute, I'm actually the person who gets the answers right. I don't think the producers thought this through because my team wins almost every week. If I lose, I lose mostly to Abby, though once I lost to Veronica, but only because her Steal Chance was to dance off to Tech Mech's Power, and I don't dance other boyband's songs other than my own.

That's also another reason why I win all the time. At the deciding round, the team in second place gets a chance to steal (hence, Steal Chance, derrr) by challenging the other team to either a dance off or a face off. A dance off is what it is - the game master draws a song (supposedly randomly, but the producers are absolute pricks) that we need to dance on the spot, as close to the choreo as possible. A face off is you take turns insulting each other and whoever laughs or reacts first loses. I also win that game all the time. I have the best deadpan. Whenever I lose this to Abby, it's because she plays dirty and Johann lets her win because, as the producers agreed once, I can't win all the time.

So even if I'm paired with the dumbest person on the planet, there's a big chance that we'll win. Every week, we're each paired with a different guest, two celebrities and two regular people they randomly pull off the street (they don't, though). They usually pair the girl off the street with Donnie, who is only on this show to smile and give the non-celebrity the best thrill of her life as he holds her hand a lot. They never care if they don't win.

If I can't make it to a shoot because Boy Next Door always comes first, they can easily get five guests instead of four and Abby's running joke of the day is the show is going to get cancelled because it's not as exciting when I'm not around. She does it all the time, and it never gets tired. Or maybe I think so, because hey hey.

So skipping today's shoot won't really affect the show, and LJ and Steve should, on principle, come first. But I needed to see Veronica.

Veronica cares that she never wins. She's the best sore loser in the country, and I think it's what she contributes to Amazing. The producers love our "rivalry" and use footage of us insulting each other during the game for teasers for the next shows. Steve knew right away when we started sleeping with each other, even though we didn't tell anyone. Maybe he does know me too well.

Soon as I arrived on set, and throughout make up and green room, Veronica was MIA. Seriously, did she skip today? I asked Abby if she knew where Veronica was and she replied, "Oh she's done with make up already, she went for a coffee."

Hmph. "Getting coffee" was our code for making out in the stairwell. I frowned and forgot to hide it from Abby, who winked at me and said, "Missing the wife already?"

"Eww, don't make me throw up my breakfast," I replied automatically, though I kinda knew Abby wasn't buying it. She told Veronica once to cool off from me a bit, that she could smell us. Yeah, whatever.

The door opened and the producer walked in with the two supposedly randomly picked contestants. They introduced us and we greeted them accordingly, then the producer left and everyone was quiet again. I kept checking my phone for news about Steve, or LJ.

The first circulation of Steve's photo with Chastity last night was thankfully its only circulation, and now fans are just mourning and the posts are full of vigils outside the hospital, where her body still was. Because of her telling social media post at the time of her death, everyone accepted that she killed herself, and have been sharing articles on depression and mental health. I agree the girl was sick, but it wasn't exactly depression, let's be real. But let's not speak ill of the dead.

I took a deep breath and wondered how hard it could be to find Steve's car. Did he get it painted a different color like in a spy movie? I shook my head.

"You okay?" Abby asked me.

"I have a headache, I'll be fine," I smiled at her. I looked at my phone again.

LJ was in the news as a blind item. Two popular male singers from the two biggest boybands were in a fist fight in the most exclusive night club in the metro. Yeah, that's more a myopic item, isn't it? The only thing LJ has going for him is it's something he had never done before so Geends are defending him like crazy, believing it couldn't possibly be him. But since it's something he's never done before, it's bigger news than we want it to be.

When they air Amazing tomorrow night and I'm on it, public opinion will veer towards it not being LJ because how could Jamie play games on TV while his bandmate was in deep shit? We don't usually have to do damage control like this, but this is how they do it and keep doing it, because it works. Which is why Ned had to shut up when I told him I had to shoot Amazing. It was common sense.

The door opened again. I heard the non-celebrity kids gasp excitedly. "Guys," said one of the producers. "This is one of our guests today, Gangsta from PYD. He'll be in Team Abby today."

I looked up from my phone to look at Arden's smug face. "Please take care of me," he said, supposedly to Abby, but he was raising his eyebrows at me.

I guess PYD's manager has the same damage control handbook. I sighed. This is going to be a really long day.