THE JOB OF A LIFETIME - for Maya
By Sarah Wartman
Maya sighed and leaned back against her chair and waited. She had only worked at her job a couple of weeks, and disliked it already. Maya thought it would be so awesome to get a job at a photography agency, but the only thing she was allowed to do was clean up after the photographers and put away props. It was a boring and meaningless job.
The only cool part about it was seeing all the famous people, but most of the celebrities were stuck-up and crabby. These photo shoots took hours at a time and Maya didn’t usually have a chance to meet them until afterwards, and by then they were crabby and moody and she usually didn’t want to deal with that.
Maya looked at her watch. Seven o’clock in the morning was way too early for her. She didn’t know what celebrities they were working with today, and she didn’t care. She wasn’t feeling well and just wanted to go back to sleep. ‘They won’t need me for a while. Maybe I can catch a few minutes of sleep,’ she said as she closed her eyes.
“Maya! I need you!” the familiar voice of her boss woke her from her sleep. She jumped up from her chair and looked at her watch. 8:20. ‘Damn,’ she thought as she ran into the other room.
“Yes?” Maya said, not even looking up. Her head felt like it weighed a ton.
“I need some more rolls of film, will you please go get them,” he asked.
“Yeah,” Maya said. She glanced quickly at who was being photographed. There were five guys standing around, goofing off and Maya gasped.
“Oh my God,” Maya whispered.
“Maya, now!” her boss ordered, which made her jump and the guys looked over at her. She quickly ran out of the room, embarrassed that her boss yelled at her in front of them.
“I can’t believe he yelled at me,” Maya said to herself. “In front of THEM! ‘N SYNC! What am I going to do? I look like crap and now my boss has made me look like a complete idiot,” she said as she grabbed the rolls of film that were set aside and ran into the other room.
She handed them to her boss and he started reloading his camera. Maya walked off and found a chair in the corner of the room, hidden from view of the guys. She just watched them, amazed at how cool they seemed. Paul, her boss, barked out orders to them, and they just smiled and did what they were told. They seemed so much fun to hang with. This is the one day she didn’t mind being at work.
The photo shoot lasted all day. Maya had snuck into the bathroom and found some tylenol and some make-up in her bag and fixed herself up a bit. ‘My friends are gonna die when I tell them about this,’ she thought as she walked back into the room. Paul asked her to move some props, so Maya went to work. She was trying to change the background drop, but the lever was too high. She tried and tried to reach it, but couldn’t. All of a sudden a hand reached from behind and pulled the lever. She turned around to thank whoever it was and was face-to-face with JC Chasez.
“Thanks,” she whispered.
“Anything for a pretty lady, my dear,” he said, working his charm. Maya smiled and walked back over to her chair and watched some more. JC kept looking over at her, and she’d blush. ‘Oh, Maya, stop it,’ she told herself. ‘He’s got thousands of girls after him. He’s just a big flirt, those smiles mean nothing,’ But she couldn’t shake this feeling she had. Those smiles MUST mean something….
The guys were allowed to take a small break before wrapping up their session. Paul went back to change cameras and Maya was to change the props and take the film he had used already to the darkroom. After she got back from dropping off the film, JC and Justin were talking in the back of the room, the other three were over at the snack table. Maya was moving and rearranging things and kept noticing JC was watching her. She smiled to herself and quickly finished. She found her chair again and slumped into it.
A couple second later, she had this eerie feeling someone was standing behind her. She turned around and saw JC wearing a hug smile.
“Hi. Mind if I join you?” he asked her.
“Sure,” she said as he sat down on the floor next to her. They talked for a while, about her job and where she was from. He was a really nice guy and was a big flirt.
Paul came back into the room and so the guys got back to work. Maya just sat there, mesmerized by JC. She couldn’t take her eyes off of him.
They wrapped up the photo sessions and the guys were in a rush to leave. JC came over and said goodbye to Maya as she was cleaning up.
“It was nice to meet you,” Maya said as he walked off and her heart fell. ‘Darn, I was hoping he’d ask for my phone number, at least,’ she thought. ‘Oh well, I’m sure this is an everyday occurrence for him.’
She drove home with a deep, sad feeling in the pit of her stomach. ‘Why am I acting like this?’ she asked herself. ‘Thousands of girls would have died to be in my shoes.’
She threw her backpack on her bed and sat down at her vanity table. She looked in the mirror and something caught her eyes. There was something sticking out of her backpack. Maya quickly got up and picked it up. It was just a piece of paper. She opened it and a huge smile crossed her face as she read it:
Maya:
I usually don’t do this, but I just had to today. You captivated me, there’s just something about you. I know this may sound weird, but I just had to write you a note and give you my phone number. I hope to hear from you, I want to learn everything about you.
JC
Maya smiled as she read the phone number at the bottom of the page. She sat the paper down on her bed and just started thinking. ‘This is too good to be true,’ she thought.
“Might as well,” she said to herself as she picked up her phone and started dialing. JC picked up the line and Maya smiled. ‘I guess that job isn’t so bad after all,’ she told herself.
THE END!