Scene I “Meet the Girls”

     “This was a great idea!” Valerie exclaimed as she threw her bag over her shoulder and headed off towards the elevator.
     “I’d much rather spend the night in a hotel than driving out here two nights in a row,” agreed her friend Natalya.
    “Well then I’m glad I thought of it,” beamed Becca as she giggled and ran ahead of her friends to get to the elevator first.  She slammed the “close door” button as she waved goodbye to her two friends.  “See you in the room,” she called.
    “That wasn’t very nice,” pouted Natalya as she tried to call another elevator.
    “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Val smiled slyly as she dangled the room keys in front of Natalya’s nose.  “Shall we take the scenic route to the room?  I hear this place has a pool.”
 

Scene II “Meet the Boys”

     “I can’t find a single thing to wear,” exclaimed Joey as he continued to dig through a growing pile of perfectly acceptable clothing, Superman logos and all.   “What about these?” he asked holding up a pair of shiny purple pants.
     “Tell you what Joey, we’ll go sacrifice some of the stuffed animals from last night’s show and we’ll make you a matching jacket,” said Chris dryly, without even looking away from the TV screen.
     Suddenly Joey grabbed a baby blue button down shirt from the very bottom of the pile.
     “What about this?” he asked as he held it up for the rest of the group to see.
     Before any of the other guys could comment on the design or cut of this stylish top, Justin jumped up from his place next to Chris on the bus’s couch.
     “THAT’S MINE” Justin yelled as he lunged at Joey in an attempt to grab the shirt.
     “Prove it,” challenged Joey as he tried to hide behind JC, who had just walked into the lounge at the back of the bus.
     “What are you two up to now?  Chris, did you start this?” JC asked in a disapproving voice.
     “Oh, for the love of Pete!!!!” Chris sighed as he finally looked over at the small skirmish that was occurring before him.  “Why do I get blamed for everything?  I don’t even like baby blue that much.  Besides, I can handle Justin . . .”
     Now it was Chris’s turn to be jumped on by Justin.  As the two fought, Joey ran over to the TV and popped in *N the Mix.  For some sick reason, he was able to set the tape to the exact frame he wanted by using the counter.
     “See right there!” Joey proclaimed triumphantly.  “Me in the shirt, not you.  I win.”
     As soon as Justin heard the word “win” without his own name next to it, he froze. This gave Chris just enough time to miss yet another punch and land on the floor.
     “That is not the same shirt!!!”
     “Yes it is!”
     “No it isn’t.  Besides, you could never wear that shirt with those pants anyway!”
     “Tell you what,” Joey said, finally getting an idea.  “Let’s put a small wager on the shirt.  Whoever gets hit on first, after we leave the bus . . .not only gets the shirt, but has first rights to the chick’s number.”
     “I’m down wit dat yo!,” was Justin’s immediate response.
     “Hey Chris, about that jacket to go with MY blue shirt. . .” said Joey.
     “I know, I know.  JC, I’m gonna need some of those stuffed animals from last night.”
     JC stared at Chris in confusion . . . “What are you going to do to them?” he asked in a frightened voice.
 

Scene 3: Erin joins the gang

     Three hours later, Val and Natalya finally made it to the room only to find Becca curled up and asleep in front of the door.
     “Dude, you’re blocking our way,” said Natalya as she nudged the sleeping girl with her foot.
     “Huh?” asked Becca in a groggy voice.  “What time is it anyway?”
     “About half past one,” answered Natalya as she looked down at her watch.
     “WHAT?” screamed Val.  “How did it get to be that late?  This means that I  have less than four hours to get ready for the concert.  Outta my way!!!”
     Val pushed Natalya and Becca aside as she opened the room’s door and practically fell inside.  Next thing they knew, Val was in the shower and Becca and Natalya were left alone to plan their evening.  They were about to get into a thrilling conversation about the many uses of napkin rings, when they suddenly got a call from the front desk.  They both jumped at the phone, but is was Natalya’s skillful dropkick that won out in the end.
     Becca stared in wonder as Natalya spoke to the mysterious person on the other line.
     “I understand completely,” said Natalya.  “See you in a bit.”
     Two seconds after Natalya hung up the phone, there was a knock at the door.  Natalya opened the door to reveal her good friend Erin who was smiling broadly.
     “Val’s gonna pee her pants when she finds out that you are here,” Natalya exclaimed.
     “Either that or kill you because she’ll think that you are after her ticket,” interrupted Becca.
     “Actually, I’m here to watch cable,” said Erin.
     “Huh?” questioned Becca.
     “I’m from Maine.”
     “Oh . . .well . . .that makes sense.”
     “You have no idea how bored I was at home.  By the way, I’m Erin.”
     The two girls shook hands as Valerie finally appeared from the bathroom.  When Val saw Erin all she could say was- “So Maine finally drove you nuts, huh?”
 

Scene IV: The arrival

     The parking lot was already filled with screaming fans when the bus finally pulled into Great Woods.  It was time for yet another “Meet and Greet” session filled to the hilt with young girls, their mothers, and the occasional gay male.  While the other boys gave themselves a quick look-over before venturing out, Joey and Justin pushed each other outside of the bus to end their little spat once and for all.
     As they look the last step off the bus, they looked up to hear the adoring cries of their fans.
     “There they are!!!” a random 13 year old hollered.
     “Here it goes, my public wants me” Justin whispered slyly to Joey as licked his fingers and smoothed over his eyebrows.
     “ WE WANT LANCE!!!” the crowd roared.
     “What?” said Justin and Joey in unison.
     Just as they were about to die from the shock, the crowd suddenly broke into a frenzy.  Lance had just poked his head out from the bus to join his friends.  Approximately 1/3 of the girls fainted straight away and the rest simply called out his name in pure ecstasy.  Lance just smiled shyly and waved.
     “Does this mean that Lance gets the shirt?” asked JC, who had appeared with Chris from the dark recesses of their bus.  Chris was too busy laughing hysterically to comment on the turn of events himself.  Sadly, there was no response from either Justin or Joey.  They simply scowled at Lance and wandered off to meet the crowd.
     The rest of the day went off without a hitch.  The sound-check went smoothly and the show was practically perfect except for a few problems JC had with his fly.  There just seemed to be some days when it just didn’t want to stay up.  The only thing that occurred that was out of the ordinary was when they sang “Sailing.”
     Chris had called for the crowd to “make an ocean of people” with their swaying arms, when he was suddenly caught off guard by something in the crowd.  Bobbing up and down among the waving arms was a cardboard sailboat that was outlined in blue glow-sticks.  He wasn’t the only one to notice it, and as a result of their giggling, the boys had been a bit late into starting to sing the song.  Other than that, they thought very little of it.  To them it was nothing more than a group of devoted fans showing their love.  They had no idea that, in a short amount of time, these fans would be touching their lives (for better or worse?  That remains to be seen).
 

Scene V – Lonely Erin

     Since her friends had left her alone in the hotel room while they ran off to the *N SYNC concert, Erin had to find ways to amuse herself while she was alone.  After traveling over 4 hours to watch cable, the only things that she could find to watch was a rerun of “Korn’s Favorite Videos on MTV” (and believe me, she would rather jab herself in the eye with a hot poker than watch that garbage), or some random Spanish Soap Opera whose title translated to “The Horse of Passion.”
     “Five years of Spanish just to find out what these shows are about . . . man, I shouldn’t have wasted my time” Erin thought to herself.
     She searched around the room a bit and found one of Val’s fantasy novels lying on the dresser.  Considering the alternatives, the book didn’t sound that bad.  As long as Val had it for pool-side reading the next day, Erin would not have to worry about losing her soul to a vengeful curly-haired Italian-American girl (yes, we are talking about Val here).  Erin grabbed the book and her walk-man and headed to the lobby for a change of scene.  She managed to read almost all of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone while singing along to her *N Sync tape, wondering why she hadn’t admitted her obsession before everyone else had bought their tickets.
     Unbeknownst to Erin, while she was reading and singing, the very cause of her obsession was returning to the hotel she was sitting in.  Due to the volume of her walk-man, she didn’t even notice the boys walk by followed by their ever growing mob of screaming girls.  The one female in the room who didn’t seem to know they existed confused the exhausted boys. She sat there reading and it looked like she was listening to some music, but with the noise in the lobby, nobody could tell what she was singing.  They couldn’t figure out what was wrong. She seemed to be the right age, but for some reason she wasn’t interested in them.
     Justin just couldn’t understand, first Lance won the shirt, now there was a girl sitting there completely enthralled in a book of all things.  Why wasn’t she looking at him?  Too tired to investigate, the boys all waved goodbye to their fans and headed to bed.  Joey looked to Justin with an understanding look.
    “Maybe you two are just having bad girl-karma today” Chris laughed.  “She looked like she might have been your type too, Joey. You know, being a girl and all.”