As soon as I came into the chorus room the next day, Ms. Robinson pulled me aside. "Macey, I want to talk to you after class."

Instantly I tensed up. What did I do wrong? I asked myself. "Umm... sure," I said as I walked to my seat.

Lindsey looked at me. "What happened?" she whispered.

"Ms. R wants to talk to me after class," I said. "Something's up. I'm spacing."

"Don't get stressed, it's probably nothing major," Lindsey said. "You're awesome in this class. What could be bad?"

I shrugged. "I'm just a little concerned."

We began to learn some new music for the winter concert we were going to have. It was going to take awhile for us to prepare for it, and I was more than ready. Besides, I loved singing Christmas songs.

It was clear Ashley didn't. She just hummed the words most of the time, and flirted with Damian Cappelli, who was in the bass section. I rolled my eyes and tried to focus on my singing.

The class drew to an end and as everyone else flooded out the room, I stayed, preparing for anything that Ms. R was going to tell me.

"Macey," she began, getting up from her position at her desk, "you're one of the most driven students in any of my classes, and one of the most talented."

"Thank you Ms. R.," I said modestly.

"So, I wanted to talk to you about something you might be interested in. I have a friend who's a talent scout for Uptown Records--it's a new label--and they're looking for talent. When she brought up the topic to me, I thought of you."

My heart literally stopped. "You mean, I could..." I paused. "I could be a signed, real singer." Oh great. That sounded so second grade.

"Yes, you could. The auditions are on the first Friday of December. Do you think you can make it?" Ms. R asked.

"I... I have to check with my mom first," I squeaked. "Thank you so much!"

"You're welcome," Ms. R said. "I hope you can make it."

I could only smile. "Thanks, Ms. R!" I grabbed my backpack and headed out to my next class, filled with the same amount of excitement I had on the day before the Supernova concert.

*********

When I got home, I popped one of the *NSYNC CDs into Mom's old CD player. It was No Strings Attached. I was growing to like it a lot, especially the song "I Thought She Knew". They were incredible a capella. I picked up my next source of *NSYNC information: my mom's scrapbook. It was huge, and crammed with articles. "They're from magazines and newspapers, and pretty accurate," Mom told me. "It's probably a really good source."

I picked it up and began to read it. The articles started from March of 1998. I leafed through, reading all sorts of interviews and articles from different sources. *NSYNC had been very mainstream; they had articles in magazines ranging from Disney Adventures to People. Mom had a huge collection of articles. Her collection could be worth quite a lot of money.

I was extremely interested in the two most popular guys of the group, Justin and JC. Justin was the youngest of the group, and he and JC shared the most leads. Justin was constantly rumored to be dating pop singer Britney Spears (even though he dispelled that rumor an insane amount of times), while JC was seeing a model he had met on the set to one of their videos. As I continued reading, I discovered that their "single and ready to mingle" status didn't remain that way for long, as did their second banana, "Backstreet poser" status.

In 2001, *NSYNC released their first movie, Why Can't It Be You? It was a box office success, much to the chagrin of critics who doubted that a pop group could make a good motion picture. Later that year, they released their third album, NSA's follow-up, which was just as successful as its predecessor was.

During the same year, Justin began to date a girl named Caylin Masterson. She was a dancer, and had appeared in quite a few videos. In fact, Justin had met her on the set of one of their videos. There were quite a few articles showing the happy couple together. Caylin was a pretty, tall, dark-haired girl who looked perfect alongside dirty blonde Justin. She wasn't beautiful like a model out of a magazine, but she was beautiful because she had flaws. I noticed in one picture that she had a slight overbite. (my uncle is an orthodontist, so I can tell all the signs of dental damage, so sue me) She had a visible scar over her left eyebrow, and she had a mole on her neck. She was attractive in accidental ways, and she looked like someone that any girl could connect with.

Later on, Justin and Caylin became one of the hottest young celebrity couples. YM compared them to "Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, and Ryan and Reece." There was a huge slew of fans that were still slightly jealous of the couple, but most of the fans were very supportive of their couple.

As 2001 passed, the group's success continued. They made another movie, and Chris--the oldest member--got married. Some swore it was the end of the group-one magazine called it "the fall of a boy pop dynasty", but once again the media was wrong. They still managed to stay very prominent in the music business, and in 2002, they won three Grammies.

2002 turned out to be an incredible year. *NSYNC racked up tons of awards, and near the end of the year Justin's relationship with Caylin became serious. The title of the next article I flipped to was titled "Justin says 'Bye, Bye, Bye' to single days".

On a warm summer night, the guys had been in Dallas, Texas doing a concert. Caylin was there, and halfway through a song, Justin called her onstage. She came on, and he knelt down and proposed to her in front of a packed house. Caylin, overcome with emotion, could barely find the words to say yes. It was reported that the audience was encouraging her to say yes. Finally, she said yes to him, and the thousands of enthusiastic fans screamed in happiness. I felt my eyes well with tears. It was the most romantic, sweet thing I had ever heard of.

The next articles told about the plans for the wedding. It was going to be held in Memphis, Tennessee around early September. The ring was a diamond surrounded by sapphires. Along with that, there was talk of a new album around that time. But suddenly things began to start taking a turn for the worst: Justin called the wedding off.

chapter 6
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