Chapter 1
Melissa:
"Dude! I'm out of film AGAIN!" my friend groaned as she reloaded her camera. But that was Durbbie for you. She was always doing something and making a fuss over it. I watched as Durbs, as I liked to call her, searched for a new roll of film to get the pictures of the sun rising over the horizon.
I, on the other hand, was more concerned with getting the right shade of orange from my array of watercolors on a tray in front of me. "You OK there Durbs?" I asked not really paying attention to her.
"Yeah. Damn camera," she muttered making me laugh. Durbbie and I had known each other since sixth grade and have been inseparable ever since. Just the fact that Durbbie ran out of film and both of us were having a good laugh at it summed up or whole friendship.
And, as you can guess, Durbbie was not her real name. Durbbie's real name was Deborah, spelled 'the difficult way' according to her. The whole Durbbie thing originated in high school when we were freshmen. She kept acting and sounding like a stupid Furby, so people started calling her Furby. Then someone around the lunch table on day forgot her name and called her Dur over and over and over again. On top of that, a teacher kept calling her Debbie, which she HATES beyond anything else, and one day it all came to a head and somebody called her Durbbie. The name stuck and I've called her it ever since. Speaking of which…
I was neglecting my painting because I was totally absorbed in my thoughts. I caught my blunder and continued painting as Durbbie clicked away at the camera. After another half hour, the sun was up, my concentration level was gone, and Durbs had run out of film yet again. We were both ready to call it quits.
"Ready when you are," Durbbie said reading my thoughts. That's another thing. We can basically read each other's minds. (It gets really scary sometimes going through what Durbbie's got up there.)
Durbbie:
Melissa was driving us to the rented apartment we shared when my beeper went off.
"I don't even understand why you have that stupid thing," Melissa said. "You have a cell phone, I don't get why you need a beeper too."
"But I like the vibrator effect!" I whined.
Melissa almost slammed on the brakes. "Please don't make me touch that. I'll keep my comments to myself," she added before cracking up.
I crinkled my nose. "Eew! Melissa!"
After things had calmed considerably, my beeper vibrated sending us into another fit of giggles. I looked at the number and groaned. "It's the office," I said miserably.
"Tell them we were on location," Melissa said.
I quickly dialed the number and reached our secretary. "Hey Jane. You beeped?" I asked.
"Hi Durbbie. Hold on. I'm transferring you to another line to talk to Jim," Jane reported. Jim was both Melissa and my boss and he was the one who sent us out on location like this.
"Hello?" Jim asked.
"Hey Jim. You beeped?" I asked again.
"Yeah. We got a call from some company about wanting to do another photo shoot," Jim told me.
I sighed heavily. "But those are so boring," I whined. I hated photo shoots. "All we do is tell some celeb who's got some swollen head to love the camera and all we do is feed their image. It's just wrong," I said almost defiantly.
"I know, I know. But they're hiring you and Melissa exclusively for this because they've seen the product of the two of you working together and they like it."
I'm not gonna argue with that. When Melissa and I worked together to create something, and had a scanner and some equipment to help us, nothing was impossible. We'd end up with these combination of photos and sketches or paintings that was just out of this world. "OK, fine. Who are we working with this time?" I moped.
"Don't tell me it's another photo shoot," Melissa chimed in.
I shushed her. Jim was trying to tell me something. "It's some musical group. Boys of Back Stage or something. Here's their number. Call them immediately. I think they want you guys on location with them for this."
"They WHAT?" I screeched. That almost made Melissa swerve off the road.
"Chill Durbs. Just don't do that again," she explained trying to stop laughing. What can I say? I've always been a little high strung.
"Location. When they take you with them?" Jim teased.
"Hardy har har. And where is this location?" I questioned.
"Call for yourself," Jim said reading off a number to me. I wrote it down but didn't think anything of it. "Trust me Durbbie, take this assignment. It'll be worth it."
"Sure," I said almost sarcastically. "Of course it will."
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