Title: Calendar Girls
Genre: CC AU (conventional pairing, all)
Rating : Mature (honest)
Summary : Four eighteen year old girlfriends decide that they need to do something to earn some extra money. Only two of them have jobs and the other two do volunteer work. They really need to do something to earn money to do the things they want to do before heading off to college. They may have just stumbled onto something really BIG!!!
Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with the show Roswell or any of it’s constituents. I have borrowed the names of the characters simply because I like them.
(For all of you skeptics, this story is about starting a business and believe me it is this easy to start a business…nobody cares as long as they get paid and that includes the government. Just give them the information they need to collect the funds. Honest!)
*~*~*
Chapter: 1
“Hey guys what’s up?” Liz asked as she joined her three best buds in the quad for lunch. She sat down and opened her sack lunch, checked out what her mom had thrown together this morning and smiled. Her very best favorite, PB&J…yummy.
Isabelle looked over at her and grinned…
“How can you eat that everyday?”
“It’s delicious!” Liz replied with a smile and then stuck her tongue out, coated with peanut butter, bread and strawberry jam.
“Oh God Liz! You’re just gross!” Isabelle shivered in disgust and everyone laughed at her.
“Hey, there are only a couple more weeks of school and we need to make some plans for this summer…we need to do something really big before we set off to college.” Tess said…her usual bubbly personality taking on a new bubble.
“Well, we could always sell porn on the internet.” Maria drawled out as they all laughed…then Liz got a serious look on her face and said,
“Why not make a calendar and sell it?” She gazed at her friends in all seriousness…
Three young women all sat slack jawed and looked at their friend in disbelief…
“You’re kidding…right?” Isabelle asked, almost in shock.
“Well, no. Not really,” Liz answered thoughtfully…”it could work”.
“What do you mean it could work?”
“Think about it. We could take pictures of each other, edit them in ‘photo shop’, print them out ourselves and sell them on the internet. We could print them up as they’re sold and we won’t have any overhead except the blank calendars at Staples and shipping of course. We already have computers. We get some manila envelopes find out how much the postage and calendars will be, figure that into our cost of goods tack on a percentage, say 100%, it’s our bodies after all and sell the calendars. We’ll give the customers a wee peak at what’s in store for them and I’ll bet we can sell a bundle.” Liz was on a roll.
The three other girls sat and looked at their friend as though she had lost her mind…’so that’s what a valedictorian looks like’ Isabelle thought to herself. Then she really thought about it, they could do this. They would have to incorporate Alex’s talents for the computer web site, or maybe they’d better get someone else…Alex might not be too pleased with her selling pictures of herself. 'Yes… someone else', she thought.
“It could work.” Isabelle said as Maria and Tess looked at their two friends and frowned…
“You’re serious aren’t you?” Tess asked.
“Yes. It really could work. We’ll need the help of a computer geek, but yes, it could work.” Isabelle said.
“Who? Alex?” Maria asked, she was just a little concerned about Alex seeing her in some kind of semi-nude or nude state and the idea wasn’t all that appealing.
“God no!!! Not Alex!!! He’d kill me!!!” Isabelle was horrified at the thought.
“Then who?” Maria wanted to know.
“Hey, whoever we get doesn’t need to know what we’re going to use the site for. They only need to know that we want one set up.” Isabelle answered matter of factly!
“That’s true. We can certainly figure out how to fill in the blanks, we’ve all had some computer training. What do you say?” Liz was getting into this plan big time.
“Fine. Count me in. Now where do you suggest we take these pictures?” Tess was joining in… quite enthusiastically now.
“Well, we can take them anywhere and everywhere. We’ll figure it out.”
Liz said and then she looked at her friends and smiled. “Let’s go to Staples after school and see what those blank calendars cost.”
“Okay, count me in.” Said Tess and Maria just groaned…
“I have the afternoon schedule and Liz, you’d better be there for the dinner crowd.”
“I will. Have I ever failed you?” Liz grinned…
“Don’t go there girl friend, you might not like the answer.” And both girls giggled. How many times had Maria covered for Max and Liz…too many to count is how many.
*
And so the four young ladies all headed back into the hall to prepare for their next classes when they saw their boyfriends laughing and heading their way.
The four young men all stopped in front of their significant others and all four promptly kissed their girls in varying ways. Alex gave Isabelle a kiss on the cheek, Max kissed Liz on the forehead and smiled as Kyle kissed Tess on the cheek and Michael and Maria just got it on and went for broke. They always did.
As Maria and Michael were sucking face so to speak Liz, Tess and Isabelle were explaining to their boyfriends why they couldn’t join them after school for a quick trip up to Frasier Woods for some swimming at the lake.
“We have to stop in at Staples for a large project Max. Maybe we can meet up after my shift tonight for a little bit.” Liz looked up into her boyfriends eyes and gave him that hopeful smile that she was able to pull out of a hat any time she needed it and Max melted as always.
“All right…if Staples is that important I’ll just drive over to the Crash after I do my homework instead of before.”
“Great…I’ll see you then.” She stood on her tiptoes, gave Max a quick little peck on the lips and was off.
Isabelle and Tess were both telling Kyle and Alex the same thing and both boys just stood there. The Girls never turned down a chance to go have some fun…since when did a school project ever interfere with that? The boys just assumed that the big project was a school project…and the girls really hadn’t lied to them, they didn’t even know they had been misunderstood at the time and all was good with the world. Besides, who had a big school project two weeks before graduation? All the tests had been taken; all the grades were in, all the college apps. finalized, the rest was just cosmetics.
So, after their last period Isabelle and Liz jumped into Tess’ mini van and took off. Maria headed home and as she was changing clothes to get ready for her shift the other three converged upon Staples.
They found their way back to the service desk and started asking questions about blank calendars.
“Hi, we have some questions about calendars that you can print your own pictures on.” Liz said.
“Of course. How large of a calendar do you want?” The service clerk asked.
“Twelve months?” Liz frowned at the question…
The clerk giggled…
“No, actually the calendars come in various sizes…what size would you be interested in?”
“Well, let me see. What size manila envelopes do you have? We want one that will fit into a manila envelope.” Isabelle answered.
“Well…why not go over there to aisle 7 and check out the various sizes of envelopes and choose a size that you think would fit your needs and then we’ll get some idea of what you want.”
“Great.” Isabelle replied and the three girls went over to aisle 7 and started looking around.
“Hey, look at these. They have different weights in the same size for different prices. What do we want to get, the cheap stuff or the expensive stuff?” Tess asked.
Isabelle and Liz both went over to Tess’ area and checked them out. There were manila envelopes in boxes of varying counts starting from 12 up to 24. You could buy a package of three clear up to eight and then they came in different weights as Tess had pointed out.
“Why don’t we go for the 8x10’s? They’re not the smallest but I think they would make the best picture size and then we can get the cheapest weight. What do you think?”
“Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. We’ll start out with a box of 24 for $25.00 and buy as we need them.” Liz said….
“Great. Oh here’s a scale. I wonder how much one of those envelopes weigh?” asked Tess.
Isabelle opened the box and took one out and stuck it on the scale…1 oz.
The three young girls looked at each other and smiled…44cents said Liz.
“No…wait, I mailed an envelope for my dad the other day and this is oversized. It’s more than 44 cents. When we go over there to that service counter again let’s ask that clerk if she knows. I think they mail stuff here, she should be able to tell us.” Isabelle informed them.
“Great! So far our cost of goods sold is 25.00 divided by 24. Let’s check out the rest.” Tess said.
So Liz wrote down, one box envelopes: 25.00
Back to the service desk they went…
“Do you have 8 x 10 calendars?” Tess asked…she was really beginning to enjoy this.
“Yes we do.”
“How much are they?” Liz asked.
“With one picture per page they would cost you $9.95.”
“Oh, we want to print them ourselves, how much for just the calendars?”
“Well, we’ve never just sold the calendars plain. I’ll have to ask.”
“Liz, how are we going to print them…we don’t have that kind of printer?”
Isabelle asked.
“Yes we do. My printer prints 8 x 10 sheets and it has a photo print quality setting. I don’t see why we can’t use it.”
“Okay then, now we’ll have to figure out how many pictures we get out of a cartridge of ink and figure that into the cost as well. Maybe we should just let them print them out for us.” Tess suggested.
“Hey, we don’t want this to get all over town and if we use their printing you know it will.” Liz said.
“Then we’ll just drive to Las Cruces and have them printed there.” said Isabelle.
“Nah, nah, nah! Nope!!! I’m going to school in Las Cruces…no, no, no!” Said Tess, shaking her head from side to side til Liz and Isabelle thought she would lose consciousness.
“Well I’m going to Albuquerque, it’s a larger city and won’t be so closed in. Maybe we could just go there and have them printed.” Isabelle suggested.
“Hey, you’re going to be studying law, your dad’s a lawyer, why not just go through his law books, find a simple contract binding all parties to secrecy and have the darned things done right here. That way we know it will cost us $9.95 plus $1.0444 each for envelope plus postage.” Liz said.
When the clerk came back Liz presented her with their proposition and the clerk looked at her a little weird. “Who are these people?” she thought.
“How much do you think it would cost to mail one of these calendars in a manila envelope?” Liz asked.
“$2.15 the girl said.” Liz added 2.15 to her list of 9.95 and 1.04444 and smiled. Doubled was $26.88. She showed the figures to Isabelle and Tess and they shook their heads.
“How much?” Liz mouthed; wanting to know what they thought would be a good price.
Isabelle thought for a minute and looked at the two girls…
“I don’t think we should go over 20.00 if we really want to sell them.”
“Yeah, I agree Liz. We’re only going to sell them as they’re ordered and we won’t ship until November that way we’ll have some idea of where we stand money wise.” Tess said.
Liz looked at the girl behind the desk and started asking questions about how they would go about getting the photo’s to her.
“Most people just bring a CD into us and tell us where to go from there. The pictures are usually laid out with the months printed below them after they have been sorted on their computer. You can use your own photo shop for different layouts and save them to a disk and we just print them to the pages for you. “All three girls smiled as they left the shop.
“I still think we need to go out of town for this. It’s just too close to home.” Liz said.
“I agree.” Isabelle agreed. “No one will ever recognize you in Las Cruces Tess. Once we get the CD to them we can just keep ordering as the orders come in. We can even get a credit card and set it up to pay them from that and then we can open a checking account to deposit our cash receipts into the bank and pay the credit card bill from there. This is going to be so much fun!”
Liz and Tess just stood there looking at their friend…then they decided yeah, it is fun.
Thank God they were all 18! Were they in for a surprise?
***
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