A NEW LIFE 

A NEW LIFE 

Camille, upset at not having signed her contract, arrives home in tears, her frustration greater than her own will.

“But my love, what happened to you?”  Angela embraces her daughter, as soon as she sees her come in.

“Mom, I lost the opportunity of my life, they called me from ALF & ASSOCIATES, to offer me a vacancy, with a salary that you can't even imagine, I had to sign the digital contract before six o'clock in the afternoon, and guess what?”

“What girl, what?!”  Camille's mother is desperate now.

“Well, I forgot, I have no choice, there is no place where I can enter my email, I lost my only chance, mom” Camille melts into her mother's arms wrapped in tears.

Until they are interrupted by Carolain, her little sister.

“Hi Cam, do you need internet? A computer?”  she replies jovially, as if it were nothing important.

“Yes, little one, but you know, in this town there is nothing”.

“I know where we can find one, my friend Flory's mom works from home and she has a computer, she can lend it and she has a modem that gives her internet, we have played on the net, she lives three houses away from here, shall we go?

“Let's go, yes!” Camille's face changed completely, now she felt positive, minutes later they were at the little girl's friend's house, she signed the document digitally and went home.

Her phone rang after 8:30 p.m.

“Hello?” Now she answers nervously

“Hello Camille, you've reached Martha, I called you this afternoon about your contract with ALF & ASSOCIATES, I regret to inform you that I cannot hire you, you sent me the contract too late”.

“Miss Martha, I'm sorry it's just that in this town there is no way to easily access the internet, please don't leave me without the opportunity”  Now her voice was broken, and she knew that if she did not go to work there, everything would be worse.

“Oh! Do not make those dramas please, I will make an exception with you because your resume and your tests were impeccable, but I want to tell you that if there is something too important in the company is punctuality, a single day that you are late is going to a discharge, in three mistakes you make will be fired and compensated, the CEO is a person too strict, you already have the information of the company, I expect you on Monday at eight in the morning, with excellent personal presentation, do not be late you have all the instructions given. Goodbye”

The woman did not even let Camille answer, but when she hung up the call, she, her mother and her sister melted in an embrace.

Camille's humility made her life difficult, but with immense pain she decided to go to live in the city where an aunt who offered her an inn for a few days while she was getting settled, she had the weekend to organize everything, on Sunday morning she was on a trip, leaving her mother and sister, promising to come every weekend to visit, the city was about four hours away and gave her time to return home.

Her aunt's house was just as humble as her mother's, but unlike her, her aunt was an unpleasant person, she agreed to stay a few days on the condition that she would pay her as soon as she received her first paycheck, and leave.

Monday eight am ALF & ASSOCIATES

Camille arrives at the company where she was hired, she was dressed in a somewhat worn black jacket, formal pants and old-fashioned high heels that her mother had lent her, by the time she went to work she didn't have a single elegant garment that would make her look good, so as best she could, she picked up borrowed and old trousers to be able to enter her new job.

It was five minutes to 8 o'clock, she had run all over town, from the train stop to the company it was about a ten-minute walk and she ran, her cheeks were flushed, and her appearance was not the best.

Before entering, some bodyguards asked her for her documents, but absent-minded as always, they had been left at her aunt's house.

“Miss, I already told you that without your ID we cannot let you in, we are sorry," says a man in a dark suit, in charge of security.

“Sir, please, look, I am going to work here today, call Mrs. Marta, there are two minutes left until eight o'clock, I could lose my job," Camille pleads.

“You don't understand that you can't come in, besides, look at you, I don't know how they could have hired you, look at your presentation” He answers her in a contemptuous manner.

Camille is frustrated and tries to call Marta, she is on one of the steps of the entrance trying to get a signal on her old phone, not being aware of where she is looking, she crashes into a man, his scent invades her nose, and her eyes are enraptured when she looks to the front of who it was. It was Andy Alf.

The most handsome man her eyes had ever seen in her entire life, her cheeks are flushed, and she dies of embarrassment, next to this beautiful man is a blonde about the same height, perfectly groomed, she looked like a beauty queen, with a red dress, that covered her in a sculptural way. Both looked like something out of a magazine.

“Hey, your filth! Be more careful” says Keyra Jones, Andy Alf's fiancée.

“Keyra please, where are your manners?”  Andy snorts at her

“Camille ducks her head in embarrassment” Andy makes a nodding face at her apology and continues his way. 

“Now I'll have to change my clothes, that woman would leave her poor smell all over me," Keyra says as they walk away from the staircase”.

Camile tries to locate Martha's phone number, but to her dismay she doesn't even have the credit to call her and inform her that she is outside, but as fate would have it, she is the one who calls her.

“Girl, what happened to you, I already gave the order for you to enter. Precisely, you crashed with the CEO, that's not lucky!”

“Miss. Marta, thank you very much. How did you know that?”  she answers intrigued.

“We have cameras everywhere, one of the men at the door told me that you were already here but that you were not carrying your document, I looked to make sure it was you and I see you fall to the floor, go upstairs and I will wait for you immediately, you must report your arrival, I will change the appointment time”.

Camille immediately goes up to the company, all its facilities are equipped with the highest technology, its employees wear beautiful dresses, and she feels miserable to be dressed in those borrowed clothes, her hair is combed, but not completely straight.

When she arrives at Martha's, she feels how everyone looks down on her and inside her there is a feeling of frustration.

Martha tells her all her duties and leaves her at her place of work, evidently it was according to how she was dressed, a small office behind all the main offices, not much light came in, but at least the eyes of her better dressed colleagues pointing out her poverty did not come in either.

The following days she had limited herself to making the human resources reports of the company, she only crossed words with Martha and little interacted with others, she was stigmatized by the way she dressed and her economic condition, despite the fact that this job changed her life she felt bad.

It was Friday morning Andy Alf as every day starts his routine at four in the morning, that night he had not had a good rest so his mood was lousy, more than usual, so today would be a total hell for employees who made a mistake, at eight in the morning when everyone was already working, he sat at his desk to review each report thoroughly if a tilde or a comma was missing he returned it, and to Camille's misfortune in his there was a minimal drafting error.

The phone in her small office rings for the first time since she started working.

“Camille Ibis, come to my office in two minutes”

She had no idea who was calling her, so she asks Martha who with a regretful face looks at her and tells her that she has thirty seconds left to get to the gentleman's office.

Camille, not believing Martha's words, walks casually down the hallway to Andy's office, and under the gaze of her coworkers, she walks calmly without any fear of what the boss she has not yet met might do to her.