Second Act

Maya DeVillier grew up not having the advantages of life. Despite only having a GED, she has worked her way up to the position of Assistant to the Manager of a Value Shop outlet in Queens, where she's worked for fifteen years, she the driving force behind many of the store's recent popular and lucrative changes. Many of her friends and colleagues believe she will be promoted to the open position of Manager, and hoping for it herself, she is disappointed when she doesn't get it solely because she is missing one qualification, a college degree, the job going to someone practically less qualified. Making a wish that practical experience and street smarts meant as much professionally as academic qualifications, she somewhat gets her wish when Dilly, her best friend Joan's computer genius teenage son soon on his way to Stanford, at least gives her the opportunity in creating a fake online resume for her with academic credentials and life experiences she could only dream of. It would be difficult to check the background as Dilly used another of her legal names, Maya Vargas. It does at least get her foot in the door as she, headhunted, is invited in for an interview at Franklin + Clarke, manufacturer of health and beauty products of which she is familiar in they being sold at the store. Speaking from her experience at the store during the interview with CEO Anderson Clarke, she is offered the temporary position of consultant in the revamping of an existing product line. She ends up butting heads with Zoe, who is heading the process and who happens to have herself only recently joined the company on Anderson's urging, he her father. Maya and Zoe end up in competition for different visions of the line. What Maya eventually learns is that she was called in on somewhat ulterior motives having to do with an issue from her real background, that issue, which she kept secret from her ex-boyfriend Trey which led to their breakup in their different visions for their future if they were to have one. Maya has to decide if and when to come clean about her fake credentials, which may threaten not only her new job regardless of how she does in that competition with Zoe, but that treasured issue from her past which has just come back into her life.