The Time of Your Life

Aubrie Boniface

Annie was the most awkward girl she knew, not that she knew many. Her eight sisters were all tall as well. But they possessed the natural grace and charm that had led men to their deaths for many years. Her entire life, Annie was burdened by jokes of how she didn't fit in, not only with the family but with the entire human race. She was just permanently out of place. One especially ordinary October afternoon, the gifted eight came home with news of open auditions for the new show that was opening off Broadway. The girl's mother was ecstatic at the thought that even one of her daughters could get a break that big. And, who knows, that could lead to on Broadway, and Broadway was where everyone wanted to be. She immediately clapped her hands together and demanded that the girls gather their things and leave immediately. They would go into the city early and stay with her sister until the casting times the next day. Annie flew about in a frenzy, just as her sisters did, and went to pack a bag. She would hate herself forever if she didn't try. Besides, she was used to merciless humiliation. At least she would get a free trip to the city.

Just as she slung her bag over her shoulder (Well, tried to sling it over her shoulder. She missed once or twice before placing it there carefully.), she heard the door slam. Annie immediately stumbled and fell to the ground. She knew what that meant. Knew the horrible feeling in her gut. She didn't even have to listen for the car to drive away. She knew they had left her. Probably didn't even think I would ever consider it, she mused to herself as she clawed her way up off the floor, leaving the bag there. She stumbled to the door and opened it. She didn't know why. But as she did, she felt her father tap her on the shoulder. She turned around and stared into his blank milky gaze. Blinded by an accident at the factory where he worked, her father's eyes had long since clouded and glassed over. She was the only one who didn't cringe at the sight. And in return, he was the only one who didn't notice her clownishness.

"Go on," he said, pressing a wad of crinkled money into her hand. "There's no reason you shouldn't get the same chance." Annie kissed her father on the cheek and hopped out the door like a court jester.

The train ride into the city was uneventful. She had narrowly escaped being cut in half by the sliding doors, but she clunked down in the seat and examined the money in her hand. Five dollars. Well, she thought, better than nothing. She emerged from the subway with a newfound confidence and headed in the direction of Broadway. Or at least what she thought was Broadway. After about an hour of walking, spilling nearly all the contents of her purse three times and spending the majority of her money on a pretzel, which was hard and unsatisfying, Annie looked about and realized, with the familiar pit in her stomach, that she was lost. Undeniably lost. When she had stepped out of the ground she was surrounded by a sea of businessmen in smart suits and cell phones, with the occasional spiked haired youth interjected in the crowd. As she went farther and farther on her way, the businessmen slowly began to dissolve around her, like sugar in water, and were replaced by more of the oddly dressed and even more oddly coifed population that had desiccated the business district. She looked around. On one side of the street there were high end designer shops, next to them, below them, beginning to outnumber them were oddball clothing shops. Annie suddenly found herself bumbling through a living kaleidoscope of color. Brightly colored fabric whipped around her knock knees and bright neon colors blinded her. Annie became overwhelmed. The colors and the lights and the smell, it was too much. She tripped and rolled into the only doorway which didn't glow like the gateway to hell, and found herself immersed, on all sides and a mile below a dry sea of books. Using the nearest shelf she pulled herself up and found that a tall brunette man was staring at her over, what looked like, half a pair of glasses. He cocked his head to the side. She stared at him. Annie was used to judging people on contact. After all, that's what they did to her. Eye for an eye. But she couldn't make a judgment on him. His portrayed neither youth nor age and his gaze was so unassuming and cool blue that she could only stare back.

"What are you looking for?" he asked.

"I don't know," Annie stammered. "Umm. Well...uh...where...no....yes...am i? and who are you?"

"I," the man said, "am Artimis Blue. And you are in a bookstore, my bookstore to be exact. Is there anything I can help you find?"

Annie sighed. "Not unless you can help me find a cure for terminal klutziness and bad luck," she said clunking her knobby elbow on the table. " I thought everyone had some guardian angle looking out for them. Not me. I think mine's blind."

"I have just the thing." He disappeared and came back carrying a thin, well worn copy of a book and opened in to the middle for her.

"West Side Story. A music book?" she asked. Artimis nodded enthusiastically. "I don't play. At all."

"My dear girl, it's not for you. It's for your drummer."

"My drummer?"

"Mmm hmm. Everyone marches to the beat of their own drum. It sounds like your drummer never really learned to play. What's inside the book is what matters."

He clapped the book shut in her face. A cloud of dust erupted from it and nearly suffocated Annie in a pungent, musty smell. She began coughing and wobbling on her feet. But then something happened that had never happened before. She caught herself and didn't fall over. As her head started to clear, Artimis pressed the book into her hands.

"On the house today, love," he said as he watched Annie glide out of the store in the direction of Broadway.

Determined to get to audition now, Annie confidently strolled towards her destination, bopping along to the beat of West Side Story. She all of the sudden had no doubts at all about where she was going. She ever danced a bit down the street on her way there. Unbeknownst to her, three miles away a buss swerved to avoid lunching road workers, rolled and had caught on fire. Annie's mother and all eight of her sisters were on that bus. But nothing could stop her now. She marched into the audition with presence and nearly stepped on something that seemed to fall out of her new book. A watch. Nice watch, she thought. Mine now. She put it on failing to notice the odd tempo at which the second hand ticked. The audition room was typical. Wide, wood floors, harshly lit and with a bar encircling it. In the middle stood a tall sever woman with her hair pulled tightly back from her face. She was in charge. The girls that were there, if they weren't crying already, were so nervous you could peel it away from there faces. They had been demolished, call fat, scrutinized. Inside, each one of them was dying. Annie took a deep breath and opened the book. The Nutcracker Ballet stretched in front of her and she could hear her watch change tempo and string music start to flow from her own ears. Her audition went beautifully. She danced as she had never dreamed, as no one could ever dream. Every girl in the room paused and stared at her in awe. She would have too, at her reflection, had she not been moving about so much. The woman presiding over the thing stared and stared. When she was finished, the woman clapped once.

"Impressive," she said in an evil lilt. "For a beginner."

Annie was out of breath. "Impressive," she said, "for a master." The woman stared at her. "You have nothing bad to say about it. Except that it is better than anything you could ever do." Annie recognized her as not being right. There was an evil supernature about her that had to be stopped. "I challenge you," she gasped. "And if I'm the better dancer you have to sing a song."

"Sing a song?" the woman asked. She knew she had a lovely voice, one which she could use to pull all these pliable girls into several hundred more dollars of classes.

"Yeah, from my book." Annie threw the book on the floor.

A demonic smile stretched across the woman's face. "You first."

Annie danced a selection from Puccini's La Boheme with the grace and prowess of an angel. When she was done, she didn't sit, but rather stood there panting, while her watch slowed down to a steady tick.

The woman somehow managed to add even more power and grace to Mozart's requiem and, as the girls watched, fear gripped them all. But Annie knew, she just knew the time would come for her to make her move. She glided over the record player so effortlessly no one knew she had moved at all. In the final haunting strings of the piece, she tapped the record player with the tip of her foot the same time the second hand clicked the 12, signaling it was six-thirty. The music stalled for a split second as she rose onto her left toe and spread her arms out like the angel of death. That momentary stretch in the music was enough to exhaust her already weak left foot and her ankle buckled. The woman caught herself with the grace of a cat who fell off a table but she knew everyone had seen what happened. No matter, she thought. I'll get them any way.

She strode over, her skin all but blistering and picked up the book. "What would you like to hear?" she asked plainly.

"Pick one," Annie spat.

The woman gave the slightest shrug and flipped open the book. As she began the first notes of a song she didn't recognize, she began to feel odd. Starting with her voice, her entire body softened. She began to feel faint and tried to stop singing but couldn't. From the top of her head she began to unravel into the book. Everything, including the impossible crimson of her leotard and shoes, right down to her cloven foot was sucked into the book. When the spectacle was over there was a room full of stunned ballerinas, a very satisfied looking Annie and her new songbook on the floor, open to Nice to Meet You by the Rolling Stones. Annie scooped up her book and waltzed out the door.

She was eager to tell her mother and sisters of her day and, having no clue where they were, opened the book for some help. The page she stopped on was Imagine, a song she had heard at many funerals the past three years. The watch started ticking the beat and she walked along with it, though she knew where she'd end up. She arrived at the a cinematically picturesque cemetery that was familiar despite her never having been there, and stood at the foot of nine plots of unbroken ground. Must have just happened, she thought. After leaving the graveyard, she went home to be with her father.

Annie live long after that day and became quite well know around the city as an activist and speaker. They called her the Mockingbird because she was always there, singing a song of hope and because no matter what anyone did, they couldn't kill her spirit. As her life went on, the notes of a new song began to flow onto the blank pages of her songbook. The notes of her song were the constant companion to her never again faulted steps and the ever changing watch near left her wrist. But as the years were added onto her life, she noticed the second hand of the watch slowing down more and more and when it was no more than a quiver, she opened the book back up to West Side Story and made her way back towards the bookstore that had changed her life.

Even in old age, though it had slowed considerably, Annie's grace and charm was as present as ever. Artimis recognized her immediately and she recognized him. He was still the same man, same stature, same head of dark, long hair, still his age undistinguishable. He hadn't aged a day. He had, however seen the gaunt man in a top hat follow her in the door.

"I had to see you again," she said, no longer faltering, "to thank you."

"You know I heard your song on the radio today," Artimis said fondly. "Funny I should hear it today."

Annie stared at him, puzzled and enraptured. "Just who are you, exactly?" she asked, her voice wavering with the second hand.

Arimis shrugged. "I'm the guy that owns this bookstore."

"Oh," Annie said, no more than a breath, "good to know. I should give this back to you." She handed him the music book and took one last delicate fall backwards.

The man in the top hat, who was little more than a skeleton with the blackest, deepest eyes one will ever see, caught her easily and looked up at Artimis. "I'll take it from here," he said. He plucked the watch from her wrist and glanced at it. "Not a minute too soon."

"You always were quite punctual," Artimis sneered. Ever since the dawn of time everyone hated the tax collector. But his job had to be done.

The man smiled, bearing every last one of his teeth, and tossed the watch back to Artimis. As he walked out the door with Annie draped over his arm, he tipped his hat and called back, "I'll be wanting that back one day."