16 November 2014
Tuesday
Maybe it was the fact that today was ever-so pleasantly bright in comparison to the ever-so cold chill lingering the streets of Seattle.  (Plus it was November and already snowing.)
Maybe it was the lack of an alarm clock set to exactly and primarily 7:30 AM, causing a stir of rushedness and impatience coursing through the household. Mom running around in an unusual panic, Dad cursing about the work he still needs to finish (and the very slim probability that it will actually get finished.) Dog barking uncontrollably, teenage-sister being her usual prissy self, except to an even prissier degree.
Maybe that was why Annie Chapel, nine years old and already reading Shakespeare, decided that today, the very day of November fourteenth, 1990, would not be the same.
8:16 AM
She wakes. Princess Annie Chapel of 517 Birchwood St rises from her (not-so) delicate pink bed, opens her eyes and is mesmerized by the same (not-so) luxurious white ceiling her palace contains. She rolls onto her stomach and opens up a new novel, fresh in scent and evidently containing no fingerprints, no identification or proof of having-ever-been-read before. A new page, filled with words and phrases and sentences and paragraphs, all combined into separate, and intricate, ideas and facts and thoughts and opinions and anything about everything and everything about anything. And yet...
“Boring. Bored, so bored,” the nine-year old blonde said aloud. “Bore, bored, boring, boredom. Everything is such a bore.” And with one single hop out of bed and a decision to cure her overpowering, yet unprecedented boredom, she is gone. (Her parents, of course, assume she is off to school.)
8:41 AM
Skipping. Down stairs and into the lobby and through the broad, intimidating entrance door and out into the shimmering city. Before her on the pavement are a countless number of shoes walking to their own beat and on seemingly endless cracks where too many people are breaking their poor mothers’ backs. Before her rush speeding cars and buses and taxicabs all bustling to get somewhere, and enormous buildings all reaching for the sky but not quite getting there.
Finally. She reaches the first area of the city, the first clue. A very narrow but instantaneously very long, drawn-out bridge lay ahead, leading to a lonely, abandoned park. With squeaky feet, the girl tip-toes down the bridge, crossing over from her comfortable little life to that of a new world.
“Ah, little miss, are you trying to find your way to school?” An old woman’s creaky voice interrupts her complex thoughts.
“Oh,” Annie shrieks, clearly surprised. “Nooo.”
“Well, my dear, where are you off to then?” The woman reaches down, taps her on the nose as if she is a baby.
“I’m looking.”
“Looking?”
“Yes. Looking, searching, discovering, finding.”
“What exactly for?” The old woman asks, slightly amused and in awe by the tiny girl. A rusty swingset sways solemnly in the background.
She doesn’t answer. Instead Annie Chapel raises her eyebrows and swiftly walks past, going somewhere, somehow.
9:18 AM
At this precise moment she should be learning about mathematics or writing some sort of overly happy poem or practicing cursive. She should not be rummaging the city, tip-toeing down narrow bridges, talking to old ladies, or anything else of the sort. But that’s the excitement in all of it, isn’t it?
9:21 AM
The wind has begun to get gustier and the air has grown even chillier. But, Annie continues on her quest, her quest of who-knows-what going who-knows-where. By now it has become evident that something must be off with this girl, or her mother at least, for allowing her to skip school and run around like this city is her playground. The looks she’s received are dreadful, most disheartening, most shameful. Of course not a single soul however has reached down to pull out their cellular phone or even tap her on the shoulder. Besides the old woman, every other person has become too attached to their own lives, their own problems, to act any further than a look.
Before Annie was even a question, Mrs. Chapel decided that whatever child she would have, if even possible, would not go about living an average life. She, as a child herself, wanted so badly to be successful and fulfill all of her incapable dreams. That didn’t happen of course, life got in the way.
So, Annie Chapel of 517 Birchwood St goes off to the next stop on her journey. The bus.
9:50 AM
“Ay, you lookin’ for something?”
“Ay little girl, I’m talkin’ to you!” A predominantly impatient voice grabs hold of the girl’s attention, and she stops directly in her tracks.
“I am looking, yes.”
“Eh? Well-uh-what’d tha’ be?” He sounds almost like something heard in one of those films, one of those films with the stereotypical drunk man, slurring his words and talking without a care in the world.
Annie, not even the slightest intimidated, continues her walk down to the corner bus station.
At age four, Annie Chapel’s mother was pick-pocketed on the street near Main and Lewis. The corner, dark and terrifying, held a single equally dark and terrifying bench and a sign reading, “Bus stop.” A large man, rugged and old, lurked in the shadows until the woman passed and then lunged on her. As if she had no fear, toddler Annie simply stared and stared at the man, made no instinct to cry, and seemingly let him take the money.
She reaches the bus. Hops on with grace and a gleam in her eye. Her head in the clouds, her heart caught in the wild air of Seattle, and the even wilder conversation it contains. Surrounding her is a wide array of life; people talking on the phone, humming along to whatever song being played on their walkman, teenagers gossiping about that party last weekend. Everything so different from her (not-so) royal life.
10:20 AM
The bus lurches to a stop. The final place. The place she should’ve been all along. Keyword: should’ve.
Jumping off the bus full of life and back into the place where everything goes back to being the same. Skipping. Down the sidewalk and into the front entrance of this adventure in itself called “Elementary School.”
With one giant breath she enters, doesn’t even bother to talk to the lady at the front desk, knowing that she must have too many problems in her life to do so much as look and sign the name “Annie Chapel” under “Tardy.” Strides down to classroom 107, where she should be learning fractions or reading Nancy Drew novels or memorizing the state capitols or something of the sort.
Mrs. Sullen is discussing the importance of checking work when doing mathematical problems.
“And would ya look at that, it’s little miss Annie Chapel.” Crossing her arms as she speaks, the teacher throws a disapproving glance at the girl. “May I ask why you are late?”
“I was looking,” she says, tossing back her blonde hair, “looking for something.”
The class leans in, as if something extraordinary is about to take place. Annie, though intelligent, never really showed interest in school. She was never one to raise her hand to answer a question or voluntarily go up to the chalkboard to solve problems. The class practically simultaneously raises their eyes wide, almost as if they expected something like this to happen all along.
“Did you find that something?”
“Yes. I found it,” she answers knowingly, “I found it in an old park, the sidewalks along the busy streets, dark corners, the buses, and finally here.”
“Okay, and what exactly is this thing?” The teacher asks as if it is the only thing that matters.
Annie doesn’t answer. Instead she slowly strides to her desk in the back right corner, sits, rests her head on the desk, and enters back into the comfortable world of right and wrong answers.