Page 4 of Places in Time
Chapter 3
Igotout of the car and squinted in the bright sunlight.
“Damn it, Ginger, if you’re going to drag me from pitch black to high noon at least have the courtesy to provide me some shades.”
She looked over her shoulder at me and cocked a thin eyebrow. “Ginger?”
I pointed at her thick red hair, blowing in the wind.
Understanding crossed her delicate features, and she gave a very unladylike snort. “Ginger. I think I like that. You know, you’re taking this awfully well. Usually when I lead folks through time, they’re too freaked out to make jokes.”
“Yeah? Well, I figure if I’m going to have a break with reality, I may as well go with it.” I stepped up next to her and looked around. “So, you want to tell me what we’re doing here?”
She looked at me appraisingly and then faced the building entrance. “Do you remember this place?”
I nodded. “Sure. Lightning Studios. This is where Jude and I first met.”
That one eyebrow rose again and she nodded slowly. “That’s right,” she dragged the last word out. “It’s also the place where your career started.”
“Now see here, you may be able to control my car…” I looked around again and waved my hand at our surroundings. “And the space-time continuum, or whatever, but I’ve been acting since I was in the third grade, and I didn’t audition at Lightning Studios until I was thirteen. So this isn’t where my career started.” I felt an odd compulsion to throw in a “so there” and stick my tongue out at her but I kept myself in check. Barely.
My captor wasn’t quite as restrained; she snorted again, this time followed by an eye roll. “Forgive me, dear, I didn’t realize playing Tiny Tim in the Cielo Vista Elementary School winter production ofA Christmas Carolwas when you got your big break.”
Jaw-dropping surprise and the fact that she was spot-on made me feel a little less smug. I reached for a distraction. “Um, right. So why are we here?”
“Oh, no reason, dear.” She wrapped her hand around my upper arm, and suddenly we’d moved from the parking lot to the reception area.
“Ginger!” I hissed, looking frantically around the crowded space. “You can’t just zap us into a room, people might have some, uh, questions.”
She waved me off with another of her “tsk tsk” noises. “First of all, they can’t see us. We’re not from this place in time. And even if we were, this is a room full of stage parents and wannabe actors. The only thing the people here are thinking about is whether they’re better than the competition and whether they’ll remember their lines.” She frowned and looked toward the back corner. “Except them. That kid’s thinking he just wants to be home reading a book, and his father’s thinking very inappropriate things about several of the women in this room.”
I followed her line of sight. The father did look a little smarmy, and his kid looked… “Wait a minute, Ginger, isn’t that—”
A vase slipped off the reception desk, landed squarely in the dad’s lap, and cut off the rest of my sentence. The angry man jumped out of his chair with a shout. “Fuck! What was that?” He tugged on his pants, trying to shake the water off. “Be right back,” he grumbled to his son, who looked like it took all his strength to hold back laughter.
Ginger giggled, drawing my attention away from the crisis. The satisfied expression on her face made my spine tingle.
“Did you do that?” I asked.
“Do what, dear?” She actually had the nerve to bat her eyelashes at me.
“Gage Fillmore,” a woman called from across the room. When nobody answered, she looked down at her clipboard and tried again. “Gage Fillmore, you’re up.”
The kid who’d been looking at the door his father had walked out of got up and slipped his messenger bag over his head and across his chest. “I’m Gage Fillmore.” He walked over to the woman with the clipboard. “Sorry about this, but my father just had an, um, accident, so I need to go.”
The woman shrugged and started writing something on her clipboard. “Whatever, but if you don’t come in when you’re called, you miss your chance, kid.”
“Oh, yeah, I figured. Thanks anyway.” He turned around, took a step toward the door, and then stopped and dug through his bag. After pulling out a sheaf of papers, he walked back to the woman. “I, uh, made a couple of suggestions on the script. I thought the writer might want to see them.”
The clipboard lady snorted but she took the papers from Gage. “Ethan Baker, you’re up.”
I should have expected it. I had been there once before, after all, so I knew what was coming. But seeing my younger self was still weird as all get-out.
My mom straightened my collar and squeezed my shoulders as she looked into my eyes.
“She’s wishing me luck,” I whispered to nobody in particular. “She still does it before I read for a part, even though I haven’t had to audition for a long, long time.”
“You have wonderful parents, Ethan. You’re very lucky,” Ginger said.
