A/N: This is a story that comes to some extent from my own life: I could be a feminine Walter Mitty, no question about it! This is for anyone who ever wanted, even for just a little while, to be bigger than real life. Thank you, Harry2, Terry L. Gardner, Bishop T and jtbwriter—your reviews and feedback are deeply appreciated. I hope you'll enjoy this one.


§ § § -- April 11, 1998

She swept down the plane dock, graceful and happy, smiling at the natives who offered her leis and drinks. What a beautiful island this was! She reached out and daintily plucked a glass off a proffered tray…

…only to promptly spill half of it at her feet. Some splashed onto her shoes, and she heaved a resigned sigh while the native girls tittered behind their hands. She shrugged, her face already burning, and took a sip of the remainder. Drat, and it really tasted good, too. Trust her to waste something so delicious. She made a determined effort to concentrate on her real-life surroundings instead of dropping back into another daydream.

She stepped with exaggerated care off the landing ramp and onto the lush green grass of the clearing, tightly clutching the stem of the glass while watching the band as they played, the colorful parrots that sat on their perches preening their feathers, and the white-suited man with the woman in the white dress. Her gaze lingered longest on these two. If he could do what everyone said he could, then just once she was going to be everything she had always wished she really were.

The man finished speaking to the woman and raised a champagne flute at her and the two middle-aged men who had disembarked just in front of her. "My dear guests," he called loudly enough for them to hear, "I am Mr. Roarke, your host. Welcome to Fantasy Island!"

She grinned hopefully and lifted her glass in response, only to feel something land on her shoulder. Slowly she turned to see what it was and groaned aloud. The parrot behind her had decided to adorn her brand-new blazer with a smelly little calling card. I knew I shouldn't have stood so darn close. She shook her head with self-disgust and hid as much of her face as she could behind the wide-mouthed glass; but something perverse in her sneaked a peek at her white-garbed hosts, and she realized instantly that they had both seen what had happened. The woman looked sympathetic; the man simply smiled as if nothing had happened. Too bad he wasn't right…

To her immense relief, the band shortly wound up its welcoming song and two of the native girls gathered around her to show her to her bungalow. They too noticed the parrot's little deposit, but merely looked at each other and pretended to ignore it. "This way," one of them said, and she hefted up her suitcase and trailed the natives to a waiting jeep that took her to a very pretty little cottage. Out front was a sign that proclaimed this was the Hibiscus Bungalow; its namesake flowers adorned the porch posts and railings.

The native girls opened the door for her and escorted her inside. "Mr. Roarke will see you at the main house in one hour," one said.

"Don't be late," the other cautioned genially. "He doesn't like that." Wordlessly she nodded, and the native girls giggled and departed.

Whew. Now I can finally try to get this…stuff off my shoulder. She spent twenty minutes in the bathroom scrubbing her shoulder, and managed to remove all traces of the offending matter, leaving just a wet spot on her blazer. She then unearthed her hair dryer and spent fifteen more minutes aiming it at the wet spot in an attempt to make it fade. Both her hosts had looked immaculate; she hated to go in feeling like a slob. By the time she was satisfied with the results, she had five minutes to get to the main house, and had to run all the way there—during which time, of course, her hair slipped out of its carefully crafted bun. She clattered onto the porch out of breath and with her damnably frizzy hair all over the place. Stomping her foot in exasperation, she clumsily gathered the mess back into the barrette she habitually carried in her pocket and finally went to knock on the door.

A moment later it opened to reveal the woman she had seen at the plane dock. "Hi, I'm Leslie Hamilton. You must be Annie Johnston."

Annie nodded sheepishly, still fidgeting with her wayward hair. "Yup, that's me. I hope I'm not late. I was warned not to be."

Leslie looked taken aback. "Who told you that? Never mind…come on in." She stepped aside and ushered Annie in ahead of her. "I'm sorry about that silly parrot, by the way. I told Father we should get a different bird—that one's always trying to relieve itself on people's heads or something." She grinned apologetically, and Annie felt herself relaxing for the first time.

"That's okay," Annie said, trying to downplay the problem the way she did so many others. "I got it cleaned off." She paused at the foot of the foyer steps and gazed in awe around the room. "Wow, what a beautiful room! The outside is gorgeous too…actually, I haven't seen anything yet that isn't gorgeous."

Leslie laughed. "Thank you! Why don't you sit down? Father should be back in a few minutes. Can I get you anything?"

"Oh, I'm fine for now, but thanks," Annie said, lowering herself gingerly into one of the elegant leather chairs that sat at angles in front of the dignified desk. "Holy cow. This place kind of looks like my father's library." The one that's off-limits to everybody but his crummy cigar-smoking billiards club. "Except it's not so stuffy-looking."

Leslie laughed again, but before she could respond, a door opened somewhere in the room and Annie twisted in her seat. Roarke was just emerging from a small room at the foot of the dark, highly polished wooden stairs leading to the second floor, and he smiled a welcome as soon as he spotted her. "Miss Johnston…thank you for coming."

Annie smiled and shrugged, unsure how to respond to that. She watched Roarke cross the room toward the desk, while Leslie settled herself in the other chair, and after he had sat down, he turned his full attention to her, making her look shyly away.

"So," said Roarke, and she looked back almost as if compelled. His smile was warm. "Miss Annie Johnston, from Silver Spring, Maryland…age twenty-five."

"Almost 26," Annie put in, then immediately bit her lip. "Sorry to interrupt."

"Not at all," Roarke said. "I trust your trip here was without event?"

Annie nodded bashfully. "It was really long, but nothing terrible happened."

Roarke chuckled. "Good." He settled back in his chair and regarded her with interest. "You have a most intriguing fantasy, Miss Johnston. I should like very much to know how you came to request it."

Annie flicked a faintly abashed glance at Leslie, whose face mirrored her father's curious expression, then half-smiled and looked down at her hands, which lay in her lap plucking at the bottom button on the blazer. "It's probably kind of stupid, really. I mean, after all, I ought to have outgrown staring out the window and woolgathering. All the way through school my teachers would catch me doing it. But…well, I just had to try this."

"So tell us," Leslie urged, leaning forward a little in her chair.

"It's a long boring story," Annie warned.

Roarke and Leslie looked at each other. "Perhaps to you," Roarke said, "but it can be helpful to know the background details of a fantasy. Due to the nature of this one, I must admit to a raging curiosity."

Annie stared at him in surprise. It looked as if he really wanted to know; in her long experience, this was just about unprecedented. She gave Leslie another sheepish look and joked, "Okay, well, you asked for it." This met with chuckles from her hosts, and she plunged in, encouraged. "I'm the youngest of three kids, you see…and I'm the misfit in a family of overachievers. My dad is the richest man in two counties, and Mom's the head of almost every charity in sight. My brother's running for governor of Maryland, and he's practically a shoo-in. And my sister graduated summa cum laude from Johns Hopkins, and she's well on her way to becoming a brain surgeon. Couple more years and she'll be done interning.

"But me…well, I faint at the sight of blood, and I see politics as a guaranteed cure for insomnia. I had to go to my father to get a job…I'm a lowly secretary for an aging executive in Dad's company, one who's due to retire soon. I don't seem to have an outstanding talent, Mr. Roarke." Her gaze pleaded for understanding. "Believe me, I've looked for something I'm good at just about all my life. I had piano and violin lessons, and I constantly massacred both. My singing voice could break eardrums. I'm such a klutz, when Mom signed me up for dance lessons, my teacher rejected me after the first class. I signed up for drama class in high school and found out I can't act. Every time I had a creative writing assignment in English classes, I flunked it. I'm scared of people, too—I never know what to say, and I always get so tongue-tied that I just keep my mouth shut altogether. I'm awful at math, science confuses me, and I never understood the analysis questions in my literature classes. I used to go on annual skiing trips to St. Moritz with my family, but I couldn't ski to save my life, and I was always sitting around our chalet trying to understand Swiss television shows. When I got old enough, they started leaving me behind." Annie caught herself and looked helplessly at Roarke and then Leslie. "Let's put it this way—I'm a walking disaster. Nothing I do ever comes out right."

"I see," said Roarke, his tone quizzical, indicating she should continue.

"Well, I saw all this accomplishment and effortless perfection around me all the time, and I saw I didn't measure up…and I started daydreaming that I did." She could hardly bear to look at her hosts now, in case they laughed at her. "In my dreams, I'm witty, sophisticated, graceful, poised, talented, attractive, charming and…well, interesting. In short, I'm everything that, in real life, I'm not and have no hope of being."

"Ah," Roarke said with comprehension. "Have you ever read a story called The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Miss Johnston?"

Excited, Annie looked up and brightened, nodding vigorously. "It's my favorite story of all time! I'm telling you, Mr. Roarke, if Walter Mitty had had a sister, I'd be her."

Roarke nodded, smiling. "So, since you identify so closely with the protagonist in that story, you thought perhaps it would be possible to carry it one step further and, whenever you feel inadequate, have the ability to call up one of your daydreams and make it reality."

"Exactly," Annie exclaimed, beside herself with relief and delight to at last find someone who actually understood her. "Can I really do that, Mr. Roarke?"

"Yes," Roarke said slowly, smile fading somewhat. Instantly a thread of alarm snaked through Annie, making her stomach roll over. "Before we continue, however, I must caution you: there is great potential for disappointment, at the very least, in a fantasy such as yours. Do you believe you will be able to relinquish the ability to make those daydreams come true when the weekend comes to a close and your fantasy is over?"

Annie sat up frantically. "Mr. Roarke, do you know how much I've counted on this?" she pleaded. "This may sound crazy to you, but I thought maybe, if I came here and had the chance to take on some of the personalities from my daydreams, I might finally stumble over something I'm actually good at. And besides, if I don't do this, I'll spend my whole life wishing I'd done it, that I'd taken the chance just once in my life and done something wild and spontaneous and completely out of character."

"A fantasy can't change your basic personality, Miss Johnston," Roarke warned her, in the kindliest tone possible. "In the end, if you wish to be different, you must implement the change from within your true self."

"But this could be a stepping stone to finding out how I might be able to change," Annie begged, turning then to Leslie, whose eyes gleamed with empathy. "You know what I mean, don't you, Leslie? If I get the chance to try on different personae, it's possible I could discover some talent I never knew I had, and I can capitalize on it."

Leslie nodded, and Annie could see she grasped the point she was trying to get across. "That's a great idea, Annie, really. I guess what Father means is that you might become a little too dependent on those imaginary personae, and not only would you be right back where you started, but you might be very unhappy with the outcome."

"But nobody could ever say I didn't try," Annie persisted. "Please, Mr. Roarke, please. I really want to do this, and there's just no other way. Please."

Roarke looked at Leslie, who said, "I realize the final decision is yours, Father, but in my opinion, there are more pros than cons to this one."

Roarke thought about this for a moment or two while Annie hung literally on the edge of her seat, clutching the chair arms so hard that her hands were beginning to ache. At last Roarke focused on her and smiled assent. "Very well, Miss Johnston, you shall have your fantasy. Leslie?"

Leslie got up and went to the credenza while Annie watched avidly. She pulled open a drawer, lifted out a small, light-blue velvet-covered box, and brought it back to Roarke, who opened it and displayed the contents at Annie. "This choker will afford you the ability to become whoever you dream of being at any given moment. Once you put it on, you cannot take it off for the duration of your fantasy. Do you understand?"

Annie nodded, wide eyes fixed on the choker. It was a black velvet ribbon that had a large egg-shaped blue opal affixed in the middle; the opal glittered and gleamed with fiery red highlights that seemed to take on an extra glow even as she stared at the gem. "It's really beautiful, Mr. Roarke," she breathed.

Roarke smiled and glanced at Leslie; she extracted the choker from its box and came to Annie, affixing it around her neck. For Annie, who rarely wore jewelry, its presence was unfamiliar but exciting. "From now on, whenever you dream of becoming someone outside your normal, everyday self, you need only think of who you wish to be, and the attributes you wish to have at that moment…and you'll become that person."

Annie jumped out of her chair, fondling the choker tentatively, beaming at them. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been so excited, so full of happy anticipation. "Thank you, Mr. Roarke, thanks a billion…and you too, Leslie." They smiled and nodded at her, and she giggled joyously. "Walter Mitty, eat your heart out," she said whimsically, and skipped out of the house with the sound of her hosts' laughter floating behind her.