The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

“Oh yeah. It was easy,” I say. Okay, it wasn’t easy, exactly, but I want Annie to be impressed.

She reaches a tentative finger forward and traces it down the crumpled surface of the printouts. I can hear the whir of Tyler’s zooming in for a close-up on her face while she reads. While she looks over the newspaper articles, I feel my phone vibrate in my shorts.

“Dammit,” I mutter, pulling it out for a quick look.

Crap. It’s Maddie.

Where R U?

I don’t mean that, obviously. I’m excited to see her. I just didn’t notice how much time had gone by. I was supposed to meet her fifteen minutes ago.

“You guys,” I say. “Come on. We have to go.” I’m quickly texting her back that I’m sorry, I’m right around the corner, and I’ll be there in five minutes.

“Go?” Tyler asks from behind the camera. I don’t think he’s turned it off once. I wonder how much memory I’ve got in there.

“Where are we going?” Annie asks.

“I have to meet someone. It’ll only take a minute. She’s cool, you’ll like her.” As I say this, I wonder if it’s true. I mean, I don’t know that it’s not true. But sometimes it’s hard to tell, with girls. Especially girls you think would have a lot in common. They can sometimes ricochet off each other like identical pool balls.

“Oooooooh,” Tyler says, understanding how much trouble I might be in right about now.

I give him a warning look from under the flop of hair on my forehead.

“No, really,” Tyler tries to cover for me. “She’s cool. You guys will totally hit it off.” To me, he says, “We going back to the same place?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“We late?” he asks, arching an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” I say, stuffing the newspaper articles back into my bag and clearing the paper plates and napkins and everything into a heap and into the garbage.

Tyler stops recording and looks between Annie and me.

“All right, kids,” he says with a smile. “Into the abyss.”





CHAPTER 11


When we get to the street outside, Annie stops me with a hand on my arm, and says, “Wait.”

I’m worried about making Maddie wait any longer, but I don’t know how you get a girl like Annie to hurry. The normal rules don’t apply to her.

“Please?” I urge. “We’re already late.”

“Wes, just wait a minute,” she says, and the rosebud upper lip of hers hides a subtle tremor.

I lean over so Tyler won’t hear what we’re saying. “What is it?” I whisper.

“I don’t know. It’s just that . . .”

She trails off, looking up at the shuttered face of the condemned town house. The palm reader’s neon sign is off. There’s no life behind the windows at all. I watch her as she stares up at the building’s empty windows. She’s studying it, hard, her dark brows furrowed, as though she were trying to memorize it.

“I finally figured it out,” she whispers to me. “How I can control where I go. If I’m afraid, I’ll think about what will make me less afraid, then I can make myself go there. Sometimes.” She glances up at me from under her eyelashes. “That was how I found my way back to you. Each time.”

I swallow, my ears burning pink under her admission.

“But it also brought me back here,” she continues, looking back up at the dilapidated building that used to be her house. “It brought me back home.”

I put my arm around her shoulders and fold her into me. We stand like that for a long minute, hidden in the shadows.

“You guys!” Tyler shouts from a little ways up the block. “Come on! Let’s go!”

I pull apart from Annie and look down at her. How do you leave home, knowing you can never go back again? I think about Madison, my parents’ house, my freshman dorm room at UW. I think about how even if I go back after this summer, even if they’ve all stayed the same, I’ll still be different. I’ve already left home. And so has she.

I guess the only way to do it, is to do it.

“You ready?” I ask her.