The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

“Do you need me to sign anything?” Maddie asks. “Or can I just go?”


“I . . . that is, you should really . . . Um . . . ,” the archivist stammers. She’s staring into the shadows where I fled, looking to see if I’m really there. I bite down on my thumb, forcing myself not to move.

“Listen, I’m in kind of a hurry,” Maddie says, pushing her chair away from the table and standing up. “You can just handle any paperwork for me, right? You don’t really need me to sign anything.”

She looks coolly at the panicked woman cowering at the table, who nods fiercely.

“Y-y-y-yes, that would be fine,” the archivist says. “Go. Please.”

Maddie’s shoulders shake with silent laughter, and she winks at me. When she does, my fear vanishes. I let myself smile, and step out of the shadows.

“Great! Thanks. You’ve been a big help.” Maddie strides over to me, loops her arm through mine, and indicating the archivist with her chin, says, “Say thank you, Annie.”

“Thank you!” I chirp as sweetly as I can.

But the archivist doesn’t hear me over her wretched scream.





CHAPTER 14


Where the hell are they?” I ask no one in particular. I am seriously starting to freak out, and there’s no sign of them yet. What if something happened? What if she went away without me?

A woman jostling by with two small kids in tow, all wearing matching I NY sweatshirts, gives me the hairy eyeball as she passes me on her way to the observation deck.

“They’ll be here,” Tyler assures me, keeping the camera trained, for some reason, on my feet. Typical art guy. For some reason they love carving the body up into its constituent parts. He’s promised me I can use this footage for Most, so my documentary is going to have a seriously arty look for a change.

“Relax, Wesley,” Eastlin says from his vantage point leaning against the wall.

“How can I relax?” I say, gripping the mop of hair over my forehead and giving it another tug. “You relax! There. See how that sounds?”

“You have to keep it together, man,” Tyler remarks. He pans over to Eastlin and zooms in on his face. Eastlin’s eyes are closed.

“Maddie’s sure they got the right one?” I ask.

“Mmm-hmmm,” Eastlin says.

A whole group of kids on a band trip or something all descend on us en masse. They’re like fourteen or fifteen, all new breasts and big teeth and big feet, and they’re in identical lime-green Tshirts. On the back of the Tshirts I see that they’re from Madison, and they go to my rival high school. They whoop and holler, shoving one another like puppies as they mass at the door to the outdoor deck, and then go spurting through it with a squeal. I shudder as I watch them go. God. All I want in the world is to get into NYU.

Well. Not all. Perhaps not even most, anymore.

“Ugh.” Eastlin rolls his eyes. “Kids.”

Eastlin is twenty.

“They’re sure, though? Annie recognized it?” I press. When we were looking at them on the internet, they basically all looked the same to me. Different colors and whatever, but that’s it. What if they got the wrong one?

“Dude,” Tyler says, swinging the camera back around to my face. “They got it.”

I can’t hold still. I wander over to the window by where Eastlin’s leaning and press my forehead to the glass. I have never felt more anxious in my entire life. I’m so anxious there’s a good chance I’m going to explode, and then Eastlin and Tyler will have to clean my intestines off this plate-glass window.

“She said they were in a cab,” Eastlin says. “It should just be a couple more minutes.”

“Why don’t you go out and have a look?” Tyler says. “You haven’t been here yet, right?”