The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

“What?” My stomach lurches with disgust as I watch her fold the pizza half in thirds. She pulls out a couple of paper napkins from her cutoff pocket, does a half-assed job of wrapping it, and stuffs the pizza into the top of the grocery bag.

“They probably just put this out. It’s totally fresh!” She grins happily at me. Then she plucks at my T-shirt and says, “Come on.”

We walk all Lawrence of Arabia style through the sweltering city, the stench of day-old pineapple pizza filling my nostrils. After all the pizza I’d already eaten that morning, I’m struggling not to retch. Why would she want pizza someone had thrown away? A sour belch rises in my chest and I swallow it back. The effort makes sweat bead on my forehead.

“Where are we going?” I ask after another avenue passes and we’re still walking east. I didn’t realize the island went this far east. We’ve passed the numbered avenues and are well into letters.

“Home. Ish. I’ve got to drop this stuff off, and then you can buy me a thank-you breakfast.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Thank you, Maddie is what you meant to say,” she corrects me in a singsong voice.

“Um . . . ,” I start to say again, because that is absolutely the way I usually am, with girls, when Maddie finally stops up short outside a decrepit brownstone on Avenue D, across from a huge housing project. The building is condemned, with a red rectangle with a white X sign in it plastered up to show that it’s going to be torn down. The first floor has bars on all the windows, with plywood where the glass should be, and the front door is made of metal. It looks locked down tight. There’s an orange sheriff department eviction notice stuck to the door.

She marches up the front steps and eases the door open with an elbow. Turns out it’s not locked at all. The sheriff department seal is a fake.

“Honey!” she calls into the house. “I’m home!”

I hesitate on the stoop, clutching Maddie’s scavenged groceries to my chest. I’m sweating, both from the heat, and from nerves. Am I really going to follow this girl into an abandoned house? Who knows what’s in there. Mice. Rats. Homeless people. Slowly it occurs to me that if she’s squatting, that means Maddie’s probably homeless. Homeless people make me nervous, which is the kind of thing it’s not cool to admit, so I usually don’t, but it’s true. Anyway, I should be getting back. I’ve got to get my workshop film done for next week. And I’m exhausted and freaked out and crushed from Annie’s ditching me for no reason and all I really want to do is sleep.

I look left. I look right. Nothing is amiss. A black kid pedals up the street on a low-rider bicycle, his knees rising and falling, one hand relaxed on the handlebars. Merengue plays on a radio a block away. A rush of miserable anger floods my chest as I think about Annie leaving me on the stoop. I don’t understand why she didn’t come back. What’s wrong with me? I’m nice! Too nice, maybe. Letting people push me around. Letting people keep me waiting. Well, to hell with that.

Resolved, I set my jaw and march up the stairs and inside the abandoned building, bringing the bag of scavenged food with me.





CHAPTER 8