The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

I clear my throat, trying to come up with something good to say. Do I acknowledge what just happened? It’d be cooler not to, right? God. I’m always so nervous, making the first move. And girls always want you to make the first move. The first time I kissed my ex-girlfriend, at this party in a friend’s basement, I was so nervous I almost threw up.

A long minute wears by while we wait for our drinks with both of us pretending we weren’t just making out in a bar. Tyler and the girl from the other bar crush in next to us, trying to flag the bartender down, both of them looking sidelong at Maddie and me and grinning. Finally, after what feels like an hour, our drinks plonk down in front of us. Maddie picks up hers and turns her shoulder to me, taking a slow sip and looking across the bar into the middle distance.

“Oh,” I say, realizing what’s going on, and I reach into my jeans pocket to fish out my wallet. “How much?” I ask the bartender.

“Twenty-two,” he shouts.

“Christ,” I mutter, and leave some wrinkled bills on the bar.

“Dude!” Tyler shouts, thrusting into the awkward dead space between Maddie and me. All I can think about is Maddie’s skin, which is a relief because until five minutes ago all I could think about was Annie. But now I have to come up with a way to get rid of Tyler. “Did he tell you about workshop?”

Maddie eyes Tyler through her cat-eye glasses and takes a long sip of her wine.

“He’s a freaking genius!” Tyler continues, and the girl he’s with says yeah, which is weird, given that she wasn’t there, but whatever.

“A genius, huh?” Maddie smiles at me from behind her wineglass.

I shrug in what I hope is a nonchalant way. I keep my gaze on her. I want her to feel me, looking.

“He didn’t tell you?” Tyler’s gotten served a beer, and the girl is holding a Cosmo. “Krauss is already telling everyone his film is powerful. Next week, man. Just you wait.”

“Tyler. Come on. Jesus,” I grumble.

Maddie’s watching this exchange with a smirk. “I bet she’ll like the footage of me best, though,” she says.

It’s true. The footage of Maddie is going to be the best part of Most. The guy with the Concorde obsession is also pretty awesome. But those few minutes of Maddie, draped in frayed burgundy silk, leaning her head back into ruffles with lidded eyes, under that warm perfect light in Eastlin’s store; that’s the part that makes me forget to breathe.

What I want most, is to be different, she says. I want to make a new now. I don’t want to be a name, or a place, or a story that someone else tells about me. What I want is right here. What I want is right now. That’s why people come here.

Then her eyes open halfway, and she gazes long and hard at my camera. At me. Into me.

What else do you want, Maddie? I ask offscreen.

But instead of answering, she fills her hands with burgundy chiffon and rains it over me and my camera, layer upon layer winding and falling and tangling together until I’m wrapped in so many gauzy layers that none of us can tell where the camera ends and the world begins.





CHAPTER 11


I should go,” Maddie whispers.

I can barely see her, in the dark. She’s just a silhouette in the blue shadows of my dorm room on Waverly Place, her hair falling over her shoulders, propping her weight on one arm as she gazes down at me. My hand plays over her shoulder, tracing the laurel leaf tattoo up and down the side of her neck.

“Did that hurt?” I ask, brushing my fingertip along her skin. I can’t imagine needles digging color into that perfect, kitten-soft skin.

“Come on,” she says, brushing my hand away. “Give me my shirt.”

I don’t actually know what happened to her shirt. I remember peeling it off her shortly after we fell in the door, but that was a while ago. We’ve been tangled together on my twin dorm mattress for a couple of hours, exploring first tentatively, almost politely. Lips meeting, then tongues, and then pressing together, hunting for each other in the dark. Her breath gasping in my ear as my hands moved over her jeans, thinking about undoing the button, not having the nerve. At one point she bit my lip, but I’m pretty sure it was an accident.