The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

Wes?

There’s someone in the room. I’m sure of it. I don’t know why I’m sure of it, because I don’t think there was a noise, but I’m sure of it. I listen. I hear breathing, and I tell myself Eastlin must have come back from the shower and I didn’t hear him come in, and now he’s here, he’s asleep across the dorm room from me, we’re in the NYU dorm on Waverly Place and I’m in summer school and we’re all safe, and everything is okay, and there’s no reason for me to be awake, except I am. Aren’t I?

I listen harder.

I’m not awake. I must still be dreaming. I’m dreaming there’s someone with me, and I’m supposed to do something. There’s something I haven’t done. I don’t remember what. Most? No. Workshop’s not ’til next week. Tyler? No. I don’t remember. What am I supposed to be doing?


Wes.

I want to explain that I’m sorry I don’t remember what I was supposed to do, but I can’t see the people I have to explain to. I can’t see who’s talking to me. Someone is talking to me.


Wes.

Someone is saying my name. Someone wants something. It’s not my dad. Is it? No, I’m not at home, I’m not in Madison, I’m in summer school. I’m in New York. I’m scowling, the sheets twisted around my legs. I can feel the pillow under my head. I’m soaked through with sweat, and my heart is beating very fast.

“What?” I say, or think I say, but I don’t hear anything. I can feel someone close to me. Someone is breathing close to me.

Maddie is close to me.

No, Maddie left.

I bicycle my feet, kicking the sheets away.

“Wes!”

I don’t know where the sound is coming from, if it’s inside my dream or if I can really hear it, but there’s someone in the room with me and I’m dreaming there’s someone in the room with me and . . .

“Wes!”

“Arrrrgh!” I cry, muffled, my mouth full of pillow. I’m struggling in the sheets, fighting against something. I’m gasping for breath, but the pillow is there and I can’t breathe and I try to reach up and pull it away.

Hands are on my shoulders, soft hands on my shoulders.

“WES, WAKE UP!”

Hands are shaking my shoulders, cold hands, and they’re shaking me. They’re really shaking me. They’re really shaking me because there’s a girl sitting on the edge of my bed with her hands on my shoulders, and she’s screaming, “WES, WAKE UP!”

My eyes fly open, and I flail and twist out of her grip, scrambling back against the headboard, pillows and sheets spilling to the floor. My heart is thudding in my ears, and I can’t hear anything but the rushing blood pumping under my skin.

“You’re . . . you’re . . .” I’m panting, my eyes dart left and right. It’s still night. It’s dark in my dorm room and I can just see the girl silhouetted against the blue light of my bedroom window.

“Shhhhh!” she shushes me, a finger pressed to her lips. Her bottomless black eyes plead with mine.

“But . . . how did you . . . ,” I sputter.

The figure sitting on my bed reaches a hand forward for me, reaches for me, and she’s in a frayed burgundy dress and I’m terrified. Instinctively I withdraw from her hand as it reaches for me in the dark.

“Wes,” she says, and her mouth is moving this time, because this is real. This is really happening.

My breath is coming fast, and I gather the covers up to my bare chest as if that will keep me safe. But I’m awake now, I’m definitely awake, in the moonlit cinder-block dorm room I can see my desk, and Eastlin’s desk, and a lumpen shape of Eastlin asleep in his bunk across the room from mine, and the blue window shade growing pale with early morning light, and the mechanical hiss of the air conditioner, and there, at the foot of my bed, tiny in a lace-trimmed dress with heavy sleeves gathered at her elbows and a perfect crimson bow nestled between the swell of her breasts, sits Annie.