The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

It certainly feels like a real elbow. I look at him warily. I’m not sure if I want him to be real or not. There’s something disconcerting, about being so at ease with a boy I’ve just met. But then, if he is real, perhaps he can help me sort out what’s going on. He doesn’t seem troubled by the fog in the slightest. Fog does happen, from time to time. And it can be very disorienting. Ships dash themselves on rocks all the time, when they get lost in the fog. What if nothing is wrong with me at all? What if I’m experiencing nothing more odious than the strange intersection of weather and Madeira after a night’s revels?

A slender thread of relief unwinds inside me, as if he’d found the loose end and is pulling to unravel an ugly shawl in my soul. I laugh at the pleasure of it, and poke him in the ribs in return.

“So how did you find me?” I want to know. “Wes.”

I certainly haven’t heard his name before. It sounds strange to me, or made up, but then a lot of the boys and girls in other neighborhoods have names that sound strange to someone whose family was English or Dutch. I’d never heard the name Herschel before, either.

“It wasn’t easy,” he says, leaning in as if to draw me into a conspiracy. “Given that I don’t know your name.”

Oh, figment. You think you are so clever.

“Wes,” I repeat, to let him know that I see through his transparent ruse. “Is that a nickname?”

“Maybe,” he replies, and waggles his eyebrows like the villain in a play.

I look him full in the face, smiling, not saying anything, letting him know in no uncertain terms that I expect him to tell me his real name before I tell him mine. But he’s waiting, too, and looking back at me just as frankly. A long challenging minute passes with us staring into each other’s eyes. The minute goes on too long, begins to make me nervous, but then we both collapse in laughter.

“So, listen,” he says. “This may sound really weird, but I did have to find you.”

“Weird?” I say, puzzled. I’m not used to hearing that word used so casually. Weird means magical, like the weird sisters in Macbeth.

He doesn’t see why I’m confused, though.

“I mean. It’s not a big deal or anything,” he continues, mollifying me. But his manner of speaking sounds odd, to my ears. I know the words he uses, but they seem wrong somehow.

He produces a funny-looking saddlebag, fastened in a way I haven’t seen. He opens it and roots around inside. After a minute he produces a sheet of notepaper and he attempts to smooth out the creases before handing it to me.

“I just need you to sign this. I’m sorry. I should have done it when I was here before.”

I stare at the paper. It looks something like a bill of sale, not that I’ve ever had to sign one before. It uses the word “whereas” a lot, and talks about rights to “the image, now and in perpetuity, in any manner of storage or retrieval now extant or devised in the future.”

But the words aren’t the strangest part.

The words are typeset.

Papa’s bank contracts are well drawn by his clerks, but they’re never typeset. And the paper is so smooth and white it doesn’t look real.

I have no idea what it means. I look at him quizzically.

“I mean”—his cheeks are burning bright pink, which I find rather charming—“I’m just as glad I didn’t. Remember to get you to sign it, I mean. Before. Because then I had to . . .”

He can’t finish his thought, so caught up is he in staring at me. Herschel wouldn’t like it, seeing another boy stare at me so. I shouldn’t like it, either. But I do. I feel like I glisten when Wes looks at me like that. I wait, not sure what I should do.

“Anyway,” Wes continues in a rush, breaking his gaze and turning back to his saddlebag for escape. “Here.”

He produces a funny little object that’s like one of Mother’s gilt pencils, only not made of wood. It’s not made of metal, either. I weigh it in my hand. It’s light, like a stripped quill, only without any ink. A pen, clearly, but of some kind I haven’t seen.

“Sign?” I say. As if my signing anything would make any difference to anyone. Under the law, I’m not even a person. “But what is it?”