The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

I must look more perturbed than I even realize, because all at once his gray eyes darken, and he looks around us quickly as though we’re being watched. My scalp tightens with sudden anxiety. I think fleetingly of the contract signed in Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. Typical, of a young girl being dramatic, I chastise myself.

“Seriously. Is everything okay?” he whispers in my ear.

I stare at him, baffled by this question. That word again.

“Is . . . everything . . . okay.” I try out the words for myself. “Oh. Kay.”

He presses himself nearer to me, and his skin feels warm next to mine. It feels good, having him here with me. Safe.

“Is it?” he insists. He puts an arm around my shoulder and gives me a squeeze, the kind of squeeze that would be too familiar if it were from almost anyone else. “You can trust me. It’s okay.”

I don’t know why, but this boy feels wonderfully necessary. He looks at me with such soft attention, and when he leans in close to me, I don’t worry so much about the fog. I don’t feel so lost. I don’t even care if he’s imaginary.

A smile spreads across my face and I say, “It caps the climax. Got any ink?”

Now it’s his turn to look confused. My figment doesn’t use idioms, apparently. It could be that my figment isn’t very bright. “Um. What?”

“Ink?” I wave the stripped quill at him. “You want me to sign it, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but . . . ,” he stammers, as if he doesn’t know how to answer my incredibly obvious question.

“Annatje?” I almost hear someone call from inside the house. The faint sound, fainter than a leaf falling on the ground, sends a chill across the back of my neck, down my spine, all the way to my slippers on the paving stones.

I sit stock-still, my ears straining to decipher if I really heard it, or if it’s another game my mind is playing with itself.

“Are you—” Wes starts to say, but I can’t have him talking to me until I discover if I heard my name. I make a hushing sound and silence him with my fingertips against his lips. They are warm and soft.

“Shhh,” I whisper. Obediently he stops, eyebrows raised with curiosity.

My ears ring with the strain of listening through the silence, and I stare hard at Ed’s bedroom window upstairs.

The window sash is open, and the corner of a gauzy curtain drifts over the lip of the window and waves slowly in the air like a hand.

Inside the house, I hear the faintest sounds of movement. Footsteps, or the scraping of a chair across the floor. It’s not even a sound, exactly, more a vibration. I can tell that they’re inside. They’re inside!

And then I hear it again.

“Annatje?” my mother clearly calls. I hear her through Ed’s window, as though she’s looking for me upstairs.

I leap to my feet.

“I’m sorry,” I stammer to my disappointed-looking figment. His eyebrows have risen higher and are meeting in a sorry little point above his nose. “I’m sorry, Wes, I’ve got to go. That’s my mother.”

“Your—what?” He glances quickly at the fa?ade of my town house with a look of utter confusion.

I’m already at the front door. It’s as real and solid and wooden as ever it was. There’s even a chip in the black paint left by the knifepoint, showing the raw wood underneath. But the note has disappeared. I have my hand on the knob, and it’s unlocked, and I have one foot on the doorsill.

Wes has scrambled to his feet.

“My mother,” I explain, impatient. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

“But—” Wes’s voice breaks, and he reaches a hand toward me. “Hey. Listen. I’m sorry, look, I know you don’t know me, but I really need your help with this.”

I pause, the door open, and it seems impossible that I can still be talking to him when I have to go inside right now and see my mother.

“Help?” I say.

“Annatje!” my mother shouts down the curve of the staircase, sharper and more urgently. “I need you right now!”

I glance up to where she’ll appear on the stair any minute. It’s clear something is wrong. It must be the letter. Papa’s read the letter.

“Please?” wheedles my figment.