The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

I lean my head down until my forehead meets hers. Her skin is cool against mine. I rest my hands on her shoulders to reassure myself that she’s really there. She feels so small. Like she’s made of paper.

“Listen, I don’t care. It’s fine. Do whatever you want. I’ll help you look for your thing that you lost. Just don’t leave me like that again,” I whisper. “Please.”

My breath stirs the fine curls over her ears. I wait for what I want to hear, which is her promising me that she won’t. But she doesn’t say anything. She just stands there, pressing her forehead to mine.

Finally I open my eyes and stare hard into hers.

“Please? I hate it. You disappearing on me like that,” I confess before I’ve really thought through whether I want to tell her this or not. Once the words are out there and I can’t take them back, I’m sick with fear.

“I’ll try,” she says. “I will. But . . .”

“But what?” I have to swallow what feels like a lump of rat poison, to get that last word out.

“But I’m a Rip van Winkle,” she whispers.

I pull away so she can’t see the pain in my face.

“I don’t know what that even means,” I choke. “What are you even talking about?”

I can’t look at her. I’m too hurt. But I feel slim fingers worm their way into my fist, and she takes my hand.

“I’ll try to explain. Come with me.”

She pulls on my hand, and at first I won’t move. But then she pulls again, and I give in and we’re walking together. We’re holding hands, walking, not saying anything. The streets have started to fill up with people going about their days, and a couple of them do a double take when they see my split lip. We walk for several blocks that way, passing other people in the summer street, not hurrying. I start to calm down. I start to feel like maybe we’re making up. If we had a fight, which I feel like we did, but we didn’t, exactly. Which is weird, because with my high school girlfriend, there was never any question about when we were fighting. She was a big screamer. Exactly the opposite of Annie. I’m puzzling this out, trying to tease apart the weird ways I feel when I’m standing next to her, when she leads me around a corner into a tiny Village side street and stops us short. On this overlooked stretch of sidewalk, surrounded on all sides by tidy low brownstones and shady trees, we’re alone.

Annie’s steered me to some kind of disused community garden. It looks weedy and overgrown. The gate is locked with a chain and padlock.

She’s acting kind of nervous. I’m worried, but I’m ashamed to realize that I’m sort of excited, too. She’s turning to me, for help. She needs me.

“What’s this?” I ask, gesturing to the garden with my chin. I’ve steeled myself. I’m ready for the truth.

Annie’s looking everywhere but at me—at her shoes, at the door across the street, at a squirrel watching the action from one of the shade trees overhead.

“Look inside,” she says.

Obediently I peer through the bars and into the dark recesses of the garden. I don’t see anything, though. Some old statues, but mostly it’s all overgrown with weeds.

“What?” I ask. “I don’t see anything.”

Annie rocks on her feet, anxiety crackling off her like static.

“You can’t see it?”

I try again, but it would help if she, like, gave me a hint.

“Why don’t you just tell me?” I suggest. The idea is knocking again at the back of my head, but I’m not listening to it.

With a sniff of frustration, Annie points a slender arm through the gate, steering my gaze. “It’s right there! In the back. Don’t make me read it to you.”

“Read what?”

Annie stamps her foot, irritation with me boiling over, though I’m at a loss to figure out why she’s the one who’s angry now, instead of me.

“I’m a Rip van Winkle, Wes!” she almost shouts, taking my T-shirt in her fists and bunching it up with insistence. “Do you understand? What do Rip van Winkles do?”

“How should I know?” I look at her with alarm.

“What do they do?” She’s almost shaking me.