The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

Grinning, she jostles my shoulder. “It’s a park!” she exclaims.

“Yeah,” I say, trying to be nonchalant. “It’s okay, I guess. It’s not Central Park, though.”

She’s so excited she bounces up on the balls of her feet. “The Central Park! They really built it?”

I laugh, baffled. “Well, yeah.”

On impulse she throws her arms around my neck and breathes, “Can we go see it?” into my ear.

“Sure!” I say, surprised. “Of course we can. Whatever you want.”

She smiles happily to herself, a dreamy look of pleasure on her face. Then, newly resolved, she turns to me and says, “Library first. Then park.”

“You’re the boss, boss.” I grin at her.

“I’m the boss,” she repeats, and mock-punches me on the arm.

What a weird girl. She makes being a Rip van Winkle seem almost fun.

We make our way over to the NYU library, which squats on the corner of Washington Square Park like a supervising bulldog. I heard that they put a pattern on the library floor that looks like spikes coming up at you if you look down on it from too high up, to discourage kids from leaping to their deaths down the central atrium. Pretty dark, if you ask me. But I don’t know if it’s true.

I pull out my summer school ID and prepare to swipe it to get through the turnstile, when I realize that we might have a problem.

“Um,” I say, waylaying Annie with a hand on her arm. “Wait a second.”

“What?” she asks me, eyes wide.

When we first stepped inside she gawked so hard at how big the building was that her mouth actually fell open. It was pretty cute. I didn’t realize people actually did that, when they were surprised.

“I’m not sure how we’re going to get you in,” I say in a low voice, so the security guard won’t hear me.

“What do you mean, get me in? I’ll walk.” She gestures with a sweep of her hand at the open atrium, which is crowded with people coming and going, the beeps and swipes of bags being checked and book spines being run over demagnetizing strips.

“No,” I say. “You have to have an ID.”

“A what?” She looks confused.

“An ID. You know, like a driver’s license, but for school.”

“Like a . . . Wes, what are you talking about?” She folds her arms and stares impatiently at me.

Her mole looks really cute when she’s impatient. Okay. So they don’t have driver’s licenses in the olden days.

“Look,” I say, producing my NYU student ID. I hate the picture of me on this, my hair is sticking up and my nose is humongous. I’m grinning so big that I look about fifteen years old. “See? It’s got a picture of me and my name and everything. And there’s a magnetic strip on the back, so they know it’s not fake. It’s an ID. You have to have ID for everything here.”

She looks wonderingly at the card, brushing a fingertip over the photograph.

“Why, it’s a perfect likeness of you,” she breathes. “How extraordinary! I’ve seen credible portrait miniatures, but they were never so like.”

“Annie!” I’m getting impatient. I don’t have time for her to be all time-traveler about it. It looks pretty suspicious, us loitering out here. They’ll call security if we don’t act normal.

“And you say I have to have one of these, or they won’t let me in? Are you sure?” she asks. But now she’s looking at me with an impish expression on her face. A wrinkle forms on the bridge of her nose.

“Yeah. See?” I gesture to the signage over by the security desk, which is very clear about ID and library access and bag searches and all that stuff. Maybe I’m getting paranoid, but I’m pretty sure the guard is staring at us. He’s definitely closed his magazine, anyway.

Annie pauses, staring down the security desk and chewing her lower lip.

Then she marches straight over to the security guard.

“You think they won’t let me in?” she calls back to me, taunting. Her voice echoes in the library vestibule.