The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen

by Katherine Howe

  What if it takes me nowhere?

  I’m not ready to think about that.

  I draw the cloak tighter. I still can’t believe how real the cloak feels. How scratchy and oily the felt is where it meets my skin.

  I’m mid-muse on the quality of felt when hands clutch my upper arms and I’m hurled against the side of a building. My chin glances across the brick wall, ripping off a strip of skin. I try to scream, but I can’t get my breath. Someone’s hands are on my shoulders, pushing me against the wall, and I’m instantly afraid that all Mother’s warnings about walking alone at night are about to come terribly true.

  “There’s money in my pocket,” I gasp. “You can have it.”

  “We don’t want your money,” a young male voice hisses in my ear.

  I close my eyes. Oh my God. Please. Please don’t.

  But instead of fumbling at my skirts, the hands spin me around, pressing my back against the wall. My eyes are shut tight, my fists balled at my sides, ready to fight and kick if I can.

  “Why were you asking about the Aquatic Display?” another voice barks.

  This is not what I was expecting would happen. I open one eye.

  In the darkness, I recognize the contours of the faces of the two young men who were sitting together in the back of the beer hall.

  “You followed me,” I say.

  “Shut up. Why’d you ask about the display, and then go into that shop?” the one in the skullcap demands. He has a metal pin on his lapel, in the shape of a broken spindle.

  “What?” I’m confused.

  “What do you know about it?” the dark one shouts, flecks of spittle hitting my cheeks.

  I cringe away from him, holding my breath.

  The other one draws so near to me that I can feel hot air from his nostrils along my cheek.

  “What did Herschel tell you?” he whispers.

  Herschel!

  “Nothing!” I cry. “I haven’t seen him!”

  “She’s lying,” the Senegalese boy says. He’s missing a tooth, and his nose has been broken at least twice. It zigzags painfully down his face.

  “I’m not lying,” I say, drawing myself up taller. I lift my bruised chin and stare down my nose at him. “I’ve been looking for him. I went to the store thinking he’d be there, but he wasn’t.”

  The boys exchange a glower. The one holding me by my cloak tightens his grip, knotting his fists together and pressing me harder against the brick wall.

  “You tell us what he told you,” the one in the skullcap mutters, his lips almost touching my ear. “You tell us right now. And you’ll tell us what your father knows, too.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut, and scream, “No! You can’t hurt me! You can’t!”

  I raise my fists and flail at the boys, but instead of hitting flesh, my hands hit nothing.

  CHAPTER 3

  I flop back into the booth, and I can’t tell if I’m hurt or angry. She wasn’t in the ladies room—I checked. And she’s nowhere in the diner. Annie ditched me. And she didn’t even eat anything. Finally I swallow a few bites of her cold bacon, just so it doesn’t go to complete waste, and now I’m just sitting here seething. It’s nine in the morning, and I’m so hurt and confused I could punch a wall.

  I lean my head back on the booth, staring up at the ceiling. Why do I always do this? Why do I let people barge into my life, spreading chaos? I let my mom persuade me to get that mushroom haircut that basically ruined junior year of high school. I let my high school girlfriend convince me we’d stay together after college started. Look how well that went. Barely a month into freshman year and I walk in on her tangled up with some Pike brother. In my room. I let Tyler convince me his project is some big art masterpiece that I should spend all my time on. I let Maddie drag me into abandoned buildings full of psychotic camera-stealing girls. I let Annie bail on me for no reason, all the time, and I never even say anything to her about it. What, do I not have enough chaos of my own to deal with? And now Eastlin thinks Annie’s some kind of thief. Whatever she is, she’s clearly completely messed up.

  I fiddle with the video camera, reviewing the footage I took of Annie during breakfast. My heart contracts, as I watch it. She fades in an out of focus, my lens roving over her mouth, lingering on her mole. Her black eyes blink at me on digital video, red-rimmed and tired. I try a few different things to see what’s wrong with the focus, but I can’t figure it out.

  I pull out my phone to text Tyler and see what he’s doing today. I’m also curious, I admit, to hear how Shuttered Eyes went down with the gallery person. I don’t want to be attracted by the electric snap of Tyler’s imminent success, and yet I am.

  There’s a new text that came in while I was busy being pissed off.

  It’s from Maddie.

  Thanks for last night, it says. You doing anything later?

  Last night. I can’t believe that Maddie was in my room just last night. I feel a sick twinge of guilt as I realize I fell asleep before I could follow up to make sure she got home okay. And I’ve been awake for hours now and haven’t texted her yet.

  I am a huge jerk.

  Hey, I text back. Maybe. What are you doing?

  Is that cold? Maybe that’s too cold. I frown, and then add, I had a lot of fun last night, too.

  Better.

  Irritated, I shove the phone back in my shorts pocket, leave a heap of dollar bills on the table, and pack my camera into its padded bag. The table is cleared before I even have both legs out from the booth—breakfast rush. Basically kicking me out. Whatever. I shove my hands in my pockets and lope, head down, out of the diner to go find Tyler.

  I stop short, though, when I see what’s going on outside.

  It’s Annie. She’s got some kind of cloak on, and her back is pressed to the glass front diner window. She’s flailing her fists at nothing, thrashing her head, her eyes squinched closed, and she’s screaming. People pass her on the sidewalk, but nobody pays her any attention. In her weird frayed dress and cloak thing she probably just looks like a homeless person.

  “Hey!” I shout, rushing up to her and putting my hands on her shoulders. “Whoa, Annie! Hey!”

  I try to get ahold of her, but she’s thrashing so hard that I can’t get a good grip. Her shoulders are bony enough that they twist under my hands like eels. We struggle, and before I know what’s happened, there’s a crack and an eruption of stars rains down in my eyes.

  “Jesus,” I slur, my hands flying to my jaw as I stagger backward. I taste copper on top of bacon grease, and I hock out a glob of metallic spit that lands in a wet red splotch on the pavement. I take my hand away from my jaw and look at my fingertips. They’re red with blood.

  “Oh!” Annie cries. She’s opened her eyes and looks at me with a mixture of terror and concern, like it’s taking her a second to place me.

  “What the hell, Annie?” I shout. Blood is running from my lower lip down my neck.

  “Wes! It’s you!” she cries. She flies over to me and flings her arms around my waist. In a flash of blind anger I peel her off me, pushing her away.

  “Where the hell did you go, huh?” I shout. “What is this?”

  “I’m so sorry,” she says, raising a fingertip to my lip and touching it gently. The contact of her skin with mine makes me shiver despite the heat of the sun. “Did I hurt you? I did, didn’t I. I’m so sorry.”

  Instantly I’m ashamed. Because she did hurt me, only not in the way that she means. “You have to stop doing that,” I say to her, my voice, catching in my throat. “You can’t just bail on me like that!”

  “I didn’t mean to.” Her black eyes plead into mine. There’s an explanation in them, but I can’t see what it is.

  “It’s . . .” I falter. “You didn’t even eat anything.”

  “I know,” she says. The lower rims of her eyes glimmer w
ith moisture.

  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.

  “I don’t know! Bowl?” I sputter.

  She looks desperately into my face, her nostrils flared, and for a fleeting second I’m worried she’s going to hit me on purpose this time.

  But instead she drops my shirt and throws her head back and laughs.

  When she laughs, her whole body shakes, and she opens her mouth so wide, I can see her molars. I grin out of one side of my mouth, watching, unsure what’s going on.

  She wraps her arms around her waist, holding herself until her laughter collapses into a fit of hiccups. “Oh my God”—she wipes a tear from her eyes and smiles at me—“they sleep, Wes. Rip van Winkles sleep.”

  I’m still smiling at her, not sure what’s so funny. Is she trying to tell me she lives on the street? Does she sleep in this alley?

  “Are you saying this is where you . . . sleep?” I ask gently.

  Her smile fades.

  I knew it.

  “Sort of,” she says quietly. “You really can’t see?”

  She’s pointing at a marble slab built into the wall of the overgrown garden. There’s writing on it, but it’s too shady in the park for me to read. I shrug at her, helplessly.

  She rolls her eyes. With a long, resigned sigh she sinks to the sidewalk, leaning her back against the locked garden gate with her knees drawn up. She looks up into the sky. A traffic copter goes chopping by overhead, and her eyebrows rise.

  I sit down next to her. I’ve already made up my mind that if she needs me to smuggle her into my dorm for the last week of summer school, it’s no problem, and Eastlin can just deal with it. I mean, she may not want to share my bunk or whatever, but I guess I can sleep on the floor for a week. I indulge in a brief fantasy of us together in my bunk, her bare feet pressed to mine, talking about movies under the musky breath of the air conditioner.

  “So,” she begins, not looking at me. “Remember how I said I last had my cameo at the Grand Aquatic Display?”

  “Uh-huh,” I say, watching her face.

  “You’ve never heard of that, have you?” she asks the treetops arching over us.

  “No,” I say. It’s not like she has to remind me about parties I wasn’t invited to. I am already well aware of all the parties I’m not invited to.

  “You don’t know anything about it. Not where it was held, what it was for, nothing.”

  I flush. “I already said I didn’t.”

  “So you don’t know when it was,” she presses.

  “No idea,” I say.

  She laughs, but it’s a dry laugh.

  Then she levels her bottomless black eyes at me.

  “It was in October. October twenty-seventh.”

  Huh. That’s a while ago. Seems like if her cameo’s been lost since then, it’s staying lost. “So?” I ask. “It’s been lost for a long time. No big deal. We can still try and find it.”

  “Wes,” she says with a sad smile. “The Grand Aquatic Display, which is the last place where I wore my cameo, and which is the last thing I remember being before I woke up in my parents’ house? It was a huge celebration put on by my father’s company. They’d been planning it for months. The whole city decked out and celebrating, you can’t even imagine how big. How many people. All the fireworks, and the lights. Bunting on every building. Newspapers, the governor, the mayor, Aborigines in breechcloths and paint. It was held the night of October twenty-seventh, 1825. Two nights from now.”

  CHAPTER 4

  I feel like I’m on five-minute tape delay. But there the idea is, it’s back, and it’s burst through a door in my brain and now I see that it’s the truth.

  That’s how she could get into my locked room. She doesn’t need a key.
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  “What?” I ask, struggling to keep up.

  “Asleep,” she says, giving me a meaningful look. Then she glances over her shoulder. “In there. That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

  “You’re serious.”

  I stare at her. Her skin looks translucent in the late morning sun. Flecks of golden light are caught in her hair. I can see her chest rise and fall with her breath, the soft swell of her breasts in that oddly constructed dress she’s wearing. She can’t be. It’s not possible.

  “You mean to tell me you’re a—”

  “Please don’t say it.” She cuts me off.

  “B-b-but—” I sputter.

  “Please.” She stares into the sky again so she doesn’t have to meet my eye. “I’m sorry. I can’t have you saying it.”

  I start to reach over to touch her arm, but something stops me. I realize that I’m afraid of what will happen, when my hand touches her arm. What will she feel like? Is this even real?

  “You’re sure,” I say, wondering if there is any room for this to be some colossal mistake. It’s got to be a mistake. This stuff doesn’t really happen. In movies, okay. It’s standard. A sheet with eyeholes. A rattling chain. Scooby jumping into Shaggy’s arms, yelling, Zoinks! Maybe a girl with her hair in her face climbing in sped-up motion out of a Korean well. But not in real life. In real life, when people die, they’re just . . . They just . . .

  “You don’t think there could be some other explanation? I mean, no offense or anything, but what if you’re just crazy?” It pops out before I can stop myself, and I immediately clap my mouth shut. Oh my God, I have got to learn how not to have verbal diarrhea. But she laughs.

  “I considered that,” she says. “But I’m afraid the carving on the marble slab isn’t.”

  I stare at her dumbly.

  “It’s my name,” she clarifies. “My name’s on the slab.”

  She jerks her thumb over her shoulder to indicate the abandoned park. Which I have just realized isn’t a park at all. With a sickening shudder I consider that she’s in there, right now. She’s in there, yet she’s right here.