The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen

by Katherine Howe

  My mouth opens and closes, fishlike, until I realize that I’m not actually saying anything, and I shut it.

  “I’ve found,” she says slowly, “that I can’t think about it too closely. I can’t . . .” She trails off. Then she tries again. “If you look too closely, you’ll see too much.”

  “What do you mean, look too closely?” I whisper.

  She watches me out of the corner of her eye. We’re both sitting in dappled summer shade, and there’s a pool of sunlight splashed on the sidewalk between us.

  “Are you sure you want to know?” she asks me.

  I don’t know what I’m supposed to be sure of. But I say yes, anyway.

  She lifts a hand from where it’s resting on her knee. Slowly, deliberately, she moves her hand from the dappled shade into the hot pool of sunlight.

  When her fingertip reaches the light, I see something begin to change. The very tip of her finger blackens with soot. When her whole hand is in the light, the nails all turn black, the skin scorched and stained. Her arm moves deeper into the sunlight, dark mottling traveling up her skin, and when the lacy edge of sleeve at her elbow reaches the light, I see clearly that it’s tattered. Rotting.

  I have to turn my head away and swallow a bubble of nausea. It’s too much. I can’t think about it. I can’t look.

  Without a word she withdraws her arm and rests her hand back on her knee. In the dappled shade, her skin is buttermilk perfect. Her dress looks old, antique, even, it’s true—Eastlin was right! Well, sort of right—but not destroyed. Not . . . rotting.

  “The sun does that?” I say, horrified.

  “No,” she says, uncertainly. “Not exactly. It’s more the thinking about it that does it. Looking closely. I just used the sunbeam because it’s easier to see.”

  We sit side by side, chewing over this idea. A woman in leggings and huge sunglasses strides past, her heels clacking loudly on the sidewalk. She doesn’t say anything to us, but chucks some quarters onto the sidewalk between my sneakers without a backward glance. Confused, I watch her go. Then I hang my head and start picking the quarters up, one at a time. My head buzzes with questions. Like, what is she going to do? How does she move around? What are the rules, for this kind of thing? How long will she be here? They all crowd together in my mouth, each vying to come out first, but then I realize that I’m taking too long to say something, and I should probably say something. She needs me to say something.

  “Does it hurt?” I finally ask Annie in a whisper.

  Her eye rolls to its corner and stares at me.

  “Sometimes,” she says.

  “But . . . how did it happen?” I ask.

  Did she know? Did she feel it? What’s she been doing, between then and now?

  “I have no idea,” she says, her voice so quiet it almost doesn’t exist.

  “So when you vanish . . . ,” I begin, my mind trying to keep up with the sudden fact of the impossible. But I don’t know how to finish the thought.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I’ve been having trouble with time lately. With knowing where I am.”

  She faces me and puts her hand on my arm. I have to force myself not to flinch away from her touch, but her hand feels like it always does—cool, real, flesh over delicate bone. Just to be on the safe side, I don’t look at it. Instead I look into her black eyes.

  “Will you help me?” she asks.

  “But I don’t know what to do,” I confess.

  I’m never ready for anything.

  I wish I did know.

  I wish I were filming this, right now.

  “I have to figure out what happened,” she says.

  I stare at her long and hard.

  “What’ll happen then? If we figure it out, I mean,” I ask.

  She reaches over and places her fingertips on my mouth, in that way that she has. Her touch makes my lips feel warm and prickly.

  “Shhh,” she says. “I can’t think about that now. I just know that I can’t solve this by myself. And I have no one else to ask. No one else sees me like you can.”

  I love having her fingers on my mouth. It makes me want to keep talking, so she’ll put them there again.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

  As I say it, I hope that I’m telling her the truth.

  • • •

  So she’s a . . . Rip van Winkle.

  Okay. Maybe.

  I eye her as we walk together through the Village, and it’s actually sort of fun, watching her look at everything. If it’s true, she’s never been in a car. That’s crazy. Does she even know how big the city is? How does she get from place to place? Right now she’s just walking like a normal person. But that’s not how she got into my room. She must have gotten in some other way. Can she walk through walls? Can she even control where she goes?

  What is she thinking about?

  What happens when she disappears?

  Is she stuck like this forever?

  I have this vague plan that maybe we should go to the library, though the truth is, I’m not a big library guy, so I’m not really sure what we’d accomplish there. But when I suggested it, she brightened up, said, “The Society’s still here?”—whatever that means—and so off we went. It made me feel good, that I could come up with a plan. As long as I don’t let on that I’m making this up as I go.

  Should I be explaining everything to her? Like, this is what an airplane is and stuff? No. Maybe she doesn’t want to know. She’ll ask, if she wants to know.

  God, I wish I were filming this right now.

  My phone vibrates in the pocket of my shorts, and I pull it out to take a look. It’s a text from Tyler, saying he’ll look at my camera if I want him to, and he’s around after twelve. I text back that I’m heading to campus, and does he want to get coffee?

  Annie watches my thumbs move with a curious smile.

  “What’s that?” she asks.

  “What, my phone?” I say, but calling it a phone doesn’t really sum it up.

  “Your . . . phone?” She cranes her neck to look at the screen.

  “Yeah. You know. Like a telephone. Only small. And no wires.”

  Annie’s looking at me with a smile of complete amusement, and I’m starting to figure out that I maybe should have paid more attention in AP US history. They had telephones back then, didn’t they? One look at Annie trying to keep herself from cracking up tells me that of course they didn’t.

  “It’s like a tool,” I try again. “You can talk to people, or you can send messages. Like letters, I guess. You can read newspapers, listen to music.”

  “Read? Like a penny paper?” she asks me.

  “Um. I guess?” I say. “It’s cool. You wanna see?”

  I hold it out so she can see the face of my phone.

  “It’s cracked,” she says.

  “Yeah. I dropped it in the subway,” I say, and then immediately wonder if I need to explain what a subway is. God, how old are subways? I don’t even know.

  She peers at it, and then glances up at me.

  “How do I make it work?” she asks.

  “You just swipe it. Like this.” I demonstrate, scrolling through several texts from Tyler, and then accidentally swiping to my text exchange with Maddie. My ears flush pink, and I quickly swipe back to Tyler, but I don’t think Annie noticed.

  “Here,” I say. “You try.”

  She doesn’t take the phone from me, but places her finger on the screen, eyes alight with curiosity. She swipes. She swipes again. Nothing happens.

  “Am I doing it wrong?” she asks me.

  “Um . . .” I watch her try again, but the screen doesn’t change.

  Annie tries a few more times, beginning to look crestfallen. When she touches it, the screen doesn’t respond. It dawns on me
that the phone doesn’t know that she’s there. It looks like she’s here, in the world, standing next to me. But she’s not really here.

  “Don’t worry. Sometimes they just don’t work,” I say, trying to make it sound like it’s not a big deal. I don’t want her feelings to get hurt. I shove the phone back in my pocket and take her gently by the elbow, leading her across the street past a row of idling taxicabs and black cars.

  “My sister, Beattie, loves letters,” she remarks, gazing off into the distance.

  “Beattie?” I ask.

  “Beatrice,” she says. “She’s twelve. When she was little I used to post letters to her pretending to be Dietrich Knickerbocker, telling her stories of when Manhattan Island was enchanted. Mermaids in the Collect Pond. Indian spirits along the riverbank. Mysterious ships sailing up the Hudson on dead calm days with no wind. She loved them.”

  We’re strolling up LaGuardia Place, heading for Washington Square Park. Annie watches the face of each passerby, peering at them with interest. Old women, babies, teenagers, it doesn’t matter. She looks closely at everyone, and I can tell that she’s filing them away, in her mind. Annie remembers things. She’s a watcher. Like me.

  I bet Annie would really love movies.

  “Why’d you stop?” I ask. “Writing imaginary letters for your sister.”

  Annie’s eyes turn sad, and she says, “Mother made me. Said Manhattan was no place for enchantment.” She stops and looks at me. “Isn’t that an awful thing to say? I always hated her for saying that.”

  I’m surprised. Annie doesn’t seem like the kind of person to use the word hate very often. I’m on the point of asking her more, but we’ve reach the southern edge of the park, and she stops up short, grasping my arm.

  “Oh!” she gasps, a huge smile breaking over her face. “Look at it!”

  “What?”

  I follow her gaze, trying to see what the big deal is. It’s just a park. I mainly think of it as the place where they shot Billy Crystal leaving Meg Ryan for the first time in When Harry Met Sally . . . It was right by that big arch.

  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.

  “What are you doing?” I shout-whisper, flapping a hand at hip level to try to beckon her back.

  Instead she gives me a lopsided smile, plants her hands on the guard’s desk, and leans into his face.

  “Hey!” she shouts at him. “You really won’t let me in?”

  The guard doesn’t respond. He’s still looking at me, though. He moves his magazine slowly to the side, and folds his hands.

  “Annie,” I say, getting desperate. “Seriously, stop it!”

  She waves her hands in the guard’s face, inches from his nose. Then she turns back and smiles at me. I’m about to pass out from anxiety as she climbs up onto the guard’s desk on her hands and knees.

  “Hey, YOU IN THE HAT,” she shouts right up next to the guard’s ear. “I’M GOING INTO THE LIBRARY, ALL RIGHT?”

  The guard’s face remains impassive as he rolls a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. With a last long glance at me, he resettles himself in his seat and picks up his magazine. He turns a page with disinterest.

  I stifle a laugh of disbelief.

  “ALL RIGHT THEN!” she hollers, jumping up and down in front of him. “I’m going in! Here I come! No ID! Just into the library, happy as you please!”

  Annie vaults over the turnstile at a run, lands on both feet, dashes into the center of the atrium and turns a completely awkward cartwheel, flashing everyone with old-timey long white bloomers. I can’t help myself, and crack up, burying my laughter under my fists. The guard glares at me.

  Annie whoops in triumph and yells, “Come on, hurry up!”

  She flops to the floor and sprawls on her back in the atrium, lying splayed like a starfish across the tile pattern that’s supposed to look like giant spike
s. People keep walking past her, stepping right over her, and nobody so much as looks twice.

  I try to compose myself, swipe through the turnstile with a polite machine beep, show the guard the inside of my camera bag, and walk over to where Annie is lying, out of breath on the atrium floor, grinning up at me.

  CHAPTER 5

  How did you know he couldn’t see you?” I whisper as we meander through the library.

  She chuckles, skipping alongside me. How can she be so happy? She’s . . . She’s . . .

  I can’t bring myself to say it, even inside my own head, where nobody can hear me. Shouldn’t she be sad? Or scary? Why am I not scared of her? Okay, sometimes I’m sort of scared of her. But not for the usual reasons.

  She glances up at me from under her eyelashes, and her eyes glitter.

  “Lucky guess?” she suggests.

  I stop and fold my arms. “Come on,” I insist. “How’d you know?”

  She laughs, and her laughter sends a shiver of pleasure up to the roots of my hair. Whenever she laughs, I find myself staring at her mouth. Her little bow-shaped mouth, with that mole.

  Can you kiss people who are . . . who are . . .

  Who are Rip van Winkles?

  The moment the thought blooms in my mind I try to crush it. That’s insane. Right? It couldn’t be any more insane. For one thing, she’s older than my gran. Actually, she’s way older than Gran. I cast a quick glance over at her, at the creamy line of her collarbone where it disappears behind velvet ribbon at her shoulder. Then I immediately stare up at the ceiling.

  And besides. What about Maddie, who I’m supposed to be seeing later? It’s not like she’s my girlfriend or anything, but even so. She was just in my room, last night. I flash to a memory of the stark outline of her black lace bra against pale skin in the night shadows of my dorm room. The thought makes me stare even harder at the ceiling.

  “For the most part,” Annie is saying, “I’m pretty sure nobody can. Not here, anyway.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense,” I insist. “I can see you!”

  She looks at me strangely.

  “So far, you’re the only one,” she says, her voice quiet.