The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen Read Free

the girl’s voice rises.
    â€œI’ll take care of it,” I say to Tyler.
    â€œNo, no,” the psychic backpedals. “That’s not what I meant.”
    â€œYou can trust Madame Blavatsky, sweetie.” One of the mom types tries to soothe the girl with the baby. “But you should let her get started.”
    The weird crawling sensation spreads across my neck again, butI can’t rub it away because I’m busy climbing back around the periphery of the room to reach the girl with the satin bow. She’s just standing there, not talking to anyone, looking down at her hands. My heart is tripping along so fast, I’m having trouble catching my breath. I don’t want to make her feel weird or anything. I also kind of hate talking to people. But more than that, she’s . . .
    â€œYes, we really can’t wait any longer,” the woman in the turban says. “Spirits only have limited time, once summoned, to resolve their unfinished business. If we don’t act quickly, we risk damning them to an eternity in the in-between.”
    The medium’s starting to get pissed off. I’m not positive, but I think Tyler’s paid her for letting us film. Which we’re not supposed to do for workshop, but whatever. She sounds really annoyed. I don’t blame her.
I’m
kind of annoyed. At Tyler, mostly, for dragging me along to do sound when I could be working on my own film.
Should
be working on my own film, especially considering how much is riding on it. In fact, all I want is to be working on my own film. But I find myself pulled into other people’s stuff a lot. I get caught up.
    â€œWhat do you mean, limited?” asks the guy in the Rangers jersey. “Like, they on the clock or something?”
    Tyler thinks he’s going to be the next Matthew Barney. He’s doing an experimental film of people in what he calls “transcendental states,” using all different film stock and filters and weird editing tricks that he’s refused to reveal to me. I don’t think we’re going to see much in the way of transcendental states in a palm reader shop upstairs from an East Village pizzeria. But we already spent the afternoon with the AX1 filming drummers in Washington Square Park. I think he’s running out of ideas.
    â€œOr something,” the medium says, and when she says it, a sickening chill moves down my spine.
    The girl with the satin bow on her dress is standing on the opposite side of the room from the camera, not far from where I stashed the mike, looking nervous, like she’s doing her best to blend into the wall. She’s awkwardly close to the edge of the table. Nobody seems to notice her, a fact that causes my ears to buzz.
    Now that I’ve seen her, I feel like she can never be unseen. She looks . . . I suck at describing people, and
beautiful
feels especially pathetic. But the truth is, I don’t understand how I haven’t been staring at her the whole time we’ve been here. As I edge nearer, my blood moves faster in my veins and I swallow, a fresh trickle of sweat making its way down my rib cage. I can feel her getting closer. Like I can sense where she is even when I can’t see her. She’s not paying any attention to me, her head half turned away, looking around at the walls with interest.
    The girl is so self-contained, so aloof from all of us, that she seems untouchable. Watching her ignore my approach, I wonder how you become someone that other people make room for, whether they know it or not.
    She’s wearing one of those intense deconstructed dresses they sell in SoHo. My roommate, Eastlin, is studying fashion design, and he’s got a sweet internship in an atelier for the summer. He took me to the store where he works one time and showed me this piece of clothing, which he said was a dress, which was dishwater-gray and frayed around the edges, covered in hooks and eyes and