Annie

My best friend, Cynthia, met Annie at music camp over the summer. While she was there, she sent me eight letters, two every week about what the cafeteria food was like, how much she wished she played piccolo instead of cello, how much I couldn't possibly understand the agonies of the female mind, and about Annie. While I spent the summer playing solitaire on my laptop and being generally antisocial, Cynthia actually did something. When she came back, her hair was green, like when we were younger and she spent too much time in the pool, only brighter.

I went over to her house while she was unpacking, and lay across her pink bed while she put away stacks of clean underwear and T-shirts.

"I met this total freak..." she began.

"Annie?"

"Yeah. How'd you know? Have you met her?"

"No. You told me about her. You kind of wrote to me a lot, if you hadn't noticed."

Cynthia glared at me.

"She sounds cool," I said.

"Yeah, she is, in a freakish sort of way." Cynthia's such a loving person. "I mean, she wore a mask-- a Snow White mask, or something-- for the first twenty-four hours of camp so that no one would freak out when they saw her. Is that not insane?"

"I guess. Is she really that ugly?"

"No. She's absolutely gorgeous. The girl could be a model."

"Then what's her problem?"

"Some kind of psycho thing. I think she should go talk to a shrink. I didn't want to tell her that while we were there, though. I thought she'd get mad at me, or something. I don't know-- maybe she had a traumatic childhood."

Cynthia wanted to be a psychiatrist. I thought she should stick to charity work.

"Call her and tell her now," I suggested.

"Sure. That'll work." Cynthia could be sarcastic as hell sometimes.

"It will. Just call. I'll talk to her if you want me to."

"No thanks."

She found her cell phone under a pile of jeans, and called Annie-- long distance.

"Hi. Can I talk to Annie please?"

She glared at me while she waited for Annie to come to the phone. I found one of her bras on the bed and threw it at her. It must be a real pain in the neck to have to wear those things. No wonder Cynthia's such a bitch sometimes.

"Hi, Annie. It's Cynthia... yeah, me too... nothing. My bum friend Zack's lying here on my bed being an ass... She says hi, Zack."

"Tell her I say hi back."

"He says hi back... You know, I've kind of been thinking about you a lot recently and, um... yeah, I miss you too... "

Cynthia's such a wuss. "Let me talk to her, ok?"

"Zack wants to talk... She says her voice is too gross."

"Dammit." I lunged at Cynthia and grabbed the phone from her. "Hi, Annie. This is Zack."

Silence.

"Can you just say hello or something? I'm sure your voice is absolutely beautiful... "

Annie kind of giggled at me.

"You have a really sexy laugh," I told her. Flattery will get you everywhere.

"Thanks," said Annie. She had a sexy voice too, but I knew she wouldn't believe me if I told her that.

"You're welcome," I said. "Cynthia's told me lots about you."

"Like what?"

"Like, you're really pretty, and really cool, and she told me that you're the one who threw Dr. Williams' baton back at him when he launched it into the viola section."

I could feel Annie blush, even through the phone.

"You just generally sound like someone I should meet."

"Hmm."

"Where do you live anyway?"

"Martinsville."

That's about an hour and a half from here. "Ok, I'll come visit you some time."

"Don't."

"Why not?"

"Because you'll hate me if you do." She didn't elaborate.

"Why will I hate you?"

"I'm hideous."

I pretended Cynthia hadn't told me anything about Annie's appearance. "What do you mean? Are you, like, a burn victim or something?"

"No. I'm not some kind of freak. I wish I were, 'cause then I could go work for a circus, or something. I'm just normal-hideous, I guess."

It was my turn to play psychiatrist. "What do you think is wrong with the way you look?"

"My face is just-- wrong. And my hair is totally gross, no matter what I do to it." She paused. "And I'm fat."

"No way are you fat. Cynthia would have at least mentioned that. She always makes fun of fat people."

Cynthia gave me another evil look.

"Maybe she changed over the summer. She was pretty nice to me."

"That's 'cause you're not fat and your 'nads aren't on the outside."

Annie giggled again. She had a really nice laugh. I know you can't tell from someone's voice, but Annie just sounded cute. Cynthia looked like she was about to kill me.

"I think Cynthia wants to talk to you again."

"Bye."

"Bye. It was really nice talking to you." I handed the phone back to Cynthia.

Cynthia talked to Annie for another hour. We went outside when it got dark and I chased Cynthia up and down the street, both of us barefoot. Cynthia and Annie kept talking the whole time. Finally we sat down in the grass, Cynthia and I back to back, leaning on each other. They kept talking about people I didn't know, but I laughed every time I heard Annie giggle at something, loudly enough that she could hear me.

Cynthia and I watched movies until 1:00 a.m. which, I'll admit, is a pretty sad thing for people our age to do on a Saturday night. She used to think I was gay because I didn't really mind watching crappy chick flicks with her. I used to kind of have a thing for her, but we're just good friends now. I've never even kissed her, at least not on the lips. I might have given her a kiss on the cheek once or twice, but that's all. Actually, that was as far as I'd ever gotten with any girl.

When we got tired of watching movies, we went back to her room and listened to some music. I lay on her bed while she danced around. I feel like such a bum sometimes.

While Cynthia was dancing, I noticed her address book lying next to the bed. I found Annie's number in it and dug my calculator out of my backpack. I programmed Annie's number in it, labeled as 'A'.

When my mother picked me up the next day, she offered to take Cynthia and me out to a movie, but I told her not to bother, I had a lot of homework to do.

All afternoon I sat in my room, wondering what to say to Annie if I called her. Eventually I gave up planning and I just called her.

The whole time we talked, Annie kept saying how much she loved talking to me, and how much we were alike. It turned out that we listened to the same music, and watched the same movies-- not chick flicks, but decent movies, like Star Wars-- and read the same books, and everything. She asked me if Cynthia and I had a thing going, and seemed surprised when I said no. The truth is, Cynthia thought I'm too much of a loser for her to ever go out with me. I don't have school spirit and I love my computer more than she thinks I should. I didn't want Annie to think I was pitiful, so I told her I didn't date bitches and she laughed.

"Cynthia was always nice to me," she said.

"I'm telling you-- that's just because you're not a guy. I keep waiting for her to announce that she's a lesbian. Did she ever come on to you, or anything?"

"No... I don't think Cynthia would go for ugly fat girls."

I cringed. I really didn't want to have to convince Annie that she was beautiful, especially because I didn't really know, and I couldn't really trust Cynthia as a judge of human beauty, especially female beauty.

"Stop that. I swear, next time you say something about being ugly, I'll go find the keys to my mom's car and drive up there to visit you. Do you have a guest room I could stay in?"

"Don't."

"If you say so."

"I do." She changed the subject. She started talking about shoes, which I didn't expect. For some reason, I always expected her to say something that would absolutely blow my mind.

I think Annie must be brilliant or something, because we talked about absolutely nothing for almost four hours-- until my mom came upstairs to check on how my homework was coming.

I called Annie nearly every day for months. We always had something to talk about, even if it was completely stupid. My parents started making me pay the phone bill, so I had to get a job at WalMart. It would have been a lot easier if we could have just talked online, but her parents had some dumb excuse, like they didn't want her looking at porn. Her parents were generally not too bright. They didn't even notice that thair daughter was practically insane.

I got my license two days after I turned 16. The next weekend, I drove up to Martinsville and found Annie's house. I stood on her front porch for hours, but she wouldn't let me in. I finally gave up and drove back home.

When I called her that night, we both pretended that nothing had happened.

That summer, Cynthia and I stopped talking to each other. She told me that I was way too obsessed with Annie and the I should go talk to a shrink for my own well-being. I guess she didn't want to talk to me because she didn't want to be a psychiatrist any more-- she wanted to be a bum musician. The whole thing kind of bothered me because Cynthia and I had been friends since she decided that I was the only boy who didn't have cooties.

Cynthia and Annie kept writing to each other, and I know they talked about me. That's the one reason I wished I had stayed friends with Cynthia-- so I could have asked her what Annie said about me.

Exactly a year after the first time I talked to her, I tried to see Annie again. This time she let me in, but she was crazy enough to make me wear a blindfold. She told me that she didn't really mind people at school and music camp seeing her, but she didn't want to be seen by anyone she had feelings for. I guess that was Annie's version of a confession of undying love-- at least that's what I took it as. It kind of freaked me out when she said it, too.

I put on the blindfold and went in Annie's house. All of the rooms seemed huge, but I think that was just because I couldn't see anything. I sort of adjusted the blindfold so that I could see where I was going-- her house had old-looking hardwood floors that made me want to take my shoes off. I didn't look at Annie, though.

Usually when I'm hanging around at someone's house, we watch t.v. Annie and I couldn't exactly do that, so we went up to her room and listened to music instead. We lay across her bed, or fingertips touching. We talked all afternoon, mostly just lying there. I found out that she had a guest room, so I called my mom and told her I was spending the night.

Annie didn't leave after she showed me to the guest room.

That night, we fooled around some, which was kind of awkward to do blindfolded. I know it sounds kinky as hell, but it really wasn't. It was one of the most normal things I've ever done. She felt thin, but her breasts were kind of big. I guess that's why she thought she was fat.

When she finally got up to leave, I counted to one hundred before I took off the blindfold. When I did, I saw that Annie hadn't gone, but was in the bathroom that connected to the guest room, standing in front of the mirror, holding onto the sink, crying. I stared at her for a while without her noticing me.

I got up and walked into the bathroom. I stood behind Annie, put my arms around her waist, and kissed the top of her head. Then I drove back home.

For some reason, I didn't call her after that. I couldn't think of anything else to say-- we'd already said everything.

I still wish I had a picture of her, or something. She's beautiful. I swear she is. I think I could kill whoever gave her the idea that she isn't. I wonder if she'd think she was beautiful if she had been the one wearing her silly blindfold.