The Illusion of Annabella

  “Is that why you’ve been blowing me off for the last few months?”

  “Partly . . . Sometimes it’s hard to be around you, too, because you’re so happy.”

  “You used to be happy with me,” she whispers. “I miss that.”

  “I miss that, too,” I say. “But I’m not like that anymore. Sometimes I get sad and that’s just how it is. There’s nothing I can do about it except let it pass.”

  “I’m so sorry, Anna, that this happened to you.”

  “Me too.” I inhale and exhale. Deep breaths. Get through it. “I want to have lunch with you, though. If you still want to.”

  “Of course I still want to,” she says, like I’m being silly. “And, Anna, I just want to say that I’m not dating Ben. I know that’s what it looks like, but we’re just friends.”

  “It’s okay if you are.” And I mean it. Ben belongs in the past with the glitter stuck in the cracks and the boxes of ballet slippers and leotards. “I don’t think of him that way anymore.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “But you want to.”

  “Kind of, but I’d never do that to you.”

  “Maybe we can talk about it at lunch,” I suggest. “And figure it all out.”

  “I’d like that,” she says, then in Cece style, she lets out a squeal that makes my ears ring. “I’m so glad you finally called! I’ve missed you so much!”

  We talk for a while about guys and school, who’s dating whom. I even tell her a little bit about Luca. By the time I hang up, I’m still unsure where things with Cece will go. I don’t think we’ll ever be as close as we used to be, the best friends who spent every waking hour together talking about guys, makeup, school, dancing. Even though I still have no idea who I want to be, I know those things are no longer important to me, but maybe we can be friends.

  “Thinking about running away so soon?” Luca’s voice sails over my shoulder. “Man, I know you like to wander, but I thought you’d at least give it a couple of days.”

  The sound of his voice makes me both giddy and sullen as I remember the amazing, breathless, perfect kiss we shared and how I lost it right afterward.

  “I might give it a few days, but I haven’t decided,” I joke without turning around. “It all depends on how bored I get.”

  “Guess we’ll have to make sure you don’t get bored, then.” He moves up behind me, so close I can smell the cool, woodsy scent of his cologne. “Happy Ankle Bracelet Goodbye Day, by the way. We so need to celebrate this ever so awesome, once in a lifetime occasion. I mean, it’s not every day I get the honor of being part of a criminal’s initiation back into society.”

  “I know. You’re so lucky.” I erase my silly smile, push to my feet, and face him. “I’m guessing you already have something weird planned to celebrate.”

  He has on a blue hooded jacket with a logo on the front, dark jeans, and a black knitted cap. The glasses are MIA, and I wonder if he’ll ever wear them around me again. A hundred butterflies come to life in my belly just thinking about him no longer wearing the glasses around me, because he wants to impress me.

  He feigns hurt, jutting out his lip. “My ideas aren’t weird.”

  “They are, too, and you want to know why? Because you’re weird. Like super weird. Like Skittles, guessing games, stealing brownies kind of weird.”

  “So are you. In fact, you’re probably the strangest girl I’ve ever met.”

  “I know.”

  Unsaid words float between us. The wind picks up, blowing dirt and debris in the air. Strands of my hair veil around my face and get stuck against my lips. As I pluck it out, he becomes obsessed with my mouth, wetting his lips with his tongue as he stares at it. I wonder if he’s even conscious that he’s doing it. That he’s looking at me like I used to want to be looked at, as if he wants nothing more than to kiss me. My stomach feels as if it has turned into a bouncy house.

  “So, about the other day with the sparklers . . .” I decide to be brave and address the big fat elephant dancing around between us.

  He cups the back of his neck, staring at the bare branches of a tree lashing around. “Huh, didn’t expect you to say that. I thought we were just pretending it didn’t happen.”

  I’m so ridiculously nervous. That kiss with Luca meant something to me, and whenever I’m around him, I feel giddy, scared, lost, and sometimes even happy. It makes me want to run. Makes me want to stay right where I am. Makes me want to do a lot of things that involve our lips.

  “Do you want to pretend it didn’t happen?” I ask coyly, kicking at the dirt.

  His eyes pop wide open as his gaze whips back to me. “What? No not at all . . . Do you?”

  I bite on my thumbnail and shake my head. “No.”

  The tension in his body gradually evaporates. “Thank God.”

  “But,” I start, and his mouth curves downward, “I really like you, but right now I’m kind of, I don’t know, lost, I guess. There’s so much stuff that’s happened lately, and I think I need to take things slow, just until I can get my feet under me again, if that makes sense.”

  “It makes perfect sense.” He glances over at his house, like he’s going to leave, most likely because he thinks I suck. “You wanna see something I haven’t really shown anyone before?”

  “It wouldn’t, by chance, be how you miraculously guessed what candies I wanted? Because I’m still waiting for that.”

  “Actually, it kind of has to do with that.” He holds his finger and thumb a sliver apart. “A little bit, anyway.” He extends his hand out for me to take. “Come on and I’ll show you.”

  I think twice before lacing my fingers through his. Is this taking it slow? I’m not sure, but it feels so good, okay, right, so I stop analyzing and go with it.

  We hold hands as we wind around the fence and cross the yard to his house.

  “It smells like a burnt Christmas tree in here,” I say when I get a whiff of the charcoal scent lingering in the entryway that’s covered with Barbie dolls and glittery princess stuff.

  He lets go of my hand to shuck off his jacket. “That’s because the tree almost burnt down.”

  “Seriously?” I ask right as I get a good view of the half singed pine tree leaning against the living room wall.

  “Yeah, my dad was trying to light some candles close to the tree, and the tree was too dry and, well, one thing led to another.” He drapes his jacket on the coatrack then nudges some toys out of the way with his foot. “You’d think a grown man would know better, but surprisingly, he seemed pretty confused as to why it happened.”

  “My dad almost burned down his store once, with fireworks he always kept stashed in the office closet,” I tell him. “My mom flipped out and yelled, even though she always joked about wishing he’d get rid of the store.”

  “My mom was pretty upset, too, but my dad usually just laughs her off.”

  “My dad does, too . . . or, I mean, did.” I pretend to have something in my eye and duck my head so he won’t see my eyes bubbling with tears.

  He threads his fingers through mine, our palms conforming, and he sketches his finger across the back of my hand. “You think you’re ready to hear about my magical mind reading gift?

  Sucking back the tears, I meet his gaze again. “If you could mind read, you wouldn’t be hanging out with me. Trust me. One look into my thoughts, and you’d be running the other way.”

  He brushes a strand of hair out of my eyes, his knuckles grazing my temple as he tucks it behind my ear. “I doubt that. I find you fascinating. Always have.”

  I shiver from his touch and cross my fingers that he doesn’t notice. “There you go again, talking like you’ve known me forever.” But the intense, butterfly-inducing look on his face has me worried that he somehow has.

  He leads me up the stairs toward the second floor.

  “Where is everyone?” I ask.

  “At the store,” he says.

  So it’s just him and me?

  My stomach d
oes a double back flip but I shake off the feeling and focus on walking up the stairs, taking in the family portraits lining the wall. One in particular captures my attention; a younger Luca sits with a girl around my age wearing baggy clothes and a stud in her nose. She looks thin, her frail arm is around Luca’s shoulder, and the sunlight beaming down on them highlights the shadows under her eyes.

  “Is this Rowan?” I ask, pointing at the picture.

  “Yeah. It was taken a few years ago.” His voice grows thick with emotion. “My mom thinks it’s one of the better pictures of Rowan when she wasn’t high . . . I don’t know why she can’t see it.”

  “Sometimes people only see what they want to.” Like I did with my mom.

  Looking back, I see it now, in the way she decided she didn’t want to cook anymore, how she never was a fan of my dad’s store, how she drove to the antique shop on my birthday, to do God knows what with Dennis. The woman, who I thought had been the perfect mother and wife, had her flaws—everyone does, I guess.

  We silently finish climbing the stairs then step into a room with an unmade twin bed, a pile of clothes on the floor, and a cluster of snapshots tacked to the dark blue accent wall. The air smells like sugar and cologne with a splash of charred pine needles.

  Luca slips his fingers from mine to turn on the lamp and tug off his beanie.

  “Did you take all of these?” I turn in a circle, looking at all the photos of him, of the mountains, the beach, trees, people I’ve never met. Some are in black and white, others in color, but the one thing they have in common is they all tell a story of the life Luca’s lived, where he’s been, what he’s seen.

  “Yeah. I pretty much started taking pictures since I was old enough to work a camera. But I took a lot of my best photos during the year Bria was missing, when my parents were pretty much nonexistent.” He scoots a pile of clothes aside and sits down on his bed. “I was actually kind of a pain in the ass back then.”

  “You were, huh?” I find the idea of him being a pain in the ass amusing for some reason.

  “I spent a lot of time being . . . well, depressed.” He grabs an album from his nightstand and places it on his lap. “You remember how I told you my parents were caught up in finding Bria?”

  Nodding, I examine a photo he took of himself. He’s leaning against a chain-link fence with a hood pulled over his head, his glasses off, and he looks so miserable. “This one looks familiar,” I say. “Where’d you take it?”

  “Here actually.” He opens the album. “Last summer when we came to visit.”

  I look at him. “You were here last summer?”

  “We’ve spent summers here almost every year for last ten years or so.”

  “Were you here on June sixth?” I have no idea why I ask, or why it matters. It really doesn’t. That’s the past. This is the now.

  I need to start focusing more on the now.

  “I was.” His head’s tipped down as he examines the photos taped to the pages.

  “I’m guessing you heard about the accident, then?”

  He bobs his head up and down with his gaze glued on the photos. “I was actually in town that day with my mom, and we drove right by it on our way back to the house we rented . . . I saw you being lifted into an ambulance.”

  My chest constricts at the moment in my life that I can’t remember. Days were lost as I drifted in and out of consciousness. “How did you know it was me?” I take a seat on the bed beside him and straighten my injured leg to ease some of the tightness in the muscles. “I don’t even look like the same person anymore.”

  “Yeah, you do. You just wear more makeup and have crazy purple hair.” He gently tugs on a strand of my hair. “I saw you before that, though, lighting off a sparkler in the parking lot of the grocery store.”

  “Oh, my God.” I don’t know whether to frown or laugh that he saw me that day, before the dyed hair, thick eyeliner, and scars. It’s overwhelming to know that all this time he recognized me and I had no idea. That he knew my don’t-gives-a-shit-attitude was a fraud. “That’s how you knew what candy I’d pick. Because I was eating Snickers and M&Ms right before I decided to light the sparkler.”

  He chuckles, a deep husky sound. “It was pretty funny watching everyone stare at you like you were crazy.”

  “I was bored, and it was my birthday, so I thought, what the hell.” I scrape at the pink nail polish Zhara put on me the other night. “My dad gave me sparklers every birthday.” Another thought dawns on me. “Is that why you got me some for Christmas?”

  He nods, his fingers curling around the corner of the page. “You looked so happy that day. I wanted to see you that happy again.”

  “I was happy.” An uneven breath falters from my lips as I remember what it felt like to be that freely happy.

  Like standing on the edge of a cliff with the wind in my hair and my arms spanned to the side, something I did with my dad once after a hike. Or right after an extremely hard dance practice, when my toes were numb, blisters covered my feet, and every one of my limbs ached; all that pain represented every ounce of what I had into dancing my best.

  “I was kind of jealous when I saw you,” he says. “Of how happy you were. I was sulking on the hood of the car, waiting for my mom to stop talking to some random stranger she cornered at the store. I had my hoodie up because I knew it’d piss her off.”

  I bite down on my tongue to stop myself from laughing at the memory. “I remember her yelling at you. I think you even looked at me while she was.”

  “I did look at you. A lot, actually.”

  He looks down, and when I follow his gaze, my heart nearly stops.

  There are a few pictures of me on the page. Some were taken recently while some were older, taken a couple of years ago, when my parents were alive. There’s one of me reading on the bench in front of my dad’s store. Another of me sitting in the shade of that ridiculous gnome statue. There’s even a photo of me dancing underneath the fireworks at the park, with my arms stretched out to the side and a huge ass grin on my face, as if every single second was perfect.

  “The first time I saw you, you were fourteen.” He looks at the photo of me dancing under a shower of sparks. “I was pissed off at my dad because he forgot to play baseball with me, or something stupid like that. It was the Fourth of July and I had wandered down to the park. I swear, almost the entire town was there. It was crazy.”

  “They probably were. It’s a thing around Honeyton, something you’ll soon learn.”

  “You were there, too, you know . . . And your family.” His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You all went so crazy when the fireworks started going off. You took off running, yelling something about fireflies.”

  “It was something we did every year . . .” I find myself smiling, yet wanting to cry over what’ll never be again. “It was one of my favorite holidays.”

  “I wanted to have that,” he says softly. “That’s what kind of caught my attention. How happy your family was. Mine was so messed up all the time. My mom with her meltdowns, my dad with his grumpy, you-need-to-grow-up-and-be-responsible-don’t-be-like-Rowan attitude, and Rowan . . . well, she’d been doing drugs for a couple of years by then. I thought about joining you, but just sat back and took pictures instead.”

  “You should have. Joined us, I mean.” The idea makes me smile just a bit. I would’ve been so stoked if a guy as cute as Luca would’ve wanted to hang out. “I was super nice back then.”

  “I know you were. I saw you a couple of times after that, and a few times over the next couple of summers. I thought about talking to you, but you looked too nice and sweet. You were always smiling, and it was a little intimidating when I felt so depressed all the time.”

  I feel like I’m seeing an entirely new side of him, just like he’s seen an entirely different side of me. But maybe that’s how everyone is, carrying around so many layers, and you never fully get to see all of them unless you get close enough that they let you.

&nb
sp; “It’s hard to believe you were sad,” I say. “You seem so happy all the time.”

  He closes the album and sets it aside on the nightstand before turning to me. “I had a revelation about seven months ago that kind of changed my life.”

  Seven months ago? “The day of the accident?”

  He nods, intertwining our fingers, and I can feel his pulse racing through his grip. “When I saw you on that stretcher, being put into the ambulance, all I could think was I might have lost my chance at ever meeting you. Then, a week later, I heard that you were okay, and that’s when I decided that I needed to stop watching life and actually live it. I went back home and started doing more of the things I wanted to do. Hanging out with friends, going to parties, biking in the mountains, hiking, seeing places I never knew existed. And I also made myself a promise that when we came back for our next summer trip that I’d finally talk to you.” His lips tilt to a lopsided smile as he struggles to conceal his nerves. “But then we ended up moving right next door to you. I swear, I seriously about lost it when I found out.”