The vulnerability in her voice makes me glance over. And at the look on her face? I find the next overlook and pull the car over and turn it off.
“Let’s go be in the beautifully sad nature shit,” I say. “It’ll make us feel better.” We both get out of the car.
The two of us sit right down in the grass, looking beyond at the vast expanse of mountains rolling endlessly into the horizon. Dusk is beginning to settle, painting the sky in soft pinks and oranges, the mountains shifting into the deep indigo of their name. The air’s cooler now, tinged with the crisp scent of pine and the faint, distant smoke of a campfire somewhere.
Annie pulls her knees up, arms wrapped around them. Her voice is quiet, like she’s talking to the wind. “I think I’m learning that I’m just a costume. One that doesn’t come off easily. And when you wear one long enough, you forget what’s underneath. If there is anything underneath. And now I’m not a voice. I’msomeone else’s voice. It’s easy to be someone else when you’re nothing at all.”
I glance over. Her face, at first glance, seems neutral. No tears. No theatrics. But I’m getting better at reading her, and it readssilent devastation.
And it does something to me. Cracks something open. The look on her face and the fact that I knew what it was.
I lie back in the grass, hands behind my head, and stare up at the sky, letting the silence stretch for several minutes.
“I get it,” I say finally.
Her eyes flick over to me. I’m not too sure but it seems like she inches closer.
“I’m hiding, too. I’ve done shit I’m not proud of,” I continue. “Things I never thought I’d do. Things that make it really hard to look people in the eye sometimes. Especially the ones who think they know me.”
She scoffs. “Look at you, Dr. Nico. There’s no way you’ve done worse than I have.”
“My mom is one of those people I can’t look in the eye, Annie.”
She pauses. “Well, you can’t tell your mom anything.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Mrs. Giannuzzi is a saint.”
A smile cracks out of my face. “You remember my mom?”
She looks at the ground. “Of course I remember your mom. She was a chaperone on that field trip to Six Flags and stayed with me in the bathroom while I puked my brains out.”
“You got sick?” I think I spent that trip on a bench reading about astronauts.
She shifts, staring at something in the distance. “I rode that huge roller coaster three times in a row.”
“The one with all the loops and flips?”
“Obviously.”
Obviously. “That’s funny you remember that.”
“It’s because she called me brave,” she says in a small voice. “Instead of getting pissed that I was puking because I rode the roller coaster so many times like an idiot, she told me that no one else in our class was brave enough to ride it except for me.”
I grin at this. “She was right. I spent that trip parked on a bench reading about NASA scientists.”
Another soft smile.
“Anyway, here’s the thing,” I say, sitting up again. “You’re not a nobody, Annie.”
She lets out a bitter scoff, but I shake my head.
“I mean it. You walk into a room and rearrange the air. Ever since we were kids. Like some sort of volatile reaction—change the temperature, shift the pressure, and suddenly nothing around you is the same. Something lights on fire. And yeah, maybe you fucked up. Maybe you lost yourself for a while. But that doesn’t make you nothing.”
I meet her gaze, steady now.
“You’re definitely something. You’re Annie Li.”
