Mathilda Savitch. Victor Lodato

       8

      Anna and I are sitting in her living room. The TV is on but we’re barely watching it. Anna’s trying to get a splinter out of her finger and I’m making a tattoo of a snake on her ankle with a blue ballpoint.

      “Don’t press so hard,” she says.

      Helene used to draw tattoos on me. One time she made a masterpiece of red lips on the side of my shoulder. For a while I was really crazy about tattoos and I made Helene do a new one on me every week. Mostly we did it in secret because Ma worried about blood poisoning. But once, in the summertime, I was sunbathing on the lawn and she drew a giant flower right on my stomach, with the petals coming straight out of my belly button. When she was finished she sealed it with a kiss. “You’re a rock star,” she said, and I pretty much believed her.

      The snake I’m doing on Anna is coming out pretty crappy and I consider turning it into an octopus. On television a man is having a conversation with a deaf boy. The boy is doing signs with his hands and grunting. Anna sighs and changes the channel with the clicker. She goes past a hundred things until she gets to the plastic surgery. At first I don’t even know what it is, for a second I think it’s a cooking show.

      “Look,” Anna says, but I’m already looking. A doctor is pulling a loose piece of someone’s face, you can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman.

      “Gross,” Anna says, but she doesn’t change the channel. “Oh my god,” she says. An assistant to the surgeon is sucking up blood with a tube. I get a funny feeling in my stomach. I used to be able to watch gross-outs but lately it’s not so appealing.

      “I’m going upstairs,” I say.

      Anna doesn’t move, she can’t take her eyes off the stupid television.

      I really can’t stand it when other people have control over the clicker. No one ever watches what you want to watch. And then they always shut the TV off at the wrong moment. When I’m watching TV by myself my rule is to shut it off only after something good has happened, or when the last words you hear are not going to hurt you. You don’t want to shut it off in the middle of two people having an argument or someone saying pig or death or my car broke down. You want to make sure the last words are something like that would be great or world of your dreams or magically delicious.

      When you go up the stairs in Anna’s house, you pass all these pictures of gardens painted by Anna’s mother. The flowers are good but the people are just blobs in the distance, they don’t even have faces. The blobs are standing under trees or sitting down to blobby picnics. Why even paint people if you’re not going to give them some character?

      Anna’s bedroom is the perfect room of a girl, pink and white and fluffy. Everything is in its place. It’s easy to imagine people visiting this room in a hundred years. It would be like a museum. the bedroom of a girl would be the exhibit. This would be in the future when people sleep in pods and live forever. But I bet the room would still make them jealous. A huge bumblebee is knocking on the window. I kick off my shoes and sprawl on the bed.

      “What are you doing up there?” Anna shouts. “Are you coming down?”

      “No,” I say, “you come up here.”

      I arrange myself on the bed like pornography but when Anna sees me she doesn’t get it.

      “Why are you lying like that?” she says.

      “I don’t know,” I say, and I close my legs.

      The bumblebee is still doing a number on the window, bonking its head. You have to feel sorry for animals like that, you really do.

      Anna comes and sits next to me on the bed. She tilts her head like a doll. Suddenly she’s my nurse. She pushes the hair out of my face. Around us on the bed are pillows shaped like hearts. It really is another world.

      You’re probably wondering how a person like me could have a friend like Anna. Why am I not surrounded by other brains? Why would Anna choose me is your question. But it’s not even the right question.

      Beauty is not the boss. The mind is. The truth is, I chose Anna.

      The beginning of Anna and me is historical. The place is the pool club at Randolph Park. The time is only five months ago.

      I was sitting on a chaise longue, reading a novel. The Straw Hotel. It wasn’t on the summer reading list, I found it at a garage sale. The story concerns a woman with amnesia who might also be a killer, I won’t say in case you ever want to read it. Highly recommended.

      Anyway, Anna was in the pool. She had on a yellow bathing suit. She was treading water and talking to another girl. I think it was Cheryl List but the other girl isn’t important. The two of them are whispering and laughing. Their hair is perfectly dry.

      Standing at the side of the pool there’s a group of boys, also whispering. There’s a lot of intrigue at the pool club if you’re into that sort of thing.

      This was the first time I noticed Anna’s eyes. They were like something you wanted to steal.

      Suddenly one of the boys, Michael “Bigtooth” Flatmore, jumps in the water. His jump splashes Anna and so she splashes him back. Then Michael moves toward Anna and he dunks her. He lets her up for air and then he dunks her again. He has complete control over her, it’s disgusting. For sure, Michael is in love with Anna but all he can think to do is push her underwater. That’s how boys are. Probably he’s sexually frustrated.

      Anna is gulping for air. Cheryl List doesn’t even help. When I jump in the water, Michael Flatmore turns and I pull him away from Anna. I call him a fucking idiot, even though that’s not an expression in my vocabulary. It just comes out of me. By accident I scratch his face. Anna is coughing and I lead her over to the edge. I was suddenly madder than I’d ever been in my whole life.

      “Fucking idiot,” I scream back to Michael. The fat lifeguard finally wakes up and blows his silver whistle. “Keep it down,” he says.

      I help Anna out of the pool. I ask if she’s okay, and she nods. But I can tell she’s suspicious of me. Why am I helping her? She can’t figure it out.

      Michael Flatmore is out of the pool now. He walks past us. He’s completely humiliated. There’s even a little bit of blood on his face.

      Anna and I stand there dripping for a long time.

      “Do you want to get something to eat?” she finally says. “At the snack bar?”

      In The Straw Hotel, Beatrice, the woman with amnesia, will only eat fruit.

      “Let’s have smoothies,” I say.

      “I’ll be right back,” Anna says. She goes into the bathroom and I wonder if she’s really going to come back out again. I can see Cheryl List on the other side of the pool talking to Michael Flatmore. Unbelievable. I’m still dripping and it almost looks like I’m peeing. Suddenly I think maybe someone is playing a trick on me. I start to feel sick. This still wasn’t the best time for me, as you can imagine.

      But Anna did come out of the bathroom. Her wet hair was parted and combed. She even smiled at me. When I think of that day it was like Anna just appeared.