Page 27 of Whistle

“So, I’ll see that line first, like it’s slicing through the air, coming out of nowhere, a sliver almost, and then it starts to turn, and the image comes into focus. That’s where I first saw Pierce. On that pane of glass.”

“Cool,” he’d said.

What she didn’t tell him was that she’d been seeing those panes of glass slice their way into her world since she was a child, and they didn’t always come through the air. Once, she saw one come right out of a person, like that time when she was eight, walking through Penn Station, holding on to her father’s hand.

Annie caught sight of a tall, ordinary-looking man in a tan trench coat coming her way. Suddenly she had a vision of glass emerging from his head, hairline to chin, edgewise. The glass pivoted, becoming a mini-window through which she saw his face.

It had changed.

He was no longer ordinary. His features were covered with fur, his ears were pointed, and he’d grown a snout with a jaw filled with sharp teeth. His fierce eyes fixed on her for a fraction of a second.

And he smiled.

The glass flipped and vanished and the man was back to normal. As he passed, Annie turned and watched him walk away and be swallowed into the crowd.

Annie never said a word to her father.

So here she was now, waiting for that creative spark. Ideas didn’t always have to come out of thin air, on a piece of glass. Sometimes you had to sweat them out.

She picked up a pencil, touched it to the paper, and started to sketch out the shape of a penguin.

She got as far as drawing Pierce’s head, and then stopped.

“No,” she said to herself. “Not yet.”

Pierce had become that old friend you’d lost touch with and didn’t have the nerve to pick up the phone and call. Maybe someday, but not now. She needed to try something else, be open to new ideas. Annie took a breath and allowed her mind to empty. Nothing happened right away, but she chided herself for being impatient. Tried to think of a cloudless blue sky.

After about a minute, her right hand began to move.

She deliberately looked away, casting her eyes up to the skylight, while her fingers sketched. It reminded her of when she and her childhood friends would rest the tips of their fingers on a planchette as it wandered a Ouija board.

After a couple of minutes, she lifted her pencil from the paper and looked down to see what she had done in her almost trance-like state.

“Oh my God,” she said.

When Annie stepped out onto the porch, she expected to find Charlie, still working on his bicycle. But he wasn’t there, and neither was the bike.

And then he suddenly appeared, rounding the house from the right, racing past the porch, legs pumping furiously, before disappearing around the left corner. A few seconds later, he reappeared, again from the right. He was doing laps.

“Charlie!” Annie shouted.

But Charlie was oblivious to her cries and kept on going. One thing was clear. He had been right when he’d said he didn’t need training wheels. He was handling the bike like a pro. Before he came around for a third pass, she descended the porch steps and positioned herself in what she expected to be his path. Sure enough, he came around again, saw her standing there, and cranked the pedals backward, engaging the brake. The bike skidded to stop two feet in front of Annie.

“Hi, Mom,” he said, panting. There was sweat on his forehead, and his shirt was sticking to his chest.

“You were supposed to wait for me before you tried it out.”

Charlie shrugged. “How’s it look?”

She had to hand it to him. The chrome wheels and spokes that had been so rusty and grimy sparkled. There were still places on the frame where the paint was chipped or cancered with rust, but for a bike that had to be decades old, it wasn’t bad. And if it bothered Charlie that it was a girl’s bike, he showed no sign.

“I’m impressed.”

“I used all the Brasso,” he said.

“Not surprised.”

“I’ve been riding around and around the house. I’ve already done it twenty-two times.”

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