Singing was something Tommy had gotten from his mother. They sang church songs and country favorites around the family piano. But that was it. Tommy was just okay—not the sort of gifted it would take to make a career. Which was why most of his friends didn’t know he could sing at all.
Not until the first day in theater class.
That morning, his group flirted with a few girls, all of them joking about being the leads. Ms. Elmer taught them the first verse of one of the songs. Then she asked students interested in being a lead to sing the verse solo at the front of the room, one at a time.
Tommy had never been afraid of much, so he was the first to raise his hand. If he was going to be in musical theater, he might as well let the teacher know what he could do. He sang that day with the confidence of someone who had been performing all his life.
His buddies gave him a standing ovation, high-fiving him and hollering over the fact that Tommy could do more than shoot baskets. Ms. Elmer nodded her approval. “Very nice. We have some real talent this year.”
The girls in their friend group took turns singing for Ms. Elmer and then his guy friends sang for her. Only a few could even remember the words.
That’s when it happened.
Ms. Elmer called on a girl from the back of the room. When she came forward a sort of hush fell over the class. None of them had ever seen her before. Blond hair spilled over her shoulders and when she turned and faced the class, her green eyes took his breath.
Most beautiful girl Tommy had ever seen.
“Class, let’s welcome Annalee Miller from Ohio. She and her family just moved to Indianapolis.” Ms. Elmer’s smile told everyone she knew more about what was coming than they did. “Annalee?”
What happened then was something Tommy would remember as long as he lived. Annalee began to sing and the sound filled the room. They might as well have sold tickets for the performance she gave that morning. Hers was the voice of an angel and when she finished, the other girls knew they were competing for second place.
Tommy’s teammates hurried him along when class ended, but just once he looked back at Annalee. She was gathering her things from the last row of seats and for the slightest instant their eyes met.
From that moment on, Tommy had been in love with Annalee Miller.
It came as no surprise a week later when Annalee was cast as Annie Oakley and Tommy, as Frank Butler—less because he was so talented and more because no one else in the program could sing on pitch.
Week after week of rehearsals, Tommy and Annalee were in the same scenes, working together, blocking their movements, side by side, singing duets. And in all that time Tommy learned practically nothing about her. Only that her parents were missionaries who had relocated to Indiana, and that she had one younger brother named Austin.
Otherwise she was an enigma.
Annalee was friendly while they worked on the show, but after rehearsal she would hurry off. When Tommy saw her in the lunchroom each day, Annalee sat by herself, usually reading. And she looked quite content about the fact.
Like she quite enjoyed the alone time.
Finally the night of the show, Tommy took a chance. After the applause died down and the curtain fell, while he and Annalee were still in the dark of the stage, he took her hand. He would never know what had been more surprising about that moment. The fact that he’d been brave enough to make the move, or what happened next.
Annalee didn’t pull away.
“I don’t want the show to end,” Tommy had whispered. “Could you still be my Annie?”
And she had done the exact thing Tommy had hoped she would do. Annalee Miller had laughed. “Why, yes, Frank Butler.” She had kept her voice low. The rest of the class was a few feet away in the wings. “I’d love to be your Annie Oakley. And I’m still a better shooter.”
They had laughed, their faces close to each other. And they’d been together ever since. Every now and then she was still his Annie and he was still her Frank. Back then his friends hadn’t understood the attraction. “She’s so quiet,” they would tell him. “Sure she’s pretty. But she’s always reading a book.”
Tommy would only smile and nod. No one else had to get it, but him. In the seasons since then, Annalee had sat near the top of the bleachers with her family for every one of his basketball games. And when he didn’t have practice after school he sat in the choir room and listened to her sing.
He could pick her voice out of a hundred-person ensemble.
As the months and years went by Tommy never tired of Annalee. Hardly. Instead he found more things to love about her. The fact that she didn’t care about the popular crowd like so many of his friends. And she was smart, too.
When she and Tommy would walk the canal path in downtown Indianapolis, Annalee would talk about her classes and what she was reading. Frank Peretti’s The Oath and Randy Alcorn’s Deadline and Dominion. Francine Rivers’s Redeeming Love.
One of her favorites was C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. They’d sit on the swings at White River Park and she’d talk for hours about a single facet of one chapter. “C. S. Lewis used to be an atheist. Did you know that?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “If everyone read his book, the whole world would believe in God.”
Other girls her age obsessed over makeup and Instagram and who was liking who. They were addicted to Snapchat and Twitter. Annalee didn’t care about any of that. She wasn’t on social media and the only time she used her phone was to make plans with Tommy or her family and choir friends.
“What could Instagram teach me, that I can’t learn in a book?” she would say.
The fact that she wasn’t like every other girl at school only made Tommy fall harder. At the end of their junior year, he started talking about forever. Especially one night when he had brought her home from a coffee date.
They had stood facing each other on her front porch, and Tommy had put his hand on her shoulder. “Annalee, I want to marry you one day,” he’d said. He wasn’t kidding.
She must’ve seen that in his face because she brought her fingers to his cheek. “Isn’t that the way the story ends, Frank?”
“Yes, it is, Annie.” And the two of them had moved closer, their hearts beating hard, until finally—for the first time—they kissed.
Tommy still wasn’t sure how he pulled away from Annalee that night when she had to go inside. He could remember smiling even after he got home.
And so life had gone with them. His parents loved Annalee and her parents loved him. One night a year or so ago, his dad said it best. “Some people just find the right thing early.”
The fact that they were young didn’t bother Tommy. He had no interest in dating other girls. There were no other girls, not ever. Only Annalee. His Annie.
As if on cue, the door opened and Annalee walked into the waiting room. She looked more tired than before. Weaker. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Hi.”
Like Ernie twenty minutes ago, Tommy was on his feet and at her side. He put his arm around her. “How was it?”
“Fine. I’ll know next week.” She leaned into him. “I want to go home, Tommy. Please.”
They didn’t talk on their way to his Jeep, didn’t sing on the drive back to her house. Neither of them brought up the plan to get coffee. Instead, Tommy helped her inside and visited with her brother for a few minutes. Before he left, he pulled Annalee aside and stared straight into her eyes. “This is just a virus.”