Just Listen

by Sarah Dessen

  “Okay,” she said quietly as my dad cut the engine. “We need to talk.”

  They did, but I wasn’t allowed to hear what they said. It was made clear to me (“Annabel, why don’t you go do some homework?”) that I was not to be part of this conversation. Instead, I stayed in my room, math book open in my lap, straining to make out some of what was happening downstairs. I could hear my father’s low tones, my mom’s higher ones, and the occasional indignant shift in tone from Kirsten. On the other side of my wall, Whitney, in her room, was silent.

  Finally, my mom came upstairs, passing my room to knock on Whitney’s door. When there was no reply, she said, “Whitney, honey. Let me in.” Nothing. She stood there for what felt like a full minute or two before suddenly I heard the lock turn, and then the door open and shut again.

  I went back downstairs, where I found Kirsten sitting at the kitchen table with my father, an untouched grilled cheese on a plate in front of her. “Look,” she was saying as I opened the cabinet to pull out a glass, “she explains it all away really well. She’ll have Mom brainwashed in three seconds.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” my dad told her. “Give your mother some credit.”

  Kirsten shook her head. “She’s sick, Daddy. She hardly ever eats, and when she does she’s really weird about it. She’ll eat one quarter of an apple for breakfast or, like, three saltines for lunch. And she works out all the time. The gym around the corner is open twenty-four hours, and sometimes I wake up and she’s gone, and I know she’s there.”

  “She might not be,” my dad said.

  “I followed her. A few times. She runs on the treadmill for hours. Look, I had a friend when I first moved to the city, her roommate was like this. She got down to eighty pounds or something; they had to put her in the hospital. It’s serious.”

  My dad was quiet for a second. “Let’s just get her side of things,” he said finally. “And then we’ll see where we are. And Annabel?”

  I jumped. “Yes?”

  “Maybe go finish that homework?”

  “Okay,” I said. I finished my water, then put my glass in the dishwasher and headed back upstairs. As I forced myself back to parallelograms, I could hear my mother talking to Whitney next door, her voice low and soothing. I was almost done with my work when her door opened.

  “I know,” my mom was saying. “How about this: Take a shower, and a nap, and I’ll wake you up when it’s time for dinner. Okay? Everything will look better then.”

  I heard a sniffle, which I assumed was Whitney agreeing to this, and then my mother was walking past my door again. This time, she looked in at me.

  “Everything’s all right,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

  Looking back, I don’t doubt my mom believed this at the time. I learned later how Whitney had completely reassured her, saying she was just overworked and overtired, and while she had been working out more and eating less because she had found she was a little bigger than the girls she was going up against for jobs, it was by no means to extreme levels. If Kirsten thought she wasn’t eating, she maintained, it was because they kept totally different hours, as Kirsten worked nights and Whitney worked days. Personally, she’d said, she felt that there was more to this than just concern. Since arriving in New York, Whitney had clearly been working more than Kirsten ever had, and perhaps that wasn’t sitting well. Maybe she was just jealous.

  “I am not jealous!” I heard Kirsten say, her voice angry, a few minutes after my mother went downstairs. “Don’t you see, she’s tricked you. Open your eyes!”

  There was more, of course, but I couldn’t hear it. And by the time I was called for dinner an hour later, whatever had happened was over, and we were back in default Greene family mode, pretending everything was just fine. And from the outside, I was sure it at least looked that way.

  My father designed our house, and at the time it was the most modern one in the neighborhood. Everyone called it “The Glass House,” although it really wasn’t all glass, only the front. From the outside, you could see our entire downstairs: the living room, split by the huge stone fireplace, the kitchen beyond, and past that the pool in the backyard. You could also see the stairs and part of the second floor—the doorways to my room and to Whitney’s, and the landing between them, split by the chimney. The rest was tucked away behind, out of sight. So while it seemed like you were seeing everything, you really weren’t. Just bits and pieces that looked like a whole.

  The dining room was right at the front of the house, though, so when we ate dinner, we were always in full view. From my seat at the table, I could always see when cars passing slowed down slightly, the drivers glancing in at us for this snapshot, a happy family seated around a hearty meal. But everyone knows looks can be deceiving.

  That night, Whitney ate her dinner; it was the first time, but by no means the last, that I noticed this. Kirsten drank too many glasses of wine, and my mother kept saying how wonderful it was we were all together, finally. And repeat, for the next three days.

  The morning they left, she sat them both down at the kitchen table and asked them each to make her a promise. She wanted Whitney to take better care of herself, get more sleep, and keep to a healthy diet. Kirsten she asked to keep an eye on Whitney and try to be sympathetic to the pressure she was under living in a new city and working so hard. “Okay?” she said, looking from one of them to the other, then back again.

  “Okay,” Whitney said. “I promise.”

  Kirsten, though, just shook her head. “It’s not me,” she said to my mother, pushing back her chair and standing up. “I warned you. That’s all I’m going to say. I told you, and you are choosing not to listen to me. I just want us all to be clear on that.”

  “Kirsten,” my mother said, but she was already gone, walking out to the garage, where my father was putting the suitcases into the car.

  “Don’t worry,” Whitney said, getting up and kissing my mom on the cheek. “Everything’s fine.”

  For a while, it seemed like it was. Whitney kept getting jobs, including a shoot for New York magazine, her biggest yet. Kirsten got a new hostessing gig at a very famous restaurant, and a cable TV commercial. If they weren’t getting along, we didn’t hear about it—instead of one weekly phone call where they passed the receiver between them, now they each called separately, Kirsten usually in the late morning, Whitney in the evenings. Then, about a week before they were due home for Christmas, we got a call during dinner.

  “I’m sorry, what?” my mother said, the phone to her ear as she stood in the doorway that led from the kitchen to the dining room. My dad glanced over at her as she lifted her other hand, putting it over her free ear to hear better. “What did you say?”

  “Gracie?” My dad pushed his chair back, getting to his feet. “What is it?”

  My mom shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said, handing over the phone. “I can’t…”

  “Hello?” my dad said. “Who is this?…Oh…I see…Right…Well, that’s a mistake, I’m sure…. Hold on, I’ll find the right information.”

  As he put the phone down, my mother said, “I couldn’t understand her, what was she saying?”

  “There’s a problem with Whitney’s insurance card,” he told her. “Apparently she was at the hospital today.”

  “The hospital?” My mother’s voice crept up to that scary, shaky octave that always made my own heart instantly start beating faster. “Is she all right? What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” my dad said. “She’s already been discharged, there’s just a problem with the billing. I have to find her new card….”

  As my dad went up to his office to look for it, my mom got back on the phone and tried to get information from the woman who’d called. Citing privacy reasons, though, she wouldn’t tell much, only that Whitney had been brought in by ambulance that morning and left a few hours earlier. The minute my dad cleared up the billing issue, he called Kirsten and Whitney’s apartment. Kirsten answered.


  “I tried to tell you,” was all she said. I could hear her voice from where I was sitting. “I tried.”

  “Put your sister on the phone,” my father told her. “Now.”

  Whitney got on, and I could hear her talking quickly, her voice high and cheery, as my parents both leaned into the receiver, listening. Later, I’d get the story she told them: that it was no big deal, she’d just been really dehydrated—a result of an ongoing sinus infection—and fainted at a shoot. It sounded worse than it was, and the ambulance was just the result of someone panicking. She hadn’t told us because she didn’t want my mother to worry, and it really was nothing, nothing at all.

  “Maybe I should come up there,” my mother said. “Just to make sure.”

  No, Whitney said, there was no point, they’d be home for Christmas in two weeks, and that was all she needed, a real break, to get some sleep, and she’d be totally well again. “Are you sure?” my mother asked.

  Yes. She was positive.

  Before they hung up, my father asked to talk to Kirsten again. “Is your sister all right?” he asked her.

  “No,” Kirsten told him. “She’s not.”

  But still, my mother didn’t go. This was the biggest mystery, the one thing that, looking back, I could never quite figure out. For whatever reason, she chose to believe Whitney. It was a mistake.

  When Whitney flew home for Christmas, she came alone, as Kirsten had to stay an additional few days for work. My dad went to the airport to pick her up, and my mom and I were in the kitchen, fixing dinner, when they returned. When I took my first glance at my sister, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  She was so thin. Emaciated. It was obvious, even though she was wearing even baggier clothes than the last time I’d seen her, and more layers as well. Her eyes looked sunken in her face, and you could see all the tendons in her neck, moving like puppet strings whenever she turned her head. I just stared at her.

  “Annabel,” she said, annoyed. “Come give me a hug.”

  I put down the vegetable peeler I was holding, then moved tentatively across the room. As I wrapped my arms around her, I felt like I might break her, she felt so brittle. My father was standing behind her with her suitcase, and as I looked at his face I knew that he, too, was shocked by the change in her in only a month’s time.

  My mother did not acknowledge any of this, at least not out loud. Instead, as I let go of Whitney, she stepped forward, smiling, and pulled her close. “Oh, honey,” she said. “You’ve had such a hard time.”

  As she leaned down over my mother’s shoulder, Whitney slowly closed her eyes. The lids seemed almost translucent, and I felt a shudder run through me.

  “We’re going to get you well,” my mother said, “starting right now. Go freshen up, and we’ll sit down for dinner.”

  “Oh, I’m not hungry,” Whitney said. “I ate while I was waiting for my plane.”

  “You did?” My mother looked hurt. She’d been cooking all day. “Well, surely you can at least manage some vegetable soup. I made it specially for you, and it’s just what you need to get your immune system up.”

  “Really, I just want to sleep,” Whitney said. “I’m so tired.”

  My mom glanced at my dad, who was still looking at Whitney, his face serious. “Well, okay, then maybe you should lie down for a while. You can eat when you wake up. Okay?”

  But Whitney didn’t eat. Not that night, which she slept straight through, not stirring each time my mother came in with a tray. Not the next morning; she was up at the crack of dawn, claiming to have already eaten breakfast when my father, the earliest riser in our house, came downstairs to make his coffee. At lunch, she was asleep again. Finally, at dinner, my mother made her sit down with us.

  It started the minute my dad began to serve. Whitney was sitting beside me, and as he started to carve the roast beef, putting pieces on plates, I was distinctly aware of how she was unable to sit still, twitching nervously, pulling at the cuff of her baggy sweatshirt. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, took a sip of her water, then tugged at her cuff again. I could feel the stress coming off of her, palpable, and as my father put a full plate in front of her heaped with meat, potatoes, green beans, and a big hunk of my mother’s famous garlic bread, she lost it.

  “I’m really not hungry,” she said quickly, pushing it away. “I’m not.”

  “Whitney,” my father said. “Eat your food.”

  “I don’t want it,” she said angrily, as across the table, my mother looked so hurt I could hardly stand it. “This is about Kirsten, isn’t it? She told you to do this.”

  “No,” my mother said, “this is about you, honey. You need to get well.”

  “I’m not sick,” Whitney said. “I’m fine. I’m just tired, and I’m not going to eat if I’m not hungry. I won’t. You can’t make me.”

  We all just sat there, watching her as she tugged at her cuffs again, her eyes on the table. “Whitney,” my father said, “you’re too thin. You need—”

  “Don’t tell me what I need,” she said, pushing back her chair and getting up. “You have no idea what I need. If you did, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

  “Honey, we want to help you,” my mother said, her voice soft. “We want—”

  “Then leave me alone!” She slammed the chair against the table, making all our plates jump, and then stomped out. A second later, I heard the front door open and shut, and then she was gone.

  This is what happened next: After doing his best to calm my mother down, my dad got in the car and went out to look for Whitney. My mother took up a position in a chair in the foyer, in case he somehow didn’t find her, and I quickly finished my dinner, then I covered all their plates with plastic wrap, put them in the fridge, and did the dishes. I was just finishing up when I saw my dad’s car coasting back into the driveway.

  When he and Whitney came back in, she wouldn’t look at anyone. Instead, she kept her head low, eyes on the floor, as my father explained that she was going to eat some food and then go back to sleep, in the hopes that things would look better tomorrow. There wasn’t a discussion of this deal, or how they had come about it. It was already decided.

  My mother asked me to go upstairs then, so I didn’t get to see Whitney eat her dinner, or hear if there were any more arguments about it. Later, though, when the house was so quiet I knew everyone else was asleep, I went downstairs. There was only one plate left of the three I’d wrapped up, and while it looked like it had been poked at since, it was nowhere near clean.

  I got a snack, then went into the TV room, where I watched a rerun of a reality makeover show and some of the local news. When I finally headed back upstairs, it was that weird time of night when the moon was shining really brightly through the glass, lighting everything up. There was always something strange about seeing so much moonlight inside, and as I passed through it, I covered my eyes.

  The hallway that led to my room and Whitney’s was lit up as well, the only shaded part in the middle, from the chimney. As I stepped into that sudden dark, I smelled the steam.

  Or felt it. All I knew was that suddenly, it was like the very air changed, becoming heavier and more moist, and for a second I just stood there, breathing it in. The bathroom was all the way at the other end of the hall, and there was no light beneath the door, but as I moved toward it, the steam got thicker and more pungent, and I could hear the sound of water splashing. It seemed so bizarre. I could understand leaving a faucet running, but the shower? Then again, Whitney had been acting weird ever since she got home, so anything was possible. I finally reached the half-open door, pushing it open.

  Immediately it hit against something, then swung back at me. I eased it open again, the steam now thick in my face, already condensing on my skin. I couldn’t see anything, and all I could hear was water, so I reached blindly to my right, my hand moving over the wall until I found the switch.

  Whitney was lying on the floor, at my feet. It was her shoulder the door h
ad hit when I first tried to open it. She was curled up, slightly, a towel knotted around her, her cheek pressed against the linoleum. The shower, as I’d suspected, was on full blast, and water was pooling in the bottom, too much for the drain to handle.

  “Whitney?” I said, crouching down beside her. I couldn’t imagine what she’d been doing here in the dark, alone, so late at night. “Are you—”

  Then I saw the toilet. The lid was up, and inside was this yellowy mix, tinged with red that I knew, somehow, with one look, was blood.

  “Whitney.” I put my hand on her face. Her skin was hot, wet, and her eyelids fluttered. I reached down, shaking her shoulder. “Whitney, wake up.”

  She didn’t. But she did move, just enough that the towel came loose. And then, finally, I saw what my sister had done to herself.

  She was all bones. That was the first thing I thought. Bones and knobs, every bump of her spine protruding and visible. Her hips poked out at angles, her knees were skinny and pale. It seemed impossible that she could be so thin and still be alive, and even more so that she’d been able to somehow hide this. As she shifted again, though, I saw it, the one thing that would stick with me forever: the sharpness of her shoulder blades as they rose out of her skin, looking like the wings of a dead baby bird I’d once found in our backyard, hairless and barely born, already broken.

  “Daddy!” I screamed, my voice so loud in the tiny room. “Daddy!”

  The rest of the night I remember only in bits and pieces. My father, fumbling to put on his glasses as he ran down the hallway in his pajamas. My mother behind him, standing in that one shaft of light at the other end of the hall, illuminated, her hands to her face as he pushed me aside, then crouched down beside Whitney, putting his ear to her chest. The ambulance, the swirling lights of which made the entire house seem like a kaleidoscope. And then the silence once it was gone, with Whitney and my mother inside, my father following in his car behind. I was told to stay where I was, and wait for word.

  I didn’t know what to do. So I went back to the bathroom and cleaned it up. I flushed the toilet, looking away as I did so, then mopped up the water that had spilled out on the floor, and took the towels I used down to the washing machine, putting them in. Then I went and sat in the living room, in all that moonlight, and waited.