Just Listen

by Sarah Dessen

  Most of all, though, I saw CDs. Tons of CDs. Not just the ones he’d cleared out for me and dumped on the backseat floor, but stacks and stacks of others, some store-bought, many more clearly home-burned, piled haphazardly on the seats and the floor. I glanced back at the dashboard in front of me. While the car was dated, the stereo looked practically new, not to mention advanced, rows of lights blinking.

  Just as I thought this, we reached the stop sign at the top of the parking lot and Owen put on his blinker, looking both ways. Then he reached out for the stereo, nudging up the volume button with the side of his thumb before taking a right.

  Even with all the lunches during which I’d studied him, and all the details I’d thereby managed to ascertain, there was still one unknown, and this was it: Owen’s music. I had my hunches, though, so I braced myself for punk rock, thrash metal, something fast and loud.

  Instead, after a bit of staticky silence, I heard…chirping. Lots of chirping, like a chorus of crickets. This was followed, a moment later, by a voice chanting in a language I didn’t understand. The chirping grew louder, then louder, and the voice did as well, so it was like they were calling to each other, back and forth. Beside me, Owen was just driving, nodding his head slightly.

  After about a minute and a half, my curiosity got the better of me. “So,” I said, “what is this?”

  He glanced over at me. “Mayan spiritual chants,” he said.

  “What?” I said, speaking loudly to be heard over the chirping, which was really going now.

  “Mayan spiritual chants,” he repeated. “They’re passed down, like oral traditions.”

  “Oh,” I said. The chanting was so loud now it was verging on shrieking. “Where did you get this?”

  He reached forward, turning the volume down a little bit. “The library at the university,” he said. “I checked it out of their sound-and-culture collection.”

  “Ah,” I said. So Owen Armstrong was spiritual. Who knew? Then again, who would have thought I would be sitting in his car, listening to chants with him? Not me. Not anybody. And yet, here we were.

  “So you must really like music,” I said, looking back at the stacks of CDs.

  “Don’t you?” he replied, switching lanes.

  “Sure,” I said. “I mean, everybody does, right?”

  “No,” he said flatly.

  “No?”

  He shook his head. “Some people think they like music, but they have no idea what it’s really all about. They’re kidding themselves. Then there are people who feel strongly about music, but just aren’t listening to the right stuff. They’re misguided. And then there are people like me.”

  I just sat there for a second, studying him. He still had his elbow out the window and was sitting back in his seat, his head just brushing the ceiling above him. Up close, I was realizing he was still kind of intimidating, but for different reasons. His size, yes, but other things, too—like those dark eyes and wiry forearms, plus his intense gaze, which he now turned on me for a moment before directing his attention back to the road. “People like you,” I said. “What kind of people are those?”

  He hit his blinker again and began to slow down. Up ahead, I could see my old middle school, a yellow school bus pulling out of the parking lot. “The kind who live for music and are constantly seeking it out, anywhere they can. Who can’t imagine a life without it. They’re enlightened.”

  “Ah,” I said, like this actually made sense to me.

  “I mean, when you really think about it,” he continued, “music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.”

  I nodded, not sure what to say to this.

  “Plus there’s the fact,” he went on, making it clear he didn’t need me to reply anyway, “that music is a total constant. That’s why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just like that moment. Which is pretty amazing, when you actually think about it.”

  It was pretty amazing. As was this conversation, so wholly unlike anything I could or would have ever imagined. “Yeah,” I said slowly. “It is.”

  We drove on for a second, in silence. Except for the chanting.

  “What I mean to say,” he said, “is yes. I like music.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  “And now,” he said as we turned into the school’s lot, “I’ll apologize in advance.”

  “Apologize? For what?”

  He slowed, finally stopping at the curb. “My sister.”

  There were several girls standing around the main entrance to Lakeview Middle, and I quickly scanned their faces, trying to guess which one was related to Owen. The girl with the instrument case and the braid, leaning against the building, an open book in her hands? The tall blonde with the big Nike duffel bag and the field-hockey stick, drinking a Diet Coke? Or the easiest bet, the dark-haired girl with the pixie cut, wearing all black, who was lying on a nearby bench, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, staring up at the sky with a pained expression?

  Just then, though, I heard a clank right outside my window. When I turned my head, I saw a small, thin, dark-haired girl dressed head to toe in pink: ponytail tied with a pink ribbon, shiny pink lip gloss, hot-pink T-shirt, jeans, and pink platform flip-flops. When she saw me, she shrieked.

  “Oh my God!” she gasped, her voice muffled by the window between us. “It’s you!”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could, she disappeared from the window, a pink blur. A second later, the back door creaked open, and she scrambled inside. “Owen, oh my God!” she said, still at full, excitable volume. “You didn’t tell me you were friends with Annabel Greene!”

  Owen glanced at her through the rearview. “Mallory,” he said, “take it down a notch.”

  I started to turn around to say hello, but she was already leaning forward, poking her head between my seat and Owen’s, so close to me I could smell bubblegum breath. “This is unbelievable,” she said. “I mean, it’s you!”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi!” she shrieked, then jumped up and down a little bit in the seat. “Oh my God, I love your work. I really do.”

  “Work?” Owen said.

  “Owen, come on.” Mallory sighed. “She’s a Lakeview Model, hello? And she’s done tons of local ads. And that commercial, you know the one I love, with the girl in the cheerleading uniform?”

  “No,” Owen said.

  “That’s her! I can’t believe this. I can’t wait to tell Shelley and Courtney, oh my God!” Mallory grabbed her bag and unzipped it, pulling out a cell phone. “Oh! Maybe you can say hello to them, that would be so cool, and—”

  Owen turned around in his seat. “Mallory.”

  “Just a sec,” she said, pushing buttons. “I just want to—”

  “Mallory.” His voice was lower now, more stern.

  “Hold on, Owen, okay?”

  Owen reached out, taking the phone from her. She watched it leave her hands, eyes wide, then looked up at him. “Come on! I just wanted her to say hello to Courtney.”

  “No,” he said, putting the phone on the console between us.

  “Owen!”

  “Put on your seat belt,” Owen told her as he pulled away from the curb. “And take a breath.”

  After a short pause, Mallory proceeded to do both of these things, audibly. When I glanced back again, she was sitting there, in full pout mode, her arms crossed over her chest. When I looked at her, she brightened up immediately. “Is that a Lanoler sweater?”

  “A what?”

  She leaned forward, smoothing her fingers over the yellow cardigan I’d thrown on that morning. “This. It’s gorgeous. Is it a Lanoler?”

  “You know,” I said, “I’m not—”

  Her hand moved to my collar, pulling it dow
n to check the tag. “It is! I knew it. Oh my God, I want a Lanoler sweater so bad, I have forever—”

  “Mallory,” Owen said, “don’t be a label whore.”

  Mallory dropped her hand. “Owen!” she said. “R and R.”

  Owen gave her a look in the rearview. Then he sighed, loudly. “What I meant to say, Mallory,” he said, sounding pained, “is that your focus on labels and material goods troubles me.”

  “Thank you,” she replied. “And I understand and appreciate your concern. But, as you know, fashion is my life.”

  I looked at Owen. “R and R?”

  “Rephrase and Redirect,” Mallory told me. “It’s part of his Anger Management. If he says something inflammatory, you can tell him it hurts your feelings, and he has to say it another way.”

  Owen was looking at her through the rearview, a flat expression on his face. “Thank you, Mallory,” he said.

  “You’re welcome,” she replied. Then she smiled at me, big, and bounced in the seat again.

  For a second, we drove in silence, which gave me a moment to catch up, or try to, with all this newfound knowledge about Owen Armstrong’s personal life. So far, only the fact that he’d been in Anger Management wasn’t a surprise. Mallory, the music, and, of course, the fact that I was privy to either of these things were shockers in the biggest sense of the word. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting. I mean, he had to have a family and a life. I’d just never really taken the time to picture it. It was like when you’re a little kid and you run into your teacher or librarian at the grocery store or Wal-Mart and it’s just so startling, because it never occurred to you they existed outside of school.

  “So I really appreciate the ride,” I said to Owen. “I don’t know how I would have gotten home otherwise.”

  “It’s no problem,” he said. “I just have to make a couple of—”

  This thought was interrupted, however, by the sound of Mallory sucking in a breath. “Oh my God,” she said. “I’m going to get to see your house?”

  “No,” Owen said curtly.

  “But we’re taking her home! I’m here!”

  “We’re dropping you off first,” he told her.

  “Why?” she said.

  “Because,” Owen told her as we moved through an intersection, turning off the main road, “I have to go by the station, so Mom said to bring you by the store.”

  Mallory sighed, sounding pained. “But Owen—”

  “No buts,” he said. “It’s already decided.”

  Another thump as Mallory slumped, dramatically and dejectedly, against the seat behind her. “It’s so not fair,” she said a second later.

  “Life isn’t fair,” Owen told her. “Get used to it.”

  “R and R!” she said.

  “No,” Owen said. Then he reached forward, nudging up the volume on the radio, and the chirping started up again.

  We drove along with just the Mayan chants for a few minutes, long enough for me to actually start to get used to them. Then, suddenly, I felt breath in my ear. “When you did that commercial,” Mallory asked, “did you get to keep the clothes from that?”

  “Mallory!” Owen said.

  “What?”

  “Can you just relax and listen to the music?”

  “This isn’t music! This is crickets and screaming.” To me she said, “Owen is a total music Nazi. He won’t let anyone listen to anything other than the weird stuff he plays on his radio show.”

  “You have a radio show?” I asked Owen.

  “It’s just a local thing,” he told me.

  “It’s his life,” Mallory said dramatically. “He spends all week getting ready for it, worrying about it, even though it’s on when normal people aren’t even up yet.”

  “I’m not playing music for normal people,” Owen said. “I’m playing music for people who are—”

  “Enlightened, we know,” Mallory said, rolling her eyes. “Me personally? I listen to 104Z. They play all the top-forty stuff, lots of good songs you can dance to. I like Bitsy Bonds. She’s my favorite singer. I went to her concert last summer, with all my friends? It was so fun. Do you know her song ‘Pyramid’?”

  “Um,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  Mallory sat up straighter, tossing back her hair. “‘Stack it up, higher and higher, the sun’s above, it’s full of fire, kiss me here so I’ll know you did, baby I’m falling, pyramid!’”

  Owen winced. “Bitsy Bonds isn’t a singer, Mallory. She’s a product. She’s fake. She has no soul; she doesn’t stand for anything.”

  “So?”

  “So,” he said, “she’s more famous for her belly button than her music.”

  “Well,” Mallory said, “she does have a great belly button.”

  Owen just shook his head, clearly bothered, as he turned off the main road into a small parking lot. There was a row of stores to the left, and he turned into a space in front of one that had a mannequin in the front window wearing a poncho and some flowing earth-toned pants. The sign on the door said DREAMWEAVERS. “Okay,” he said. “We’re here.”

  Mallory made a face. “Great,” she said sarcastically. “Another afternoon at the store.”

  “Your parents own this place?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Mallory grumbled as Owen picked up her phone from the center console, giving it back to her. “It’s so unfair. Here I am, obsessed with clothes, and my mom has a clothing store. But it’s all stuff I wouldn’t ever wear in a million years. Not even if I was dead.”

  “If you were dead,” Owen told her, “you’d have bigger problems than what you were wearing.”

  Mallory looked at me then, her expression grave. “Annabel, seriously. It’s all, you know, natural fabrics and fibers, Tibetan batiks, vegan shoes.”

  “Vegan shoes?” I said.

  “They’re awful,” she whispered. “Awful. They’re not even pointy.”

  “Mallory,” Owen said. “Please get out of the car.”

  “I’m going, I’m going.” Still, she took her time gathering up her bag, undoing her seat belt, and unlocking the door. “It was really nice to meet you,” she said to me.

  “You, too,” I said.

  She slid out, shutting the door behind her, and started into the store. As she pushed the door open, she looked back, then waved at me excitedly, her hand blurring. I waved back, and then Owen was pulling away, back to the main road. Without Mallory, the car seemed smaller, not to mention quieter.

  “Again,” he said, as we slowed for a red light, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” I told him. “She’s cute.”

  “You don’t live with her. Or have to listen to her music.”

  “104Z,” I said. “All the hits, with less of the lip.”

  “You listen to that station?”

  “I have before,” I said. “Especially when I was in middle school.”

  He shook his head. “It would be different if she had no access to good music. If she was deprived of culture. But I’ve made her tons of CDs. She just won’t listen to them. Instead, she chooses to fill her head with that pop crap, listening to a station where they pretty much just play the occasional songs between commercials.”

  “So on your show,” I said, “it’s different.”

  “Well, yeah.” He glanced over at me, shifting gears as we headed back onto the main road. “I mean, it’s community radio, so there aren’t commercials. But I think you should be responsible about what you’re putting out there for people to hear. If it can be pollution or art, why wouldn’t you choose art?”

  I just looked at him. Clearly, I had really misjudged Owen Armstrong. I wasn’t sure who I’d thought he was, but it wasn’t this person sitting beside me.

  “So where do you live?” he asked me, switching lanes as we approached a stoplight.

  “The Arbors,” I said. “It’s a few miles past the mall; you can just—”

  “I know it,” he said. “The station is just a coupl
e of blocks from there. I have to stop in there for a second, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure,” I said. “That’s fine.”

  The community radio station was in a squat, square building that had once been a bank. There was a metal tower beside it, as well as a somewhat droopy banner hanging across the front entrance. WRUS it said in big black letters. COMMUNITY RADIO: RADIO FOR US. There was a big window in front, on the other side of which I could see a man sitting in a broadcast booth wearing headphones and speaking into a microphone. There was a lit-up sign in the corner of the window that said O AIR: apparently, the N was burned out.

  Owen pulled into a space right up front, then cut the engine before turning around in his seat to pick through some CDs on the floor. After gathering up a few, he pushed open the door. “Back in a sec,” he said.

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  Once he disappeared inside, I started checking out some of the handwritten names on the CD cases, none of which I recognized: THE HANDYWACKS (ASSORTED), JEREMIAH REEVES (EARLY STUFF), TRUTH SQUAD (OPUS). Suddenly, I heard a beep, then turned my head to see a Honda Civic pulling into the spot next to me. Which wouldn’t have been noteworthy, really, except the driver had on a bright red helmet.

  It wasn’t the kind football players wear, exactly, but something a little bigger, with more padding. The guy wearing it looked to be about my age and was dressed in a black sweatshirt and jeans. He waved at me, and I waved back, tentatively, and then he was rolling down his window.

  “Hi,” he said. “Is Owen inside?”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly. His eyes were big, blue, and long-lashed in the small cutout of the faceplate, and his hair was past his shoulders, pulled back in a ponytail that was poking out from under the helmet. “He said he’d be back in a second.”

  He nodded. “Cool,” he said, sitting back in his seat. I was trying not to stare at him, even though it was kind of hard. “I’m Rolly, by the way,” he said.