Just Listen

by Sarah Dessen

  “Why not?”

  “I just don’t.” She turned, looking at me. “What? We don’t have to be joined at the hip, you know. You don’t have to do everything I do.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  “Do you?” She exhaled, a stream of smoke billowing out between us. “Because, really, you’ve never done anything without me. From the day we met, I’m the one who’s gotten all the guys, found out about all the parties. Before you met me, you were just sitting around passing tissues to Ca-larke Rebbolds.”

  I took another sip from my cup. I hated when Sophie was like this—nasty, all sharp edges. I hated it even more when I thought it was my fault, which clearly this was. “Look,” I told her, “I just invited Emily along because she doesn’t know anyone.”

  “She knows you,” she said. “And now Greg Nichols.”

  “Funny.”

  “I’m not being funny,” she told me. “I’m just telling it like it is. I don’t like her. If you want to hang out with her, go ahead. I’m not interested.” Then she dropped her cigarette on the deck, grinding it out with her boot, turned around, and went inside.

  I felt uneasy watching her go, nervous. Like maybe she was right, that without her I really would be nothing. A part of me knew this wasn’t true, but there was this small sliver of doubt, nagging like a splinter. With Sophie, it was always all or nothing. You were either with her—or, more specifically, following her—or against her. There was no in between. So while being her friend was often hard, being on her bad side would be much, much worse.

  I glanced at my watch, realizing Emily had to be home soon, and went to look for her, working my way through the party until I found her talking to a girl from the models. I hung out with them for a while, letting Sophie cool down. By the time we had to leave, I figured her little mood had passed.

  When I went to look for her, though, she’d disappeared again. She wasn’t outside. Or in the kitchen. Finally I turned down a hallway and spotted her at the other end, opening a door. She saw me, then turned away, slipping inside. I took a deep breath, then headed toward it, knocking twice.

  “Sophie,” I said. “It’s time to go.”

  No answer. I sighed, crossing my arms over my chest, and stepped closer to the door. “Okay,” I said, “I know you’re mad at me, but let’s just go, and we can talk about it later. All right?”

  Still nothing. I looked at my watch again—if we didn’t leave soon, Emily would be late for curfew. “Sophie,” I said, reaching down for the knob. It wasn’t locked, so I turned it, slowly, pushing it open and starting to step inside. “Just—”

  I stopped speaking. And walking. Instead, I just stood there, in the half-open door, staring at Sophie, who was leaning against the wall opposite, a boy pressed against her. He had one hand under her shirt, the other moving down her thigh, and his head was ducked down, his lips on her neck. As I jerked back over the threshold, startled, he turned and looked at me. It was Will Cash.

  “We’re busy,” he said, his voice low. His eyes were red, his lips inches from her shoulder.

  “I—” I said “—I’m sorry…”

  “Go home, Annabel,” Sophie told me, moving her hand up into his hair, her fingers moving through where it curled, just barely, over his collar. “Just go home.”

  I stepped back, shutting the door, and just stood there in the hallway. Will Cash was one of the Perkins Day guys. He played guitar in the band and was a senior that year. While he was cute—very cute, the kind of guy you couldn’t help but notice—he also had a reputation for being sort of a jerk, as well as a serial dater, at least in the short term. He was always with one girl or another, but never for long. Sophie, for her part, preferred jocks and clean-cut types and hated anyone even slightly alternative. Clearly, though, she was making an exception. At least for the time being.

  That night, I tried to call her several times, but she never answered. The next day, around noon, when she finally called me, she didn’t even mention Emily or what had happened between us. All she wanted to talk about was Will Cash.

  “He’s amazing,” she told me. She’d given me the barest of details before announcing she was coming over, as if this subject was too big for a simple phone discussion. Now, she was sitting on my bed, flipping through an old Vogue. “He knows everybody, he’s this amazing guitar player, and he’s so freaking smart. Not to mention sexy. I could have kissed him all night long.”

  “You looked happy,” I said.

  “I was. I am,” she said, turning a page and leaning in to examine a shoe ad. “He is just what I need right now.”

  “So,” I said, keeping Will’s hit-and-run reputation in mind, “you’re gonna see him again?”

  “Of course,” she said, like this was a stupid question. “Tonight. The band’s playing at Bendo.”

  “Bendo?”

  She sighed, reaching up to pull her hair back behind her neck with one hand. “It’s a club, over on Finley?” she said. “Come on, Annabel, you have to have heard of Bendo.”

  “Oh,” I said, although I hadn’t. “Yeah.”

  “They go on at ten,” she said, flipping another page. “You can come, if you want.”

  She wasn’t looking at me as she asked this, and her voice was flat, no intonation. “No,” I said. “I can’t. I have to be up early tomorrow.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said.

  So that night, I sat at home, and Sophie went to Bendo to see the band, after which, I heard later, she went back to the A-Frame and slept with Will. Despite all her bragging and talk, he was her first, and from then on, he was all she cared about.

  For me, though, it was difficult to see the appeal. While Sophie claimed that Will was sweet and funny and hot and smart (as well as a million other adjectives) none of these things really came to mind whenever I found myself face-to-face with him. Will was good-looking and incredibly popular. But he was also hard to read, the kind of guy who is just attractive enough that a warm personality is almost required to make him approachable. Will didn’t have that. Instead, he came off as standoffish, as well as eerily intense, and whenever I found myself having to make conversation with him—in the car, when Sophie ran in to pay for gas, or at parties, when we both were looking for her—I felt nervous, entirely too aware of how he stared at me or let long silences fall between us.

  Even worse, it was like he knew he unsettled me, almost as if he liked it. Usually I attempted to make up for my uneasiness by talking too much or too loudly, or both. And when I did, Will would just keep his eyes level, no expression on his face, as I floundered on endlessly before finally sputtering to a stop. I was sure he thought I was stupid. I sounded stupid, like a little girl trying too hard to impress. At any rate, I did my best to avoid him, although it wasn’t always possible.

  Other girls, though, didn’t seem to have this problem, and because of it, dating Will turned out to be a full-time job, even for a girl as hardworking as Sophie. From the very start, there were rumors, and it seemed like everywhere they went Will knew someone, usually female. Add in the fact that they went to different schools, which made the stories we heard second-or thirdhand of his wandering eye and—if the constant rumors were to be believed—hands that much harder to confirm. Plus there was the being-in-a-band factor. Plainly put, Sophie had her work cut out for her, and their relationship quickly became defined by a recognizable cycle: Will interacts in any way with some girl, rumors abound, Sophie goes after said girl, then after Will, they argue, break up, get back together. And on and on.

  “I just don’t understand why you put up with this,” I said to her late one night as we drove too fast through a strange neighborhood, yet again looking for the house of some girl she’d heard had been flirting with Will at a party.

  “Of course you don’t,” she snapped, running a stop sign as we took a sharp right. “You’ve never been in love, Annabel.”

  I said nothing to this, because it was true. I’d dated a few guys but had never had anyo
ne serious. Although, if this was love, I thought, as we screeched around another curve, Sophie leaning across me to scan house numbers, her face flushed, I had to wonder if that was really such a bad thing.

  “Will could have any girl he wanted,” she said, slowing down a bit as we approached a row of houses on the left. “But he chose me. He’s with me. And I will be damned if I let some bitch decide she’s going to change that.”

  “They were just talking, though,” I said. “Right? I mean, that doesn’t mean anything, necessarily.”

  “Just talking, alone, at a party, in a room with no one else, is not just talking,” she snapped. “If you know a guy has a girlfriend—especially if that girlfriend is me—there’s absolutely no reason you should be doing anything with him that could be taken the wrong way. It’s a choice, Annabel. And if you make the wrong one, you have only yourself to blame when there are consequences.”

  I sat back in my seat, keeping quiet as she pulled up in front of a small white house. The front porch light was on, and there was a red Jetta in the driveway, a Perkins Day field hockey sticker on the back bumper. If I’d been bolder—or just very stupid—I might have pointed out that it couldn’t just be that all the girls in town had it in for Sophie’s relationship, that Will had to have some culpability in all the rumors. But then I looked at her face, and something in her expression reminded me of that day at the pool all those years ago, when she’d shown up and immediately zeroed in on Kirsten being her friend. It didn’t matter that my sister ignored her or was outright rude to her. When Sophie decided she wanted something, she wanted it. And for all the drama, being with Will had made her more envied than ever. She didn’t have to follow the most popular girl around anymore. She was the most popular girl. Because of this, I wondered if the way she saw Will wasn’t, really, all that different from how I saw her; while staying could be difficult, doing without entirely would be much, much harder.

  So I’d sat there in the car as she got out, dodging the thrown brightness of the porch light as she walked up the driveway to the Jetta. I wanted to look away as she took the key clutched in her hand and dragged it across its pretty red flank, spelling out what this girl now was to her. But I didn’t. I watched, the way I always did, only turning away as she came back toward me, when I was already a partner to the crime.

  The irony was that even though I’d seen Will and Sophie go through their drama enough times to know it by heart, I was still completely surprised when I suddenly found myself a part of it. One bad move on one night, and the next thing I knew it was me she was after—me who was the slut, the whore—and me cut out, not only of her life, but the one I’d come to know as my own, as well.

  “Annabel,” Mrs. McMurty, the director of the Models, said now as she passed behind me, “you’re up next, okay?”

  I nodded, then stood up, brushing myself off. Across the room, I could see one of the new girls, a tall brunette, posing awkwardly with a large blue serving platter from the kitchen store. The calendar shoot was always kind of weird. Each girl got a month, and you had pose with products from a particular store in the mall. The year before, I’d been unlucky enough to draw Rochelle Tire and got stuck with whitewalls and radials.

  “Hold it out, like you’re offering something,” the photographer said, and the girl reached forward, extending her neck. “Too much,” he said, and she flushed, then pulled back.

  I started up toward where the photographer was, working my way around a few girls who were leaning against the wall. I was almost there when Hillary Prescott stepped in front of me, blocking my path.

  “Hey, Annabel.”

  Hillary and I had started in the Models together. While initially we’d been kind of friends, I’d quickly learned to keep my distance, as she was a huge gossip. She was also an instigator, more than happy to not only report the dish but stir it up as well.

  “Hi, Hillary,” I said. She was unwrapping a stick of gum, which she now popped in her mouth, then offered the pack to me. I shook my head. “What’s going on?”

  “Not much.” She reached up, twisting a strand of hair around her finger, looking at me. “How was your summer?”

  If it had been anyone else, I would have offered up my standard answer—“Fine”—without even thinking. But since it was Hillary, I was on my guard. “Good,” I said, keeping my voice curt. “How was yours?”

  “Totally boring,” she replied, sighing. She chewed her gum for a moment: I could see it, pink and shiny, on her tongue. “So what’s up with you and Emily?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Why?”

  She shrugged. “It’s just, you guys always used to hang out. Now you’re not even talking to each other. Just seems kind of weird.”

  I glanced over at Emily, who was examining her fingernails. “I don’t know,” I said. “Things change, I guess.”

  I could feel her looking at me, and I knew, despite her questions, that she knew exactly what had happened, or most of it. Still, I’d be damned if I filled in the rest of the details. “I better go,” I told her. “I’m up next.”

  “Right,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me as I stepped around her. “See you later.”

  I took my place against the wall, then settled to wait again, yawning. It was two in the afternoon, but I was exhausted. And it was all Owen Armstrong’s fault.

  That morning I’d happened to wake up briefly and glance at the clock right at 6:57 A.M. Just as I was about to roll back over, I remembered Owen’s show. He’d been on my mind a lot that weekend, if only because I was suddenly aware of every little white lie I told, from the “Fine” I replied when my dad asked me how school was on Friday to how I’d nodded when my mom asked me the night before if I was excited about getting back to the Models. Cumulatively, it seemed like a lot of dishonesty, enough so that I found myself wanting to keep my word whenever possible. I’d told Owen I would listen to his show. So I did.

  When I first turned it on at seven sharp, I could hear only static. I leaned closer to the radio, pressing my ear to it, just as there was an explosion of noise: a sudden burst of guitar, a clanging of cymbals, followed by someone screaming. I jerked, startled, whacking the radio with my elbow and knocking it off the bed. It hit the floor with a bang but kept playing, now at full blast.

  Whitney started banging on the other side of the wall as I grabbed it, turning it down as quickly as I could. When I finally pulled it back to my ear—carefully this time—the song was still going, the words the singer was saying (or screeching, really) indecipherable. I had never heard music like this, if it was even music at all.

  Finally, with a burst of cymbals, it was over. The next song, though, was no better. Instead of thrashing guitars, it was some sort of electronic piece, consisting of various beeps and blips with a man talking over them, reciting what sounded, to me anyway, like a shopping list. Plus, it went on for five and a half minutes, which I knew because I was watching the clock the entire time, praying for it to finish. When it finally did, Owen came on.

  “That was Misanthrope with ‘Descartes Dream,’” he said. “Before that, we had Lipo with ‘Jennifer.’ You’re listening to Anger Management, here on WRUS, your community radio station. Here’s Nuptial.”

  Which was another long techno piece, followed by something that sounded like old men reciting poems about whaling ships, their voices gruff and uneven, after which came a solid two minutes of very drippy-sounding harp music. It was such a mishmash, I couldn’t even begin to adjust to it. Instead, for a full hour, I sat there, listening to song after song, waiting for one I could actually either a) understand or b) enjoy. It didn’t happen. Clearly, I was not going to be enlightened. Just exhausted.

  “Annabel,” Mrs. McMurty called out, jerking me back to the present. “We’re ready for you.”

  I nodded, then stepped over to stand in front of the backdrop, which was now decorated with several plants: a spider plant, some ferns, and a big palm tree in a pot with wheels. Clearly, this year I’d drawn Laur
el’s Florals. At least it was better than tires.

  The photographer was one I hadn’t met before, and he didn’t say hello as I stepped in front of him, too busy messing with his camera as a prop guy pushed the rolling pot closer to me. A frond brushed my cheek.

  The photographer glanced up at me. “We need more plants,” he said to Mrs. McMurty, who was standing off to the side. “Or else I’m just going to have to shoot really close.”

  “Do we have more plants?” Mrs. McMurty asked the prop guy.

  He glanced into the adjoining room. “A couple of cacti,” he said. “And one ficus. But it’s looking kind of sick.”

  There was a pop as the light meter went off. I reached up, trying to push the frond out of my face. “Good,” the photographer said, coming closer and moving it back. “I like that. Kind of a reveal thing. Do it again.”

  I did, holding back a sneeze as a branch tickled my face. Behind the photographer, I could see the other girls watching me—the new models, the seniors, Emily. But while I’d had so much trouble lately with being stared at, in this setting it was familiar, what was supposed to happen. If only for a few minutes, I could stop thinking of everything inside to focus only on the surface: one glimpse, one glance, one look. This one.

  “Good,” the photographer said. A cactus was moving closer in my side vision, but I kept my eyes on him as he moved around me, the flash popping as he directed me to come out, emerge, again and again.

  That night, after my mom had gone to bed, and Whitney was locked away in her room, I went downstairs for a glass of water. My dad was sitting in the den just beyond the kitchen, the TV on in front of him, his feet up on the ottoman. When I flicked on the light, he turned around.

  “You,” he said, “are just in time for a great documentary on Christopher Columbus.”

  “Really,” I said, pulling a glass out of the cabinet.

  “It’s fascinating,” he said. “You want to watch with me? You might just learn something.”

  My dad loved the History Channel. “It’s the story of the world!” he always said, when the rest of us complained about having to watch yet another show about the Third Reich, the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the Great Pyramids. Usually he capitulated, allowing himself to be outvoted, and was subsequently subjected to the Style Network, HGTV, or an endless series of reality shows. When he was alone later at night, though, the TV was all his. Still, he always seemed eager for company, as though history was even better when you had someone to share it with.