Just Listen

by Sarah Dessen

Whatever the case, some things now were just understood. First, that we’d sit together. Second, that I’d always give him a hard time about not eating anything—he’d confessed to me he spent his lunch money on music, always—before sharing whatever I’d brought. And third, that we would argue. Or not argue, exactly. Discuss.

  Initially, it was only about music, Owen’s favorite subject and the one about which he felt the most strongly. When I agreed with him, I was brilliant and enlightened. When I didn’t, I had the Worst Taste in Music in the World. Usually the most spirited exchanges came at the beginning of the week, as we discussed his radio show, which I now listened to faithfully every Sunday morning. It was hard to believe that once I’d been so nervous to tell him what I thought. Now, it came naturally.

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” he said one Monday, shaking his head. “You didn’t like that Baby Bejesuses song?”

  “Was it the one that was all touch-tones?”

  “It wasn’t all touch-tones,” he said indignantly. “There was other stuff, too.”

  “Like what?”

  He just looked at me for a second, half of my turkey sandwich poised in his hand. “Like,” he said, then took a bite, which meant he was stalling. After taking his time chewing and swallowing, he said, “The Baby Bejesuses are innovators of the genre.”

  “Then they should be able to put together a song using more than a phone keypad.”

  “That,” he said, pointing at me with the sandwich, “is I-Lang. Watch it.”

  I-Lang meant Inflammatory Language. And like R and R and placeholders, it had become part of my daily vocabulary. Hang out with Owen long enough, and you got an Anger Management tutorial, free of charge.

  “Look,” I said, “you know I don’t like techno music. So maybe, you know, you should stop asking me my opinion of techno songs.”

  “That is such a generalization!” he replied. “How can you just rule out an entire genre? You’re jumping to conclusions.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said.

  “What do you call it, then?”

  “Being honest.”

  He just looked at me for a second. Then, with a sigh, he took another bite of the sandwich. “Fine,” he said, chewing. “Let’s move on. What about that thrash metal song by the Lipswitches?”

  “Too noisy.”

  “It’s supposed to be noisy! It’s thrash metal!”

  “I wouldn’t mind the noise, if there were other redeeming qualities,” I told him. “It’s just someone wailing at the top of their lungs.”

  He popped the last bit of crust into his mouth. “So no techno and no thrash metal,” he said. “What’s left?”

  “Everything else?” I said.

  “Everything else,” he repeated slowly, still not convinced. “Okay, fine. How about the last song I played, the one with glockenspiel.”

  “The glockenspiel?”

  “Yeah. By Aimee Decker. There was a stand-up bass, and some yodeling at the beginning, and then…”

  “Yodeling?” I said. “Is that what that was?”

  “What, now you don’t like yodeling, either?”

  And on and on. Sometimes, it got heated, but never to the point where I couldn’t handle it. The truth was, I looked forward to my lunches with Owen, more than I ever would have admitted.

  Between our discourses on early punk, big band and swing, and the questionable redeeming qualities of techno music, I was learning more and more about him. I now knew that although he’d always had a passion for music, it wasn’t until his parents divorced a year and a half earlier that he’d become, to use his word, obsessed. Apparently the split had been pretty ugly, with accusations going back and forth. Music, he told me, was an escape. Everything else was ending and changing, but music was this vast resource, bottomless.

  “Basically,” he said one day, “when they wouldn’t talk to each other, I got stuck in the middle, doing all the go-between work. And of course, it was always the other one who was terrible and inconsiderate. If I agreed, I was screwed, because someone got offended. But if I disagreed, that was taking sides, too. There was no way to win.”

  “That must have been hard,” I said.

  “It sucked. That’s when I started really getting into the music thing, all the obscure stuff. If nobody had heard it, nobody could tell me what I was supposed to think about it. There was no right and wrong there.” He sat back, waving away a bee that was circling around us. “Plus, around that same time, there was this college radio station out in Phoenix that I started listening to—KXPC. There was this one guy who had a late-night shift on the weekends…he played some seriously obscure shit. Like tribal music, or seriously underground punk, or five full minutes of a faucet dripping. Stuff like that.”

  “A faucet dripping,” I said. He nodded. “That’s music?”

  “Obviously not to everyone,” he replied, shooting me a look. I smiled. “But that was kind of the point. It was, like, this whole uncharted territory. I started writing down the stuff he was playing, and looking for it at record stores and online. It gave me something to focus on other than all the stuff going down at home. Plus, it came in handy when I needed to drown out the screaming downstairs.”

  “Really? Screaming?”

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t that bad. But there were definitely some freak-outs on both sides. Though, to be honest, the silence was worse.”

  “Worse than screaming?” I said.

  “Much,” he said, nodding. “I mean, at least with an argument, you know what’s happening. Or have some idea. Silence is…it could be anything. It’s just—”

  “So freaking loud,” I finished for him.

  He pointed at me. “Exactly.”

  So Owen hated silence. Also on his list of dislikes: peanut butter (too dry), liars (self-explanatory), and people who didn’t tip (delivering pizza didn’t pay that well, apparently). And those were only the ones I knew about so far. Maybe it was because of his stint in Anger Management, but Owen was very open about the things that pissed him off.

  “Aren’t you?” he asked one day, when I pointed this out to him.

  “No,” I said. “I mean, I guess I am about some things.”

  “What makes you mad?”

  Instinctively, I looked over at Sophie, who was on her bench, talking on her cell phone. Out loud I said, “Techno music.”

  “Ha-ha,” he said. “Seriously.”

  “I don’t know.” I picked the crust of my sandwich. “My sisters, I guess. Sometimes.”

  “What else?”

  “I can’t think of anything,” I said.

  “Please! You’re seriously saying the only thing that bugs you is siblings and a genre of music? Come on. Are you not human?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “I’m just not as angry as you are.”

  “Nobody’s as angry as I am,” he replied, hardly bothered. “That’s a fact. But even you have to have something that really pisses you off.”

  “I probably do. I just…can’t think of one right this second.” He rolled his eyes. “And besides, what do you mean no one’s as angry as you are? What about Anger Management?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well,” I said, “wasn’t the point that you not be angry anymore?”

  “The purpose of Anger Management isn’t to make you not angry.”

  “No?”

  He shook his head. “No. Anger is inevitable. Anger Management is just what it sounds like: It’s supposed to help you deal with it. Express it in a more productive way than, say, hitting people in parking lots.”

  If at first I’d doubted it, I didn’t now: Owen was always this honest. Ask a question, you got an answer. For a while, though, I’d tested him, soliciting his opinion on various things, like my clothes (“Not your best shade,” he told me about a new peach-colored shirt), his initial impression of me (“Too perfect and completely unapproachable”), and the state of his love life (“Nonexistent, currently”).

  “Is there anything
you won’t tell someone?” I finally asked him one day, just after he’d told me that, while my new haircut looked fine, he preferred it longer. “Like, at all?”

  “You just asked me what I thought,” he pointed out, helping himself to a pretzel from the bag between us. “Why ask me, if you don’t want me to be honest?”

  “I’m not talking about my hair. I’m talking in general.” He gave me a doubtful look, popping the pretzel into his mouth. “Seriously. Do you ever think to yourself, maybe I shouldn’t say this? Maybe it’s not the right thing to do?”

  He considered this for a second. “No,” he said finally. “I told you. I don’t like liars.”

  “It’s not lying, though. It’s just not telling.”

  “You’re saying there’s a difference?”

  “There is,” I said. “One is actively deceiving. The other is just not saying something out loud.”

  “Yes, but,” he replied, pulling out another pretzel, “you’re still participating in a deception. Except it’s just to yourself. Right?”

  I just looked at him, turning this thought over in my mind. “I don’t know,” I said slowly.

  “In fact,” he continued, “that’s worse than lying, when you really think about it. I mean, at the very least you should tell yourself the truth. If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust? You know?”

  I would never have been able to tell him so, but Owen inspired me. The little white lies I told on a daily basis, the things I kept in, each time I was not totally honest—I was aware of every one now. I was also cognizant of how good it felt to actually be able to say what I thought to someone. Even if it was just about music. Or not.

  One day at lunch, Owen put his backpack on the wall between us, unzipped it, and pulled out a stack of CDs. “Here,” he said, pushing them toward me. “For you.”

  “Me?” I said. “What is this?”

  “An overview,” he explained. “I planned to do more, but my burner was acting up. So I could only do a few.”

  To Owen, “a few” CDs meant ten, by my count. Looking at the top few, I saw that each had a title—TRUE HIP HOP, CHANTS AND SHANTIES (VARIOUS), TOLERABLE JAZZ, ACTUAL SINGERS ACTUALLY SINGING—with the tracks listed beneath in a neat block print. It occurred to me that they were probably the result of a pointed discussion about stoner rock we’d had the day before, when Owen decided that maybe my knowledge of music was so “stunted and wanting” (his words) due to a lack of exposure. So here was his remedy: a personal primer, divided into chapters. “If you really like any of these,” he continued, “then I can give you more. When, you know, you’re ready to go in depth.”

  I picked up the stack, flipping through the rest of the titles. There was one for country music, the British Invasion, folk songs. When I reached the one at the very bottom, though, I saw that the cover was blank, except for two words: JUST LISTEN.

  Instantly, I was suspicious. “Is this techno?” I asked him.

  “I can’t believe you’d just assume that,” he said, offended. “God.”

  “Owen,” I said.

  “It’s not techno.”

  I just looked at him.

  “The point is,” he said as I shook my head, “that all the others are set lists, set concepts. An education, if you will. You should listen to them first. And then, when you’ve done that, and you think you’re ready, really ready, put that one on. It’s a bit more…out there.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’m officially wary now.”

  “You might totally hate it,” he admitted. “Or not. It might be the answer to all life’s questions. That’s the beauty of it. You know?”

  I looked down at it again, studying the cover. “‘Just Listen,’” I said.

  “Yeah. Don’t think, or judge. Just listen.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then,” he said, “you can make up your mind. Fair enough, right?”

  This did seem fair to me, in fact. Whether it was a song, a person, or a story, there was a lot you couldn’t know from just an excerpt, a glance, or part of a chorus. “Yeah,” I said, sliding it back to the bottom the stack. “Okay.”

  “Grace,” my father said, glancing at his watch again. “It’s time to go.”

  “Andrew, I know. I’m almost ready.” My mother bustled across the kitchen, picking up her purse and putting it over her shoulder. “Now, Annabel, I’m leaving money for pizza tonight, and tomorrow you girls can make whatever you want. I just went shopping, so there’s plenty of food. Okay?”

  I nodded, as my dad shifted in the doorway.

  “Now,” my mom said, “what did I do with my keys?”

  “You don’t need your keys,” my father told her. “I’m driving.”

  “And I’m going to be in Charleston all day tomorrow and half of Monday while you’re in meetings,” she replied, putting her purse down again and starting to dig through it. “I might need to get out of the hotel for a while.”

  My father, who by my count had already been standing in the open door to the garage for a full twenty minutes, leaned against the doorjamb, exhaling loudly. It was Saturday morning, and my parents were supposed to have left for South Carolina for the long weekend, and some big architecture conference, ages ago. “Then you can use mine,” he told her, but she ignored him and began taking stuff out of her purse, laying her wallet, a pack of Kleenex, and her cell phone on the counter. “Grace. Come on.” She didn’t budge.

  When my dad had first proposed this trip, he’d pitched it as a great getaway to one of their very favorite cities. When he was in meetings, she could shop and see the sights, and in the evenings, they’d eat at the best restaurants and enjoy some quality time together. It had sounded great to me, but my mother had hesitated, not sure she wanted to leave me and Whitney alone. Especially since Whitney had been in a worse mood than usual since the week before, when she’d started a new therapy group. Against her wishes. With, in her words, a “freak.”

  “Whitney, please,” my mother had said one night at dinner, when the subject first came up. “Dr. Hammond thinks this group could really help you.”

  “Dr. Hammond is an idiot,” Whitney replied. My father shot her a look, but if she saw this, she ignored it. “I know people who have worked with this woman, Mom. She’s a nutcase.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” my dad said.

  “Believe it. She’s not even a real psychiatrist. A lot of the doctors in my program think she’s way out there. Her methods are really unorthodox.”

  “Unorthodox how?” he asked.

  “Dr. Hammond,” my mom said, and this time, Whitney rolled her eyes at his name, “says that this woman, Moira Bell, has had great success with many of his patients because she takes a different approach.”

  “I’m still not getting what’s so different about this woman,” my dad said.

  “She does a lot of hands-on exercises,” my mother told him. “It’s not just sitting and talking.”

  “You want an example?” Whitney put down her fork. “Janet, this girl I know from the hospital? When she was in Moira Bell’s group, she had to learn how to make fire.”

  My mother looked confused. “Make fire?”

  “Yeah. Moira gave her two sticks, and her assignment was to rub them together until she made fire. Until she could make fire consistently, every time she did it.”

  “And what, exactly,” my dad said, “was the purpose of this exercise?”

  Whitney shrugged, picking up her fork again. “Janet said it was supposed to have something to do with being self-sufficient. She also said Moira Bell was crazy.”

  “That does sound different,” my mother said. She looked worried, like she was picturing Whitney burning the entire house down.

  “I’m just saying,” Whitney said, “that it’s going to be a waste of time.”

  “Give it a try,” my dad told her. “Then make up your mind.”

  Her mind, though, had clearly already been made up, at least judging by ho
w the rest of the night went—all her typical slamming, sighing, and sulking tacked up a notch. The next day, after attending the group as scheduled, she’d come back in one of the worst moods yet. Now, she’d been back twice, and while she hadn’t yet burned down the house, my mother was still nervous. I kind of was as well, since I was the one stuck behind with her.

  My dad, though, felt it was time to trust Whitney with more responsibility. She’d never be independent if my mother kept hovering, he said, and they’d only be gone for two days. He’d even called Dr. Hammond, who signed off on the arrangement. Still, my mother wasn’t convinced, which was why she was stalling now, going through her purse contents yet again as my father glanced at his watch.

  “I just don’t understand,” she said, opening the purse wider. “I had them last night, and I can’t imagine where they’ve gotten to….”

  Just then, I heard the front door shut. A moment later, Whitney came around the corner, wearing yoga pants, a T-shirt, and sneakers, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. In one hand, she was carrying a bag from Home & Garden. In the other, my mother’s keys.

  “Ah,” my father said, walking over to my mom. “Mystery solved.” He picked up the purse, pushing everything on the counter back into it. “Let’s go. Before we lose anything else.”

  They went, finally, and I watched from the kitchen table as they backed up the driveway. The last glimpse I got of my mom, she was turning her head to look back at the house as they drove away.

  Once they were gone, I pushed out my chair, standing up, then looked over Whitney, who was messing with whatever she’d bought at Home & Garden, her brow furrowed as she studied the bag’s contents. “Well,” I said. “I guess it’s just the two of us.”

  “What?” she said, not looking up at me.

  All around me, the house felt empty. Quiet. It was going to be a long weekend. “Nothing,” I told her. “Never mind.”

  Luckily, I had other things to do besides be ignored by my sister. Well, one thing.

  The Lakeview Mall Fall Fashion Show was the next weekend, and that afternoon, I had to go to a meeting about the rehearsal schedule. When I got to Kopf’s, it was in the midst of a typically hectic Saturday, complete with an in-store appearance by a pop singer named Jenny Reef, who was doing a promotion with, of all things, Mooshka Surfwear. The juniors department was packed with girls, a long line snaking all the way back to lingerie while a bouncy pop song played on a constant loop from a nearby boom box.