Just Listen

by Sarah Dessen

  “Really,” she said.

  I nodded. For a moment, we were both quiet, just eating. I looked over at the pots again, the golf course beyond, so green it was almost unreal.

  “Thank you,” Whitney said.

  I wasn’t sure if this was for the cooking compliment, or the salad, or just sticking around. I didn’t care, either. I was just happy to take it, for whatever it was.

  “You’re welcome,” I said, and she nodded, as outside, a car drove past, then slowed, the driver glancing in at us before moving on.

  Chapter ELEVEN

  “It’s Annabel!”

  I had not even taken my finger off Owen’s doorbell, but somehow Mallory was already on the other side. Then the knob rattled and the door swung open.

  At first, I almost didn’t recognize her, as she was wearing an incredible amount of makeup: base, eyeliner and shadow, way too much rouge, and fake eyelashes, one of which was unpasted and sticking to her eyebrow. She also had on a tight, strapless black dress and very high-heeled sandals, on which she was teetering as she gripped the doorknob.

  Grouped around her, all staring at me, were four other girls, also dressed and made up: a short, dark-haired girl with glasses, wearing a black dress and wedge heels; two identical redheads with green eyes and freckles, each in jeans and high-cut crop-tops; and a chubby blonde in what looked like a prom dress. In the small space of the doorframe, the smell of hair spray was overpowering.

  “Annabel!” Mallory shrieked, jumping up and down. Her hair, done up high above her head in some sort of faux-Mohawk, did not move. “Hi!”

  “Hi,” I said. “What are you—”

  Before I could finish, she reached out, grabbing my hand and yanking me over the threshold. “You guys,” she said as the other girls stepped back, still staring, “oh my God, this is Annabel Greene, can you even believe it?”

  The blonde in the prom dress, studying me with her very pink lips pursed, said, “You were in that commercial.”

  “Duh!” Mallory told her. She reached up, finally adjusting her eyelash. “She’s the Kopf’s girl. And a Lakeview Model.”

  “What are you doing here?” one of the redheads asked.

  “Well,” I said, “I was in the neighborhood, and—”

  “She’s friends with my brother. And with me.” Mallory squeezed my hand again, her palm hot against mine. To me she said, “You’re just in time for our photo shoot. You can help us with our poses!”

  “Actually, I can’t stay,” I said. “I just stopped in for a second.”

  This was what I’d told Whitney, too, after dinner. That I had something to bring by a friend’s, and I’d be back within the hour. She’d just nodded, although she was looking at me sort of strangely, like she was wondering if I might come home smelling of bacon.

  “Do you like my outfit?” Mallory asked now, striking a pose, one hand behind her neck, eyes turned up to the ceiling. She held it for a moment, then resumed her normal standing position. “We’re doing all these different looks. I’m Evening Elegant.”

  “We’re Daytime Casual,” one of the redheads told me, planting a hand on her hip. Her sister, who had more freckles, nodded, her face solemn.

  I looked at the dark-haired girl with the glasses. “Classy Workplace,” she mumbled, tugging at her black dress.

  “And I,” the blonde announced, twirling so her dress swished, “am Fantasy Engagement.”

  “You are not,” Mallory said. “You’re Nighttime Formal.”

  “Fantasy Engagement,” the blonde insisted, taking another spin. To me she added, “This dress cost—”

  “Four hundred dollars, we know, we know,” Mallory said, annoyed. “She thinks she’s a big deal just because her sister was a debutante.”

  “When are we taking pictures?” one of the redheads asked. “I’m tired of being Daytime Casual; I want to wear a dress.”

  “In a second!” Mallory snapped, irritated. “First Annabel has to see my room. Then she can advise us on our looks.”

  She started to pull me toward the stairs, the other girls clomping along behind us. “Is Owen here?” I asked.

  “Somewhere,” she said as we started up the steps. The dark-haired girl was beside me now, studying me with a serious expression, while the other three whispered behind me. “You should see the pictures we took last time at Michelle’s, they were so good! I had this one where I was European Flair? It was fabulous.”

  “European Flair?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I wore a beret and a plaid skirt, and posed with a loaf of French bread. It was awesome.”

  “I want to be European Flair,” the girl in black said. “This dress is boring. And how come you always get to be Evening Elegant?”

  “Just wait a second!” Mallory hissed as we came up on a closed door. She stepped in front of it, clasping her hands to her chest. “Okay,” she said. Her eyelash had come loose again. “Prepare yourself for the ultimate model experience.”

  This did not sound very promising. I glanced behind me; the other girls were all staring at me, still. I turned back to Mallory. “All right,” I said slowly.

  She reached down, twisting the knob, then pushed the door open. “Here it is,” she said. “Can you believe it?”

  I couldn’t. The wall in front of me, like the ones on either side, was covered from top to bottom with pictures from magazines. Model after model, ad after ad, celebrity after celebrity. There were blondes, brunettes, redheads. High fashion, prom fashion, casual fashion, showbiz fashion. One beautiful, high-cheekboned face after another, striking a pose this way, that way, every possible way. There were so many pictures, cut out and edges overlapping, that you couldn’t even see the wall behind them.

  “Well?” Mallory said. “What do you think?”

  Truth be told, it was all completely overwhelming, even before she pulled me forward, pointing at one specific face. It was only after I moved closer that I realized it was mine.

  “See,” she said, “this is from the Lakeview Models calendar last year, when you were April, and posed with the tires? Remember?”

  I nodded, and then she was pulling me a few feet to the right, pointing again. Meanwhile, the other girls had scattered, the redheads flopping onto the nearby bed, where they were flipping through a stack of magazines, while the blonde and the dark-haired girl jockeyed for position on the chair that faced a nearby vanity.

  “And this,” Mallory said, her finger inches from the wall, “is the Boca Tan ad that was in the program for a basketball game I went to last year at the university. See, your hair is blonder there, right?”

  “Right,” I said. I looked slightly orange, as well. So strange. I’d forgotten all about that. “It sure is.”

  Another tug, and the photos blurred as we moved again, this time in the opposite direction, coming to a stop on the far left. “But this one,” she said, “is my all-time favorite. That’s why I have it right next to my bed.”

  I leaned in closer. It was a collage of shots from the Kopf’s back-to-school commercial: me in the cheerleader uniform, on the bench with the girls behind me, at a desk, on the arm of the cute boy in the tux. “Where did you get photos?” I asked her.

  “It’s a screen capture,” she said proudly. “I burned the commercial to a DVD, then uploaded it and saved the images on my computer. Cool, huh?”

  I leaned in, looking even more closely, remembering, as I did each time I saw the commercial, that day in April when I’d shot it. I was so different then; everything was different then.

  Mallory dropped my hand, leaning in beside me. “I just love that commercial,” she said now. “At first, it was because of the cheerleading outfit, because I was really into that this summer? But then it was all about the clothes, and the story…. I mean, it’s great.”

  “The story,” I said.

  “Yeah.” She turned to look at me. “You know, that you’re this girl, and you’re going back to high school after a great summer.”

  �
��Oh,” I said. “Right.”

  “At first, it’s, like, all the stuff that happens right at the beginning of school. Like cheering at the big game. And studying for tests, and hanging out with all your friends on the quad.”

  Hanging out with all my friends on the quad, I thought. Right.

  “And then,” she said, “it ends with the first dance, where you get the hot guy, which means the rest of the year will be even better.” She sighed. “It’s like you have this great life, and get to do all this cool stuff. All the stuff high school should be. You’re like—”

  I looked at her again. Her face was inches from the pictures, still staring. “The girl who has everything,” I said, remembering the director’s words.

  She turned to face me, nodding. “Exactly,” she said.

  I wanted to tell her, right then, that this wasn’t true. That I was far from the girl who had everything; that I wasn’t even that girl in the pictures, if I ever had been. No one’s life was really like that, one glorious moment after another, especially mine. A real set of snapshots from my back-to-school experience would be something else entirely: Sophie’s pretty mouth forming an ugly word, Will Cash smiling at me, me alone behind the building retching in the grass. This was the real truth about me going to back to school. The story of my life.

  I heard heavy footsteps in the hallway, then a heavy sigh. “Mallory, I told you, if you want me to take pictures, let’s go ahead and do it. I’ve got a show to work on and I don’t—”

  I stood up; Owen was standing in the open doorway. When he saw me, his eyes widened. “—have all night,” he finished. “Hey. What are you doing here?”

  “She came for my party,” Mallory told him.

  Owen narrowed his eyes. “You came for this?”

  “You’re helping with the photo shoot?” I replied.

  “No,” he said. “I just—”

  “We needed a photographer,” Mallory explained to me, “for the group shots. And now we have a stylist, too! This is perfect.” She clapped her hands. “Okay, everyone, downstairs and into position. We’ll do our group pictures first, then move on to individual. Who has our shoot list?”

  The dark-haired girl got up off the chair by the mirror, reaching into her pocket to pull out folded piece of paper. “Here,” she said.

  “Okay,” Owen said as Mallory took it from her, “tell me why you’re really here.”

  “Fashion is my life,” I told him. “You know that.”

  Mallory cleared her throat. “Daytime Casual first,” she said, pointing to the redheads, “followed by Workplace Classy, Evening Elegant, and Nighttime Formal.”

  “Fantasy Engagement,” the blonde corrected her.

  “Downstairs!” Mallory said. “Let’s go!”

  The redheads got off the bed, heading for the door, the dark-haired girl in the black following along. The blonde, in comparison, took her time, shooting me a look as she passed.

  “Hi, Owen,” she said as she walked by him, the hem of her dress dragging on the carpet.

  Owen nodded at her, a flat expression on his face. “Hello, Elinor,” he said. At the sound of her name, her face flushed pink and she picked up speed, darting out the door and down the hallway, where she was greeted with a burst of giggling.

  Mallory followed her friends, then stopped in the doorway, turning back to look at us. “Owen,” she said, “I’ll need you downstairs in five, ready to shoot. Annabel, you can style and supervise.”

  “Watch the tone, Mallory,” Owen told her. “Or you’ll be taking self-portraits.”

  “Five minutes!” she said. Then she clomped down the hallway, her voice rising up as she continued to order her friends around.

  “Wow,” I said to Owen as their voices faded. “This is quite a production.”

  “Tell me about it,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “And mark my words: it will end in tears. It always does. These girls have no concept of thinking toward the middle.”

  “Thinking toward what?”

  “The middle,” he repeated as I sat down next to him. “It’s an Anger Management term. It means not only thinking in extremes. You know, either I get what I want or I don’t. Either I’m right or I’m wrong.”

  “Either I’m Fantasy Engagement or I’m Nighttime Formal,” I added.

  “Right. It’s dangerous to think like that, because nothing is totally cut-and-dry,” he said. “Unless, apparently, you’re thirteen.”

  “Miss Fantasy Engagement does seem like a bit of a diva.”

  “Elinor?” He let out a breath. “She’s a piece of work.”

  “She seems to like you quite a bit.”

  “Stop it,” he said, shooting me a dark look. “That’s I-Lang. Big-time.”

  “You know that whole model-photographer-hookup thing,” I said, bumping him with my knee. “It’s practically required.”

  “Why are you here, again?”

  “I just came by to drop this off.” I held up his jacket. “I forgot to give it back to you this morning.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Thanks. But you could have waited until Tuesday, if you wanted.”

  “I would have,” I told him, reaching into the pocket and pulling out the iPod, “except for this.”

  His eyes widened. “Oh, man,” he said, taking it from me. “That I would have missed.”

  “I figured you probably were already.”

  “Not yet,” he said. “But I was about to start planning next week’s show, so pretty soon, I would have. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  There was a burst of noise from downstairs, what sounded like someone either cheering or wailing. “See?” Owen said, pointing at the open door. “Tears. Guaranteed. No middle.”

  “Maybe we should just hide out here,” I said. “Might be safer.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, glancing around at the walls. “Looking at all these pictures gives me the creeps.”

  “At least you’re not in them,” I told him.

  “You? There are ones of you here?”

  I pointed at the pictures from the commercial, and he got up, walking over to look closer. “It’s nothing special,” I said. “Really.”

  He studied the pictures long enough that I began to regret pointing them out. “It’s strange,” he said finally.

  “Gee,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

  “No, I mean, you don’t look like you, or something.” He paused, leaning in a little closer. “Yeah. I mean, you look familiar, but not like the same person at all.”

  I sat there for a second, a little weirded out, because actually this was how I felt, too, when I looked at the older ads I’d done, especially the Kopf’s commercial. That girl was different from who I was now, more whole and unbroken and okay than the one I saw in the mirror these days. I’d just thought I was the only one who noticed.

  “No offense,” Owen said.

  I shook my head. “It’s fine.”

  “I mean, it’s a nice picture.” He peered at it again. “I just think you look better now.”

  At first, I thought maybe I’d heard him wrong. “Now?” I said.

  “Yeah.” He glanced up at me. “What did you think I meant?”

  “I don’t…” I began, then stopped. “Never mind.”

  “You think I’d tell you that you looked better here?”

  “Well,” I said, “you are honest.”

  “I’m not a jerk, though,” he replied. “You look good. You just don’t look like you. You look…different.”

  “Different bad,” I said.

  “Different different.”

  “Super vague,” I pointed out. “Placeholder. Double placeholder.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “What I mean is, looking at this, I think, Huh, that’s not Annabel. That doesn’t look like her at all.”

  “What do I look like?”

  “Like this,” he said, nodding at me. “My point is, I don’t know you as someone who gets their p
icture taken in a cheerleading outfit. Or even as a model, period. That’s not you to me.”

  I wanted to ask him to explain further, to say what I was to him, exactly. But then I realized maybe he just had. I already knew he thought of me as honest, direct, even funny—all things I had never thought about myself. Who knew what else I could be, what kind of potential there was in the differences between that girl and the one he saw now. So many possibilities.

  “Owen!” Mallory yelled up the stairs. “We’re ready for you now!”

  Owen rolled his eyes. Then he walked over, holding out his hand to help me to my feet. “Okay,” he said. “Come on.”

  Looking up at him, I realized that this, too, was part of my real back-to-school days: Along with Sophie and Will and everything horrible, there was Owen, reaching out a hand to me. And now, as I reached up, closing my fingers over his, I was grateful more than ever for something, finally, to hold on to.

  Owen was right about the tears. Within an hour, we had a meltdown.

  “It’s not fair!” said the dark-haired girl, whose name I now knew was Angela, her voice wavering.

  “You look good,” Mallory told her, adjusting her boa. “What’s the problem?”

  I knew. In fact, it was pretty obvious. While Mallory and the others were alternating between Evening Elegant and Nighttime Formal (or, depending on how you looked at it, Fantasy Engagement), Angela had been continually assigned Workplace Classy, which was clearly the least favorite of the chosen looks. Now, she looked down at her plain black skirt, black blouse, and flats. “I want to do Evening Elegant,” she protested. “When is it my turn?”

  “Owen!” Elinor, the blonde, called out, tugging a tube top down over her stomach. “Are you ready for me?”

  “No,” Owen muttered as she moved in toward him, tossing her hair and putting a hand on her hip. “Not even close.”

  The shoot was quite a production. Not only had the girls pushed back the furniture in the living room and draped a white sheet over the mantel for a backdrop, there was also a dressing and makeup area (the powder room) and background music (mostly Jenny Reef, Bitsy Bonds, and Z104; Owen’s offer to put together a mix was roundly rejected).