Текст книги "Just Listen"

Автор книги: Sarah Dessen

Соавторы: Sarah Dessen
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Chapter Fifteen

"Okay," my mother said, loosening a cart from the row in front of the automatic doors. She set her purse in the front, then pulled out her list, unfolding it. "Here we go."

It was the second week of December, and we were at Mayor's Market, where I'd been recruited to help with the grocery shopping for Kirsten's homecoming dinner. It was not something I was all that excited about, unlike my mother, who was in full-on holiday mode. But still, as she pushed the cart toward the doors, smiling at me, and they slid open, I tried my best to smile back. It was all about trying, these days.

The last month and a half had been a total blur. The only thing I was fully aware of was how completely things were back to how they had been when the school year began. It was like the time I'd spent with Owen hadn't happened at all. Yet again, I was alone at school, modeling even though I didn't want to, and somehow completely unable to do anything about either.

The Sunday after that night at Bendo, I woke up right at seven, just in time for Owen's show. It was only once I opened my eyes that I remembered this morning was different and turned away from the clock, trying to will myself back to sleep. But I could feel some part of myself stubbornly waking up, bit by bit, and then everything was flooding back.

He had to be furious with me. After all, I'd just bolted, no explanation, nothing. The worst part was I knew it was wrong, even as it was happening, and yet I still couldn't stop myself. The only way to fix it would be to explain openly and honestly why I'd left, and I just could not do that. Even for him.

As it turned out, though, whether we discussed that night or not wasn't entirely up to me. The next day, our first day back at school, Owen made the decision for us.

I was in my car, having just parked, when he suddenly appeared at my driver's-side window. He announced himself by knocking: three hard raps, boom boom, boom. I jumped, then turned. Once he saw he had my attention, he dropped his hand and started around my front bumper to the passenger door. As he opened it I sucked in a breath, the way they say you should do if your car is ever immersed in water, one last gasp to hold you over. And then he was in.

"What happened to you?"

As I'd expected, there was no hello. No stony silence for me to fill. Just the one thing that had been on his mind for, oh, thirty-six hours or so. Even worse, he was looking at me so intently—angrily—that I couldn't keep my eyes on him for more than a moment. His mouth was a thin line, his face flushed, his unsettled presence filling the small space around us.

"I'm sorry," I said, and as the words came out I heard my voice break. "I just…"

This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don't jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them. Or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait. So you have to keep going.

"I don't know what to say," I finally managed. "I just… don't."

He was quiet for what felt like a long time. This is excruciating, I thought. Then he said, "If you didn't want to be there on Saturday, you could have just told me."

I bit my lip, looking down at my hands as a couple of guys passed by my window, yelling something about football practice. "I wanted to be there," I said.

"Then what happened?" he said. "Why did you just bolt? I didn't know what was going on. I waited for you."

There was something in these last few words that made my heart just break. I waited for you. Of course he had. And of course he would tell me this, because unlike me, Owen didn't keep secrets. With him, what you saw was really what you got.

"I'm sorry," I said again, but even to me it sounded so lame and weak, meaningless. "I just… There was a lot going on."

"Like what?"

I shook my head. This was what I could not do, get into this place where I was backed up to a wall, no choice but to tell the truth. "It's just a lot of stuff," I said.

"Stuff," he repeated, and I thought in my head, Placeholder. But he didn't say this out loud.

Instead he exhaled, turning his head toward the window. Only then did I allow myself to really look at him, taking in all the familiar things: the strong line of his jaw; the rings on his fingers; his earphones, looped loosely around his neck. Distantly, through one of them, I could hear music, and I wondered out of habit what he was listening to.

"I just don't get it," he said. "I mean, there has to be a reason, and you just don't want to give it. And that's just…" He stopped, shaking his head. "It's not like you."

For a moment, everything was very quiet. No one was passing, no cars driving up the row behind us. So silent as I said, "It is, though."

Owen looked at me, shifting his bag to the other leg. "What?"

"It is like me," I said. My voice was low, even to my ears. "This is just like me."

"Annabel." He still sounded annoyed, like this could never be true. So wrong. "Come on."

I looked down at my hands again. "I wanted to be different," I said to him. "But this is how I really am."

I'd tried to tell him that first day. I'd said I didn't always tell the truth, that I didn't handle conflict well, that anger scared me, that I was used to people just disappearing when they were mad. Our mistake was that we'd both thought I was capable of changing. That I had changed. In the end, though, that was the biggest lie of all.

The first bell sounded then, long and loud. Owen shifted in his seat, then put his hand on the door handle.

"Whatever it is," he said, "you could have told me. You know that, right?"

I knew as Owen sat there, one hand on the door, he was waiting for me to be the bold girl he'd wanted to believe I was, to just tell him. He waited longer than I thought he would have before pushing the door open and getting out.

And then he was gone. Walking across the parking lot, his bag over one shoulder, already lifting his earphones to his ears. Almost a year ago I'd watched him this same way, just after he punched Ronnie Waterman out. Then, I'd been awed, and slightly scared, and I felt the same way now as I realized what my silence and fear had cost me, yet again.

I waited until second bell, when the courtyard was nearly empty, before I finally got out of my car and headed to class. I didn't want to see Owen; I didn't want to see anyone. All morning, I walked through the halls in a fog, deliberately blocking out the voices around me. At lunch, I went to the library and sat in a carrel by the American History section, books spread out in front of me, not reading one word.

As the period was winding down, I packed up my stuff and went to the bathroom. It was empty except for two girls I didn't know, standing by the sinks, who started talking as I went into a stall.

"All I'm saying," one said as a faucet was turned on and water began to splash, "is that I don't think she's lying."

"Oh, come on." The other girl's voice was high, and more nasal. "He could date any girl he wanted. It's not like he's desperate. So why would he do something like that?"

"Do you really think she'd go to the cops if he hadn't?"

"Maybe she just wants attention."

"No way." The faucet cut off, and I heard paper towels being yanked from the dispenser. "She and Sophie were best friends. And now everyone knows? Why go through all that for a lie?"

I froze. They were talking about Emily.

"What did he get booked for?" the first girl asked.

"Sexual assault. Or second-degree rape, I don't know which."

"I can't believe he actually got arrested," the other girl said.

"At the A-Frame!" her friend replied. "Meghan said when the cops pulled up, people were running in all directions. Everyone thought it was a beer bust."

"Not hardly." I heard a backpack pocket unzip. "Have you seen Sophie?"

"Nope. I don't think she came today," the other girl said. "Shit. Would you?"

They were leaving now, their heels clicking across the floor, so I didn't get to hear the response to this. Instead, I stood in the stall, one hand on the wall beside me, where someone had written /smc i hate this place in blue ballpoint pen. I dropped my hand, then put down the toilet seat and sat, trying to piece together what I'd just heard.

Emily had gone to the cops. Emily had pressed charges. Emily had told.

This realization was so big I just sat there, hands locked in my lap, stunned. Will had been arrested. People knew about this. Ever since Saturday night, I'd assumed Emily, like me, had stayed silent and scared, sucked this story in and held it there. But she hadn't.

As the afternoon wore on and I actually started listening to the people around me, I got the rest of the story. I heard that Emily was supposed to get a ride from the A-Frame to the party with Sophie, but she'd gotten held up, so Will offered to drive her instead. That he'd parked on the street and then, depending on who you believed, either jumped on her or was surprised when she made a move on him. That a woman walking her dog past saw something happening and threatened to call the cops if they didn't move on. That this was how Emily had gotten out of the car and, after getting a ride home, told her mom everything. That she'd spent Saturday morning at the police station, filing charges. That when the cops came for Will on Saturday night, he cried when the cops cuffed him. That Will's dad bailed him out within hours, then hired him the best lawyer in town. That Sophie was telling everyone that Emily had always been hot for Will, and when he wasn't interested, she cried rape. And that while Sophie was not at school today, Emily was.

I didn't see her until just after final bell. I was pulling a notebook out of my locker when I felt a sudden, strange hush fall over the normal end-of-the-day commotion. It didn't get entirely quiet, just quieter. When I turned my head, I saw her coming down the hallway toward me. She wasn't cowering or alone. She had two girls with her, one on either side, both of them people she'd been friends with before Sophie. I'd just assumed that I had no one after what had happened, that everyone would just accept Sophie's side of the story. It hadn't even occurred to me that somebody would believe mine.

For the next few days, what happened between Emily and Will remained the hot topic, although I was doing my best not to pay attention to it. At times, though, this was impossible, like the day I was in my English class, doing some last-minute cramming before a midterm, and Jessica Norfolk and Tabitha

Johnson, who sat behind me, started talking about Will.

"What I heard," said Jessica, who was junior class treasurer and not, I thought, the gossip type, "is that he's done it before."

"Really?" Tabitha replied. She'd sat behind me all year and always clicked her pen, which drove me nuts. She was doing it now.

"Yeah. There were rumors when he was at Perkins Day, apparently. You know, girls who said similar stuff had happened to them."

"But nobody ever had him arrested."

"Well, no," Jessica said. "But it means that it could be, you know, a pattern."

Tabitha, still clicking her pen, sighed through her teeth. "God," she said. "Poor Sophie."

"I know. Can you imagine dating someone and then this?"

A lot of these conversations I'd overheard came back to Sophie, which wasn't surprising. She and Will were one of those couples people knew about, if only for their frequently public dramatics. So it was odd she wasn't at school that first day. If Emily surprised me, though, Sophie did, too. Not only by not showing up, but by how she acted when she finally did.

She didn't station herself in the courtyard to make it clear she was unaffected by what had happened. Or confront Emily in public, as she had me. In fact, the first time I saw her she was alone, walking down the hallway with her cell phone pressed to her ear. At lunch, when I glanced out the library window, she wasn't on her bench—which was populated instead by some sophomore girls I didn't even know—but sitting on the curb by the turnaround, waiting for a ride. As for

Emily, she was sitting at a picnic table, drinking a bottled water and eating some potato chips, surrounded by people.

So Sophie was alone. I was alone. And Owen was alone, or so I was assuming. Occasionally before or after school, I'd catch a glimpse of him, towering over everyone else as he cut across a pathway or disappeared around a corner. Sometimes when I saw him, all I wanted to do was tell him everything. The thought would crash over me like a wave, sudden and unexpected. In the next moment, though, I'd already be telling myself that he probably didn't even want to hear it, now. Watching him walking across the courtyard with no expression, earphones on, it was like he was receding, back, back, to the person he'd been to me before all this. Just a mystery, a boy I didn't know at all, one more face in the crowd.

If school was stressful, home was not much better. At least not for me. For everyone else in my family, however, things were just great. My mother, next to me, was at this moment pushing her cart through the bounty that was the Mayor's Market produce department, so happy the entire family was finally getting together. While Kirsten had talked about coming for Thanksgiving, she'd opted instead to stay in the city, ostensibly to work some extra shifts and catch up on schoolwork. Later, though, she'd mentioned eating a turkey dinner with Brian, her TA; however, in very non-Kirsten fashion, she hadn't offered more details. Now she was finally coming home early for Christmas, and my mom was going all out.

"We're doing two kinds of potatoes," Mom said to me, gesturing for me to pull a couple of plastic bags from the dis-penser. "I'm doing my creamed casserole, and Whitney's doing some kind of roasted potatoes with olive oil."

"Really," I said, handing the bags over to her.

"It's some recipe Moira gave her," she said. "Isn't that great?"

It was. My own problems aside, I could not help but be impressed with Whitney's recent progress. A year ago everything had started; now, while she was still by no means cured, the changes in her were yet again evident, but they were all good ones.

First, she'd started cooking. Not a lot, and not constantly; it had started slowly, after the dinner she'd made for me. Apparently Moira Bell was big into natural foods and organic cooking, and when Whitney told her about making spaghetti, she'd lent her a couple of cookbooks. My mother's meals tended toward the creamy and hearty: lots of casseroles with cream of mushroom bases, heavy sauces, meats, and starches. Whitney's interest, not surprisingly, leaned in a different direction. She'd started by contributing salads to our dinners now and then, going to the farmer's market and loading up with vegetables, which she'd spend ages slicing and dicing. Her dressings were vinaigrettes, swirled with herbs; reach for the Thousand Island or ranch and she'd shoot you a look suggesting that you don't. Then, the weekend of the fashion show, she made grilled salmon with a lime sauce for my parents, followed by steamed green beans with fresh lemon to replace the gooey casserole with french-fried onion topping we normally had for Thanksgiving. My mother was a great cook, the kind who worked on instinct, with no real measurements, only pinches and dashes. When Whitney cooked, she was all about exactitude, and her natural bossiness—about the dressing, or how yes, we could live without butter on every side dish—was just part of the process. But even at its most annoying, it was still an improvement, and we were all eating better. Whether we liked it or not.

She was also writing. She'd finished her official history by the end of the October, but since then she'd kept at it, often sitting at the dining-room table scribbling on a notepad, or curling up by the fire chewing her pencil. So far she hadn't let me read anything she'd written, although it wasn't like I'd asked, either. Still, the couple of times I'd found her notebook on the stairs, or the kitchen table, I'd been tempted to open it, just to see what was within all those carefully written lines. But I didn't. After all, I could understand about keeping things to yourself.

The most amazing thing, though, was the herbs. After sitting in the window doing absolutely nothing for a couple of months, the rosemary had suddenly sprouted just before Halloween. It was just one tiny, green shoot, but in the next week the others followed suit. Whitney checked on them every single day, testing the dampness of the soil with her fingers, turning them slightly for the optimum amount of light. Where I'd once thought of my middle sister as a closed door, these days when I pictured her I saw another image: her hands, curved around a chopping knife, or a pen, the handle of a watering can, moving across the plants, helping them grow.

Kirsten, meanwhile, had not only survived the showing of her piece to her professors and classmates but emerged victorious, winning the first-place prize in the competition. I'd expected her to call and regale us with one of her typical monologues, full of stream-of-consciousness details, but instead she'd left a message—telling us about the win and that she was very pleased with it—that clocked in at under two minutes, which had to be a record for her. It was so strange we were all convinced something must be wrong, but when I called her back, she said it was just the opposite.

"Things are great," she told me. "Just great."

"Are you sure?" I asked. "Your message was awfully short."

"Was it?"

"I thought the machine had cut you off, at first," I said.

She sighed. "Well, that's not altogether surprising, I guess. I've really been doing a lot of work on how I convey myself these days."

"You are?" I asked.

"Well, sure." She sighed again, a happy sigh. "It's amazing what I've learned this semester. I mean, between the filmmaking and Brian's class, I'm learning a lot about the true meaning of communication. It's really opened my eyes."

I waited for her to go on, to explain. Especially about Brian. But she didn't. Instead, she told me she loved me and had to run, and that she'd see me soon. And then we hung up. In under four minutes.

Kirsten may have been mastering the art of true communication, but I was failing miserably. Not just with Owen, but with my mother as well, as I'd somehow, in the midst of everything else that was happening, agreed to do another Kopf's commercial.

It happened the same week I'd heard about Emily's pressing charges. When I got home from school that Friday, my mother was waiting for me at the door.

"Guess what!" she said, before I even stepped over the threshold. "I just got a call from Lindy. The Kopf's people contacted her yesterday morning. They want you for their new spring commercial."

"What?" I said.

"Apparently they were very pleased with how the fall campaign went. Although, I have to say, I think your meeting that man from marketing last weekend didn't hurt. They're shooting in January but they want to see you in December for a fitting. Isn't it great?"

Great, I thought. The truth was, a couple of months ago this would have been a much bigger deal. A couple of weeks ago, maybe I might have even been able to stop it. But now, I just stood there, and barely managed to nod.

"I told Lindy I'd call her as soon as I told you," she said, going into the kitchen and picking up the phone. As she dialed, she added, "From what Lindy said, the ad skewed really well with younger girls, and that's what really won the Kopf's people over. You're a role model, Annabel! Isn't that something?"

I thought of Mallory's room, the screen captures lined up on the wall. And then her face staring into the camera, the feathers from the boa floating up to the edges.

"I'm no role model," I said.

"Sure you are," she replied, so easily. She turned and looked at me, smiling again as she shifted the phone to her other ear. "You have so much to be proud of, honey. You really do. I mean—

Lindy?… Hi! It's Grace, I've been trying to get through… is your receptionist out?… Still?… That's horrible… Yes, I've just talked to Annabel, and she's thrilled…"

Thrilled, I thought. Not quite. And not a role model, either. Not that it mattered. As long as someone else thought I was those things, that was all that counted.

October had folded into November and then December somehow without my even noticing, the days getting shorter and colder, Christmas music suddenly on the radio. I went to school, I studied, I came home. Even when people did try to talk to me at school, I barely replied, so used to my isolation that now I preferred it. At first, on weekend nights, my mom and dad seemed curious as to why I didn't go out or have plans. But after a few times of telling them I was just so tired from the Models and school and trying to catch up on my schoolwork, they stopped asking.

Still, I was aware of what was happening around me. I knew from the rumor mill that Will's trial was coming up, and there was still talk that some girls from Perkins Day would come forward with stories similar to Emily's. As for Emily herself, she seemed to be doing well. She certainly wasn't hiding out. In fact, I saw her everywhere—in the halls, the courtyard, hanging out in the parking lot—always with a bunch of girls around her. A week or so earlier, in the hallway between classes, I'd caught a glimpse of her standing by her locker, laughing at something. Her cheeks had been flushed, her hand covering her mouth. It was just one moment, one thing, but for some reason it stuck with me, all that day and into the next. I could not get it out of my mind.

Sophie was not faring so well. Usually when I saw her, she was alone, and she now left for lunch almost every day, a black car sliding to a stop to pick her up. It wasn't Will, and I wondered if they were still together. Because I hadn't heard otherwise, I assumed they were.

It seemed like a million years ago now that school had begun, and I'd been so scared of her. Now when I saw Sophie, I just felt tired and sad for both of us. Only when I saw Owen did I feel a twinge of something like loneliness. But even though we weren't talking, I was still listening, in my own way.

Not to the radio show, although I still found myself waking like clockwork at seven A.M. on Sundays, a bad habit that proved impossible, for whatever reason, to break. Even harder to shake was the music itself. Not just his music, either, but all music.

I wasn't sure when it had started, exactly, but suddenly I was very aware of silence. Everywhere I went, I needed some kind of noise. When I was in the car, I instantly turned on my stereo; in my room, I hit the light switch first, my CD player on button second. Even in class, or sitting at the table with my parents, I'd always have to have some song in my head, repeating itself again and again. I remembered Owen telling me how music had saved him in Phoenix, that it drowned everything out, and it was the same for me now. As long as I had something to listen to, I could blur the things I didn't want to think about, if not block them out completely.

It took a lot of music to do this, though, and after a few weeks, I'd burned through my entire collection multiple times. Which was why, on a recent Saturday night, I'd broken down and pulled out the stack Owen had burned me. Desperate times, I thought as I opened up the protest songs one again and stuck it in.

I still didn't love it. Some of the songs were strange, and others I didn't understand. But while I'd expected it to be weird to listen to Owen's music, I found a surprising comfort instead. There was something nice about picturing him picking the songs for me, organizing them so carefully, hoping I'd be enlightened. If nothing else, they proved we had been friends, once.

For the past few weeks I'd been working my way through the discs, song by song, listening to every single track until I knew them all by heart. Each time I finished with one, I felt sad, knowing there were only that many more left before this, too, was over. Because of this, I was planning to save the one that said /smc just listen. Like Owen had been to me once, it was a total mystery, and sometimes one I thought maybe was best unsolved. Still, I pulled it out every once in a while, just turning it in my hands before sliding it back to the bottom of the stack and leaving it there.

When my mom and I finally headed out into the Mayor's Market parking lot, I was surprised to see it was snowing. The flakes were the big, fat kind, too pretty to stick or last, but we both stopped still for a moment, looking up at them as they fell. By the time we got in the car and pulled out of the lot, they were already slowing, some catching the wind, blowing in circles. My mom turned on the wipers as we sat at a stoplight, watching the flakes hit the windshield.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" she said. "There's something about snow that just makes everything seem so fresh and new. Don't you think?"

I nodded. The light was a long one, and even though it was barely five p.m., it was already getting dark. My mom glanced over at me, smiling, then reached forward to the radio. As she twisted the volume, filling the car with classical music, I turned my head to the side. The window was cool against my cheek, those pretty flakes still falling, as I closed my eyes.

Chapter Sixteen

The library carrel where I was spending my lunches was deep in the far right corner, out of sight and away from most foot traffic. I wasn't used to having company. Which was why when Emily came looking for me thirty minutes into the last lunch before Christmas break, I saw her first.

Initially, she was just a flash of red in the corner of my eye, blurring past once, then twice. I glanced up from my English notes, which I had spread out in front of me, doing some last-minute cramming, then looked around me: nothing. Same quiet shelves, same rows of books. A moment later, though, I heard footsteps. When I turned around, she was standing at the end of the stack just behind me.

"Oh," she said. Her voice was quiet but audible. "There you are."

Like I'd been lost. Misplaced, only now turning up, like a sock you find long after you've assumed it was eaten by the dryer. I didn't say anything, too distracted by a rising panic. I'd picked my spot because it was secluded, faced the wall, and was tucked away from everything, the same reasons it was the last place you wanted to find yourself trapped.

Emily started toward me, and without even realizing it I leaned back, bumping the carrel behind me. She stopped, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Look," she said. "I know things have been weird between us this year. But I… I need to talk to you."

Somewhere nearby, I could hear voices, one male, one female, chatting as they moved through the stacks. Emily heard it, too, turning her head at the sound, until it faded. Then she grabbed a nearby chair, dragging it closer to me, and sat down. Her voice was barely a hush as she said, "I know you've heard what happened. What Will did to me."

She was so close I could smell her perfume, something fruity and floral.

"Afterwards," she continued, keeping her green eyes level on me, "I started thinking about you. And that night at the party, back when school ended last year."

I could hear myself breathing, which meant she probably could, too. Behind her, the trees beyond the window shifted, and a shaft of sunlight spilled across the shelves of books, dust dancing within it.

"You don't have to talk to me about it," she said. "I mean, I know you hate me and all."

I thought of Clarke, looking up at me from that chair at Bendo. Is that what you think? she'd replied, when I'd said this same thing to her.

"But the thing is," Emily said, "if something did happen… something like what happened to me, it could help. Make it stop, I mean. Make him stop."

I still hadn't said a word. I couldn't. Instead, I just sat there, immobile, as she reached into the pocket of her jeans, pulling out a small white card.

"This is the name of the woman who's been working on my case," she said, holding the card out to me. When I didn't reach for it immediately, she put it on the table, beside my elbow, faceup. The name was in black, a seal of some sort on the top left-hand corner. "The trial starts on Monday, but they're still wanting to talk to people. You could just call her and tell her… whatever you wanted. She's really nice."

The one thing that scared me more than anything, the reason I hadn't been honest with Owen about what was really bothering me that night at Bendo—she made it sound easy. If I couldn't tell him, the one person I actually thought could take it, how on earth could I be expected to confide in a stranger? There was no way. Even if I wanted to. Which I didn't.

"Just think about it," she told me. Then she took in a breath, like she might add something, but didn't, instead just pushing herself to her feet. "I'll see you around, okay?"

She pushed the chair back into place, then started down the nearest row of shelves. After taking a couple of steps, though, she turned back to face me. "And Annabel?" she said. "I'm sorry."

These two words just hung there for a moment in the air between us, and then she was walking away, disappearing around the empty carrel on the far end of the row. I'm sorry. It was the same thing that I wanted to say to her, that I'd wanted to say ever since that Saturday night at the fashion show. What did she have to apologize for?

But even as my mind grappled with this, trying to work the logic, I could feel it, a visceral reaction to what had just happened, her coming closer than anyone to the truth. My truth. And just like that, I could feel something rising up inside me. I looked around, wondering where on earth I could get sick quietly and discreetly. But then something else happened: I started to cry.