Текст книги "Just Listen"

Автор книги: Sarah Dessen

Соавторы: Sarah Dessen
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It wasn't until I was right up to him that it occurred to me this might be a mistake. But you get only so many do-overs in this life, so many chances to, if not change your past, alter your future. So I slowed down and lowered my window.

"Hey," I called out, but he didn't hear me. "Owen!" Still no response. I moved my hand to the center of my steering wheel and pushed down, hard, on the horn. Finally, he turned his head.

"Hey," he said as someone behind me beeped angrily before whizzing past. "What's up?"

"What happened to your car?" I asked him.

He stopped walking, then reached up, pulling the earphone out of his left ear. "Transportation issues," he said.

This is it, I told myself. Say something. Anything. Just spit it out.

"Story of my life," I told him, then reached over, pushing open my passenger door. "Get in."

Chapter Eight

The first thing that Owen did when he got in my car was bump his head on what I hadn't realized—until that particular moment anyway—was a pretty low ceiling. "Oof," he said, reaching up to rub his forehead just as one of his knees whacked the dashboard. "Man. This is a small car."

"Is it?" I said. "I've never really noticed, and I'm five-eight."

"Is that tall?"

"I used to think so," I said, glancing at him.

"Well, I'm six-four," he replied, trying to push his seat, which was already back as far as it would go, even farther away from the dashboard. Then he moved his arm, trying to balance it on the window, but it was too big, so he changed position, crossing it over his chest, before finally letting it drop to hang beside him. "So I guess it's all relative."

"You okay?" I asked.

"Fine," he said, altogether unbothered, as if this sort of thing happened all the time. "Thanks for the ride, by the way."

"No problem," I said. "Just tell me where you're going."

"Home." He moved his arm again, still trying to fit into the seat. "Just keep straight. You don't have to turn for a while."

We rode without talking for a few minutes. I knew this was the time to say what was on my mind, to explain myself. I took in a breath, bracing myself.

"How do you stand it?" he said.

I blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"I mean," he said, "it's just so silent. Empty."

"What is?"

"This," he said, gesturing around the car. "Driving in silence. With no music."

"Well," I said slowly, "to be honest, I didn't realize we were, actually."

He sat back, his head bumping the headrest. "See for me, it's immediate. Silence is so freaking loud."

This seemed either deep or deeply oxymoronic. I wasn't sure which. "Well," I said, "my CDs are in the console in the center if you—"

But he was already pulling it open and taking out a stack of CDs. As he began to work his way through them, I glanced over, suddenly nervous.

"Those aren't really my favorites," I said. "They're just the ones I have in here right now."

"Huh," he said, not looking up. I turned back to the road, hearing the cases clacking as he flipped through them. "Drake Peyton, Drake Peyton… so you're into that frat-boy hippie rock stuff?"

"I guess," I said. This was bad, I thought. "I saw him live summer before last."

"Huh," he said again. "More Drake Peyton… and Alamance. That's alt-country, right?"

"Yeah."

"Interesting," he said. "Because I wouldn't have pegged you for… Tiny? This is his most current album, right?"

"I got it over the summer," I said, slowing for a red light.

"Then it is." He shook his head. "You know, I have to admit, I'm surprised. I never would have pegged you for a Tiny fan. Or any rap, for that matter."

"Why not?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Bad assumption, I guess. Who made you this one?"

I glanced at the disc he was holding, immediately recognizing the slanting print. "My sister Kirsten."

"She's into classic rock," he said.

"Since high school," I said. "She had a Jimmy Page poster on her wall for years."

"Ah." He scanned the track list. "She has good taste, though. I mean, there's Led Zeppelin here, but at least it's not 'Stairway to Heaven.' In fact," he said, sounding impressed, "'Thank You' is my favorite Led Zeppelin song."

"Really?"

"Really. It's got that kind of cheesy, power-ballad feel. Kind of ironic, yet truthful. Can I put it on?"

"Sure," I said. "Thanks for asking."

"You gotta ask," he said, reaching forward and sliding the CD into my stereo. "Only a real asshole takes liberties with someone else's car stereo. That's serious."

The player clicked a couple of times, and then I heard music, faintly. Owen reached forward for the volume button, then glanced at me. When I nodded, he turned it up. Hearing the opening chords, I had a pang of missing Kirsten, who, during her rebellion-filled senior year, had developed a passion for seventies-era guitar rock, which, at its height, had her listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon on repeat for what seemed like weeks at a time.

Thinking this, I looked back over at Owen, who was drumming his fingers on his knee. Kirsten, of course, would never hesitate to say what was on her mind. So with her song playing in my ears, I decided to follow suit. Or try to. "So about today," I said. He looked over at me. "I'm sorry about what happened."

"What happened?"

I fixed my eyes on the road ahead, feeling my face flush. "When we were doing the role-playing, and I freaked out and walked away."

I was expecting an "It's okay" or maybe a "Don't worry about it." Instead, he said, "That was freaking out?"

"Well," I said. "I guess. Yeah."

"Huh," he said. "Okay."

"I didn't mean to get so upset," I explained. "Like I said, I just don't do confrontations very well. Which I guess was obvious. So… I'm sorry."

"It's all right." He tried to sit back again, his elbow knocking the door. "In fact…"

I waited for him to finish this thought. When he didn't, I said, "What?"

"It's just, to me, that wasn't really freaking out," he said.

"No?"

He shook his head. "To me, freaking out is raising your voice. Screaming. Veins bulging. Hitting people in parking lots. That kind of thing."

"I don't do that," I said.

"I'm not saying you should." He reached up, running a hand through his hair; as he did so, the ring on his middle finger caught the light, glinting for a second. "It's just a semantic issue, I guess. Take this next right."

I did, turning onto a tree-lined street. All the houses were big, with wide front porches. We passed a group of kids in a cul-de-sac playing roller hockey, then some moms on a corner, grouped around a pack of strollers.

"This is it, up here," he told me. "The gray one."

I slowed down, then pulled over to the curb. The house was beautiful, with a wide front porch with a swing, and bright pink flowers in pots lining the steps. A yellow cat was lying on the front walk, stretched out in the sunshine. "Wow," I said. "Great house."

"Well, it's not glass," he said. "But it's okay."

We sat there for a second, our situation now reversed from last time, me waiting for him to go inside. "You know," I said finally, "I just wanted to say you were right about what you said earlier. It is kind of hard to hold a lot in. But for me… it's sometimes even harder to let it out."

I wasn't sure why I felt compelled to bring this up again. Maybe to finally explain myself. To him, or to me.

"Yeah," he said. "But you gotta get stuff out. Otherwise it just festers, and eventually, you just blow."

"See, that's the part I can't deal with," I said. "I can't take it when people are angry."

"Anger's not bad," he said. "It's human. And anyway, just because someone's upset doesn't mean they'll stay that way."

I looked down at my steering wheel, picking at the edge. "I don't know," I said. "In my experience, when people I'm close with have gotten upset with me, that's it. It is forever. Everything changes."

Owen didn't say anything for a second. I could hear a dog barking from some house down the street. "Well," he said, "maybe you weren't as close with them as you thought."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that if someone is really close with you, your getting upset or them getting upset is okay, and they don't change because of it. It's just part of the relationship. It happens. You deal with it."

"You deal with it," I said. "I wouldn't even know how to do that."

"Well, that makes sense," he said. "Considering you never let it happen in the first place."

The CD was still going, now playing a song by Rush as a minivan drove past us, kicking up some leaves. I had no idea how many minutes had passed while we'd been sitting there. It seemed like a long time.

"You sure have a lot of answers," I said.

"I don't," he replied, reaching down to twist one of his rings around his finger. "I'm just doing the best I can, under the circumstances."

"How's that going?" I asked.

He glanced up at me. "Well, you know," he said. "It's day to day."

I smiled. "I like your rings," I said, nodding at his hands. "Are they the exact same?"

"Sort of. And not really." He reached down, sliding the one off his left hand and handing it to me. "They're kind of a before-and-after thing. Rolly made them for me. His dad's a jeweler."

The ring was heavy in my palm, the silver thick. "He made this?"

"Not the ring," he said. "The engraving. On the inside."

"Oh." I tilted the ring slightly, peering along the interior curve. There, in all capital letters, in formal, very elegant type, it said go fuck yourself . "Nice," I said.

"Classy, huh?" he said. He made a face. "That was me pre-arrest. I was a little…"

"Angry?"

"You could say. He made this one when I finished the Anger Management course." He slid the ring off his other middle finger, then held it up to my face. In the same type, same size, it said /smc or not.

I laughed. "Well," I said, handing it back to him. "It's always good to know your options."

"Exactly." Then he smiled at me, and I felt another flush come over my face, but not the embarrassed or anxious kind– a different sort entirely. One I never would have thought I'd feel around Owen Armstrong. Ever. The moment was broken, however, by a voice.

"Annabel!"

I looked to my right—it was Mallory. Sometime during this exchange, she'd appeared at Owen's window, where she was now smiling widely and waving. "Hi!"

"Hi," I said.

She gestured for Owen to put his window down, which he did, slowly, and clearly somewhat reluctantly. As soon as there was a space big enough, she stuck her head in. "Oh my God, I love your shirt! Is that from Tosca?"

I glanced down. "Maybe," I said. "My mom got it for me."

"You're so lucky! I love Tosca. It's, like, my favorite store in the whole world. Are you coming in?"

"Coming in?" I asked.

"To the house. Are you staving for dinner? Oh, you totally have to stay for dinner!"

"Mallory," Owen said, rubbing a hand over his face. "Please stop shrieking."

She ignored him, sticking her head in even farther. "You could see my room," she said, her eyes wide, excited. "And my closet, and I could show you—"

"Mallory," Owen said again. "Back away from the car."

"Do you like my outfit?" she asked me. She stepped back so I could see it: plain white tee, short jacket over it, rolled-up jeans, and shiny boots with thick soles. After doing a little spin, she stuck her head back in the window. "It's inspired by Nicholls Lake; she's my favorite singer right now? She's, like, punk."

Owen sat back, his head bonking against the headrest. "Nicholls Lake," he said in a low voice, "is not punk."

"Yes, she is," Mallory told him. "And see? Today, so am I!"

"Mallory, we've talked about this. Remember? Did we not discuss the true definition of punk?" Owen said. "Have you even listened to that Black Flag CD I gave you?"

"That was so loud," she said. "And plus you can't even sing along. Nicholls Lake is better."

Owen took in another shuddering breath. "Mallory," he said. "If you could just—"

Just then, a tall dark-haired woman—Owen's mom, I assumed—appeared in the doorway of the house, calling her. Mallory shot her an annoyed look. "I have to go in," she announced, then leaned in even farther, so her face was inches from Owen's. "But you'll come over another time, right?"

"Sure," I told her.

"Bye, Annabel."

"Good-bye," I said.

She smiled, then stood up, and waved at me. I waved back, and Owen and I watched her climb the front stairs and head down the walk, turning to look back at us every few steps or so.

"Wow," I said. "So she's punk, huh?"

Owen didn't answer me. Instead, all I could hear was him inhaling, loudly, several times in a row.

"Is this you freaking out?" I asked.

He exhaled. "No. This is me annoyed. I don't know what it is about her. There's just something about sisters. They can make you freaking crazy."

"Story of my life," I said.

Another silence. In every one that fell, I told myself this time, he was going to get out and leave, and this would be over. And each time, I wanted it to happen even less.

He said, "You say that a lot, you know."

"What?"

"'Story of my life.'"

"You said it first."

"Did I?"

I nodded. "That day, behind the school."

"Oh." He was quiet for a moment. "You know, when you think about it, that's kind of a weird thing. I mean, it's meant to be sympathetic, right? But it's kind of not. Like you're telling the other person there's nothing unique about what they're saying."

I considered this as a couple of kids on Rollerblades whizzed past, hockey sticks over their shoulders. "Yeah," I said, finally, "but you could also look at it the other way. Like you're saying no matter how bad things are for you, I can still relate."

"Ah," he said. "So you're saying you relate to me."

"No. Not at all."

"Nice." He laughed, turning his head to look out the window. I caught the quickest flash of his profile, and remembered all those days I'd spent studying him from a distance.

"Okay," I said. "Maybe a little."

He turned back, facing me, and I felt it again. Another pause, just long enough for me to wonder what, exactly, was happening. Then he pushed the door open. "So," he said, "um, thanks again for the ride."

"No problem. I owed you."

"No," he said, "you didn't." He untangled himself from the seat. "I'll see you tomorrow, or something."

"Yeah. See you then."

He got out, shutting the door behind him, then grabbed his bag and started up the steps. I watched him until he went inside.

As I pulled away from the curb, the whole afternoon seemed so strange, surreal. There was so much filling my head, too much to even begin to understand, but as I drove, I suddenly realized something else was bothering me: The CD had stopped and there was no music. Before, I probably wouldn't have even noticed, but now that I had, the silence, if not deafening, was distracting. I wasn't sure what this meant. But I reached forward and turned on the radio anyway.

Chapter Nine

Beauty and the Beast. The Odd Couple. Shrek and Fiona. I had to hand it to the rumor mill: Over the next couple of weeks, they came up with lots of names for me and Owen and whatever it was we were doing every day on the wall at lunch. For me, it was harder to define. We weren't together by any means, but we weren't strangers. Like so much else, we fell somewhere in the middle.

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 mom-ing, 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."