Just Listen Page 3

  Owen stumbled, but only slightly. Then he dropped his bag, pulling back his other arm and letting go in a solid arc, where it connected square in the center of Ronnie’s face. I could hear it, that smack of fist against bone, from where I was standing.

  Ronnie went down within seconds—his body first, knees buckling, then shoulders, followed by his head, which bounced slightly when it hit the ground. Owen, for his part, dropped his hand, stepped over him calm as you please, then picked up his bag and kept walking, the crowd that had gathered parting quickly, then scattering outright to let him through. Ronnie’s friends were already gathering around him, someone was calling for the parking-lot guard, but all I could remember was Owen just walking away—same pace, same stride as before, as if he hadn’t even stopped.

  At the time, Owen was still relatively new; he had been at our school for a only month. As a result of this incident, he got suspended for another. When he came back, everyone was talking about him. I heard that he’d done time in juvenile hall, been kicked out of his previous school, and was in a gang. There were so many rumors that a few months later, when I heard he’d been arrested for fighting at a club over the weekend, I just assumed it wasn’t true. But then he’d just disappeared, never coming back to school. Until now.

  Up close, though, Owen didn’t really look like a monster. He was just sitting there, in sunglasses and a red T-shirt, drumming his fingers on his knee and listening to his music. Even so, I figured it was best not to get caught staring at him, so after unwrapping my sandwich and taking a bite, I took a breath and turned my attention to my right side, and Clarke.

  She was at the far end of the wall, a notebook open in her lap, eating an apple with one hand while scribbling something with the other. Her hair was pulled back at her neck in a simple elastic, and she was wearing a plain white T-shirt, army pants, and flip-flops, the glasses she’d started to wear the year earlier, small and tortoiseshell, perched on her nose. After a moment, she glanced up and over at me.

  She had to have heard about what happened the previous May. Everyone had. As the seconds passed and she didn’t turn away, I wondered if maybe she might have finally forgiven me. That perhaps, just as a new rift had started, I could mend an old one. It would be only fitting, now that we’d both been shunned by Sophie. It gave us something in common again.

  And she was still looking at me. I put down my sandwich, then took in a breath. All I had to do, right now, was say something to her, something great, something that might—

  But then, suddenly, she turned away. Pushed her notebook into her bag, zipping it shut, her body language stiff, her elbow extended in a sharp angle in my direction. Then she hopped down off the wall, slid her bag over her shoulders, and walked away.

  I looked down at my sandwich, half-eaten, and felt a lump rise in my throat. Which was just so stupid, because Clarke had hated me forever. This, at least, was not new.

  For the rest of lunch, I just sat there, making a point of not looking at anyone. When I checked my watch and saw I had only five minutes to go, I figured the worst part was over. I was wrong.

  I was stuffing my water bottle into my bag when I heard a car pull into the turnaround at the end of the wall. I glanced over to see a red Jeep pulling up to the curb. The passenger door opened and a dark-haired guy climbed out, sticking a cigarette behind his ear as he ducked down, saying something to the person behind the wheel. As he shut the door and started to walk away, I got a look at the driver. It was Will Cash.

  I felt my stomach physically drop, as if from a great height, straight down. Everything narrowed, the sounds around me falling away as my palms sprang into sweat, my heartbeat loud in my ears, thump thump thump.

  I could not stop staring at him. He was just sitting there, one hand on the wheel, waiting for the car in front of him—a station wagon out of which some girl was unloading a cello or some other big instrument—to move along. After a second, he shook his head, irritated.

  Shhh, Annabel. It’s just me.

  A million red Jeeps must have passed before my eyes in the last few months, and despite myself I’d checked each one for his face, this face. But only now, here, was it actually him. And while I had told myself that in broad daylight I could be strong and fearless, I felt as helpless as that night, as if even in the wide open, the bright light of day, I still wasn’t safe.

  The girl finally got her case out of the station wagon, then waved to the driver as she shut the door. As the car pulled forward, Will glanced over at the courtyard, and I watched his eyes move across the people there, barely seeming to register anyone in particular. Then he looked at me.

  I just stared at him, my heart pounding in my chest. It lasted only a second, and I saw no recognition, nothing on his face but a blank stare, as if I were a stranger, just anyone. Then he was moving forward, the car a red blur, and it was over.

  Suddenly, I was aware again of the noise and commotion around me: people bustling past to their next class, calling out to one another, tossing trash into the nearby can. Still, I kept my eyes on the Jeep, watching as it climbed the hill that led toward the main road, creeping away from me, bit by bit. And then, in the midst of all the noise and voices, movement and change, I turned my head, cupped a hand to cover my mouth, and threw up in the grass behind me.

  When I turned back around a few moments later, the courtyard was mostly empty. The jocks had vacated the other wall, the grass beneath the trees was bare, Emily and Sophie had left their bench. It wasn’t until I had wiped my mouth and glanced to my other side that I saw Owen Armstrong was still there, watching me. His eyes were dark and intense, and I was so startled that I quickly looked away. When I glanced back a minute later, he was gone.

  Sophie hated me. Clarke hated me. Everybody hated me. Or, maybe not everybody.

  “The Mooshka people loved your pictures,” my mother was saying, her happy voice a complete contrast to how I felt as I sat in a long line of traffic, trying to get out of the parking lot after seventh period. “Lindy said they called her and were just raving.”

  “Really,” I said, switching my phone to my other ear. “That’s great.”

  I tried to sound enthusiastic, but the truth was I’d totally forgotten that a few days earlier my mother had told me that Lindy, my agent, was sending my pictures over to a local swimwear company called Mooshka Surfwear that was hiring for their new ad campaign. Suffice to say modeling was not my top concern these days.

  “However,” she continued, “Lindy says they’d like to see you in person.”

  “Oh,” I said as the line crept another inch or so forward. “Okay. When?”

  “Well,” she replied, “actually…today.”

  “Today?” I said, as Amanda Cheeker, driving what looked like a brand-new BMW, totally cut me off, not even looking as she pulled out in front of me.

  “Yes. Apparently one of their advertising heads is in town, but only until tonight.”

  “Mom.” I inched forward incrementally, then craned my neck, trying to see who was causing the holdup. “I can’t. It’s been a really crappy day, and—”

  “Honey, I know,” she said, as if she actually did, which was totally not the case. Having raised three daughters, my mom was well versed in the politics of girls, which had made it easy for me to explain Sophie’s sudden and utter disappearance from my life with the standard “She’s just acting so weird,” and “I have no idea what happened.” As far as she knew, Sophie and I had just drifted apart; I couldn’t imagine what she would have thought if I told her the real story. Actually, I could imagine, which was why I hadn’t and had no intention of doing so. “But Lindy says they’re really interested in you.”

  I glanced in my side mirror, taking in my flushed face, flat hair, and the flecks of mascara around my eyes, the result of finally breaking down in tears in a bathroom stall after sixth period. I really did look as bad as I felt. “You don’t understand,” I said as I moved up barely one car length. “I didn’t sleep well last ni
ght, I look really tired, I’m all sweaty—”

  “Oh, Annabel,” she said, and I felt a lump rising in my throat, reacting immediately to her soft, understanding tone, so welcome after this long terrible day. “I know, sweetie. But it’s just one thing, and then you’ll be done.”

  “Mom.” The sun was in my eyes, and all I could smell was exhaust. “I’m just—”

  “Listen,” she said. “How about this. Come home, you can take a quick shower, I’ll make you a sandwich and do your makeup. Then I’ll drive you over, we’ll get it done, and you won’t have to think about it again. Okay?”

  That was the thing with my mother. There was always a How About This, some deal she was able to manufacture and sell to you that, while being not very different from the original proposition, at least sounded better. Before, saying no had been my prerogative. Now, doing so would make me unreasonable.

  “All right,” I said as traffic finally started moving at a decent pace. Up ahead, I could see the security guard waving people around a blue Toyota with a crushed back bumper. “When’s the appointment?”

  “Four o’clock.”

  I glanced at my watch. “Mom, it’s three thirty right now, and I’m not even out of the parking lot. Where’s the office?”

  “It’s at…” she said. I heard paper rustling. “Mayor’s Village.”

  Which was a good twenty minutes away. I’d be lucky to get there on time if I headed straight there, and even then I’d need serious stoplight mercy. “Great,” I said. “There’s no way.”

  I knew I was being difficult, not to mention petulant. I also knew I’d go to the meeting and put on my best face, because being difficult and petulant was about as bad as I got when it came to my mother. After all, I was the nice one.

  “Well,” she said now, in her small voice. “I could call Lindy and tell her you just can’t do it, if you like. I’m happy to do that.”

  “No,” I said as I finally reached the top of the parking lot, putting on my blinker. “It’s okay. I’ll go.”

  I’d been modeling for as long as I could remember. Actually, it was even before that. I’d done my first shoot when I was nine months old, wearing onesies for a SmartMart Sunday circular, a job I’d gotten when my mother, her sitter having fallen through, had to bring me along to one of my sister Whitney’s go-sees. The woman hiring asked her if I was available, my mother said yes, and that was that.

  The whole modeling thing had started, though, with Kirsten. She was eight when a talent agent caught up with my mom and dad in the parking lot after her ballet recital, offering them a card and saying they should give him a call. My father had laughed, assuming it was a scam, but my mom was intrigued enough to take Kirsten in for an appointment. The agent had immediately set her up for an audition for a local car-dealership commercial, which she didn’t get, followed by a print ad for Easter festivities at the Lakeview Mall, which she did. My modeling career began with onesies, but Kirsten could claim bunnies, or at least one very big one, leaning over to put a shiny egg in her basket as she, in a puffy white dress, smiled into the camera.

  Once Kirsten started getting regular work, Whitney wanted to try it as well, and soon they were both making the rounds, often even going up for the same jobs, which only added to the natural friction between them. Their looks, though, were as distinct and different as their temperaments. Whitney was the beauty, with the perfect bone structure and haunting eyes, while Kirsten was somehow able to convey her bubbly personality with just one look. Whitney did better in print, but Kirsten popped on screen. And so on.

  Because of this, by the time I started modeling, my family was well known on the local circuit, which consisted mostly of print ads for department and discount stores and regionally cast and shot commercials. While my dad chose to take a hands-off approach to us working—as he did to everything even vaguely girly, from Tampax to broken hearts—my mother thrived on it. She loved ferrying us to jobs, talking business with Lindy on the phone and gathering pictures to update our books. But when she was asked about it, she always pointed out first that it was our choice, not hers. “I would have been happy to have them making mud pies in the backyard,” I’d heard her tell people a million times. “But this is what they wanted to do.”

  In truth, though, my mother loved the modeling, too, even if she didn’t want to admit it. But I believed it was even more than that. In some way, I thought that it had saved her.

  Not at first, of course. Initially, for her, our modeling was just a fun hobby, something for her to do when she wasn’t having to work at my dad’s office, which we joked was the most fertile place on the planet, as the secretaries were always getting pregnant, leaving it to my mom to answer the phones until he found a replacement. But then, the year I turned nine, my grandmother died, and something changed.

  My own memories of my grandmother are distant, muted, based more on photographs I’d seen than on any real events. My mom was an only child and very close to her own mother, even though they lived on opposite coasts and saw each other only a few times a year. They talked on the phone almost every morning, usually while my mom had her midmorning cup of coffee. Like clockwork, if you came into the kitchen around ten thirty, you’d find her in the chair facing the window, stirring cream into a mug, the phone cocked between her ear and shoulder. To me, it always sounded like the most boring of conversations, solely about people I’d never met, or whatever my mom had cooked the night before, or even my own life, which sounded deadly dull, as well, relayed this way. For my mom, though, it was different. Crucial. How much so, we didn’t realize until after my grandmother was gone.

  It wasn’t like my mom had ever been some pillar of strength. She was a quiet woman, soft-spoken, with a kind face—the sort of person you’d look for if you were out in public somewhere and something bad happened, an instant comfort. I’d always relied on my mom to be just that, exactly as she always had been, which was why the change in her in the weeks following my grandmother’s funeral was so strange. She just got…quieter. Still. There was suddenly something haunted and tired about her face, so obvious that even I, at nine, could see it. At first, my dad just assured us that it was the normal grief process, that my mother was tired, and she’d be fine. But as time went on, she didn’t get better. Instead she started sleeping later, and then later, until she sometimes didn’t get out of bed at all. When she was up, I’d sometimes come into the kitchen midmorning to find her sitting in that same chair, empty mug in her hands, looking out the window.

  “Mom,” I’d say, and she wouldn’t respond, so I’d say it again. Sometimes it took three times before she’d slowly begin to turn her head, but when she did I would suddenly feel scared, like I didn’t want to see her face after all. Like in those few moments, she might have changed again, shifting deeper into someone I didn’t recognize.

  My sisters remembered this time better than I did, as they were older and therefore privy to more information. And in typical fashion, they each had their own way of dealing with it. It fell to Kirsten to take care of things around the house, like cleaning and making our lunches, when my mom wasn’t up to it, which she did with her usual bravado, as if nothing was wrong at all. Whitney, on the other hand, I often found outside my mother’s half-closed bedroom door, listening or peering in, but she’d always move on when I saw her, not meeting my eyes. As the youngest, I wasn’t sure how to react, other than to just try not to make trouble or ask too many questions.

  My mother’s condition quickly grew to dictate our lives. It was the barometer by which we judged everything. In my mind, it all came down to the first glimpse I had of her each morning. If she was up and dressed at a decent hour and making breakfast, things would be okay. But if she wasn’t and I found my dad in the kitchen instead, doing his best with cold cereal and toast, or even worse, if neither of them was in sight, I knew it was not going to be a good day. Maybe it was a rudimentary system, but it worked, more or less. And it wasn’t like I had a lot else to go on.
>
  “Your mother isn’t feeling well,” was all my dad would say when we asked after her as we sat around the dining-room table, my mother’s place glaringly empty, or when she didn’t emerge from her room all day, the only view of her a lump under the covers, barely visible in a sliver of light from the drawn shades. “We all just need to do the best we can to make things easy for her until she feels better. Okay?”

  I remember nodding, and seeing my sisters doing the same. But how to do this was another thing entirely. I had no idea how to make things easier, or even if I’d done something to make them difficult in the first place. What I did get was that it was paramount that we protect my mom from anything that might upset her, even if I wasn’t sure what those things were. So I learned another system: When in doubt, keep it out—out of earshot, out of the house—even if this meant, really, just keeping it in.

  My mother’s depression, or episode, or whatever it was—I never got a concrete term, which made it all the more hard to define—had been going on for about three months when my dad convinced her to go see a therapist. At first she went reluctantly, quitting after a couple of sessions, but then she started up again, and this time she stuck with it, continuing for the next year. Still, there wasn’t some sudden change—one particular day that I came into the kitchen at ten thirty and there she was, bright and cheerful, like she’d been waiting for me to appear. Instead, it was a slow process, little increments, like moving a half a millimeter a day so that you only really notice progress from a distance. First she stopped sleeping all day, then she began to get up midmorning, then finally she started to cook breakfast every once in a while. Her silences, so noticeable at the dinner table and everywhere else, slowly became less extended, a little conversation here, a comment there.

  In the end it was the modeling, though, that convinced me we were over the worst of it. Since my mom had been the one who got us to jobs and dealt with Lindy as far as scheduling and auditions, we’d all been working a lot less while she was sick. My dad had taken Whitney to a couple of jobs, and I’d had one shoot that was booked way in advance, but things had definitely slowed down—enough so that when Lindy called one day during dinner about a go-see, even she was assuming we’d take a pass.