Just Listen

“The camera moved in, closer, closer, until all you could see was my face, the rest dropping away. This had been before that night, before everything that had happened with Sophie, before this long, lonely summer of secrets and silence. I was a mess, but this girl—she was fine. You could tell in the way she stared out at me and the world so confidently…”

Annabel watches herself in the fall commercial, reflecting that her fake character—a high school cheerleader with “everything”—doesn’t reflect her life now. The theme of Appearances Versus Reality begins immediately, comparing her fake, glamorous character in the commercial to the mysterious but obviously negative events that have changed her over the summer. The mystery of her trauma and her brokenness afterward, including her ruined friendship with Sophie, are also established.

“One open, one closed. It was no wonder that the first image that came to mind when I thought of either of my sisters was a door. With Kirsten, it was the front one to our house, through which she was always coming in or out, usually in mid-sentence, a gaggle of friends trailing behind her. Whitney’s was the one to her bedroom, which she preferred to keep shut between her and the rest of us, always.

As for me, I fell somewhere between my sisters and their strong personalities, the very personification of the vast gray area that separated them. I was not bold and outspoken, or silent and calculating.”

The contrast between Annabel and her sisters and her perspective about their personalities on a spectrum reveals deep characterization and Annabel’s authentic voice. Through her unique perspective, readers are introduced to the idea of a middle ground and rejecting dichotomies. Owen later explains to Annabel that he believes in the “middle,” of not fighting with an either/or way of thinking in life. Annabel represents this middle, the balancing force, between her sisters.

“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. [Will] was just sitting there, one hand on the wheel [...] After a second, he shook his head, irritated.

Shhh, Annabel. It’s just me.

[...] And while I told myself that in the 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.”

Annabel’s reactions to her assaulter, Will, when she sees him for the first time afterward, are indicative of the trauma she endured. Dessen portrays her trauma symptoms as bodily reactions, the instant stress she experiences physically, mentally, and emotionally when faced with her rapist.