Just Listen

The “girl who has everything” commercial and Annabel’s mysterious foreshadowing of her past immerses readers in the storyline and highlights a major theme immediately: Annabel is being silent rather than speaking up about her trauma. The Spectrum of Silence, Listening, and Speaking Up play through the novel in multiple ways, most prominently in Annabel’s silence about being raped by Will, which is revealed much later. Dessen uses the mystery’s pull to build plot momentum, and Annabel hints at her secret and foreshadows its reveal from the earliest pages; when viewing her commercial, she thinks, “This was 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” (2). Annabel’s voice is emotional, insightful, and honest with readers, though she struggles with honesty with any other character. She admits she is “a mess” due to an unknown event that resulted in losing her best friend, Sophie. She also reveals her isolation since spring, when that trauma drastically changed her life.

To further establish Annabel’s character and the theme of silence, Dessen doesn’t have her respond when Sophie calls her a “bitch” at school, instead accepting Sophie's fury. Right after, the author employs a flashback of when Annabel and Sophie became friends to characterize both Sophie and Annabel. Annabel is revealed to be “conflict-adverse” and “famously polite” like her mother (10). Sophie aspires to hang out with older, popular kids like Kirsten and is rude when Annabel invites her to hang out with her and Clarke. Kirsten, the “family powder keg” who makes Annabel cringe and blush as she tackles confrontation, yells at Sophie for being cruel to her little sister (11). After Sophie races from the pool and forgets her belongings, Annabel and Clarke bring her pool bag to her house. Annabel’s genuine, caring nature establishes her as a likable character who seems incapable of earning the insult “bitch,” though Sophie calls her this in the first pages. Sophie appears cruel and moody and fits the YA mean-girl archetype, but Annabel never expected her closest friend to turn on her.

Due to Annabel’s conflict-averse nature, she sits alone during lunch rather than trying to reclaim her popular group or Sophie’s friendship. She feels others’ eyes on her and fears the rumors have spread about her; this ostracization creates a symbolic contrast between Annabel being a model and not enjoying attention or people judging her. Nonetheless, Annabel’s modeling career has allowed her to perfect what she shows to the world. With this, Dessen establishes the theme of Appearances Versus Reality. Annabel holds intense pain, fear, guilt, and shame inside, but on the outside, she seems fine, her struggles unknown to even her family and closest friends.

Despite this, Annabel’s body reacts automatically when Will appears at school one day. Dessen uses vivid, tactile language to describe what appear to be post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, which are common in survivors of trauma including rape:

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. [...] I felt as helpless as that night, as if even in the wide open, the bright light of day, I still wasn’t safe. [...] I just stared at him, my heart pounding in my chest. [...] And then, in the midst of all the noises and voices, movement and change, I turned my head, cupped my hand over my mouth, and threw up in the grass behind me (24-25).

Later, Annabel has an intense reaction when her mother, Grace, offers her a “pink suede top” (38), which is triggering to her and causes her to feel like she cannot breathe. It is later revealed that Annabel was wearing this top when Will assaulted her. These visceral, physiological reactions portray the severity of Annabel’s trauma from Will raping her. Dessen also juxtaposes Annabel’s physical reactions with her closed, repressed verbal reactions. She hasn’t tried to tell anyone besides Sophie, who didn’t believe her. This juxtaposition highlights how silence impacts trauma survivors; Annabel hasn’t been heard, so she hasn’t been able to heal. She is stuck in a loop, reliving her trauma.

Depression is another sensitive topic introduced in these chapters. When Annabel shares about her mother’s past depression, her suppression makes more sense. She remembers how Grace had difficulty coping after her mom died. Grace slept for entire days, and Annabel recalls Kirsten making their lunches and doing chores with their father, who insisted Grace was grieving and they shouldn’t worry about her. Their father’s dialogue—“We all just need to do the best we can to make things easy for her until she feels better”—sticks with Annabel (32). Annabel was afraid of upsetting her mother and prolonging her depression, so she stopped talking about difficult things at home. Eventually, Annabel learned to be timid and keep things inside to ensure others were safe. Because of this, she doesn’t reveal that she wants to quit modeling though the scrutiny makes Annabel feel highly uncomfortable now. As an empathetic character, Annabel cannot take away modeling from Grace because it gives her happiness and purpose. She worries that Grace will become depressed again if she shares that she wants to quit, especially if she tells her about the rape.

In the third chapter, backstory is used to create round, fully developed characters. This background information contextualizes the characters’ journeys such as the emotional and physical effects of anorexia/bulimia. Themes of change and silence’s effects also occur in the Greene family dynamics. Keeping secrets instead of speaking up can be life-threatening, as in the case of Whitney and her eating disorder. Like Annabel keeping her stress inside to protect others, Whitney is private and prone to silent fuming rather than being forthright. Whitney hides her eating disorder, but Kirsten, who is a foil to her sisters and overshares, is a candid character. Her refusal to keep Whitney’s eating disorder a secret stands in contrast to their parents’ denial that there is a problem; only by confronting the problem honestly does Whitney get help. Whitney’s backstory sets the foundation for Dessen’s theme about the value of speaking up.

The first major symbol, the Greene family home, is detailed along with Whitney’s eating disorder and grounds the theme of Appearances Versus Reality. Andrew, an architect, designed his family’s modern home, which everyone calls “The Glass House” (48). It is semi-glass and allows those driving by to see into their living space and actions. Outsiders can view their living room, kitchen, pool, and up to the second-floor hallway to Annabel and Whitney’s rooms, but everything else is “tucked away behind, out of sight” (48). As such, people think they are seeing the whole, but they are only getting “just bits and pieces” (49). A family dining together can look happy from the outside, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Though people like Annabel and Whitney appear happy and healthy, they’re both enduring difficult personal obstacles that have changed them.

The backstory presents another thread in Annabel’s life: loss of friendships and regretting her choices. She feels too much time has passed for her to repair her friendship with Clarke, who she ditched to befriend Sophie in sixth grade. At school, she sees Clarke with her teammates and wishes she could go back in time and fix their friendship, especially since she was aware Sophie could be incredibly mean and felt uneasy around her often. Annabel’s loneliness and regret—amplified by her inability to speak up—create the starting point for her character arc in the story. As Annabel learns to stand in her truth, she is able to address these regrets and find comfort in others.