Just Listen(84)

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 dispenser. "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."