"Just Listen" entry #3

author: Sarah Dessen; published: 2006

So far as plot, not much happens within the next 75 pages- except that Annabel goes with Rolly and Owen to breakfast for the first time. Here, Annabel becomes slightly amazed that she is spending time with Owen like this, so natural and relaxed and although she doesn't realize it yet- she starts to fall for him. Owen drives Annabel back to her house, and then leaves just as Annabel realizes that Owen left his jacket with her (the breakfast restaurant had been cold) and she would have returned it to him when school started up again on Monday or Tuesday but she realized that Owen also left his ipod with her. Curious, Annabel turns on the ipod to find a playlist on the ipod with her name on it- slightly intrigued she starts playing the list and as she scrolls she finds that every song that she has ever talked about with Owen is on this playlist that has her name on it. Annabel thinks about how she had always wondered what Owen was listening to all the time (he's the type that always has the ipod earbuds in his ears almost 24/7, playing something all the time), and what he was thinking about as he listened to his ipod but "who would have ever guessed that it might have been me (Dessen 203)?", Annabel finds herself thinking. Its when Annabel goes to take the ipod back to Owen that she finds her sister trying to make dinner in the kitchen. At first Annabel makes a move to leave her sister alone (the sister that had the eating disorder), in the kitchen trying to make herself dinner, but then Annabel realizes it must be very difficult for her sister Whitney, seeing that "[...] Whitney hardly ever cooked for herself. My mother monitored all her meals, fixed her snacks and sandwiches, even the cereal she ate for breakfast. I realized that if this was weird for me to watch, it had to be really strange for her to do. Especially alone (Dessen 204)." So for the first time, Annabel cooks dinner with her middle sister, Whitney, and then leaves shortly after to take the ipod and jacket back to Owen. When she arrives at Owen's house, she finds his sister Mallory having a sleep over and playing model/dress-up and taking tons of pictures. Mallory shows Annabel her room- which is covered with pictures of models in all sorts of attire, including pictures of Annabel. Here Annabel discovers that Owen sees her as different from what they can see in the pictures and later that night they kiss for the first time. As Annabel heads home from the photo op, Mallory hands a stack of pictures to Annabel to take home and shortly after Annabel leaves with a lot on her mind. When Owen tried to explain to Annabel exactly what she was to him at his house, she doesn't really get it but then, "I wanted to ask him to explain further, to say what I was to him, exactly. But then I realized maybe he just had. I already knew he thought of me as honest, direct, even funny- all things I had never thought about myself. Who knew what else I could be, what kind of potential there was in the differences between that girl and the one he saw now. So many possibilities (Dessen 217)." Here, its a major turning point for Annabel: she starts to realize who she had been and the differences between who she is now and who she had been and that's changing, and that the girl who Owen sees her as isn't necessarily the girl who she "thinks" she is. All of this is a major turning point in thinking for Annabel.