Just Listen

Kirsten, her hands in the water, turned and looked at her. "Where are you going?"

"Just to this coffee shop to meet some people," Whitney told her.

"Oh," Kirsten said, nodding. Then she turned back to the sink.

"Do you…" Whitney paused. "Did you want to come?"

"I don't want to intrude," Kirsten told her. "That's okay."

"It's all right," I heard Whitney say. "I mean, if you don't mind hanging out there for a little while."

Again, I felt it: this tentative, careful peace between my sisters—not exactly flimsy, but not set in stone, either. My parents exchanged a look. "A

I could feel Kirsten's eyes on me as she asked this, and I thought of her squeezing my hand earlier, and how she was maybe more nervous than she seemed. "Sure," I said. "Okay."

"Wonderful!" my mother said. "You all go and have fun. Your dad and I can finish cleaning up."

"Are you sure?" I asked. "We're only about halfway through—"

"It's fine." She stood up, then came over, gesturing me and Kirsten out of the way as she rolled up her sleeves. I looked over at Whitney, standing in the archway. How I'd gotten in the middle of this I wasn't sure. But here I was. "Just go."

"Hello, and welcome to open-mike night, here at Jump Java. I'm Esther, and I'll be your emcee tonight. If you've been here before, you know the rules: Sign up at the back, keep it down when someone's reading, and most importantly, tip your barista. Thank you!"

When we arrived, I'd figured this was just something that happened to be going on. But as Whitney's friends from her group waved us over, it was clear it was no coincidence.

"So are you ready?" a girl named Jane, who was tall and very thin, wearing a red sweater with a pack of cigarettes pok-ing out of the front pocket, said to Whitney after we got our coffees and had introductions. "And, more importantly, are you nervous?"

"Whitney doesn't get nervous," Heather, the other girl, said. She looked to be about my age and had short black hair, cut spiky, and a variety of piercings in her nose and lip. "You know that."

Kirsten and I exchanged a look. "What would you be nervous about?" she asked Whitney, who was sitting beside me, rummaging through the purse in her lap.

"Reading," Jane told her, taking a sip from the mug in front of her. "She's signed up for tonight."

"She had to sign up," Heather added. "It was a Moira Must."

"Moira Must?" I said.

"It's something from our group," Whitney explained, pulling some folded papers from her purse and putting them on the table in front of her. "You know, like an assignment. Moira's one of my doctors."

"Oh," Kirsten said. "Right."

"So you're reading something you wrote," I said. "Like part of your history?"

Whitney nodded. "Kind of."

"All right, we're ready to get started," Esther said. "And first up, we have Jacob. Welcome, Jacob!"

Everyone applauded as a tall, ski

The poem he began to read started with images about daylight and dreaming. Then it began to build quickly, his voice rising until it was just a staccato list of words that he spit out, one right after another. "Metal, Cold, Betrayal, Endless!" he was saying, as the occasional bit of spit arced over the mike. I glanced at Whitney, who was biting her lip, then at Kirsten, who looked completely entranced.

"What is this?" I whispered.

"Shhh," she said.

Jacob's poem went on for what seemed like a long time before ending, finally, with a series of long, breathless gasps. When he was done, we all sat there for a second before deciding it was okay to clap.

"Wow," I said to Heather. "That was really something."

"Oh, that's nothing," she said. "You should have been here last week. He did ten minutes on castration."

"It was disgusting," Jane added. "Compelling, but disgusting."

"Next up," Esther said, "we have a first-time reader. Everyone, please, give it up for Whitney."

Jane and Heather immediately burst into loud applause, and Kirsten and I followed suit. As Whitney walked up to the mike, I watched the crowd reacting to her, their heads turning, then double-taking, at her beauty.

"I'm going to read a short piece," she said, her voice kind of faint. She stepped closer to the microphone. "A short piece," she repeated, "about my sisters."

I felt myself blink, surprised, and looked at Kirsten. I

wanted to say something, but I kept quiet, not wanting to be shushed again.

Whitney swallowed, then looked down at her papers, the edge of which I could see fluttering, just barely. She looked scared, and it suddenly seemed too quiet. But then she began.

"I am the middle sister," she read. "The one in between. Not oldest, not youngest, not boldest, not nicest. I am the shade of gray, the glass half empty or full, depending on your view. In my life, there has been little that I have done first or better than the one preceding or following me. Of all of us, though, I am the only one who has been broken."

I heard the chime over the door sound, and turned in my seat to see an older woman with long curly hair come in and stand at the back. When she saw Whitney at the microphone she smiled, then began to unwind her scarf from around her neck.

"It happened on the day of my youngest sister's ninth birthday party," Whitney continued. "I'd been sulking around the house all day, feeling alternately ignored and entirely too hassled, which was pretty much my default setting, even at eleven."

Kirsten's eyes widened as, at the table next to us, a man laughed loudly, and I heard other chuckles as well. Whitney flushed, smiling. "My older sister, the social one, was going to ride her bike down to the neighborhood pool to meet some friends and asked me to come along. I didn't want to. I didn't want to be with anyone. If my older sister was friendly, and my younger sweet, I was the darkness. Nobody understood my pain. Not even me."

There was another laugh, this time from someone across the room, and she smiled. So Whitney could be fu

"My older sister got on her bike and headed for the pool, and I started to follow. I always followed, and once we were riding, I started to get angry about it. I was tired of being second."

I looked at Kirsten again; she was watching Whitney so intently, as if no one else was even there. "So I turned back. And suddenly, the road was empty ahead of me, this whole new view, all mine. I started to pedal as fast as I could."

I could hear Heather's spoon clinking as she added another packet of sugar to her coffee, as I sat silent, unmoving.

"It was great. Freedom, even the imagined kind, always is. But as I got farther away, and didn't recognize what was ahead of me, I started to realize the distance I was covering. I was still going full speed, away from home, when my front wheel suddenly sank, and I was flying."