Celeste Ng - Everything I Never Told You

After Nath puts the phone down, so hard the bells jangle, he shuts himself in his room. They think he’s being hysterical, but he knows there’s something there, that there’s some connection to Jack, some missing piece of the puzzle. If the police don’t believe him, his parents won’t either. His father is hardly home these days anyway, and his mother has locked herself in Lydia’s room again; through the wall he can hear her pacing, like a prowling cat. Hannah raps at his door, and he puts on a record, loud, until he can’t hear the sound of her knuckles, or his mother’s footsteps, anymore. Later, none of them will remember how the day passes, only a numbed blur, overshadowed by all that would happen the next day.

When evening falls, Hannah opens her door and peers through the crack. A razor of light slices under Nath’s door, another under Lydia’s. All afternoon Nath had played his record over and over, but he has finally let it wind to a stop, and now a thick silence, like fog, seeps out onto the landing. Tiptoeing downstairs, she finds the house dark, her father still gone. The kitchen faucet drips: plink, plink, plink. She knows she should turn it off, but then the house will be silent, and at the moment this is unbearable. Back in her room, she imagines the faucet dripping to itself in the kitchen. With every plink, another bead of water would form on the brushed steel of the sink.

She longs to climb into her sister’s bed and sleep, but with her mother there, she cannot, and to console herself, Hannah circles the room, checking her treasures, pulling each from its hiding place and examining it. Tucked between mattress and box spring: the smallest spoon from her mother’s tea set. Behind the books on the shelf: her father’s old wallet, the leather worn thin as tissue. A pencil of Nath’s, his toothmarks revealing wood grain beneath the yellow paint. These are her failures. The successes are all gone: the ring on which her father kept his office keys; her mother’s best lipstick, Rose Petal Frost ; the mood ring Lydia used to wear on her thumb. They were wanted and missed and hunted down in Hannah’s hands. These aren’t a toy, said her father. You’re too young for makeup, said her mother. Lydia had been more blunt: Stay out of my things. Hannah had folded her hands behind her back, savoring the lecture, nodding solemnly as she memorized the shape of them standing there beside the bed. When they were gone, she repeated each sentence under her breath, redrawing them in the empty spot where they’d been.

All she has left are things unwanted, things unloved. But she doesn’t put them back. To make up for them being unmissed, she counts them carefully, twice, rubs a spot of tarnish from the spoon, snaps and unsnaps the change pocket of the wallet. She’s had some of them for years. No one has ever noticed they were gone. They slipped away silently, without even the plink of a drop of water.

She knows Nath is convinced, no matter what the police say, that Jack brought Lydia to the lake, that he had something to do with it, that it’s his fault. In his mind, Jack dragged her into the boat, Jack pushed her underwater, Jack’s fingerprints are pressed into her neck. But Nath is all wrong about Jack.

This is how she knows. Last summer, she and Nath and Lydia had been down at the lake. It was hot and Nath had gone in for a swim. Lydia sunbathed on a striped towel in her swimsuit on the grass, one hand over her eyes. Hannah had been listing Lydia’s many nicknames in her mind. Lyd. Lyds. Lyddie. Honey. Sweetheart. Angel. No one ever called Hannah anything but Hannah. There were no clouds, and in the sun, the water had looked almost white, like a puddle of milk. Beside her, Lydia let out a little sigh and settled her shoulders deeper into the towel. She smelled like baby oil and her skin gleamed.

As Hannah squinted, looking for Nath, she thought of possibilities. “Hannah Banana”—they might call her that. Or something that had nothing to do with her name, something that sounded strange but that, from them, would be warm and personal. Moose, she thought. Bean. Then Jack had strolled by, with his sunglasses perched atop his head, even though it was blindingly bright.

“Better watch out,” he said to Lydia. “You’ll have a white patch on your face if you lie like that.” She laughed and uncovered her eyes and sat up. “Nath not here?” Jack asked, settling down beside them, and Lydia waved out toward the water. Jack pulled his cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, and suddenly there was Nath, glowering down at them. Water speckled his bare chest and his hair dripped down onto his shoulders.

“What are you doing here?” he’d said to Jack, and Jack stubbed the cigarette out in the grass and put on his sunglasses before looking up.

“Just enjoying the sun,” he said. “Thought I might go for a swim.” His voice didn’t sound nervous, but from where she was sitting, Hannah could see his eyes behind the tinted lenses, how they fluttered to Nath, then away. Without speaking, Nath plunked himself down right between Jack and Lydia, bunching his unused towel in his hand. Blades of grass stuck to his wet swimsuit and his calves, like thin streaks of green paint.

“You’re going to burn,” he said to Lydia. “Better put on your T-shirt.”

“I’m fine.” Lydia shielded her eyes with her hand again.

“You’re already turning pink,” Nath said. His back was to Jack, as if Jack weren’t there at all. “Here. And here.” He touched Lydia’s shoulder, then her collarbone.

“I’m fine,” Lydia said again, swatting him away with her free hand and lying back again. “You’re worse than Mom. Stop fussing. Leave me alone.” Something caught Hannah’s eye then, and she didn’t hear what Nath said in return. A drop of water trickled out of Nath’s hair, like a shy little mouse, and ran down the nape of his neck. It made its slow way between his shoulder blades, and where his back curved, it dropped straight down, as if it had jumped off a cliff, and splashed onto the back of Jack’s hand. Nath, facing away from Jack, didn’t see it, and neither did Lydia, peeking up through the slits between her fingers. Only Hannah, arms curled around knees, a little way behind them, saw it fall. In her ears, it made a noise, like a cannon shot. And Jack himself jumped. He stared at the drop of water without moving, as if it were a rare insect that might fly away. Then, without looking at any of them, he raised his hand to his mouth and touched his tongue to it, as if it were honey.

It happened so quickly that if she were a different person, Hannah might have wondered if she’d imagined it. No one else saw. Nath was still turned away; Lydia had her eyes shut now against the sun. But the moment flashed lightning-bright to Hannah. Years of yearning had made her sensitive, the way a starving dog twitches its nostrils at the faintest scent of food. She could not mistake it. She recognized it at once: love, one-way deep adoration that bounced off and did not bounce back; careful, quiet love that didn’t care and went on anyway. It was too familiar to be surprising. Something deep inside her stretched out and curled around Jack like a shawl, but he didn’t notice. His gaze moved away to the far side of the lake, as if nothing had happened. She stretched her leg and touched her bare foot to Jack’s, big toe to big toe, and only then did he look down at her.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said, ruffling her hair with his hand. Her whole scalp had tingled and she thought her hair might stand up, like static electricity. At the sound of Jack’s voice, Nath glanced over.

“Hannah,” he said, and without knowing why, she stood up. Nath nudged Lydia with his foot. “Let’s go.” Lydia groaned but picked up her towel and the bottle of baby oil.