Celeste Ng - Everything I Never Told You

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Nath did not call that night, when Lydia shrank and shriveled beneath her parents’ undeflected attention. I got a course catalog from the college — do you want to take statistics this summer? Anyone ask you to prom yet? Well, I’m sure someone will soon. He did not call Saturday, when Lydia cried herself to sleep, or on Sunday, when she awoke with eyes still scalding. So this is what it will be like, she thought to herself. As if I never had a brother at all.

With Nath gone, Hannah followed Lydia like a puppy, scampering to her door each morning before Lydia’s clock radio had even gone off, her voice breathless, just short of a pant. Guess what? Lydia, guess what? It was never guessable and never important: it was raining; there were pancakes for breakfast; there was a blue jay in the spruce tree. Each day, all day, she trailed Lydia suggesting things they could do— We could play Life, we could watch the Friday Night Movie, we could make Jiffy Pop. All her life, Hannah had hovered at a distance from her brother and sister, and Lydia and Nath had tacitly tolerated their small, awkward moon. Now Lydia noticed a thousand little things about her sister: the way she twitched her nose once-twice, fast as a rabbit, when she was talking; the habit she had of standing on her toes, as if she had on invisible high heels. And then, Sunday afternoon, as Hannah climbed into the wedges Lydia had kicked off, she delivered her latest idea— We could go play by the lake. Lydia, let’s go play by the lake —and Lydia noticed something else, shiny and silver beneath Hannah’s shirt.

“What’s that?”

Hannah tried to turn away, but Lydia jerked her collar down to reveal what she’d already half glimpsed: a lithe silver chain, a slender silver heart. Her locket. She hooked it with one finger, and Hannah teetered, staggering out of Lydia’s shoes with a thump.

“What are you doing with that?”

Hannah glanced at the doorway, as if the correct answer might be painted on the wall. Six days ago she had found the little velvet box beneath Lydia’s bed. “I didn’t think you wanted it,” she whispered. Lydia wasn’t listening. Every time you look at this, she heard her father say, just remember what really matters. Being sociable. Being popular. Blending in. You don’t feel like smiling? Then what? Force yourself to smile. Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain. Hannah, so pleased in that little silver snare, looked like her younger self — timid, gawky, shoulders just beginning to stoop under the weight of something that seemed so thin and silver and light.

With a loud crack, her hand struck Hannah’s cheek, knocking her back, snapping her head to the side. Then she looped her whole hand through the chain and twisted, hard, jerking her forward like a dog on a choke collar. I’m sorry, Hannah began, but nothing emerged except a soft gasp. Lydia twisted harder. Then the necklace snapped, and both sisters found they could breathe again.

“You don’t want that,” Lydia said, the gentleness in her voice surprising Hannah, surprising Lydia herself. “Listen to me. You think you do. You don’t.” She bunched the necklace in her fist. “Promise me you’ll never put this on again. Ever.”

Hannah shook her head, eyes wide. Lydia touched her sister’s throat, her thumb smoothing the tiny thread of blood where the chain had sliced into the skin.

“Don’t ever smile if you don’t want to,” she said, and Hannah, half-blinded by the spotlight of Lydia’s whole attention, nodded. “Remember that.”

Hannah kept her word: later that night, and for years to come, she would look back on this moment, each time touching her throat, where the red mark of the chain had long since faded away. Lydia had looked more anxious than angry, the necklace dangling from her fingers like a dead snake; she had sounded almost sad, as if she had done something wrong, not Hannah. The necklace was, in fact, the last thing Hannah would ever steal. But this moment, this last talk with her sister, would puzzle her for a long time.

That evening, in the safety of her room, Lydia pulled out the piece of loose-leaf on which Nath had scrawled his host student’s number. After dinner — when her father retreated to his study and her mother settled into the living room — she unfolded it and picked up the telephone on the landing. The phone rang six times before someone answered and, in the background, she could hear the raucous sounds of a party just getting under way. “Who?” the voice on the other end said, twice, and at last Lydia gave up whispering and snapped, “Nathan Lee. The visiting student. Nathan Lee .” Minutes ticked by, each ratcheting up the long-distance charge — though by the time the bill came, James would be too devastated to notice. Downstairs, Marilyn clicked the television dial around and around: Rhoda. Six Million Dollar Man. Quincy. Rhoda again. Then, finally, Nath came on the line.

“Nath,” Lydia said. “It’s me.” To her surprise, tears welled in her eyes just at the sound of his voice — though his voice was deeper and blunter than usual, as if he had a cold. In fact, Nath was three-quarters through the first beer of his life, and the room was beginning to take on a warmish glow. Now his sister’s voice — flattened by long distance — sliced through that glow like a blunt knife.

“What’s the matter?”

“You didn’t call.”

“What?”

“You promised you’d call.” Lydia wiped her eyes with the back of one wrist.

“That’s why you’re calling?”

“No, listen, Nath. I need to tell you something.” Lydia paused, puzzling over how to explain. In the background, a burst of laughter swelled like a wave crashing ashore.

Nath sighed. “What happened? Did Mom nag you about your homework?” He tipped the bottle to his lips and found the beer had gone warm, and the stale liquid shriveled his tongue. “Wait, let me guess. Mom bought you a special present, but it was just a book. Dad bought you a new dress — no, a diamond necklace — and he expects you to wear it. Last night at dinner you had to talk and talk and talk and all their attention was on you. Am I getting warmer?”

Stunned, Lydia fell silent. All their lives Nath had understood, better than anyone, the lexicon of their family, the things they could never truly explain to outsiders: that a book or a dress meant more than something to read or something to wear; that attention came with expectations that — like snow — drifted and settled and crushed you with their weight. All the words were right, but in this new Nath’s voice, they sounded trivial and brittle and hollow. The way anyone else might have heard them. Already her brother had become a stranger.

“I gotta go,” he said.

“Wait. Wait, Nath. Listen.”

“God, I don’t have time for this.” In a flash of bitterness, he added, “Why don’t you go take your problems to Jack?”

He did not know then how those words would haunt him. After he slammed the receiver back onto the cradle, a twinge of guilt, like a small sharp bubble, bored its way through his chest. But from far away, with the heat and noise of the party cocooning him, his perspective had shifted. Everything that loomed so large close up — school, their parents, their lives — all you had to do was step away, and they shrank to nothing. You could stop taking their phone calls, tear up their letters, pretend they’d never existed. Start over as a new person with a new life. Just a problem of geography, he thought, with the confidence of someone who had never yet tried to free himself of family. Soon enough Lydia, too, would head off to school. Soon enough she, too, would cut herself free. He gulped down the rest of his beer and went to get another.