Celeste Ng - Everything I Never Told You

At home, alone on the landing, Lydia cradled the handset in her hands for a long time after the click. The tears that had choked off her voice dried away. A slow, burning anger at Nath began to smolder inside her, his parting words ringing in her ears. I don’t have time for this. He had turned into a different person, a person who didn’t care that she needed him. A person who said things to hurt her. She felt herself becoming a different person, too: a person who would slap her sister. Who would hurt Nath as much as he had hurt her. Go take your problems to Jack.

• • •

Monday morning she put on her prettiest dress, the halter-neck with the tiny red flowers, which her father had bought her in the fall. Something new for the new school year, he had said. They had been shopping for school supplies and he had spotted it on a mannequin in the store’s window display. James liked to buy Lydia dresses off the mannequin; he was sure it meant everyone was wearing them. The latest thing, right? Every girl needs a dress for a special occasion. Lydia, who aimed for unobtrusive — a hooded sweater and corduroys; a plain blouse and bell-bottoms — knew it was a date dress, and she did not date. She had kept it in the back of her closet for months, but today she pulled it from the hanger. She parted her hair carefully, right down the center, and clipped one side back with a red barrette. With the tip of her lipstick she traced the curves of her mouth.

“Don’t you look nice,” James said at breakfast. “Just as pretty as Susan Dey.” Lydia smiled and said nothing, not when Marilyn said, “Lydia, don’t be too late after school, Nath will be home for dinner,” not when James touched one finger to her dimple — that old joke again — and said, “All the boys will be after you now.” Across the table, Hannah studied her sister’s dress and lipsticked smile, rubbing one finger against the rusty scab, fine as a spiderweb, that ringed her neck. Don’t, she wanted to say, though she didn’t know: don’t what? She knew only that something was about to happen, and that nothing she could say or do would prevent it. When Lydia had gone, she seized her spoon and mashed the soggy cereal in her bowl to a pulp.

Hannah was right. That afternoon, at Lydia’s suggestion, Jack drove up to the Point, overlooking the town, and they parked in the shade. On a Friday night, half a dozen cars would cluster there, windows slowly fogging, until a police car scattered them away. Now — in the bright light of a Monday afternoon — there was no one else around.

“So when’s Nath getting back?”

“Tonight, I think.” In fact, Lydia knew, Nath would land at Hopkins Airport in Cleveland at five nineteen. He and their father would be home at six thirty. She peeked through the window to where First Federal’s clock rose, just visible in the center of town. Five minutes past four.

“Must be weird not having him around.”

Lydia laughed, a small, bitter laugh. “Four days wasn’t long enough for him, I bet. He can’t wait to leave for good.”

“It’s not like you’ll never see him again. I mean, he’ll come back. At Christmas. And summers. Right?” Jack raised an eyebrow.

“Maybe. Or maybe he’ll stay out there forever. Who cares.” Lydia swallowed, steadying her voice. “I’ve got my own life.” Through the rolled-down window, the new leaves of the maples rustled. A single helicopter, leftover from fall, broke free and spiraled to the ground. Every cell in her body was trembling, but when she looked down at her hands, they lay calm and quiet in her lap.

She opened the glove compartment and fished out the box of condoms. There were still two inside, just as there had been months ago.

Jack looked startled. “What are you doing?”

“It’s okay. Don’t worry. I won’t regret anything.” He was so close she could smell the sweet saltiness of his skin. “You know, you’re not like people think,” she said, touching one hand to his thigh. “Everybody thinks, with all those girls, you don’t care about anything. But that’s not true. That’s not really who you are, is it?” Her eyes met his, blue on blue. “I know you.”

And while Jack stared, Lydia took a deep breath, as if she were diving underwater, and kissed him.

She had never kissed anyone before, and it was — though she didn’t know it — a sweet kiss, a chaste kiss, a little-girl kiss. Beneath her lips, his were warm and dry and still. Beneath the smoke, Jack smelled as if he had just been out in the woods, leafy and green. He smelled the way velvet felt, something you wanted to run your hands over and then press to your face. In that moment Lydia’s mind fast-forwarded, the way movies did. Past them clambering into the backseat, tumbling over one another, their hands too slow for their desires. Past untying the knot at the nape of her neck, past the peeling away of clothing, past Jack’s body hovering over hers. All the things she had never experienced and, in truth, could barely imagine. By the time Nath came home, she thought, she would be transformed. That evening, when Nath told her everything new that he had seen at Harvard, everything about the new and fabulous life he was already beginning, she would have something new to tell him, too.

And then, very gently, Jack pulled away.

“You’re sweet,” he said.

He gazed down at her, but — even Lydia understood this instinctively — not like a lover: tenderly, the way adults look at children who have fallen and hurt themselves. Inside, she shriveled. She looked down at her lap, letting her hair screen her burning face, and a bitter taste bloomed in her mouth.

“Don’t tell me you’ve grown morals all of a sudden,” she said sharply. “Or am I just not good enough for you?”

“Lydia,” Jack sighed, his voice flannel-soft. “It’s not you.”

“Then what?”

A long pause, so long she thought Jack had forgotten to answer. When he spoke at last, he turned toward the window, as if what he really meant were outside, beyond the maple trees, beyond the lake and everything beneath them. “Nath.”

“Nath?” Lydia rolled her eyes. “Don’t be afraid of Nath. Nath doesn’t matter.”

“He matters,” Jack said, still looking out the window. “He matters to me.”

It took Lydia a minute to process this, and she stared, as if Jack’s face had changed shape, or his hair had changed color. Jack rubbed his thumb against the base of his ring finger, and she knew that he was telling the truth, that this had been the truth for a long, long time.

“But—” Lydia paused. Nath? “You’re always — I mean, everyone knows—” Without meaning to, she glanced at the backseat, at the faded Navajo blanket crumpled there.

Jack smiled a wry smile. “How did you put it? Everybody thinks, with all those girls — but that’s not who you are.” He glanced at her sideways. Through the open window, a breeze ruffled his sandy curls. “No one would ever suspect.”

Snatches of conversation floated back to Lydia now, in a different tone. Where’s your brother? What’s Nath going to say? And: Are you going to tell your brother we’ve been hanging out, and I’m not such a bad guy? What had she said? He’d never believe me. The half-empty box of condoms gaped up at her, and she crushed it in her fist. I know you, she heard herself say again, and cringed. How could I have been so stupid, she thought. To have gotten him so wrong. To have gotten everything so wrong.

“I gotta go.” Lydia snatched her bookbag from the floor of the car.