Celeste Ng - Everything I Never Told You

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? For what? There’s nothing to be sorry about.” Lydia slung the bag over her shoulder. “Actually, I’m sorry for you. In love with someone who hates you.”

She glared at Jack: one sharp wince, as if she’d splashed water in his eyes. Then Jack’s face grew wary and pinched and closed, like it was with other people, like it had been the first day they’d met. He grinned, but it looked more like a grimace.

“At least I don’t let other people tell me what I want,” he said, and she flinched at the contempt in his voice. She had not heard it in so many months. “At least I know who I am. What I want.” His eyes narrowed. “What about you, Miss Lee? What do you want?”

Of course I know what I want, she thought, but when she opened her mouth she found it empty. In her mind words ricocheted like glass marbles— doctor, popular, happy —and scattered into silence.

Jack snorted. “At least I don’t let other people tell me what to do all the time. At least I’m not afraid.”

Lydia swallowed. Under his eyes her skin felt flayed away. She wanted to hit Jack, but that would not be painful enough. And then she knew what would hurt him most.

“I bet Nath would love to hear about all this,” she said. “I bet everyone at school would. Don’t you think so?”

Before her eyes, Jack deflated like a pricked balloon.

“Look — Lydia—” he began, but she had already shoved the car door open and slammed it behind her. With each step, her bookbag thumped against her back, but she kept running, all the way down to the main road and toward home, not stopping even when a stitch knotted her side. At the sound of every car, she wheeled around, expecting to see Jack, but the VW was nowhere in sight. She wondered if he was still parked up there on the Point, that hunted look still in his eyes.

When she passed the lake and reached her own street, slowing to catch her breath at last, everything looked unfamiliar: strangely sharp, all the colors too bright, like an overtuned TV set. Green lawns were a little too blue, Mrs. Allen’s white gables a little too dazzling, the skin of her own arms a little too yellow. Everything felt just a bit distorted, and Lydia squinted, trying to squash it back into familiar shape. When she reached her own house, it took her a moment to realize that the woman sweeping the porch was her mother.

Marilyn, spotting her daughter, held out her arms for a kiss. Only then did Lydia discover the box of condoms still clutched in her hand, and she shoved it into her bookbag, inside the lining.

“You feel warm,” Marilyn said. She picked up the broom again. “I’m almost finished. Then we can start reviewing for your exams.” Tiny green buds, fallen from the trees, crushed themselves beneath the bristles.

For a moment Lydia’s voice froze, and when it finally emerged, it was so jagged neither she nor her mother recognized it. “I told you,” she snapped. “I don’t need your help.”

By tomorrow, Marilyn would forget this moment: Lydia’s shout, the shattered edges in her tone. It would disappear forever from her memory of Lydia, the way memories of a lost loved one always smooth and simplify themselves, shedding complexities like scales. For now, startled by her daughter’s unusual tone, she attributed it to fatigue, to the late afternoon.

“Not much time left,” she called as Lydia pulled the front door open. “You know, it’s already May.”

• • •

Later, when they look back on this last evening, the family will remember almost nothing. So many things will be pared away by the sadness to come. Nath, flushed with excitement, chattered through dinner, but none of them — including him — will remember this unusual volubility, or a single word he said. They will not remember the early-evening sunlight splashing across the tablecloth like melted butter, or Marilyn saying, The lilacs are starting to bloom. They will not remember James smiling at the mention of Charlie’s Kitchen, thinking of long-ago lunches with Marilyn, or Hannah asking, Do they have the same stars in Boston? and Nath answering, Yes, of course they do. All of that will be gone by morning. Instead, they will dissect this last evening for years to come. What had they missed that they should have seen? What small gesture, forgotten, might have changed everything? They will pick it down to the bones, wondering how this had all gone so wrong, and they will never be sure.

As for Lydia: all evening, she asked herself the same question. She did not notice her father’s nostalgia, or her brother’s illuminated face. All through dinner, and after dinner, after she had said goodnight, that one question churned through her mind. How had this all gone so wrong? Alone, record player humming in the lamplight, she dug back through her memory: Before Jack’s face that afternoon, defiant and tender and hunted all at once. Before Jack. Before the failed physics test, before biology, before the ribbons and books and the real stethoscope. Where had things gone askew?

As her clock flipped from 1:59 to 2:00 with a gentle click, it came to her, falling into place with the same tiny sound. The record had long since spun to a halt, and the darkness outside made the silence deeper, like the muffled hush of a library. She knew at last where everything had gone wrong. And she knew where she had to go.

• • •

The wood of the dock was just as smooth as she remembered it. Lydia sat down at the end, as she had so long ago, feet dangling over the edge, where the rowboat knocked softly against the pier. All this time, she had never dared come so close again. Tonight, in the dark, she felt no fear, and she noted this with a calm sense of wonder.

Jack was right: she had been afraid so long, she had forgotten what it was like not to be — afraid that, one day, her mother would disappear again, that her father would crumble, that their whole family would collapse once more. Ever since that summer without her mother, their family had felt precarious, as if they were teetering on a cliff. Before that she hadn’t realized how fragile happiness was, how if you were careless, you could knock it over and shatter it. Anything her mother wanted, she had promised. As long as she would stay. She had been so afraid.

So every time her mother said Do you want—? she had said yes. She knew what her parents had longed for, without them saying a word, and she had wanted them happy. She had kept her promise. And her mother had stayed. Read this book. Yes. Want this. Love this. Yes. Once, at the college museum, while Nath had pouted about missing the star show, she had spotted a nugget of amber with a fly trapped inside. “That’s four million years old,” Marilyn whispered, wrapping her arms around her daughter from behind. Lydia had stared until Nath, at last, had dragged them both away. Now she thought of the fly landing daintily in the pool of resin. Perhaps it had mistaken it for honey. Perhaps it hadn’t seen the puddle at all. By the time it had realized its mistake, it was too late. It had flailed, and then it had sunk, and then it had drowned.

Ever since that summer, she had been so afraid — of losing her mother, of losing her father. And, after a while, the biggest fear of all: of losing Nath, the only one who understood the strange and brittle balance in their family. Who knew all that had happened. Who had always kept her afloat.