Everything I Never Told You

by Celeste Ng

  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.

  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 sum
mers. 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.

  “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 volubilit
y, 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.