Everything I Never Told You

by Celeste Ng

  He does not bother to change his clothes, or to grab his keys, or to think at all. He simply pulls on his tennis shoes and barrels down the stairs. The universe has given him this chance, and he refuses to squander it. As he yanks open the front door, Hannah is merely a startled blur in the front hall. For her part, she does not even bother to put on shoes. Barefoot, she darts after him, the asphalt still cool and damp against her feet.

  “Nath,” she calls. “Nath, it’s not his fault.” Nath doesn’t stop. He’s not running, just marching with a fierce and angry stride toward the corner, where Jack has just disappeared. He looks like the cowboys in their father’s movies, determined and tense-jawed and unshakable in the middle of the deserted street. “Nath.” Hannah grabs his arm, but he keeps walking, unmoved, and she scurries to keep up. They’re at the corner now, and both of them see Jack at the same moment, sitting on the dock, arms wrapped around his knees, the dog lying beside him. Nath pauses to let a car go by and Hannah tugs his hand, hard.

  “Please,” she says. “Please.” The car passes and Nath hesitates, but he’s been waiting for answers so long. Now or never, he thinks, and he jerks himself free and crosses the street.

  If Jack hears them coming, he doesn’t show it. He stays there, looking out over the water, until Nath is standing right over him.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t see you?” Nath says. Jack doesn’t reply. Slowly, he gets to his feet, facing Nath with his hands tucked in the back pockets of his jeans. As if, Nath thinks, he’s not even worth fighting. “You can’t hide forever.”

  “I know it,” Jack says. At his feet, the dog utters a low, moaning whine.

  “Nath,” Hannah whispers. “Let’s go home. Please.”

  Nath ignores her. “I hope you were thinking about how sorry you are,” he says.

  “I am so sorry,” Jack says. “About what happened to Lydia.” A faint tremor shakes his voice. “About everything.” Jack’s dog backs away, huddling against Hannah’s legs, and she’s sure now that Nath’s hands will unclench, that he’ll turn around and leave Jack alone and walk away. Except he doesn’t. For a second he seems confused—then being confused makes him angrier.

  “Do you think that changes anything? It doesn’t.” The knuckles of his fists have gone white. “Tell me the truth. Now. I want to know. What happened between you two. What made her go out on that lake that night.”

  Jack half shakes his head, as if he doesn’t understand the question. “I thought Lydia told you—” His arm twitches, as if he’s about to take Nath by the shoulder, or the hand. “I should have told you myself,” he says. “I should have said, a long time ago—”

  Nath takes a half-step closer. He is so close now, so close to understanding, that it makes him dizzy. “What?” he says, almost whispering, so quiet now that Hannah can hardly hear him. “That it’s your fault?”

  In the second before Jack’s head moves, she understands what’s going to happen: Nath needs a target, somewhere to point his anger and guilt, or he’ll crumble. Jack knows this; she can see it in his face, in the way he squares his shoulders, bracing himself. Nath leans closer, and for the first time in a long time, he looks Jack right in the eye, brown on blue. Demanding. Begging. Tell me. Please. And Jack nods his head. Yes.

  Then his fist smashes into Jack and Jack doubles over. Nath has never hit anyone before, and he’d thought it would feel good—powerful—his arm uncoiling like a piston. It doesn’t. It feels like punching a piece of meat, something dense and heavy, something that does not resist. It makes him feel a little sick. And he’d expected a pow, like in the movies, but there’s hardly any noise at all. Just a thump, like a heavy bag falling to the floor, a faint little gasp, and that makes him feel sick, too. Nath readies himself, waiting, but Jack doesn’t hit back. He straightens up, slowly, one hand on his stomach, his eyes watching Nath. He doesn’t even make a fist, and this makes Nath feel sickest of all.

  He had thought that when he found Jack, when his fist hit Jack’s smug face, he’d feel better. That everything would change, that the hard glob of anger that has grown inside him would crumble like sand. But nothing happens. He can still feel it there, a lump of concrete inside, scraping him raw from the inside out. And Jack’s face isn’t smug, either. He’d expected at least defensiveness, maybe fear, but in Jack’s eyes he sees nothing of that. Instead Jack looks at him almost tenderly, as if he’s sorry for him. As if he wants to reach out and put his arms around him.

  “Come on,” Nath shouts. “Are you too ashamed to hit back?”

  He grabs Jack by the shoulder and swings again and Hannah looks away just before his fist meets Jack’s face. This time, a trickle of red drips from Jack’s nose. He doesn’t wipe it away, just lets it drip, from nostril to lip to chin.

  “Stop it,” she screams, and only when she hears her own voice does she realize she’s crying, that her cheeks and her neck and even the collar of her T-shirt are sticky with tears. Nath and Jack hear it too. They both stare, Nath’s fist still cocked, Jack’s face and that tender look now turned on her. “Stop,” she screams again, stomach churning, and she rushes between them, trying to shield Jack, battering her brother with her palms, shoving him away.

  And Nath doesn’t resist. He lets her push him, feels himself teetering, feet slipping on the worn-smooth wood, lets himself fall off the dock and into the water.

  • • •

  So this is what it’s like, he thinks as the water closes over his head. He doesn’t fight it. He holds his breath, stills his arms and legs, keeps his eyes open as he plummets. This is what it looks like. He imagines Lydia sinking, the sunlight above the water growing dimmer as he sinks farther, too. Soon he’ll be at the bottom, legs and arms and the small of his back pressed to the sandy lake floor. He’ll stay there until he can’t hold his breath any longer, until the water rushes in to snuff out his mind like a candle. His eyes sting, but he forces them open. This is what it’s like, he tells himself. Notice this. Notice everything. Remember it.

  But he’s too familiar with the water. His body already knows what to do, the way it knows to duck at the corner of the staircase at home, where the ceiling is low. His muscles stretch and flail. On its own, his body rights itself, his arms claw at the water. His legs kick until his head breaks the surface and he coughs out a mouthful of silt, breathes cool air into his lungs. It’s too late. He’s already learned how not to drown.

  He floats faceup, eyes closed, letting the water hold his weary limbs. He can’t know what it was like, not the first time, not the last. He can guess, but he won’t ever know, not really. What it was like, what she was thinking, everything she’d never told him. Whether she thought he’d failed her, or whether she wanted him to let her go. This, more than anything, makes him feel that she is gone.

  “Nath?” Hannah calls, and then she’s peering over the side of the dock, her face small and pale. Then another head appears—Jack’s—and a hand stretches down toward him. He knows it’s Jack’s, and that when he gets there, he’ll take it anyway.

  And after he takes it, what will happen? He’ll struggle home, dripping wet, muddy, knuckles raw from Jack’s teeth. Beside him, Jack will be bruised and swollen, the front of his shirt a Rorschach of dark brown. Hannah will obviously have been crying; it will show in the streaks under her eyes, in the damp thwack of lashes against her cheek. Despite this, they will be strangely aglow, all of them, as if they’ve been scoured. It will take a long time to sort things out. Today they will have to deal with their parents, Jack’s mother, too, all the questions: Why were you fighting? What happened? It will take a long time, because they won’t be able to explain, and parents, they know, need explanations. They will change into dry clothing, Jack wearing one of Nath’s old T-shirts. They will dab mercurochrome on Jack’s cheek, on Nath’s knuckles, making them look bloodier, like their wounds are reopened, even though in reality they are beginning to close.

&n
bsp; And tomorrow, next month, next year? It will take a long time. Years from now, they will still be arranging the pieces they know, puzzling over her features, redrawing her outlines in their minds. Sure that they’ve got her right this time, positive in this moment that they understand her completely, at last. They will think of her often: when Marilyn opens the curtains in Lydia’s room, opens the closet, and begins to take the clothing from the shelves. When their father, one day, enters a party and for the first time does not glance, quickly, at all the blond heads in the room. When Hannah begins to stand a little straighter, when she begins to speak a bit clearer, when one day she flicks her hair behind her ear in a familiar gesture and wonders, for a moment, where she got it. And Nath. When at school people ask if he has siblings: two sisters, but one died; when, one day, he looks at the small bump that will always mar the bridge of Jack’s nose and wants to trace it, gently, with his finger. When, a long, long time later, he stares down at the silent blue marble of the earth and thinks of his sister, as he will at every important moment of his life. He doesn’t know this yet, but he senses it deep down in his core. So much will happen, he thinks, that I would want to tell you.

  For now, when he opens his eyes at last, he focuses on the dock, on Jack’s hand, on Hannah. From where he floats, her upside-down face is right-side up, and he dog-paddles toward her. He doesn’t want to dive underwater and lose sight of her face.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I’ve taken a few minor historical liberties: the cover of How to Win Friends and Influence People that I describe in the novel is an amalgamation of several different editions’ covers, though the text is all real. Likewise, the quotes from Betty Crocker’s Cookbook are from my mother’s own 1968 edition, although Marilyn’s mother would have used an earlier edition.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Enormous thanks to my agent, Julie Barer, who waited patiently for this novel for six years and who always had more faith in it (and me) than I did. I thank my lucky stars for her. William Boggess, Anna Wiener, Gemma Purdy, and Anna Knutson Geller at Barer Literary have been a delight to work with, and I couldn’t have been in better hands.

  My editors at The Penguin Press, Andrea Walker and Ginny Smith Younce, helped make this book immeasurably better and guided me every step of the way. Sofia Groopman brightened my day literally every time we emailed. Jane Cavolina, my copyeditor; Lisa Thornbloom, my proofreader; and Barbara Campo and the production team straightened out my myriad inconsistencies and were exceptionally patient about my use of italics. My publicist, Juliana Kiyan, has been a dynamic and tireless advocate, and I’m deeply grateful to Ann Godoff, Scott Moyers, Tracy Locke, Sarah Hutson, Brittany Boughter, and everyone else at The Penguin Press and Penguin Random House for bringing this book into the world with such enthusiasm and love.

  People often insist that writing can’t be taught, but I learned a tremendous amount—about both writing and the writing life—from my teachers. Patricia Powell helped me take my work seriously in my first real writing workshop. Wendy Hyman first suggested the idea of an MFA, and I will forever be in her debt for that. Eliezra Schaffzin offered crucial early encouragement and support, and my incredibly generous professors at Michigan—Peter Ho Davies, Nicholas Delbanco, Matthew Klam, Eileen Pollack, and Nancy Reisman—continue to be a source of wisdom and guidance.

  I owe a huge debt to my informal teachers—my writer friends—as well. I’m especially grateful to my fellow Michigan MFAers, especially Uwem Akpan, Jasper Caarls, Ariel Djanikian, Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Joe Kilduff, Danielle Lazarin, Taemi Lim, Peter Mayshle, Phoebe Nobles, Marissa Perry, Preeta Samarasan, Brittani Sonnenberg, and Jesmyn Ward. Ayelet Amittay, Christina McCarroll, Anne Stameshkin, and Elizabeth Staudt deserve double—triple, quadruple—thanks for reading early drafts of this novel over the years and cheering me on. Jes Haberli is not only a trusted sounding board but a much-needed voice of sanity.

  Writing is a lonely business, and I’m immensely grateful for the communities that have offered me fellowship along the way. The staff of Fiction Writers Review reminded me, always, that fiction matters, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference introduced me to many friends and literary idols, including the Voltrons. In Boston, Grub Street adopted me into its warm and welcoming writing family—extra helpings of thanks to Christopher Castellani for bringing me into the fold. My writers’ group, the Chunky Monkeys (Chip Cheek, Jennifer De Leon, Calvin Hennick, Sonya Larson, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich,Whitney Scharer, Adam Stumacher, Grace Talusan, and Becky Tuch) provides boundless encouragement and merciless critiques. And whenever I get stuck, Darwin’s Ltd. in Cambridge magically gets me going again with hot tea, the best sandwiches in town, and (somehow) always exactly the right music on the stereo.

  Finally, my heartfelt thanks to my friends and family, who have shaped me in innumerable ways. Katie Campbell, Samantha Chin, and Annie Xu have been cheerleaders and confidantes for more than two decades. Many more friends have been there for me along the way than I can list here; you know who you are—thank you. Carol, Steve, and Melissa Fox graciously welcomed me into their word-loving home more than a decade ago. And my family has been an continual source of support, even when they weren’t totally sure what to make of this writing thing; thank you to my parents, Daniel and Lily Ng, and my sister, Yvonne Ng, for letting me (and helping me) find my way. My husband, Matthew Fox, not only encouraged me at every step, he took on endless responsibilities to make it possible for me to write. Without him, this book would not have been possible. And last but not least, thank you to my son, who graciously puts up with his daydreaming mother, constantly makes me laugh, and helps keep everything in perspective: you will always be my proudest accomplishment.