Celeste Ng

halves and wholes

You can’t blame yourself if the students don’t try. And they’re not all so bad. A few got As.”

You can’t blame yourself if the students don’t try. And they’re not all so bad. A few got As.”

Lots of times, they say, the girls are mad at their parents and the parents don’t even know.

“Not with Lydia making a face like that. People will think she looks like that all the time. Pick a nice one.”

Lydia has never really had friends, but their parents have never known.

hugged her for a long time and whispered, “How proud I am of you. You have no idea.”

She recognized it at once: love, one-way deep adoration that bounced off and did not bounce back; careful, quiet love that didn’t care and went on anyway.

, Lydia’s ink-black

sixty-five out of one hundred—and circles it.