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"It doesn't matter," the woman said, "you only need to answer fourteen questions correctly to pass." However, Lydia knew that she only drew five circles.
In the next room, a man was stuffing answer sheets into a grading machine, and she jabbed her finger with the tip of her pencil. "You answered eighteen questions correctly." The man said to the girl in front of her, "Take this to the front desk. They will take a photo of you and print out your learner's driver's license. Congratulations." The girl walked briskly with joy. After going out, Lydia wanted to slap her. When the man saw Lydia's answer sheet, he was silent briefly, and she stared at the mud on his boots.
"Okay," he said, "don't be discouraged. Many people fail the first time." He put the test paper face up, and she saw the five circles on it again, like moles, and the rest of the paper was is blank. Lydia didn't wait for her score to come out. When the machine swallowed the answer sheet, she passed the man and returned to the waiting room.
A long line had formed at the front desk, people waiting to take pictures; the bearded man was counting the bills in his wallet, the girl jumping out was admiring her nail polish, the girl with the ponytail and the one sitting next to her The boy is gone. On the bench, James sat waiting for her. "So," he said, looking at her empty hands, "where is it?"
"I failed," she said. The two women sitting next to her father looked up at her and then quickly looked away. Her father blinked, once, twice, as if he didn't believe his ears.
"It's okay, honey," he said, "You try again this weekend." Surrounded by a cloud of disappointment and shame, Lydia couldn't remember or care if she could try again. Tomorrow morning, Ness will leave for Boston. Her only thought was: I'm going to stay here forever, I can never leave again.
James held his daughter in his arms, but Lydia felt the weight on her like a lead blanket, and she shrugged her father's arm away.
"Can we go home?" she said.
"As soon as Lydia came in," Marilyn said, "we said 'surprise' together. Then we had dinner and gave gifts afterward." Nath was packing her bags upstairs. Only Hannah was beside her, but Marilyn Still planning loudly, half of her words were meant for herself. Feeling her mother's attention, Hannah was overjoyed and nodded eagerly. She practiced silently—surprise! surprise! — while watching her mother paint Lydia’s name on the rectangular cake blue. Marilyn planned to make the cake look like a driver's license: a rectangle covered with white frosting, with a real photo of Lydia in one corner and a piece of chocolate cake inside. Because it was a special birthday, Marilyn made the cake herself—of course, the ingredients were readily available, but she needed to mix them herself. She held the mixer in one hand and the aluminum bowl in the other, pointing it at the spinning blades. Hannah had already taken out the jar of frosting for her. Marilyn squeezed out the last bit of cream from the piping bag and wrote the three letters "LYD". When the cream was used up, she took out a new bag from the shopping bag.
Such a special cake, Hannah thought, must taste very special, better than pure vanilla or chocolate cakes. There is a smiling woman printed on the box of ingredients. There is a slice of cake in front of her, and next to it is a line of words: Mix your love. Love, Hannah thought, must be sweet, like her mother's perfume, must be soft, like cotton candy. She quietly stretched out her fingers and picked off a small piece from the smooth surface of the cake. "Hannah!" Marilyn snapped, slapping her hand aside.
As her mother smoothed the dent with a shovel, Hannah licked the icing on her fingers, so sweet that she cried, and when Marilyn wasn't looking, she spread the remaining icing on the back of the tablecloth. She could tell by the little wrinkle between her mother's brows that she was still unhappy, and Hannah longed to rest her head on Marilyn's apron-clad lap so that her mother would understand that she didn't mean to spoil the cake. However, just as she was about to pass, Marilyn put down the piping bag, raised her head and listened to the noise: "It can't be them so early."
Hannah felt the floor beneath her feet shake and the garage door roar open. "I'll go get Nath."
But when Hannah and Nath arrived downstairs, Lydia and their father had already walked from the garage into the foyer and there was no time for a "surprise." Marilyn held Lydia's face and kissed her cheek hard, leaving a red lip mark like a scar.
"It's so early for you to go home," she said, "Happy birthday. Congratulations," she extended her palm, "take it out for us to see?"
"I failed," Lydia said. She glanced alternately between Nath and her mother, looking for signs of anger.
Marilyn's eyes widened. "What do you mean, you failed?" She said quite unexpectedly, as if she didn't understand what her daughter said.
Lydia said again, raising her voice: "I didn't pass." Hannah felt that Lydia was about to explode at her mother, at each of them. But the outburst was about more than just failing the test. Lydia's face was cold and stiff, but Hannah could tell she was shaking slightly—she could feel it in her hunched shoulders and clenched teeth, and she might be shaken to pieces. Hannah wanted to squeeze her sister tight enough to keep her whole, but she knew Lydia would just push her aside. Everyone else noticed she was shaking—Nath, Marilyn, and James looked at each other, unsure of what to say.
"Okay," Marilyn said at last, "you have to learn the traffic rules and try again when you're ready. It's not the end of the world." She helped Lydia tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, " It doesn’t matter. It’s not like you failed in school, right?”
Normally, these words would only make Lydia secretly angry. And today - after the incident with the necklace, after seeing the boys making faces at them from the front of the car, after failing the test, after meeting Luisa - her anger could no longer be suppressed. Something inside her tipped over and shattered.
"Of course, Mom." She said, looked up at her mother, looked at the whole family, and smiled. Hannah was so frightened that she almost hid behind Nath. This smile is extremely bright, extremely bright, and cheerful, but it is fake. Hannah felt nothing but horror. It made Lydia look like a different person, a stranger. However, others still didn't notice it. Nath's shoulders relaxed, James breathed out, and Marilyn dried her hands on her apron, which were a little wet.
"Dinner isn't quite ready yet," she said. "Why don't you go upstairs and take a shower and relax? We'll get started as soon as the meal is ready."
"That's great," Lydia said. This time, Hannah couldn't help but turn her face away until she heard her sister's footsteps coming up the stairs.
"What's going on?" Marilyn asked James in a low voice, and he shook his head. Hannah knows why. Lydia did not learn the rules of the road. One day two weeks ago, before Lydia was out of school, Hannah went exploring in her room, looking for treasure. She found one of Lydia's books at the bottom of the cabinet, pocketed it, and then, beneath it, she saw a pamphlet with traffic rules printed on it. As Lydia started studying, Hannah thought she would notice that her book was missing and look around for it. Every few days, she would go to her sister's room to check, only to find that the traffic rules book had not moved at all. Yesterday, a pair of beige high-heeled platform shoes and Lydia's best bell-bottoms were laminated on top of the brochure. And the book is still hidden under the pillow in Hannah's bedroom.
Upstairs, Lydia pulls hard on the necklace in her room but doesn't break it. She unbuckled it, threw it into the box, and stuffed it deep under the bed, as if it was something dirty. If her father asks where the necklace is, she says she won't wear it until a special occasion and don't worry, she won't lose it and will wear it next time, Dad. In the mirror, a thin red mark appeared on her neck.
An hour later, Lydia went downstairs to eat. The traces had faded, but the painful feeling was still there. She was dressed as if she were going to a party, her hair neatly pressed, straight and smooth, and her lips were smeared with jam-colored lipstick. James looked at his daughter and suddenly remembered the time when he and Marilyn first met. "You're so beautiful," he said, and Lydia forced a smile. She kept her fake smile and sat upright at the dinner table, like a doll in a display cabinet, but only Hannah could see how fake that smile was. She looked at Lydia uncomfortably, observing her every move, sitting listlessly in her chair, and finally almost slipped off it. As soon as dinner was over, Lydia patted her mouth with a napkin and stood up.
"Wait," Marilyn said, "there's a cake." She walked into the kitchen, and after a while she brought out a cake on a tray with a candle lit. Lydia's picture on the cake disappeared, and was repainted white with frosting, with only Lydia's name written on it. Hannah thought that hidden under the white surface was the original driver's license pattern, as well as the letters "Congratulations" and "LYD". Although you can't see them, they're underneath, smoothed out and unreadable. And, when you eat it, you can taste it. Their father kept taking pictures, but Hannah wasn't smiling. Unlike Lydia, she hasn't learned to pretend yet. She could only half-close her eyes, as if watching a horror scene on TV, so that she could only see half of what happened next.
What happened was this: Lydia waited for them to finish singing Happy Birthday, and when they got to the last line, James raised the camera, Lydia lay in front of the cake, pursed her lips, and pretended to kiss it. She looked around the whole family with a perfect fake smile, scanning each face in order. their mother. their father. Ness. Hannah didn't know everything about Lydia—the necklace, Louisa, I Just Want You to Remember—but she knew something was happening inside her sister, who was standing on a narrow, dangerous ledge far from the ground. She was trying her best to maintain her balance. So, Hannah sat motionless, as if one wrong move could push Lydia off the ledge. Lydia exhaled and quickly blew out the candle.