Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Author Name: Celeste Ng
- Book Genre: Adult, Adult Fiction, Contemporary, Dystopia, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Mystery, Science Fiction, Thriller
- ISBN # 9780593492543
- Edition Language: English
- Date of Publication: 2022-10-4
- File Format: PDF / EPUB
- PDF / EPUB File Size: 4.3 MB
The letter arrives on a Friday. Slit and resealed with a sticker, of course,
as all their letters are: Inspected for your safety—PACT. It had caused
confusion at the post office, the clerk unfolding the paper inside, studying it,
passing it up to his supervisor, then the boss. But eventually it had been
deemed harmless and sent on its way. No return address, only a New York,
NY postmark, six days old. On the outside, his name—Bird—and because of
this he knows it is from his mother.
• • •
He has not been Bird for a long time.
We named you Noah after your father’s father, his mother told him once.
Bird was all your own doing.
The word that, when he said it, felt like him. Something that did not
belong on earth, a small quick thing. An inquisitive chirp, a self that curled
up at the edges.
The school hadn’t liked it. Bird is not a name, they’d said, his name is
Noah. His kindergarten teacher, fuming: He won’t answer when I call him.
He only answers to Bird.
Because his name is Bird, his mother said. He answers to Bird, so I
suggest you call him that, birth certificate be damned. She’d taken a Sharpie
to every handout that came home, crossing off Noah, writing Bird on the
dotted line instead.
That was his mother: formidable and ferocious when her child was in
need.
In the end the school conceded, though after that the teacher had written
Bird in quotation marks, like a gangster’s nickname. Dear “Bird,” please
remember to have your mother sign your permission slip. Dear Mr. and Mrs.
Gardner, “Bird” is respectful and studious but needs to participate more
fully in class. It wasn’t until he was nine, after his mother left, that he became
Noah.
His father says it’s for the best, and won’t let anyone call him Bird
anymore.
If anyone calls you that, he says, you correct them. You say: Sorry, no,
that’s not my name.
It was one of the many changes that took place after his mother left. A
new apartment, a new school, a new job for his father. An entirely new life.
As if his father had wanted to transform them completely, so that if his
mother ever came back, she wouldn’t even know how to find them.
He’d passed his old kindergarten teacher on the street last year, on his way
home. Well, hello, Noah, she said, how are you this morning? and he could
not tell whether it was smugness or pity in her voice.
He is twelve now; he has been Noah for three years, but Noah still feels
like one of those Halloween masks, something rubbery and awkward he
doesn’t quite know how to wear.
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