When readers first meet Maddy, she completely trusts the two people with whom she has the most contact: Mom and Carla, her nurse. Mom and Carla prize trust, openness, and honesty over all else, and they teach Maddy to do the same. However, Maddy has new revelations about honesty as she grows up, falls in love with the neighbor boy Olly, and embarks on a secret trip with him to Hawaii. She begins to see the truth as more of a gray area than Mom in particular has led her to believe but learns that while lying may have its place (and may, at times, be worth it), that doesn’t mean that lying doesn’t bring major consequences along with it. Ultimately, Everything, Everything situates lying as something that everyone does, no matter who they are—but while lying may be a normal part of growing up for teens, the novel suggests that an adult using their authority to lie to a minor is unavoidably egregious and damaging for all.
Throughout Maddy’s life, her relationship with Mom has been open and trusting by necessity. Aside from Carla, there’s no one else Maddy sees in person regularly, which means that Mom is Maddy’s sole source of entertainment, wisdom, and love, aside from the internet. This has, over the years, created what seems at first to be a close and tender relationship between mother and daughter. They have weekly fancy dinners together, play unique games like Phonetic Scrabble, and importantly, don’t keep secrets from each other. Because of this, it’s extremely uncomfortable for Maddy when Olly moves in next door and she finds herself attracted to him. This is the first time that Maddy has felt attraction for a real person, but it’s also the first time she’s ever kept a secret from Mom.
Maddy’s discomfort, and later, Mom’s reaction when Maddy begins to pull away from her to instant message Olly or think about him by herself, begins to suggest that there’s more to their relationship than just innocent closeness. Maddy has an unusual amount of discomfort and anxiety about having a crush—an entirely normal thing for an 18-year-old to experience—and Mom is similarly anxious that Maddy seems different. These reactions begin to suggest that what Maddy believes is a family culture of genuine truth and openness is actually one in which members are required to sacrifice their privacy or suffer consequences. Importantly, the consequences Maddy eventually experiences for her “transgression” don’t actually encourage her to be any more truthful with Mom—instead, she becomes even less truthful and embarks on a trip to Hawaii without telling Mom where she’s going.
Though Maddy congratulates herself for much of her relationship with Olly for never lying to him, she does have to lie in order to convince him to go to Hawaii with her. To assure him that she’s going to be safe in the outside world, Maddy tells him that she bought pills from Canada that will delay any possible reaction to her SCID triggers. Importantly, Maddy can tell that Olly doesn’t really believe her, and yet he chooses to trust her and accompany her to Hawaii anyway. When taken in conjunction with Maddy’s choice to lie to her mom about going to Hawaii in the first place, this begins to suggest that to some degree, lying is a normal part of growing up and developing a sense of independence and agency. Further, Olly essentially ignoring Maddy’s lie and choosing to go with her anyway allows him and Maddy to build intimacy and develop their relationship in a way that they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. This, again, leaves open the possibility that Maddy’s lie was, in the long run, a positive thing for their relationship and her development.
Most importantly for Maddy, lying to Mom about Hawaii leads to her discovery that Mom lied about Maddy’s diagnosis: Maddy doesn’t have, and never had, SCID. Maddy only learns this because her illness and hospitalization in Hawaii is the first time since infancy that a doctor other than her mom has seen her. Maddy is understandably angry when she discovers that Mom lied to her. Because of the lie, Maddy was denied a real childhood, friends, and school experience in favor of a sanitized existence in which Mom controlled nearly everything Maddy did, experienced, ate, and saw. It’s possible, then, to see Maddy’s lie about Hawaii as one that is hurtful in the short term but that allows Maddy to grow as an individual and leads her to discover vital information about herself. In contrast, Mom’s lie about Maddy’s diagnosis is one that actively harms Maddy and deprives her of everything life has to offer, both positive and negative. Through this, Everything, Everything makes the case that teens lying—to their parents and to each other—is a normal part of development that can lead to new information, experiences, and growth, even if the lie causes discomfort, fear, and anger in the moment. When adults lie to their children, however—especially when they do so to control their children’s bodies and lives—lying becomes an unforgivable and sinister offense.
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Trust and Lies Quotes in Everything, Everything
I wish again that I could talk to my mom about this. I want to ask her why I get breathless when I think of him. I want to share my giddiness with her. I want to tell her all the funny things Olly says. I want to tell her how I can’t make myself stop thinking about him even though I try. I want to ask her if this is the way she felt about Dad at the beginning.
It feels strange not to talk to my mom about something, someone, who’s becoming so important to me. My mom and I are drifting apart, but not because we’re spending less time together. And not because Olly’s replacing her. We’re drifting apart because for the first time in my life, I have a secret to keep.
Olly watched the color fade in the glass and remembered the day his dad got fired and how he’d been too afraid to comfort him. What if he had—would things be different now? What if?
He remembered how his dad had said that one thing doesn’t always lead to another.
He’s much too smart to fall for this, but he wants it to be true. He wants it to be true more than he wants the truth. The smile that breaks across his face is cautious, but so beautiful that I can’t look away. I would lie to him again for that smile.
By eighteen years old, other teenagers have separated from their parents. They leave home, have separate lives, make separate memories. But not me. My mom and I have shared the same closed space and breathed the same filtered air for so long that it’s strange being here without her. It’s strange making memories that don’t include her.
“You should leave them,” I say. “It’s not safe for you there.”
I say it because he doesn’t know it. He’s trapped by the same memory of love, of better times, that his mother is, and it isn’t enough.
“How could you do this to yourself? You could’ve died,” she whispers.
She steps closer, hugs a clipboard to her chest. “How could you do this to me? After everything?”
I wish I could undo the last few months of knowing him. I would stay in my room. I would hear the truck beeping next door and I would remain on my white couch in my white room reading my brand-new books. I would remember my past and then I would remember not to repeat it.
“Mom, it’s OK,” I say. “I didn’t really believe it anyway.”
I don’t think she hears me. “I had to protect you,” she says.
“I know, Mom.” I don’t really want to talk about this anymore. I move back into her arms.
“I had to protect you,” she says into my hair.
And it’s that last “I had to protect you” that makes a part of me go quiet.
[...]
I try to pull away, to see her face, but she holds on tight.
