Excerpt from What Hunger by Catherine Dang, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The two of us had seen it: the blood. It stained the white sheets of the stretcher, red like church wine. There was a live body under those sheets, its chest rising up and down as it struggled to breathe.

Later, Tommy and I could recall nothing about the victim—not even the color of their skin. We'd been fixated on the blood, though we didn't know why. Blood looked different when it wasn't ours. It was thicker, more alien. More alive.

We never returned to the chain-link fence after that. We'd seen more than enough.

But at his graduation party, Tommy was looking at it. He sat on the edge of our lawn, his neck craned upward as he looked across the street, up at the fence on the hill. To his left, there was the clear line where the neighbors' yard began—their grass was dark green. Ours was tinged with yellow.

I sat down next to Tommy. His cheeks were rosy. He had a bottle of Heineken in one hand.

"How'd you get that?" I asked.

"They gave it to me," he said, shrugging. "They said I earned it."

"Can I have a sip?"

Tommy gave me the bottle. I'd had church wine before, but not real beer. We sat in broad daylight in front of the house, though Tommy seemed unbothered. No cars were down the street. The men in the garage were preoccupied.

I took a quick swig.

The beer tasted of bitter metal and acid. It burned down my throat. But after a moment, I took another long sip. Then I gave it back.

"You like it?" Tommy asked.

I shook my head.

Tommy smiled and polished off the rest. Then he sat there, staring out at the street. I could tell he was thinking about something. Tommy was often quiet, but when he was thinking deeply, you could feel it around him. The air would grow viscous and heavy. And there was a slight hum to it, a faint current of energy. When he got like that, Ba said he looked like a French philosopher. But it worried our mother. She said if Tommy was thinking too hard, he'd hurt his head, perhaps ruin his eyes. The latter scared her—Tommy's eyes were healthy. Unlike the rest of our family, he didn't need glasses. M? said he didn't need to think so hard in everyday life—things weren't that serious.

But that was Tommy. His mind was restless.

"You're not very excited today," I said.

"I'm not. I feel like I'm being gawked at by every Viet person in the state."

"But they're giving you money," I said, punching him in the arm. Tommy didn't flinch. "You're loaded now. Think of all the booze you can buy."

"That's uplifting, Ronny, thank you," he said drily. But a smile had crept onto his face.

"You can spend your money on other things. Like me. We can go to the mall and you can pay."

Tommy laughed.

"Yeah, that sounds fun."

"I can even help you pick out furniture for school," I said, but my voice faltered.

It was a mistake.

"Aw, are you gonna miss me?" he mocked.

I shook my head and launched a middle finger at his face, but Tommy leaned back, laughing.

"Aw, is Ronny gonna be lonely without her big brother?"

I launched a second middle finger at him, but Tommy dodged it. Immediately, he shot back his middle fingers at me. The two of us were trying to flick off the other's face. Tommy was bigger, stronger, but I was faster. I put him on the defensive as he tried to block my arms. Unlike in those childhood fights over the remote, I actually had a shot at winning.

Laughter roared from the garage. The two of us stopped, turned, but none of the adults were outside. They weren't looking at us. They were laughing about something else.

Instantly, I took my chance:

I struck Tommy's left cheek with my middle finger.

"Got you," I said loudly.

"Fuck," Tommy blurted, a hand flying to his face. He looked perturbed for a moment, his eyes wide with shock. I thought I'd hurt him.

Suddenly, his other middle finger flew out and struck my right cheek.

Excerpted from What Hunger by Catherine Dang. Copyright © 2025 by Catherine Dang. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.