Yesterday

by C. K. Kelly Martin

THREE

  I arrive home early, with the taste of bubblegum in my mouth (the sad girl gave me a piece to hide alcohol breath). My mom’s lying on the couch waiting for me and wanting to talk about the party. I mention the dancing and the guys playing hockey on the ice rink and say it was okay but that I miss my old friends.

  This feels like what I should say. I can’t tell her how most of the things that happened before we returned to Canada feel hazy and that the things that have happened since don’t seem right either. I don’t want that to be true.

  My father doesn’t feel vague or blurry the way New Zealand, Alison and Shane do. His image is as vivid in my mind as my mother’s is. He has the kind of face that turns to stone when he’s angry, thinking that he’s not betraying any sign of emotion. When I was younger I used to hate seeing that blank expression aimed at me because I knew it meant he was supremely displeased. He wasn’t the type to shout—he rarely raised his voice—but having my father mad at you felt a little like losing a sunny day. And when my dad was happy the world seemed like a better place. If he were here with us now, would I still feel lost? Would I remember everything the way I should?

  There’s no one I can ask, no one I can really talk to, and I don’t call Seth to explain my disappearance the next day. He doesn’t call me either so he’s maybe written me off, which is for the best. It’s not right to use someone as a distraction and besides, it didn’t work.

  Monday at lunch I pretend all over again, for Christine and Derrick, that I had an all right time at Corey’s party. There’s a blend of contempt and curiosity, with an overlay of forced casualness, buried in their questions about the party. They know I don’t belong with them but maybe they don’t want to lose me to the jock table either.

  As we’re leaving the cafeteria afterwards, Christine pulls me aside and says, “Aren’t you going to tell me how things went with Seth? You hardly mentioned him.”

  I drag my fingers through my hair and bite down on my molars, silently debating how much I can share without sounding like a weirdo. Since Christine and Derrick are outsiders themselves, I feel closer to them than I do to anyone else at school, but I don’t want to scare them off. “I thought you didn’t like Seth,” I say, stalling.

  Christine folds her arms tightly across her long black sweater. “There are people like him who I don’t like very much but I don’t know enough about Seth Hardy personally to have a specific opinion on him.” She digs her black nails into her arms. “But that’s not the point—you like him, right?”

  I pull my chin in under my turtleneck. “He’s okay.”

  Christine’s eyes roll back in her skull. “God, Freya, don’t you trust me at all? I just thought you might want to talk about it because it’s not like you have many other people to talk to around here yet but, okay, you’re all right.” She throws a helping of exasperation on the words “all right” before adding, “You don’t need to talk.”

  “Christine!” I erupt in frustration. The two lanky freshman guys in front of us turn at the sound of my voice and then quickly look away. My cheeks are warm as I bend my head and whisper, “Did it ever occur to you that maybe it’s not about trusting you and that I’m just a private person?

  “Okay, I sit with you and Derrick at lunch but I’ve known you, like, a week,” I continue as we hurtle up the hall. “And you’re not exactly a warm and fuzzy person, you know. I don’t necessarily want to spill about what did or didn’t happen just to have you crap on it.”

  Even as I’m saying it—angry that Christine doesn’t feel like she can talk about things going on in her own life but expects me to blab about my own—I only feel half in the moment and half like I’m looking at myself from a distance, surprised that I care enough to react this way.

  Christine hasn’t looked at me once since I began my rant but when I fall silent she sneaks a peek and I imagine that I see a hint of red in her cheeks bleed through the pale makeup. “I wasn’t going to crap on anything,” she says. Her voice gets smaller as she goes on. “Really … but I get it. I get why you don’t want to say anything. I mean, I never really tell anyone anything either.”

  “What about Derrick?”

  “Some things,” she says, her gaze fixed stubbornly on the sea of moving bodies ahead of us. “Some things I just don’t tell anyone.”

  I think about her mom being in the hospital last week and the other new wavers she never talks to and I feel bad for the two of us believing we have to keep our secrets to ourselves. Still, that feeling isn’t enough to change my mind about confiding in her on the most important things—the crazy things inside my head.

  I sigh into my palm and say, “To tell you the truth, the party felt kind of weird. I just wasn’t on the same wavelength with most of the people there.” I figure I’m safe to admit that much to Christine, who wouldn’t have felt in tune with Corey’s party either. Because she’s still staring at me, her face returning to its earlier state of paler than pale, I add, “I actually left early, without telling Seth. I bummed a ride home from two girls and haven’t spoken to him since. He’s probably mad.”

  Christine smoothes her lips together like someone who’s just applied lip gloss. “He probably is. But hey, it’s not like he could’ve gotten terminally attached to you this quickly. He’ll get over it.”

  I’m sure he will. I just feel guilty for using him. I’d have been better off staying home and watching Family Ties and music videos, not in danger of hurting anyone’s feelings and not trying to pretend I fit somewhere that I don’t.

  “If you’re not feeling it, you’re not feeling it,” Christine adds helpfully.

  That could apply to either Seth or the party in general and I say, “You’re right. Thanks.” I wish all my problems could be resolved as easily. It’s on the tip of my tongue to add that Christine can talk to me sometime too, if she wants, but then the second bell goes and we have to rush the rest of the way to math class.

  Seth calls me on Monday night demanding to know why I took off on him on Saturday, never called to explain and didn’t search him out at school today to talk about it either. I guess I let him down three times and I have nothing to say for myself. The longer I fail to provide an explanation the angrier he gets until I finally mumble that it’s not a good time for me to start seeing anyone and he hangs up on me.

  I can’t blame him.

  With that out of the way, I feel marginally better and magically ace a multiple-choice biology quiz on Tuesday afternoon and then argue with my sister over TV access on Tuesday night (I want to watch videos on MuchMusic and Olivia wants to see The A-Team). On Wednesday morning the entire tenth grade is assigned a bus to the museum according to their homeroom. This means that I’m not on the same bus as Christine or Derrick and I end up sitting in the third row from the front with a girl named Tracy who’s in my homeroom but I’ve never spoken to.

  She sticks on earphones, closes her eyes and promptly falls asleep. I have the window seat and watch highway traffic. As we approach Toronto I find myself getting mildly excited. The skyscrapers and level of activity feel invigorating compared to life in the suburbs. My grandfather lives downtown, near the Davisville subway station. Maybe we would’ve been better off moving closer to him rather than situating ourselves in the burbs.

  Forty minutes later I’m loitering among a mob of tenth graders in front of the Royal Ontario Museum, looking for Christine and Derrick. The first person I find is actually Nicolette who is standing around with a couple of other girls who qualify as popular and pretty. Standing together as a trio they remind me of the women on Charlie’s Angels, only younger. I met one of them at Corey’s party on the weekend and they all act really nice to me, despite what happened with Seth. They even say I can stick with them today, if I want.

  Meanwhile Derrick’s fighting his way through the crowd towards me and one of Nicolette’s angels sees him and points him out to me. “What’s with his hair anyway?” she asks snidely. “Does he think he’s that guy from General
Public?” Nicolette levels an icy look at her friend on my behalf. Because I’ve been paying more attention to music lately I get the reference and Derrick’s hair is, in fact, exactly like the guy’s from British band General Public but that’s no reason for Nicolette’s friend to be bitchy. Especially when she happens to style her hair and dress exactly like her friends do.

  I wave at Derrick and step away from Nicolette. Derrick hasn’t found Christine yet either but we’re all being corralled towards the front entrance. Derrick and I both have homework questions to fill in during our stint at the museum—me for history class and him for geography. The kids who have both classes this semester must be pissed off at facing double the work but I doubt that any of the museum homework really matters.

  As Derrick and I head inside we overhear that a busload of tenth graders from our school arrived ahead of us and have gotten started, which means we might not be able to catch up with Christine right away. Tons of people are scrambling off in the direction of the dinosaur exhibit so Derrick and I decide to check out geology first. While Derrick’s scrawling out an answer to a question about metamorphic rock I wander around staring at weirdly beautiful minerals and rocks.

  I stare at them for such a long time, being sure to read every inch of the text that goes along with the exhibits, that Derrick gets bored and has to hurry me up. It’s the same when we’re staring at gorgeous Greek statues, ancient hieroglyphs and ugly insects. I can’t get enough of any of it and Derrick jokes about what a geek I’ve turned into when we finally do stumble across Christine in the museum cafeteria at lunchtime.

  Since we sit together in bio, Derrick’s well aware that I’m not normally so raptly interested in things that feel like homework. This is different. This building holds the knowledge of our past—humanity’s past and the planet’s past.

  Who wouldn’t find that interesting?

  Most of my classmates, I guess, but I don’t understand that. They’re so stuck in the moment that you’d think history had disappeared and that the future will never arrive: 1985 forever.

  I buy gloopy macaroni and cheese and salad for lunch and then finish Derrick’s hamburger (which isn’t as bad as he says it is), wishing that I could come to the museum every day instead of going to school. I don’t feel out of place here. Do I need to become an archaeologist to successfully fit into my own life?

  After lunch Christine, Derrick and I hit the dinosaur exhibit, which seems to turn everyone (because I can see it in other tenth-grade faces too) into awed children. It’s strange to conceive of a time that dinosaurs roamed the earth—that they were here before we were. The perspective sends my head spinning. Will we have as long as they did or will nuclear arms wipe us off the face of the planet?

  “You’re quiet,” Derrick observes as I stare up at a cast of Tyrannosaurus rex, one of the last dinosaurs to walk the earth before mass extinction approximately 65 million years ago.

  Mass extinction. I can’t wrap my head around the concept.

  “Do you think we’re doomed?” I ask. “Humanity.”

  Derrick nods readily. “Absolutely. Everything dies—and look how destructive we are as a species.” He shrugs and folds his crumpled geography homework pages in two. “But it would happen anyway. Everything ends.”

  I can’t argue with that.

  I’m not even sure how I feel about it.

  How can anything matter from a perspective of probable mass extinction? Is it better to live like it will always be 1985?

  Beads of sweat are gathering on my upper lip. It’s too hot in here. I’m burning up. No headache yet, though, thank God.

  “You don’t look so good,” Christine tells me. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Warm.” I smooth my palm across my face to soak up the sweat. “I think I’m getting dehydrated. I’m going to head back to the cafeteria for another drink.”

  “We’ll come with you,” Christine offers.

  “No, stay.” I point to Derrick’s crumpled sheets. “You guys still have blanks to fill in.”

  “So do you,” Derrick says.

  Yeah, but I don’t care. Derrick may think we’re ultimately headed for mass extinction but he’s still the kind of person who likes to have his homework done on time. He’s not just going through the motions like I am.

  I tell Christine and Derrick I’m fine, wave them both away and say I’ll catch up with them in the next gallery. It’s what I fully intend to do but then I get to thinking that the fastest way to cool down is to step outside into February.

  Canadians complain about the weather nonstop but I don’t mind the cold. I retrieve my coat from the museum coat check and step out onto the heavily salted city sidewalk. There’s no question that it’s better out here. The air inside is stale and warm in comparison. I stretch my legs and walk to the corner, enjoying the feel of the breeze on my face. I still love the museum—I just wish they’d lower the temperature, not that it seems to bother anyone else.

  I smell hotdogs cooking before I see them and my first thought is that if I hadn’t eaten lunch less than an hour ago I’d be reaching into my pocket to pay for one with everything on it—heaps of peppers, relish, mustard, ketchup, onions—but there’s a first time for everything and I’m not hungry. However, my craving for ice-cold soda (like they’re advertising on the front of the hotdog cart) is something fierce and pushes me into line behind a teenage guy only a couple of years older than me. In the beginning I don’t bother to look at him closely, just catch a glimpse of his profile and black winter coat, which is hanging open the same way mine is.

  Then I notice him licking his lips as the vendor hands him a sizzling hotdog loaded with the works. He bites into it, ingesting nearly half the hotdog in a single bite and I stifle a laugh but the guy’s too busy eating to notice me anyway. I watch him stroll away as I order a Coke. My eyes can’t tear themselves from his form.

  For a start, he’s the best-looking guy I’ve laid eyes on since I landed back in Canada, maybe even the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen, and secondly, I know I’ve seen him before. I don’t know that with my mind the way you’re supposed to know things. It’s an instinct or at least something deeper than my consciousness and that thing, whatever it is, is drawn to him with a strength that would be frightening if I could think about this rationally … which I can’t.

  It’s like hunger or needing oxygen. It’s not something you can make up your mind to quit craving. It just is. And then I’m taking my change from the hotdog vendor and trailing after the guy, like a spy or private detective, only they’d have a logical motive and I just have … a hunger, a need.

  Not something sexual, although that’s there too because he’s breathtaking to look at. From my place about thirty feet behind him, all I can see is his close-cropped dark hair (any darker and it would be jet black) and his six-foot-something medium-build frame sauntering west along the sidewalk. But for a moment before he turned to walk away I had an unobstructed view of his face and it was like staring into a living, breathing version of one of those Greek statues from the museum: high cheekbones, smooth skin, a perfectly straight nose and what looked like an unbreakable jawline. Examined alone none of those things would be extraordinarily impressive—it’s the way they work together that’s acting on me like a drug—and not even quite that, but the absolute certainty that I’ve felt this way about him before.

  I can’t remember him.

  But I know.

  In my mind I see his eyes, as clear green as a tropical ocean. I see him staring at me. Smiling for me. Being the person he is, the one I should remember in full, not in this hazy, unformed manner.

  Random people in winter jackets, gloves and hats flow between us but I keep my eyes on the guy in the distance, only shifting my gaze for a split second to read a street sign and find we’re on Bloor Street. I’m afraid to get closer and risk him seeing me but I don’t want to lose him either. None of this adds up. If I know him, he should know me. But I was standing right next to him
on the corner by the museum.…

  I was as good as invisible to him.

  It doesn’t matter that this is insane; I can’t let him get away. I follow him along Bloor Street until he turns north onto Spadina. The streets are less crowded there and I have to hang back farther to avoid being conspicuous. Soon he’s turning again, left this time, and I’m surrounded by houses, their front yards covered in graying snow. A blue van pulls into a driveway ahead of me and I jump at the break in concentration, afraid he’ll evaporate into thin air.

  He doesn’t, of course. No matter how improbable this seems so far, it’s still the real world.

  No, he’s striding easily along the residential street, his arms swaying at his sides like he doesn’t have a clue he’s being followed and that there’s no problem on the planet he couldn’t handle.

  The gap between us is so large that it makes me ache and I can’t stop searching my mind for the missing information—who this boy is to me and why neither of us remember. I pull my arms tight around my waist, fighting an overwhelming feeling of withdrawal when the inevitable happens and he turns up a pathway, steps onto a pale blue fenced porch and disappears inside the front door.

  Slowly, I approach what I assume to be his house. It’s semi-detached and old but in good repair. Its other half sports beige trim and fencing, making the homes look like a pair of mismatched socks. Both residences feature second-floor bay windows and porches nearly as big as the ones on ground level. The third-floor windows are smaller and I wonder where the boy sleeps and whether he has brothers and sisters. The driveway’s empty, as is the curb space directly in front of his house, meaning his parents are probably at work.

  Is he alone inside?

  I stare at the door he retreated through. It’s closed and the ground-floor window merely offers me a reflection of the street. Damn. My heart’s racing like I’m running a marathon. How do I stop this insanity? How do I let go of him?

  The can of Coke I’ve been holding all along is freezing in my naked hand. I pop it open and gulp down sugary liquid caffeine, hoping the normalcy of the action will help calm me down. Then I continue forward at a snail’s pace, past the boy’s property, ogling a street sign as I go: Walmer Road. At the next cross street I stalk across the road and double back towards the guy’s house, still guzzling Coca-Cola and hoping he’ll emerge again, although I have no idea what I’ll do if he does.