My stomach flips over as Garren steps back into the room with me. This would be challenging enough without him looking like a sculpture come to life. My fingers tingle as I glance up at him and make myself say, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
A thinly veiled wariness seeps into Garren’s pupils. He leans against the door frame and beckons me forward with his hand. I follow him out of the kitchen and into the living room. The wall opposite us is populated with crammed bookshelves. In the corner of the room nearest the TV, I spy a family photo of what looks like a typical 1970s scene—a man in polyester pants positioned in front of a barbecue, holding a spatula in one hand. His other hand rests on the shoulder of the young boy standing in front of him. In the background, behind the two of them, a woman with a nightmare of a perm stares dreamily off camera.
“What’s going on?” Garren demands. He stops next to the couch and folds his arms in front of him but doesn’t sit down. He’s already out of patience with me; I’m running out of time.
I pull my hair back to give him an unobstructed view of my face. My voice is wispy as I spit out, “My name’s Freya Kallas and my hair’s normally blond. I moved back here from New Zealand with my family just over a month ago but I …” The next part is the toughest and I clench the fingers of my right hand as I continue. “I know that I know you somehow and if you could just have a good look at me maybe you’d remember me and remember how we know each other.”
Garren’s already-wary eyes darken. His head jerks on his shoulders. “What was that with the phone? I thought this was about your friend.”
“I know.” I release my hair and fight the impulse to look away. “I’m sorry. I know it probably sounds mental. It’s just that I’m sure I know you and I need to remember how. I don’t know what it means. Just that this is important.”
“I don’t get it,” Garren says, spiky with annoyance. “I have no idea who you are. I’ve never seen you before in my life. You just show up here, looking for someone and ask to use my phone but you’re …” He shakes his head, his left hand slicing through the air in aggravation. “Now you think you know me or something?”
I know how this looks and sounds and that I should feel pathetic and maybe sprint out into the street and never come back but I can’t. I can’t.
The angry Garren in front of me isn’t the only one I’ve met. Behind my eyes another Garren is smiling and saying my name like we’re friends or … something. We’ve been something. Sometime and somewhere.
“I don’t seem familiar at all?” I ask. “Take a good look.”
“Yeah,” he snaps. “I can see you fine and like I said, we’ve never met.”
If I were to hold my hands out in front of me I know they’d shake but I can’t back down now. I plunge my fists into my coat pockets and stare at my feet. “Look, my dad was a diplomat. We’ve lived all over—New Zealand, Spain, Hong Kong, Argentina. Have you been any of those places?”
I see Garren’s resolve flicker. He bows his head, lost in thought.
“What?” I nearly trip over my tongue with excitement. “You’ve been to one of those places?”
“No.” Garren’s eyes are quizzical. “Not any of those places but my dad was a diplomat too.”
“Was?” I repeat.
“He died in December.” Another flash of anger bursts onto Garren’s face, like he’s mad at me for making him say it.
The shock of what he’s just revealed renders me speechless. It’s as though we’ve been living flip sides of the same life. What does it mean?
Before my brain can begin to process the information, the fever and head-rush strike full-on. I hold a hand to my forehead and sip oxygen into my lungs, like I’m drinking it through a straw. “My dad … died too,” I stammer, pushing the words out despite the dizziness taking me over. “December seventeenth. Back in Auckland.”
“Don’t mess with me,” Garren warns. With my head in my left hand I can’t see him and he sounds fuzzy, like either his mouth or my ears are full of cotton balls.
“I’m not messing with you. I’m not. I saw you walking in the street last week and—”
“Last week?” Garren cuts in. “Where?”
I lift my head from my hand to look at him. Garren’s glaring at me like he doesn’t trust a word of what I’m telling him but is helplessly curious just the same.
“Outside the museum. Last Wednesday.” I rub my temples and swallow air. Hold it deep in my lungs before releasing. I can’t believe we’re finally having this conversation.
“And you what … you followed me?” Garren says, almost shouting.
“Because I knew there was something. I don’t know how I knew but when I saw you, something hit me.”
“The feeling that you know me,” Garren says with a sneer in his voice. “Look, I don’t know who the fuck you are or what you think you’re doing but you need to go.”
“No!” I protest. “This isn’t a joke. I’m telling you the truth. My father died two months ago in an accident—a gas explosion. You can look it up.”
“An accident?” Garren barrels over to me and closes his fingers roughly around my left arm. “Fuck you. Get out of my house.” He frog marches me out of the living room and towards the front door.
“Garren, listen to me. It can’t be a coincidence about our dads.” I struggle against him but he’s stronger. “There’s something going on. We need to figure out what it is.”
Garren freezes behind me, his hand tightening its grip on my arm. “How do you know my name?”
“I didn’t until a couple of minutes ago. I overheard your girlfriend say it in the kitchen. I didn’t know anything about you, I swear. I saw you in the street last week and followed you home but I didn’t have the guts to say anything.” I turn my neck to look at him over my shoulder. “I had to come back. Please, just give me a chance so that we can—”
“Shut up,” Garren snaps. We’re standing directly in front of the door and he has to release me to open it. When he does, I swivel to face him.
“Please,” I repeat. “I’m telling you the truth.”
Garren’s green eyes are livid, his body taut with tension. “You need to get out.” He steps back and points to the open door. “Now.”
I do as he says, afraid of what will happen otherwise. Out on Garren’s porch I spin back towards him, legs quivering underneath me, and ask, “How did your father die?”
Garren glares at me with more concentrated rage than I’ve ever felt pointed in my direction. He slams the door in my face. It rattles on its hinges as I feel my heart pound in my chest. I stare at the closed door, out of breath and burning up. My mind’s somersaulting with conspiracy theories. Two dead Canadian diplomats in the same month. Who would benefit from that? And why is my memory of Garren still only a shadow thing now that I’ve spoken to him? Why doesn’t he know me? If it weren’t for the February air breathing cold life into me, I’d be falling to my knees with the weight of wondering.
I’m hot but upright. Hot but thinking, thinking, thinking as I retrace my steps through the city streets, moving ever farther from the place I want to be most because the one person who I’m sure is caught up in this mystery with me never wants to see me again.
SEVEN
Soon the sky is violet and as I hit Spadina, I realize that I’ve left my sister hanging for the second time in a week. It’s not that I forgot about her exactly but I lapsed in remembering my responsibility towards her. I call Olivia from the first pay phone I find and tell her I’m sitting in at a yearbook meeting at school and won’t be home for a while yet. Two hours, one subway train and two buses later I’m trudging into my house, throwing off my winter clothes and yanking off my salt-stained boots. My mother meets me at the door and complains, in a voice like a jagged line, that I shouldn’t have left my sister alone after school without warning.
At first I apologize, my mind still too busy trying to wrap itself around what happened earlier with Garren to pay much attention to anythin
g else, and then I begin to argue with her. My frustration with Garren (how he shut me out and wouldn’t listen) fuels my anger and I tell my mother I shouldn’t be expected to babysit every single afternoon, that things happen after school that I want to be a part of.
My mother counters that she doesn’t expect me to be a full-time babysitter, that she’s only talking about a couple of hours after school and suggesting that I tell her ahead of time if I can’t be here so that she can make alternate arrangements.
In the middle of our disagreement I realize that I don’t care about what either of us is saying. It’s not important.
I stomp away from my mother and up the stairs to my bedroom where I fling myself onto the bed, thinking about how I need to convince Garren to give me another chance. I was wrong to talk my way into his house with a lie. Maybe I would’ve been less threatening if I’d told him the truth from his doorstep.
I thought we’d have some kind of breakthrough once I spoke to him. That he’d know me. But the information about his father’s a start. I need a plan for the next time I see Garren. Something to say that will make him stop resisting me and listen.
Just then my mother hurls my door open and charges into the room, hands on her hips. “I know none of us have had it easy lately,” she begins, “but I don’t like what’s been happening to your attitude, Freya. First changing your appearance drastically without warning and now acting like it doesn’t matter if Olivia is left alone. This isn’t like you.”
I fold my hands under my head as I meet my mother’s gaze. “No? What am I like, Mom?” Because I honestly don’t know anymore. I don’t know what any of us are like.
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. Winston Churchill’s making pronouncements in my head again, like when I woke up from my first dream about the blond boy.
And what Churchill said fits. The majority of my life feels as though it’s been some kind of lie. I don’t know where I’ve picked up his words—they seem to have always been with me, a kernel of authenticity in a web of falsehoods. Is my mother in on the pretense? What does she know that I don’t?
“Freya,” my mother warns, like I’m goading her for fun. Her form appears to shrink from me, her gaze coldly retreating as though she’s already tired of this but won’t let me win. The moment echoes inside me, a dripping tap that will never stop. It feels like we’ve faced off against each other a hundred times before, each instance as aggravating as the last.
Only we haven’t. Not like that. We don’t fight any worse than your typical mother and daughter. It just feels that way. Another lie in my life.
I smother the urge to shout at her. “Mom.” I soften my tone, regretting that I pushed her because it might make her more reluctant to answer my next question. “Is there any reason to think that what happened to Dad wasn’t an accident?”
I remember the many black-suited men and somber women at my father’s funeral, pumping my hand as they told me how sorry they were. The minister had only met my father a few times and the sermon he gave could’ve been for just about anyone, except for the words about my father’s service to his country. Shortly afterwards, the investigation into the accident was concluded and the findings printed in the Herald: “A failed transition fitting that connects the gas line from the street to the house’s gas system was the source of the gas that fueled the explosion.”
But governments can cover things up. They do it with such frequency it’s like a compulsion. How do I know the official version of the accident is what really happened?
My mom stands at the edge of my bed, blinking as if she misheard me. “Why would you say that?” she asks, a lump of wet sadness in her throat.
I prop myself casually up on my elbows. “No specific reason. It’s just that we left only a month after. I wondered if any other information had come up. Have you heard from anyone at the consulate?”
“Neil Kingsley’s written to see how we’re doing,” she says.
Neil Kingsley was my father’s closest friend in New Zealand, one of the men in black suits with a strong handshake. The only thing I can really remember about him is that he always smelled sort of like ginger and grapefruit.
My mother stares at the floral pattern on my bedspread and adds, “But there’s no news about the accident and there won’t be. The investigation’s long finished. It was an accident. You know that, Freya.”
I hang my head and bite my lip. She thinks I haven’t accepted my father’s death.
I don’t know what else to say to her. Either she doesn’t know anything or doesn’t want to tell me.
“Come downstairs and help me make dinner,” my mom says. “Your sister’s been asking for Hamburger Helper.” The sudden warmth in her eyes puts a lump in my throat too. I don’t want to be angry with my mother; I don’t want things to change for the worse between us.
We go down to the kitchen together, me remarking how hooked my sister is on Hamburger Helper. Ever since the first package Nancy picked up for us along with a bunch of other groceries when my mom was too sick to go shopping. Olivia ate so much of it that she nearly made herself sick again, something I teased her about once she was feeling better.
When I realized I’d left Olivia alone after school again today I felt guilty but the other feelings I have about her, the ones that make me dizzy and feverish, haven’t left me either and at the end of the night—hours after I’ve helped my mom with the Hamburger Helper and the three of us have watched Magnum P.I. together—I dream about Olivia.
A slightly smaller Olivia on a path to a stately Victorian building. I’m several feet away but can see her clearly from my spot on the path. She’s flanked by two things that look almost like men but aren’t. Inside, the building is filled with children and teenagers—all of them attractive, whole, healthy and intelligent.
I know that because I know exactly where we are. The place is a school, our school. In another time and another place. I catch a glimpse of Garren as I wander through the hallway to my classroom, my clothes feeling weightless like a second skin.
The sight of Garren, his dark hair wavy and nearly wild, makes my breath catch in my throat. He’s talking to four other teenagers in a cluster in the middle of the hall and I stop to watch him like I’ve done so many times before. Sometimes I think he knows that I watch him.
I’ve never felt this way about anyone else. It seems a little like insanity.
Garren’s the kind of person who says what he thinks and that makes some people angry and draws others to him like honey. He doesn’t like the way things are and that’s not something you’re supposed to say, although this is a free country.
I should stop staring before he catches me at it, but he’s smiling and that makes it tougher to look away and then … then his gaze flicks over to me and it’s already too late.
In the morning I feel gloomy and weak and lie on my side with the covers pulled up over my chin wishing that I were someone else. My dreams mock me. I don’t know which parts of them point to a deeper truth and which are only a kaleidoscope of images from my everyday life. What will happen to me if I can’t filter out the truth? I have the terrible feeling that leaving the truth buried will poison me in one way or another and when Olivia—sent upstairs by my mom—tells me that if I don’t get out of bed soon I’ll be late for school, I burrow into my pillow.
I don’t want my feelings about Olivia to be true but the creeping doubts won’t leave me alone. I listen to Olivia pad out of my room and shout from the top of the stairs, “Mom, she won’t get up!”
I throw back the covers and yell after her, “I’m up! I’m up.”
“You better be!” my mother hollers from downstairs.
I change out of my pajamas and into clothes. My hair’s kind of grimy but there’s no time to wash it; there’s barely enough time to do my makeup. I fly through the process and then dash downstairs to gulp down cold cereal.
Less than thirty minutes later I’m sta
nding at my open locker, pulling out the textbooks and notebooks I need for my morning classes. Having to deal with such mundane things when I don’t know what happened to my father and why a boy who should be a stranger to me isn’t, seems ludicrous and just like that, the energy it took for me to get out of bed fizzles and dissipates. Misery descends with a vengeance and I freeze in front of my locker with my bio textbook in one arm.
Time stops.
For a while—who knows how long—I’m not sure where I am, the Victorian school from my dream or Sir John A. MacDonald. The realities merge unevenly in my head and the pieces that don’t fit make my head ache.
I could stay this way forever and never decide what to do next. Maybe that’s easiest.
“Freya?” a faraway voice calls. I turn, expecting to find small Olivia, wild-haired Garren or the well-intentioned blond boy.
I hadn’t realized there were tears streaming down my face and as my eyes close in on Seth Hardy next to me I feel embarrassed, which is just as stupid as having to gather my books in the first place. Who cares about Seth or any of the people brushing by me in the hallway?
I need Garren. He has to help me. He’s the only one. None of this means anything.
“Freya,” Seth repeats. “Are you okay?”
I drag one of my sleeves across my face, smearing white makeup onto black cotton. Then I sniffle and try to clear my throat.
“Hey,” he says, inching closer. “Is there anything I can do?”
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