I sense that he means that, despite the fact that I’ve treated him badly, and I thank him but tell him no, there’s nothing he can do. On impulse, because he’s being so nice, I apologize again for leaving the party without warning. “But I’m a mess,” I add. “That’s just the way things are right now.”
I don’t say why I’m a mess and he doesn’t ask. His sympathetic eyes linger on my face until I break the silence again by saying, “I need to get to bio.”
Seth nods and soon we’re going our separate ways, him hightailing it down one end of the hallway and me the other, towards biology. I hate the days that I have double bio first thing. My morning concentration sucks and today I feel like I shouldn’t be here at all.
As I slide into my seat, Derrick takes one look at me and then glances down at his hands, pretending that he hasn’t noticed my bloodshot eyes.
“Hey,” I say, dropping my biology textbook down on the counter in front of me.
“Hey,” Derrick says back, his mouth inching open as though the thought of having to ask me what’s wrong is making him tired.
Some people just aren’t good at dealing with emotions and I save Derrick the trouble by saying, “Don’t ask, okay? I don’t want to talk about it.”
Derrick bobs his head in relief. “You ready for the grasshopper dissection today? Payne’s gone into the back room to get them.”
Derrick and I actually had a debate about this on Tuesday, knowing that we’d be lab partners. Both of us wanted to be the one to cut the grasshopper open, like kids with a new toy. Dissection seems exciting compared to most of the other things we have to do in school.
“Do you still want to be acting surgeon?” I ask, because just trying not to dissolve or freeze the way I did at my locker a few minutes ago is draining my energy reserves; there’s nothing left for pulling apart a dead grasshopper.
“Getting cold feet?” Derrick smiles. “Don’t worry, I’m on it.”
Sure enough when Mr. Payne hands us our grasshopper (a male) Derrick enthusiastically grips the scalpel. Mr. Payne makes us name all the specimen’s external parts for him before getting started. The only ones I recognize by sight and name are the most obvious ones: simple eye, compound eye, head, antenna, wings and the ovipositor. I feel woozy as I listen to Derrick name the rest. When I close my eyes I see the interior of the Victorian school I walked through in my dreams last night. I never reached the classroom I was headed for before I spotted Garren but I can see it in my mind now—row upon row of wooden desks with cast-iron frames. The floor is wooden too and faded maps and diagrams hang on the walls like props in a Hollywood movie. The contrast between the historical setting and the students’ perfect skin and features puzzles me. The oddly mechanical men escorting Olivia can only have been a product of my imagination but the thought of them makes me shiver.
“Are you doing all right there, Freya?” Mr. Payne asks.
It’s time to pin our grasshopper into the dissecting pan and I mumble that I’m okay so Mr. Payne will leave us alone. He walks away, casting a final look over his shoulder.
With the pins in place Derrick drags the scalpel down the grasshopper’s abdomen. Then he switches to the tweezers, digs into our specimen and pulls out a clump of mushy brown innards. “What the hell is this supposed to be?” Derrick asks, examining the gunk at the end of his tweezers. He turns to get my opinion but his face—the entire classroom—is fading to black with me in it. I fight the darkness, clawing my way back towards consciousness but not reaching it. As my body turns to jelly and begins to slide towards the floor, my lab partner’s lightning-fast reflexes are the only thing that keep me from hitting cold linoleum.
EIGHT
The blond boy and I are weaving through a tangled mass of young people, some of them dancing with their arms stretched sensually up towards a hot summer night, others swaying—or even sleeping—as they lounge on blankets, towels and pieces of abandoned clothing. There are people upon people upon people as far as the eye can see—guys with long sideburns and flowing locks, girls with blissful smiles on their faces, some of them bare-breasted. The ground is squelchy underfoot and the air smells like mulch.
A curly-haired guy with grungy cheeks grabs my ankle as I step forward. I kick him loose and turn to shoot him an angry look. “Hey, man, what time is it?” the guy asks in a tone so mellow that he should be sitting atop a mountain, cross-legged, chanting for world peace.
“I don’t know,” I tell him.
“Don’t sweat it,” he says dreamily. “Stay beautiful.”
I stare into the distance at the blond boy who’s managed to get thirty feet ahead of me. “Latham!” I shout, not the least bit surprised that I know his name because it’s second nature; I’ve known him forever.
Latham turns to wait for me. When I catch up to him in the dark he drawls “Far out” in a perfect drugged-up imitation of the hippies surrounding us.
“Out of sight,” I declare, trying to match his dazed tone.
“Groovy, man,” Latham adds.
We laugh together, thinking we’re clever. Then Latham says, “I wish I could’ve been there for the real thing.”
“I don’t know—it was pretty unhygienic,” I joke. But I know what he means. Life was rawer then but more innocent. People like these thought they could change things and that the changes would last.
We start pressing forward again, looking for safe places to put our feet as we near the stage. “You should come to the concert in Chicago with us,” Latham says. “You know I can get more transit documents no problem.”
“And you know that I can’t go. Leila would explode. She’s angry enough with me already.”
Latham’s opening his mouth to say something else when I begin to drift away from him and back towards my biology classroom. I hear it before I can see it—raised teenage voices and chairs scraping across linoleum. When I open my eyes Mr. Payne and Derrick are gazing down at me with matching looks of concern. They’ve laid me down on the floor after all but at least I didn’t fall and crack my skull open. I can feel something soft under my head and notice that they’ve elevated my feet over a pile of textbooks.
“Don’t try to sit up,” Mr. Payne advises. “I’ve called for the nurse.”
My mother comes to pick me up thirty minutes later. I’m lying in the school nurse’s office under a scratchy gray blanket, staring at a cobweb on the ceiling and listening to the tinny radio that sits on the nurse’s desk. The DJ’s introducing a new Simple Minds song when my mom walks into the room along with the nurse, who’s in the middle of telling her that I’ve perked up in the past few minutes but am running a low-grade fever.
“So she didn’t faint because of the dissection in science class?” my mom asks as I sit up on the cot. My mother crosses over to me and spreads her right hand across my forehead.
“I’m feeling better,” I say. “I just got light-headed watching my lab partner cut into the grasshopper.”
“You do feel warm, though,” my mother notes.
“I didn’t sleep well last night. On top of that, there was the bio thing. I guess I couldn’t handle it.”
My mother faces the nurse. “She had a very rough case of flu a few weeks ago. We all did. But she’s had some fairly bad headaches since then and I’d feel better if I could get her checked out by our doctor.”
“Of course,” the nurse says approvingly.
I continue to protest that I’m fine but my mother isn’t interested in my assessment and asks the nurse if she can use the telephone. Then she calls Doctor Byrne, who tells her he can see me in an hour.
My mom propels me out of the office and towards her car as I repeatedly insist that I don’t need to see a doctor and was the victim of a run-of-the-mill fainting spell. The truth is that my head feels like a balloon that’s been overfilled and could pop at any second. If Garren hadn’t told me about his father I might still suspect a brain tumor was the cause of all my strange thoughts and feelings over the past few weeks.
; In the car, the sun feels like a jackhammer chipping into my skull and I close my eyes and sleep. We arrive in Toronto early and sit in Doctor Byrne’s waiting room listening to his receptionist answer the telephone and book appointments. My mother leafs through a copy of Life magazine and I cross my legs and grip the armrests of my chair, determined that no matter what Doctor Byrne asks me, I won’t crack and confess the sense of loss that runs deeper than my father, the holes in my memory, and feelings of distance from various family members. The only things I intend to reveal are physical symptoms.
“And where’s he taking you this year?” the receptionist says into the phone during what sounds like a less formal conversation than the ones I’ve overheard so far. “Ah, very nice. Lucky you. I’ve only been there once and everything was delicious. But listen, as soon as he’s finished with the patient he’s in with, I’ll have him call you back, all right?”
Not ten minutes later Doctor Byrne emerges from his office with a man in a ski jacket. The receptionist nabs the doctor before he can disappear back inside his office and informs him that his wife called. “Thanks, Marjorie,” he says to the receptionist. Then he turns his attention to me and my mother and instructs, “Please come through.”
“I have a wedding anniversary coming up on the weekend,” he explains as my mom and I file into his office behind him. “So the pressure’s on.”
“Your anniversary?” my mother asks.
Doctor Byrne pinches at his eyeglasses. “That’s right. Seven years.”
Since Doctor Byrne looks about sixty, I would have guessed he’d been married for decades. Maybe it’s a second wife and because I’m in no hurry to talk about myself I ask, “Where are you taking her for dinner?” I heard the receptionist ask his wife the same question over the phone.
“A place in Yorkville—the Bellair Café.” Doctor Byrne smiles and launches into a series of questions about my fainting spell and how I’ve been feeling lately.
I admit that I have a headache (which I downplay the intensity of) and tell him it mostly happens when I don’t sleep well, that school’s been a big change from my old one in New Zealand and that I’m feeling a little stressed. The fainting I explain away by emphasizing that I was grossed out by the grasshopper even before my lab partner began slicing it open. I laugh and tell Doctor Byrne that I guess I won’t be going to medical school.
“Well, let’s have a look at you then,” he says. Doctor Byrne listens to my heart, checks my glands, shines a light inside my ears and then whips out a tongue depressor and peers down my throat.
“I can feel the slight fever,” he says, directing his comments at my mother. “It could be that she’s fighting something off but since there are no other persistent symptoms for the moment I’m just going to suggest that she try to get more rest and drink plenty of fluids. You can give her acetaminophen for the fever if that’s bothering her.”
“It’s not,” I tell him.
“And of course if she develops other symptoms, I’d like to see her back here.”
“What about the headaches?” my mother asks.
Doctor Byrne plants his palms on his thighs and looks me directly in the eye the way few people can sustain for long. It reminds me of how Nancy stared at me in the restaurant last Sunday. “Any confusion, Freya?” he asks. “Any dizziness—apart from today, that is?”
“What do you mean by confusion?” As soon as I’ve said it I wish I could take it back. I should’ve just told him no.
Doctor Byrne adjusts his glasses. “Disorientation. Memory problems. Word-finding difficulty. Hallucinations.”
Hallucinations. Like thinking I’m someplace else. I see my mother scrunch up her shoulders at the word and I quickly shake my head. “Nothing like that. More like confusion over the difference between the metathorax and mesothorax.” Two terms Derrick used in relation to the grasshopper earlier.
“I wouldn’t worry about that unduly.” Doctor Byrne’s eyes twinkle briefly. “And I can hardly tell you to study harder when you’re already under stress from changing schools and everything else, can I?”
The unnamed everything else is my father’s death. People don’t like to mention it unless there’s no way around it, as though saying it will make it true all over again and send me into shock.
Doctor Byrne asks if I would mind waiting outside for a moment while he speaks to my mother. This must be the part of the visit when he and my mother confer over my stress and grief levels. I leave them alone, relieved to have made it through the examination without giving away too much but fixating on the other symptoms Doctor Byrne asked me about. The only one I’m not actively suffering from is word-finding difficulty.
I wish he’d explained what kind of condition all the other symptoms could indicate. On the other hand, even if he had I wouldn’t have admitted to the symptoms. No matter what Doctor Byrne—or anyone—says I don’t trust them the way I trust myself. It’s how someone who is paranoid would feel but if I can’t trust my gut I can’t trust anything.
Back in the waiting room I skim through the same copy of Life magazine that my mom was looking at before we were called into Doctor Byrne’s office. A girl named Brooke Shields is in a skimpy swimsuit on the cover, striking an uncomfortable-looking pose that’s probably supposed to be sexy. Minutes later my mother joins me and we walk out to the car together. “I want you to take it easy tonight, all right?” she says. “No homework. No going out. Lie down and relax.
“Humor me,” she adds before I have a chance to reply.
“Okay, okay.” I climb into the car and belt myself in while my mother, on the driver’s side, does the same. “What did Doctor Byrne say after I left?”
My mother’s face is weary. “Nothing new. He thinks you’re a little worn out emotionally and that it’s been taking a physical toll.”
Exactly what I want him and everyone else to think, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep up the pretense. At home I pop acetaminophen for my head and do as my mother suggests. Curled up on the couch with a glass of chocolate milk beside me on the coffee table and a mixture of music videos and soap operas playing out on the TV, my brain’s on a rampage, alternately running over the details of the bizarre dreams I’ve had in recent weeks and racking my mind for a way to get through to Garren.
There must be a record of what happened to my father on file with the Canadian government. It could take a while to get my hands on it but it’s possible my mother clipped one of the newspaper articles about the explosion from the Herald. If she did, they’re likely somewhere in her bedroom, which I won’t be able to ransack until she leaves for work tomorrow morning. The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes that I can’t put off seeing Garren for long. I’ve covered for myself so far but that can’t last. The dreams have begun to break through to my conscious mind.
Aside from the deaths of our fathers, all I have to offer Garren is visions and vague feelings. Without evidence he’s not any more likely to listen to me than he was the last time but I have to try anyway. It’s either that or end up locked in a rubber room.
The day feels endless and finally, around six o’clock, while my mother’s cooking dinner and Olivia’s parked safely in front of the TV watching a Gilligan’s Island repeat, I scurry up to my mother’s room and ease open each of her dresser drawers. The right-hand drawers are full of her things—underwear, hosiery, pajamas—and the left side contains a selection of my father’s clothes that she couldn’t bear to throw away—a Star Wars T-shirt, a navy cashmere sweater, jogging pants and an entire drawer of black socks.
I stare at the Star Wars T-shirt, an illustration of Luke Skywalker wielding a lightsaber emblazoned across its front. This was one of the T-shirts my dad liked to throw on for doing yard work or other household tasks. He was wearing it with his Adidas running shoes and faded blue jeans the day before he died, mowing the lawn while my mom planted lettuce, ginger and turnips in the garden. I glanced through the kitchen window at the two of them, Mom wr
apped up in her seeds and Dad catching sight of me at the window. He paused to wave and I waved back, never dreaming that I’d only have him in my life for another day.
The memory of that moment feels as solid as yesterday, unlike many of my memories from before we arrived in Canada. I still can’t believe he’s gone and I lay my hand on the T-shirt and silently vow, I’m going to find out what happened to you. I won’t let the truth stay buried. With my eyes smarting I continue scouring the bedroom. There’s a squat filing cabinet stored within the walk-in closet and my heart quickens at the sight of it. I slide open the top drawer, sink my shaking fingers inside and discover copies of various financial statements, receipts and contracts, as well as my family’s medical and education records. Disappointingly, the bottom drawer is completely empty. There are other parts of the closet left to search but I’ve taken too long already. Dinner will be ready any minute now and Mom will be sending Olivia up to look for me.
I’ve put my mother through enough today and don’t want to have to scramble for a lie she might not believe. I grind my teeth together as I slip reluctantly out of the room, counting the hours until I can return to finish the job.
NINE
In the morning I don’t remember my dreams but I feel profoundly unsettled, like I’m standing on a fault line while balancing on one foot. No one needs to come upstairs to urge me to get ready for school. I’m wide awake and moving long before my alarm goes off. Freshly showered and with my makeup done I watch Olivia crunch sleepily on her cereal and my mother brew coffee.
“How are you feeling, Freya?” my mother asks, tapping her nails on her coffee mug.
“Better,” I tell her. “More rested.” Truthfully, the headache’s gone too.
“And the fever?” My mother coasts over to touch my forehead.
“You could just wait for me to answer, you know.” I try to swat her away but she’s already made contact. “I’m old enough to know whether I have a fever or not.”
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