Yesterday (5 page)

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 fi ngers 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 out-siders 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 specifi c 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 fresh-man 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 fi xed 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 confi ding 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 fi gure 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 fi t 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 fi nally 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 traffi c. As we approach Toronto I fi nd myself getting mildly excited. The skyscrapers and level of activity feel invigorat-ing 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 fi rst person I fi nd 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 fi ghting 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 fi ll 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 fi rst. 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 hiero-glyphs 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 fi nally 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 fi nd 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 fi nish 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 fi t 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 fi ll 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 fi ne, 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 fi rst 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 fi rst 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 fi erce 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 profi le 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 stifl e 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.