Yesterday (6 page)

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.

For the next while I patrol the street in this way. Drifting
up one side of the road and then coasting down the other, avoiding the eyes of the pedestrians who stroll past but keeping a vigilant watch on the mystery guy’s house. Only when two red-haired children, a skinny boy and rosy-cheeked girl who must be walking home from school, zip past me do I think about the time and where I’m supposed to be.

It’s ten minutes to three and the Sir John A. MacDonald buses were scheduled to leave the museum at 2:30. I’ve missed my ride home.

I’ve missed the bus to Brampton
and
I’ve been trekking around Toronto with a raging case of temporary insanity. No, temporary would mean it was over with, and I still don’t want to leave Walmer Road. I’ve pulled just far enough out from the spell I’ve been under to realize I have to go. No matter what I
think
I know, I can’t pace the sidewalk outside his door forever.

I point one final stare at the boy’s house before retracing my steps back to Spadina and then Bloor Street. The museum hasn’t gone anywhere. Neither has the hotdog vendor. However, the school buses are nowhere in sight.

I slink guiltily into the museum lobby, pondering my situation. I’m too old to embarrass myself by approaching the museum staff like a lost seven-year-old but there’s only one location I know how to find from here and that knowledge won’t help me now.

My fingers fumble for a quarter in my pocket. Then I scan the lobby for a pay phone and dial home. Olivia’s usually only in the house alone for about fifteen minutes after
school and I hope she doesn’t freak out when she hears I won’t be there soon.

Initially I figure my mom will have to pick me up once she’s finished work but by the time Olivia picks up on the third ring I have a better idea and after explaining about missing the bus I ask her for my grandfather’s phone number. His and Nancy’s numbers are both stuck to the front of our refrigerator and when Olivia comes back on the line to recite his number I tell her to make sure the front door’s locked and not to open it for anyone.

“I won’t,” she says. “Do you have Mom’s work number in case Grandpa isn’t home?”

She gives me that number too. I scribble it down but it turns out I don’t need it; my grandfather’s at the museum to pick me up within twenty minutes. He smiles at me, making his wrinkles pop, as he ambles into the lobby with a long red scarf wrapped around his neck and says, “You’re lucky you caught me at home. I just got in from Cooke’s place.”

His friend Cooke is in bad health and so is Cooke’s wife. My grandfather spends lots of time helping them out—running them over to church, doctor’s visits and the grocery store. Nearly every time we see my grandfather he makes some mention of Cooke.

“Thanks for coming to get me,” I tell him. “I thought I might have to wait for Mom.”

“Glad to do it,” my grandfather says heartily. “But how’d you manage to miss the bus? Isn’t the school supposed to keep track of you while you’re on a field trip?”

“I was in the bathroom,” I lie. “I wasn’t feeling well. I guess someone screwed up the head count.”

My grandfather purses his lips, his eyebrows pointy with suspicion. “Are you having more of those headaches?”

I’m a step ahead of my grandfather, ready with another lie. “No—not that. Women’s stuff.”

This is a surefire way to steer my grandfather away from the topic of headaches and another visit to Doctor Byrne. Men my grandfather’s age generally don’t like to hear about periods.

A quizzical look, which I interpret as discomfort, clouds his face. “Let’s get you home before it snows again, Freya,” he declares. “The forecast says there’ll be quite a bit of it tonight.”

We trudge out of the lobby together and towards my grandfather’s car nestled at the curbside, my thoughts back on Walmer Road with the boy who’s a complete stranger to me yet feels so much more familiar than my flesh-and-blood grandfather.

W
hat I want to do is sit quietly by myself and churn it all over in my mind until I figure it out. Peel back the layers and unravel the core mystery of what happened today. The dark-haired boy haunts me in the car trip with my grandfather and once we’re home he haunts me throughout my mom’s rant about the school being neglectful and irresponsible in abandoning me at the museum. When my mother says she’ll call tomorrow and let them know leaving me in Toronto to fend for myself was totally unacceptable, I don’t argue. It would’ve been worse if one of the trip supervisors had noticed my absence on the bus, begun a search (how would I account for leaving the museum?) and raised the alarm. If any of that had happened they’d have alerted my mother, so it seems I fell through the cracks. Their neglect was my good fortune.

My grandfather leaves before dinner, wanting to beat the
snow, and when my mother, Olivia and I are eating lamb at the table later, the phone rings, breaking the silence. My mom reaches for it, her cheeks flaring as if she’s expecting to hear a school official on the other end and is eager to tear a strip off them. Mom’s anger is usually subtler than my father’s but I instinctively suck in my cheeks, like I’ve tasted something sour. Tension prickles under my skin.

Then my mother presses the receiver to her ear and I begin to relax as I watch her face soften. “I’ll have her call you back if that’s all right,” she says into the phone. “We’re just in the middle of dinner.”

She hangs up, announcing, “That was Christine for you, Freya.”

I thank her as the boy from earlier keeps blinking his green eyes inside my head, trying to tell me something I should already know.

I envision him in the old brick house with the pale blue trim and try to imagine what he might be doing there this very second. His parents could be home from work now. He might be eating dinner with them. Will he be hungry despite the hotdog he inhaled, practically in one piece, earlier? Is he in high school like me or has he already graduated? What does he do with his spare time? What does he want to be? Does he ever think about mass extinction?

Do I know him like I think I do? How is that possible?

Nothing concrete happened today—I didn’t even speak to the boy—but just seeing him has changed things and
I’m so swept up in him that I almost forget about returning Christine’s call. It’s my mother who reminds me when I pass her in the upstairs hallway just before eight o’clock.

“What happened to you at the museum?” Christine wants to know once I have her on the phone. “You never came back. Are you ditching us like you ditched Seth?”

“Of course not.” It never occurred to me that she and Derrick might think I didn’t want to hang out with them at the museum. Since the three of us were assigned different buses I guess they didn’t have a clue I wasn’t on mine when it left.

“Just kidding,” Christine claims. “So what
did
happen?”

I tell her that I fell asleep in the cafeteria and that I must have some kind of twenty-four-hour bug because I still feel sort of groggy. As I’m explaining about missing the bus I hear a female voice in the background mumble something about popcorn. “In a few minutes, Mom,” Christine replies. “I’m on the phone.”

“How is your mom anyway?” I’m glad to have the focus off me but that’s not the only reason I’m asking. I really do want Christine to feel like we can talk. Behind those concerns a large portion of my brain is still obsessing about the guy on Walmer Road and I tighten my grip on the phone and begin pacing my room, restless like a caged thing.

Christine hesitates. “She’s okay.” Christine drops her voice to a feathery whisper. “She … it was just a panic attack. She’s been under a lot of stress because she …”

I stop walking and give Christine my full attention.

“She … lost her job last summer.”

People never know the right thing to say when they hear I lost my father and I don’t know the right thing now but at least Christine’s mother is still around. “I’m glad she’s all right,” I venture. “So … you two are watching a movie? I heard her say something about popcorn.” From what I
do
know of Christine she wouldn’t want me to feel sorry for her.

Christine’s tone brightens. “She’s a total popcorn nut. If she has to go more than two nights in a row without it she has to rush out to the supermarket. But anyway, we were just going to watch
MacGyver
.”

That sounds nice and I smile into the phone. “Okay, well, I don’t want to make you miss it.”

“See you tomorrow, then?” Christine asks, because after all, I’m supposed to be sick.

“
Oh
. Yeah. I think I’ll be better by then. See you tomorrow.”

As I hang up I feel an odd flutter of satisfaction in the pit of my stomach.
Christine trusts me
. But it’s not long before I’m lost in thoughts of the boy on Walmer Road again. If anyone could read my mind I’d be embarrassed. To have trailed a strange boy home and then prowled around his street is beyond simple crush behavior. The rational side of me knows that as well as anyone else would but the other side won’t give way—today it’s in charge.

As the night wears on I climb into bed where I toss and turn for hours, sleepless, before opening my drapes to stare
at the moon overhead. The very same moon that presided over rampaging dinosaurs millions of years ago.

My mind begins to melt with thoughts of mass extinction, just as it did at the museum earlier. I sweat through my pajama top and have to change into a T-shirt.

When I curl up in a ball under the covers again, the image of the green-eyed boy feels like comfort.
Like home
. Calmed, I drift into a dream that feels every bit as real as the majority of my waking life.

In the dream the world is a different place but the moon is the same, as close to eternal as any of us can comprehend.

In the dream I live in an old house—a mansion filled with unexplainable objects that I don’t question. Not all of the people within my dreamworld are human. But everywhere, the air is rife with fear and uncertainty.