Yesterday (2 page)

I’ve gone to school in Hong Kong, Argentina, Spain and most recently New Zealand, but Canada—the country where I was born—is the one that feels alien. When my grandfather hugged us each in turn at the airport, murmuring “Welcome home,” I felt as though I was in the arms of a stranger. His watery blue eyes, hawklike nose and lined forehead looked just how I remembered, yet he was different in a way I couldn’t pinpoint. And it wasn’t only him.
Everything
was different—more dynamic and distinct than the images in my head. Crisp. Limitless.

The shock, probably. The shock and the grief. I’m not myself.

I squint as I kick off the bedcovers, knowing that the headache will dull once I’ve eaten something. While I’m dragging myself down to the kitchen, the voices of my mother and ten-year-old sister flit towards me.

“I feel hot,” Olivia complains. “Maybe I shouldn’t go today. What if I’m still contagious?”

My mother humors Olivia and stretches her palm along her forehead as I shuffle into the kitchen. “You’re not hot,”
she replies, her gaze flicking over to me. “You’ll be fine. It’s probably just new-school jitters.”

Olivia glances my way too, her spoon poised to slip back into her cereal. Her top teeth scrape over her bottom lip as she dips her spoon into her cornflakes and slowly stirs. “I’m not nervous. I just don’t want to go.”

I don’t want to go either.

I want to devour last night’s cold pizza leftovers and then lie in front of the TV watching
Three’s Company, Leave It to Beaver
or whatever dumb repeat I can find. All day long. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

“Morning, Freya,” my mother says.

I squeeze past her and dig into the fridge for last night’s dinner. “Morning,” I mumble to the refrigerator shelves.

“They’re behind the margarine and under the bacon,” my mother advises.

And they are. I pinch the Saran Wrap–covered slices between my fingers and let the fridge door swing shut. Then I plop myself into the seat next to Olivia’s, although she’s junked up my table space with her pencil case and assorted school stuff. I could sit in my father’s place, which is junk-free, but nobody except Nancy or my grandfather has used his seat since he died. This isn’t even the same table that we had in New Zealand, but still Olivia, Mom and I always leave a chair for my dad.

If he were here now he’d be rushing around with a mug of coffee, looking for his car keys and throwing on his blazer.
You’d think a diplomat would be more organized but my father was always in danger of being late. He was brilliant, though. One of the smartest people you’d ever meet. Everyone said so.

I shove Olivia’s school junk aside and cram cold pizza into my mouth with the speed of someone who expects to have it snatched from her hand. My mother shakes her head at me and says, “You’re going to choke on that if you don’t slow down.”

I thought sadness normally killed appetite but for me it’s been the opposite. There are three things I can’t get enough of lately: sleep, food, television.

I roll my eyes at my mother and chew noisily but with forced slowness. Today’s also a first for her—her first day at the new administrative job Nancy fixed her up with at Sheridan College—but my mother doesn’t seem nervous, only muted, like a washed-out version of the person she was when my father was alive. That’s the grief too, and one of the most unsettling things about it is that it drags you into a fog that makes the past seem like something you saw in a movie and the present nearly as fictional.

I don’t feel like I belong in my own life. Not the one here with Olivia and my mom but not the old one in New Zealand either. My father’s death has hollowed me out inside.

No matter how I happen to feel about things, though, I have to go to school. After breakfast Mom drives Olivia to hers on the way to work but since mine is only a couple of blocks away and begins fifteen minutes later I have to walk.

Fresh snow is falling as I trek away from my house and it makes the otherwise bland suburban neighborhood look almost pretty. I guess I should be cold, jumping from New Zealand summer to Canadian winter, but I really don’t mind. My lungs like the cool air. It feels clean.

In minutes I’m at Sir John A. MacDonald High School, stalling at the main entrance with a single snowy binder under my arm because I still don’t want to go in. If I thought I’d get away with it I’d double back to the house, root through the kitchen cupboards for something else to eat and then lie on the couch for so long that I’d begin to grow moss. It’s not that I don’t want to go to school specifically; it’s that I don’t want to have to do much of anything.

As I’m hesitating at the door, watching bored-looking teenagers file inside, a blond boy in a blue coat and red winter hat does a double take and stops next to me. “Are you coming in?” he asks with a smile that reveals his braces.

I shrug and trail him to the door. He goes first but holds it open for me. “Thanks,” I tell him, and I guess I must look disoriented because he says, “So, new student?”

“That obvious, huh?” I pull off my gloves and try to smile.

The boy cocks his head. “Do you know what room you’re heading to?”

“One fourteen.”

“Easy,” he proclaims, yanking off his hat. “It’s right beside the music room. I can show you.”

I follow the boy down the hall, around the corner and up
a second hallway and when we arrive at 114 I stare down at my boots and coat realizing I should’ve stopped to put them in the locker they assigned me when my mother got me signed up for school last week.

I tell the boy this, frustration rolling around in the back of my throat, but he patiently offers to take me to my locker too. The narrow sameness of the hallways (off-white walls punctuated by row after row of faded green lockers) makes me feel vaguely claustrophobic—I preferred it outside in the open air, though I guess I’ll get used to it. School is school. At my locker (which is midway between the gymnasium and the guidance office) I thank the boy again and he says, “No problem” and then, “What grade are you in anyway?”

“Ten,” I tell him.

The boy runs one of his hands through his blond hair. “Too bad.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I’m in eleven. But hey, at least I know where to find you.” He taps my locker with two of his knuckles. “See you around.” He flashes me one last grin before disappearing into the crowd.

By the time I’ve stuffed my coat into my locker, shaken my binder and boots off (having forgotten to bring a pair of shoes to change into) and retraced my steps back to room 114 I’m late for homeroom. Mrs. Snyder seems like the cranky type but because I’m new she cuts me a break. She’s written today’s date—Monday, February 4, 1985—on the blackboard and I stifle a yawn as I weave my way over to an empty seat
in the second row. We have to stand for the national anthem and then listen to a series of announcements that most of the other students seem to sleep through. I would probably sleep through them too but I don’t feel at ease enough for that.

The discomfort clings to me like a second skin as I move from homeroom to math to English. Being the new kid is never good but I don’t think I’ve ever had people stare at me this much and it makes me paranoid. Like I’m never going to fit in here because no one except the teachers and the blond guy from earlier will ever say anything to me; they’ll just keep sneaking peeks at me from across the room like I’m seven feet tall or my skin is purple.

At lunch I don’t know where to sit without making it look obvious that I’m alone and I pause just a few feet inside the cafeteria door, scanning the tables as though I’ll magically spy someone I know. Just as I’m resolving to stride boldly forward a girl I recognize from math class appears at my side. She has wavy black hair that you can tell was dyed and is wearing equally dark clothing but her makeup (except for her paint-thick black eyeliner) is as pale as death. “Freya, right?” she says.

She doesn’t allow time for me to answer or maybe I’m just too slow, neck-deep in that fog I can’t escape. “You can sit with me if you want,” she says, pointing to a table on our left. “Derrick and I usually sit over there.”

“Thanks.” I step forward to trail the girl from my math class to her table. Her friend Derrick is already seated.
He’s black and skinny and his clothes are as decisively dark as hers. His hair, however, is the exact same color as a bumblebee—wide, alternating strips of black and yellow. I can’t work out why everyone’s staring at me when his head doesn’t seem to be scoring the slightest bit of attention.

“This is Derrick,” the girl tells me as we sit down across from him.

“Hi,” I say.

“Freya’s in my math class,” she explains. “Is it your first day here?” she asks, turning towards me. “I don’t remember you from last semester.”

“First day,” I confirm.

Derrick rests his sandwich on his lunch bag. “So what other classes do you have?”

He brightens when I run through the names of my teachers. “You have bio with me last period,” he notes. “Believe me, Payne is the nicer tenth-grade biology teacher, despite his name. We lucked out.”

“Cool,” I murmur. I need all the luck I can get. I’ve already forgotten virtually everything my math and English teachers said this morning and I doubt my afternoon concentration levels will be much of an improvement.

My stomach roars like a wildcat as I head over to buy my lunch (chili with a bread roll), but I’m relieved that I don’t have to sit alone and now know people in half of my classes. Once I return to the table, Derrick and the girl, who I learn is named Christine, are bad-mouthing a French teacher and
discussing bands I’ve never heard of. It’s like eavesdropping on two people speaking a secret language and after I’ve polished off my lunch and have essentially been staring into space for a few minutes, Derrick notices that I’ve tuned out. He wags a finger at me as he remarks, “We’re losing her.”

Christine scrapes at one of her cuticles and switches her attention to me. “So, who do you listen to?”

I shrug. “Whatever’s on the radio. I’m not big into music.”

Christine’s chin dips like I’ve given the wrong answer and, not wanting to be a disappointment, I rack my brain for band/musical artist names to give her. Coming up with any is surprisingly difficult. “Wham’s okay,” I offer at last. “And, like, Prince and Van Halen. The Police. Cyndi Lauper.”

Christine’s and Derrick’s twin expressions reveal that these, too, are the wrong answers. Then Derrick shrugs with his elbows and says, in what I think is meant to be a charitable tone, “Music’s a really personal thing. Everyone’s taste is different.”

Christine scrunches up her face. “Van Halen, though, seriously? David Lee Roth is such a joke.”

I mean … I don’t know. Why does it even matter?

“Whatever,” I say, her disapproval beginning to grate on me. “I told you I wasn’t really into music.” I can’t remember a single person asking me about bands at my old school, not one, and I struggle to recall who my best friend Alison’s favorite band or musical artist was but the information’s not there. I see us riding horses together and laughing about
boys. She’d land herself in trouble with teachers more than I would but never about anything serious, just stuff like talking and passing notes in class.

Last July she convinced me to walk to the supermarket three blocks from my house and finally speak to the cute stock boy I liked to stealthily stare at. His name was Shane and he kissed me by the bike rack behind the grocery store three days later. In another week and a half he was my boyfriend and two months after that we were breaking up.

Suddenly I can’t stop thinking. About him. Alison. Everyone. Everything. My mind’s racing with thoughts of life in New Zealand and all the other places I’ve lived in the past sixteen years. Teachers I liked. The gerbils my mother let me keep as pets in Hong Kong. My father building a network of elaborate sand castles with me on a Spanish beach. My parents coming home from the hospital with my sister days after she was born. Dates, names, geographic locations and cultural events flood my brain, making my head throb like I’ve just gulped down a frostbitten scoop of ice cream.

December 8, 1980: John Lennon was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman in New York City.

January 20, 1981: After fourteen months, fifty-two American hostages were released, ending the Iran hostage crisis.

July 29, 1981: Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer were married at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, England.

November 30, 1982: Michael Jackson’s
Thriller
album was released.

March 23, 1983: U.S. president Ronald Reagan announced a defense plan popularly known as Star Wars.

April 23, 1984: The discovery of the virus that causes AIDS was announced.

I’m a human encyclopedia, pictures, concepts and people flashing behind my eyes: Macintosh personal computers. Pac-Man. Cabbage Patch Kids. “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Compact discs. MTV. Mount Saint Helens.
E.T
. Rubik’s Cube. Duran Duran. Madonna. Space Shuttle
Discovery
. Atari. Margaret Thatcher. Pope John Paul II. James Bond. Blondie. Trivial Pursuit. Darth Vader. VCRs. Oreos.
Playboy
magazine. Tylenol. Touch-tone telephones. Big Macs. Easy-Bake Ovens. Kool-Aid.

Remembering, remembering
. Lost in an avalanche of information …

“Hey!” Christine snaps, waving her hand in front of my face. “Earth to Freya.”

I hurtle back into the present, my fingers massaging my forehead and the pain beginning to subside. I shouldn’t have come today; I should’ve tried Olivia’s line about still being sick. I’m not ready to be around people. Not
right
.

I could beg off sick after lunch. Postpone my first full day at school until tomorrow or the next day. But will being here feel any more natural then? I doubt it.

When the bell rings I stick with Derrick and head for bio, feeling quiet and tired (and already hungry again, always hungry). Because this is the first day of second semester
Derrick and I are able to grab seats together and as I slip into mine I notice what I’ve been noticing all day—furtive eyes on me. I try to let it slide, act like I don’t notice, but thirty minutes into the period my resolve cracks and I lean close to Derrick and whisper, “Why does everyone keep looking at me?”