Yesterday Read Online Free PDF

one says left and the other says right.”
    My head twinges right behind my eyes and I set down my fork and rub my forehead with two fi ngers. I haven’t woken up with a headache since Wednesday but the pains still come and go. They make me want to shut my eyes and hide out in the dark. Crawl backwards out of existence to whatever came before.
    Crazy, Freya. Who the hell thinks things like that? Only people who need to be on serious amounts of medication.
    “You still getting those headaches, Freya?” my grand father asks. “Maybe Doctor Byrne should have another look at you.”
    Doctor Byrne is the Toronto physician my grandfather set my family up with when the three of us came home with a nasty fl u. He drove out to suburban Brampton to make a house call for us because he’s also a close friend of my grandfather. My grandfather wants us to become Doctor Byrne’s permanent patients, despite him working out of the city. Ever since we got back he’s been stressing that he has absolute faith in Doctor Byrne and that we’d never fi nd a better physician.
    “You okay, hon?” my mom asks, worry in her eyes.
    The pain’s disappeared with the same swiftness it arrived and I let my hand fall away from my forehead. “I’m all right. It’s probably just a little eyestrain. They dumped a lot of homework on us this week.” I shovel another forkful of lasagna between my lips because the hunger, like the headaches, is a constant in my life. The tip of an iceberg that I’m trying to ignore.
    After dinner Olivia and I do the dishes and then I go upstairs to shower and get ready for the party. It’s almost nine-thirty when Nicolette knocks at my front door. I drag her inside to introduce her to my mother and soon we’re hurrying out to Seth’s car, Nicolette climbing into the backseat so I can sit next to Seth.
    They have two bottles of rum in the trunk and when the three of us get out of the car at Corey’s house Seth lights a cigarette and hands me one of the bottles to carry. Then he opens Corey’s front door without knocking and Nicolette strides past us into the house, looking for her boyfriend.
    Some kids I vaguely recognize from school, and many I don’t, are sprawled out on the living room furniture while a swarm of others dance in the middle of the room to the sounds of Prince’s “1999.” Seth leads me along the hall and into the kitchen where a second crowd is standing around drinking out of paper cups. We deposit the rum on the kitchen counter and then Seth cups his hand around my ear so I can hear him over the sound of the music. “I forgot to tell you to bring your skates,” he says. “Corey’s got a rink out back.”
    “A rink?” I repeat.
    “Yeah.” Seth points to the sliding door at the back of the kitchen. I lope over to it, Seth a step behind me, and peer into the backyard, which, sure enough, sports an ice rink of about thirty-by- forty feet. Six guys are playing hockey in their jeans and coats, fl ying over the ice. Several summer folding chairs (three of them occupied by girls cheering on the game and another few empty) wind around the rink.
    I haven’t been skating since I can’t remember when and I turn my back to the sliding door and say, “That’s okay. I don’t think I know how to skate anyway.”
    “Don’t think you know, huh?” Seth smiles wide enough for me to see his braces. “You’d think that’d be the kind of thing you’d know about yourself.”
    He’s teasing, trying to be cute, but he’s also right. I should know whether I can skate and I don’t. There’s a blank space in my mind where that info should be, just like the blank about Alison’s favorite band.
    Seth and I are standing close together so we don’t have to shout to compete against the music and he plants a hand on my waist and leans in nearer still to kiss me. He tastes like spearmint gum and smoke and the feel of his mouth on mine is warm but unfamiliar. For the life of me I can’t compare