Free Yesterday by C. K. Kelly Martin

impulsively ask her if she’s ever had a déjà vu about a person she’s never met.
    “I get déjà vu all the time,” Christine says, “but not usually about people, more about things I’m doing.”
    That sounds normal and I stretch my legs out in front of me as I think about the guy on Walmer Road and what he could be doing with his Friday night. He didn’t recognize me before and he’ll be even less likely to recognize me when Christine and I are done here.
    The problem with knowing where he lives is that I can go back anytime I want to. I’m trying not to do that but I’m fi ghting with myself on so many fronts lately that I’m afraid I might give in. I’m almost equally afraid I won’t, that I’ll stop trying to fi gure out what really matters and why and end up just like everyone else.
    “Did you have a déjà vu about someone you’ve never met?” Christine asks pointedly.
    A pause to a question like that is as good as an affi rmative response and after a couple of seconds I drag my teeth across my bottom lip and say, “A guy I passed in the street.”
    I can’t tell her about following him home from the hotdog stand outside the museum— that would sound psycho, even to someone who’s trying to be my friend. “It was such a strong feeling that I can’t stop thinking about it.”
    “About him, ” Christine qualifi es, not looking fazed so far.
    “About him, yeah, but also about the situation in general— how someone who I’ve never met could feel that familiar to me.” My ears are beginning to warm and I pinch my left earlobe, causing Christine to reach down for a wad of toilet paper.
    She hands it to me so I can wipe the dye from my left hand. Then she says, “Maybe you did meet him before, a really long time ago and your subconscious remembers it even if you don’t.”
    “Maybe.” I get up to run my hand under the water and then sit myself back down on the tub again. “It just seems weird.”
    “What’s weird about it?” Christine’s black-rimmed eyes study me.
    “Well, if I did meet him a long, long time ago, how come I can’t stop thinking about him? You’d think he’d have to have been someone important, in which case I should remember and so should he.”
    Christine stares contemplatively at the matching purple hand towels hanging beside me, next to the bath. “Past life,”
    she offers.
    Her tone gives no clue whether she’s kidding or not and I say, “Do you believe in that?”
    “Not really. But what do I know?” She tucks her hands into her lap and leans forward. “Maybe you should’ve tried to say something to him. Where did you see him?”
    “On the way home from school earlier this week,” I lie.
    “But he doesn’t go to school with us— I mean he looked like he could be a high school student but not at Sir John A. Mac-donald. I would’ve noticed.”
    “Maybe not. You’ve only been going there two weeks.
    There must be a lot of students you haven’t seen yet.”
    I raise my eyebrows as if to say she could be right but my mouth is downcast, like I’m not convinced.
    “If you see him again you have to say something,” Christine coaches.
    She has no idea that she’s making it harder for me to resist temptation. I blink back another chemical-induced tear as I picture the boy’s arresting eyes and perfect mouth.
    I’m driven restless by the thought that I don’t know what he’s doing at this very second, that I don’t know the tiniest thing about him except where he lives and that he likes hotdogs. It doesn’t seem right not to know.
    I have to change that.
    Soon Christine’s washing the excess dye from my hair and spraying on a leave-in conditioner. The dark hair fram-ing my face makes my blue eyes stand out more. I was afraid my blond eyebrows would look stupid with black hair (Christine was afraid to blind me so left my eyebrows alone) but even that contrast looks sort of cool and once I’m fi nished with Christine’s hairdryer I stare into