The First Last Day (14 page)

He thought for almost a full minute. “Yes,” he said. “It's the right thing to do.”

I punched the buttons on the phone and asked my dad to come and get me.

I
'd touched the painting that morning—and a smudge of blue had come off on my finger. The directions said a wish could be reversed as long as the paint hadn't dried. I hoped there was still time.

The second I walked in the house, I raced toward my desk. But the painting wasn't there. I dashed to the closet. After shuffling things around, I still couldn't find it. Had I put it somewhere else? I looked on my dresser, behind the bedroom door, even under my bed. But it was nowhere.

I couldn't think straight. “Mom, Mom!”

At first there was no answer. I screamed louder and both my parents came running. “What's wrong? You said you felt better once you came home.”

“I'm fine. I'm fine.”

Mom put her cheek against my forehead.

I pulled away. “Stop! I need to talk to you. Did either of you see a painting in my room?”

“Haleigh!” Mom said. “You have to calm down. I think you have a fever. Let me see if I have anything for it.” She left the room.

“No!” I called after her. “I just need the painting. Where is it?”

Dad put his arm around me. “Why don't you lie down? You'll feel better.”

“No, I won't. Don't you see? I'm running out of time.”

Mom rushed into the room with a wet cloth in her hands. “Is she okay?”

“I don't know,” Dad said. “The fever might be making her delirious. She keeps saying something about running out of time.”

Mom pressed the cold compress against my forehead.
“Now, close your eyes,” she said, softly. “Calm down.”

I realized my parents weren't going to leave my room until they were convinced I was okay. I took a few deep breaths and steadied myself.

“That's much better,” Dad said. “Now, what's this about a painting?”

“Oh,” Mom said. “I know what she's talking about. I found a painting in here this morning. It was still wet, so I put it on the porch to dry.” She looked at me. “I was just about to bring it in here when you called us.”

I bolted upright, grabbed Mom's hand, and put it against my forehead. Her eyes opened wide as she looked at Dad. “She seems to be fine now.”

“I told you I'm okay.” I jumped up from the bed. “I can start packing now.”

I waited until their footsteps faded and then flew to the porch to retrieve the painting.

I dabbed my finger against the bottom, where I'd made thick clumps to resemble sand.

The paint was still wet. Yes!

Once I was in my room, I opened the instruction
booklet and went straight to the
Paint Your Heart's Desire
heading. The directions explained that if you wanted your deepest desire to come true, you had to paint with that longing in your heart at the time.

I thought back to when I first saw the yellow box in my backpack. All I wanted then was for summer to never end. I hadn't even needed to wish on the painting—that desire had been in my heart all along.

I continued to read:

Once you have finished painting your heart's desire, put your canvas aside for the oil to dry. If by chance you change your mind, as long as the paint has not dried, you may undo your desire by adding to the canvas or by painting over what is already there. Make sure, however, that you know what's truly in your heart. You will have only one chance to undo your original wish.

My hands shook as I removed the paints from the box. I couldn't make a mistake this time. I had to be sure of what I wanted to do, sure of what was in my heart.

Something terrible could happen if the next day wasn't August twenty-sixth anymore. But, after all those weeks, I truly understood what G-Mags meant when she bowed her head and whispered, “May she rest in peace.”

I needed to let G-Mags rest in peace if it was her time. I couldn't let her keep having a stroke every night.

And there were lots of other reasons to want time to move forward. I made a mental list: Kevin would be able to put all his footage together to make that sci-fi movie he was always working on. And, he'd get to see Michael again.

The seeds Mom had gotten from G-Mags would grow into herbs. Mom would get to finish her book about van Gogh. And, according to the website I'd looked at, once she was past a certain point in her pregnancy, her indigestion could get better.

Dad could continue his research on time and space.

Mr. Damico could finally get some new trivia.

I'd get to take art classes and keep my drawings. And maybe even see Abbey again.

But, most important, I'd be getting a new brother or sister.

I propped up the canvas and squeezed a few blobs of black and white paint on the palette. I added the linseed oil, and the smell took me back to the night I'd first used the paints.

My eyes burned and my heart felt like it was rising into my throat as I whispered over and over: “I wish for time to move forward. I wish for time to move forward. I wish . . .”

I opened my eyes and kept whispering as I threw globs of gray on the upper portion of the canvas. The weather report for the next day had called for rain, so I swirled the paint in circles, to make clouds like the ones in van Gogh's
The Starry Night
. I didn't stop whispering until the clouds were finished, and there was no turning back.

I sighed as I put the painting on my desk and grabbed my suitcase from the closet. It was a bittersweet feeling, knowing that might be the last time I'd be packing. As I pressed each piece of clothing into the suitcase, I thought about how it had been a whole day of lasts.

My last ragout dinner.

My last day with Kevin on the beach.

My last time to hear Mateo's joke about saving time. Actually, that one wasn't so bad.

After tucking a couple of my fossils between some T-shirts, I closed the suitcase.

Then I crawled into bed and waited for the doorbell to ring.

S
eeing Kevin's face as he walked through the door made me feel even worse than I had that first night. I told myself I didn't know what would happen in the morning. G-Mags might be perfectly fine. But the look on everyone's faces made me realize that was wishful thinking.

As I pulled down the sheets on the couch, there was little I could say to offer encouragement to Kevin. All I could tell him was, “I'm so sorry,” over and over.

He didn't look at me for a long while. But once he tugged the blanket under his chin he glanced my way and said, “It's okay. You didn't cause the stroke.”

“I know but . . .” I couldn't look into his eyes.

“Did you do it?” he asked. “Did you fix the painting to reverse the magic?”

“Yes,” I whispered. Now that he'd seen for himself what happened with G-Mags, could he have changed his mind? “Are you sure it's what you want?”

He hesitated, looking up at the ceiling.

“I saved some paint. The clouds I made are still wet. Maybe there's time to paint over them.”

He thought for what seemed like a long, long time, but was probably only minutes. Then he looked at me with the saddest eyes I'd ever seen. “We're doing the right thing, aren't we? It's what she would want. Right?”

I looked away because I couldn't stand to see him so sad. “I think so.”

After getting up the courage to say good night, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. My mind raced as I pictured what might happen the next day, and the next, and the next.

It was no use trying to sleep.

I got up and opened my sketchbook. As I took out my box of colored pencils, I realized that whatever I
drew would be there in the morning. That was one good thing.

I remembered what G-Mags had said about fossils being like art, and began sketching a picture of my fossil with the fish skeleton. Beneath the picture, I wrote:
Nature's Memory
.

Underneath that, I drew a sugar maple tree with its leaves of vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows as they fell to the ground. Beside that, I drew a snowflake. And below both of them, I wrote:
A Time for Every Season.

At the bottom of the page, I drew a full moon, shining against a dark sky. Under that, I wrote:
Full Moon Soon
.

Finally, exhaustion swept over me. I set my clock for seven and settled into bed. I gazed out the window at the moon, the same crescent moon I'd stared at night after night.

No longer a closed parenthesis, it seemed more like a giant comma, a pause in the middle of a sentence, ready for the rest to be written

A
s soon as the alarm sounded, I squeezed my eyelids together even tighter. Holding my breath, I turned toward the desk.

With a mixture of emotions, I cracked an eye open to see if the gray clouds were still painted on the canvas.

They were.

It worked! The time loop had to be over. But I couldn't be totally sure until I saw the calendar. The night before, I'd ripped off the page that read
August 26
and thrown it in the garbage.

I raced to the kitchen. My pulse pounded as I
turned the corner, stopped, and read:
August 27
.

I let out a huge breath. Underneath the date was the new animal fact:
According to scientists, cows have best friends and become stressed if they are separated.

I looked over at Kevin on the couch. Someday I'd have to tell him that one.

But right then, I had something more important to do.

I tiptoed back into my room and got out the yellow box. I needed to get rid of the paints. Even though they hadn't worked when I'd used them on paper, I couldn't be sure. What if someone evil found them?

I knew the paints would be toxic to the environment if I threw them away or squeezed them down the drain.

There was only one thing left to do.

I ripped out three pages from my sketchpad and scattered them all over the floor. Silence surrounded me as I took the blue paint and held it high above the first large sheet of paper. I squeezed the tube from the bottom, and a drop of paint was released. For a second it seemed to hang in midair above the floor, a small blue blob suspended in time.

My breath caught, and I wondered if this was really
what I wanted. Should I stop now? I asked myself. Should I save the paints in case they might work on another canvas? What if the future was even worse than I imagined?

I squeezed the sides of the tube so the remaining paint slithered back inside, like a snake going backward.

Still, a single blue drop splattered like a raindrop on the paper. I had to continue.

I squeezed out another drop of blue. Then another.

I did the same with the next two sheets of paper, rolling the paint tube from the bottom to make sure it was totally empty.

I did it all again with each tube: red, yellow, orange, green, purple, black, white, and brown.

Soon, colored dots decorated each page.

The sharp smell of paint enveloped me as I knelt before the first sheet with brush in hand. My eyes prickled.

There was no turning back. Once I swirled the paint across those pages, there definitely would be no more chances to change the future or stop something bad from happening.

After a few deep breaths, I swept the brush across the first page. I continued making broad brushstrokes on each sheet, mixing the colors together in energetic swirls like the yin and yang symbol in the middle of van Gogh's
The Starry Night
.

When the paintings were finished, I stood and examined them. Each one was different, with its own blend of hues, its own mood. I checked the paint tubes again, making sure I'd squeezed out every drop.

The smell flooded my mind with memories of Kevin and G-Mags and the day I found the paints. It seemed both long ago and just like the day before.

Finally, I threw the brush into the yellow box with the flattened tubes of paint and took it all to the garbage can in the backyard.

When I returned, Kevin was still sleeping on the couch. I figured he probably wouldn't remember anything about the paints or the time loop when he woke up. His last day of summer would likely be the one that happened so many weeks before. The only thing on his mind this morning would be G-Mags. And no matter what, we wouldn't be eating breakfast together at Annie's.

I tiptoed into the kitchen and stared through blurry eyes at the lone apple in the fruit bowl on the table, the one Mom had thrown my way every day for weeks. I'd always thrown it back to her. But that morning, I clutched the apple in my hand and took a huge bite. The tartness tingled my jaw as the juice seeped from the corner of my mouth, down to my chin. I wiped it with the back of my hand.

And waited for the future to happen.

L
ess than fifteen minutes later, the doorbell rang, and I rushed to answer it. I found Kevin's mother, alone on the porch. After a few seconds my parents arrived, and Kevin ran into his mother's arms.

No one said anything. But we all understood.

We exchanged sad hugs before Kevin left with his mom so they could “make arrangements.” I'd always associated that phrase with something else: making a flower arrangement or making an arrangement to meet someone. But that day, I learned it had another meaning. A much sadder one.

Once we were alone, Mom, Dad, and I looked at each other, not sure what to do next. We were almost packed and ready to leave for home, but none of us seemed to want to move. I could tell Mom and Dad didn't want to believe what happened to G-Mags. They wanted to hang on to summer as much as I had all those weeks ago.

As we sat around the kitchen table, I got an idea. I leaped off my chair and headed to the refrigerator. Would the cannoli from G-Mags be in there? Would it still be fresh?