The First Last Day (7 page)

I grabbed my wallet from my backpack and pulled out two bills. Mr. Sidhu's eyebrows came together. A wayward curl of black hair dangled in the middle of his forehead. “So, you are buying this for your friend as a gift?”

“Yes.”

“This is a very expensive gift.”

“Uh, well, I've been saving my money for it. I want to surprise Kevin.”

Mr. Sidhu held the fifty up to the light and ran a marker across the front. “I must make sure any bill over twenty is not counterfeit,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Unfortunately, there are many dishonest people in this world.”

I looked down and swallowed hard. Had he emphasized the word “dishonest,” or was it my imagination?

“I am sorry I do not have wrapping paper,” Mr. Sidhu said.

“It's okay,” I answered. “It's not Kevin's birthday or anything.” The musty old book smell in the shop had gone from soothing to suffocating. The heel of my right foot bounced, and I couldn't make it stop.

Mr. Sidhu pulled a plastic bag out from under the counter and then slipped the DVDs inside. It felt like he was doing everything in slow motion.

“This is a fine gift,” Mr. Sidhu said. “You are a very generous friend.”

Could he tell I was lying about saving the money? I'd heard people do weird things with their eyes when they aren't telling the truth. Walking toward the exit, I tried to steady my eyeballs. I looked back over my shoulder, half expecting Mr. Sidhu to call the police as I opened the door. But he just waved and said, “I hope your friend enjoys the movies.”

I took a huge breath of fresh air and shouted, “Thanks. I'm sure he will.”

I sprinted back to where I was supposed to meet Kevin and tried to shake off the slithery feeling running through my veins.

As I watched him bound toward me in his cow suit, I forgot about everything. I couldn't wait to give him the gift. I pretended to be surprised as I listened to his cow facts and his theory about the cow suit personality test. But as soon as he finished, I whipped the DVDs out of my backpack and handed them to him.

His eyes widened. “What? Where did you get these?”

“At the store, of course.”

“But where did you get the money? They're so expensive.”

“Um, they went on sale.” Another lie. I was getting good at it.

Kevin examined the DVDs. “This is so cool. Thanks!” He looked at me. “But we have to watch them together. Once we leave the shore, you can come to my house and we'll have a movie marathon.”

“Yeah . . . that'll be great.” I gave a weak smile, knowing we'd
never be able to watch all those movies together. The next morning they'd be back in the store, sitting on the shelf behind Mr. Sidhu.

A lump rose in my throat as I looked at Kevin's face, full of anticipation. I felt like a piece of fruit that was rotten on the inside, but still smooth and perfect on the outside.

O
nce we got back from Atlantic City, instead of turning on the TV, Kevin pulled out one of his new DVDs. “C'mon,” he said, setting his laptop on the kitchen table. “We can catch
The Colossus of New York
before dinner. He slipped the DVD into the slot and dragged two chairs together. Sitting next to him, I tried to contain my secret joy that I didn't have to watch the end of
The Day the Earth Stood Still
for the gazillionth time.

The smell of ragout and rosemary surrounded us. The movie was a sad one, about a man who got hit by a
car and died. His father, a famous brain surgeon, operated and put his son's brain into a robot. But the robot turned bad and started terrorizing people.

Just as the robot was using his X-ray eyes to kill someone, Mr. Damico came into the kitchen. “Ah,” he said, “
The Colossus of New York
. I saw that one when I was about your age. Scary, isn't it?”

“No way,” Kevin said. “It's cool.”

Mr. Damico laughed. “I guess it's cool. It's kind of a fifties version of
Frankenstein
.”

Kevin paused the DVD. “What do you mean?”

Mr. Damico sat across from us. “Well, the brain surgeon father in the movie is just like Dr. Frankenstein. He starts off with good intentions but, instead, creates a monster.”

“What are his good intentions?” Kevin asked.

“I suppose both stories have to do with finding the secret to immortality.”

The second Mr. Damico finished, I blurted, without thinking, “But isn't that a good thing?”

Mr. Damico shook his head. “It never seems to work out. It's like they used to say in that old margarine commercial: ‘It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.' ”

Kevin gave a puzzled look. “What does that have to do with margarine?”

Mr. Damico shrugged. “I can't remember. But that phrase always stuck with me.”

It stuck with me, too—all through the movie and dinner. By the time Kevin wanted me to play Scrabble, my mind was as mixed up as the tiles Kevin poured out onto the table. Still, I picked the same ones I did every night. I'd memorized everyone's letters as well as the words they'd put down. And I'd secretly researched tons of words on the Internet so I could figure out how to get the most points. I knew it was cheating. But it was just a game. It wasn't hurting anyone. Right?

So when Kevin put the letters
M
,
R
,
O
,
N
next to the letter
O
that was already on the board, I was ready. I scrunched up my face as if I were concentrating really hard, and then placed my
O
,
X
, and
Y
before the word “MORON.” “Yes! Forty-two points!” I shouted.

“Oxymoron?” Kevin said. “How did you know how to spell that?”

“I looked it up.”

“What?” he said. “When? You've been sitting here the whole time.”

“Uh, I mean I looked it up once in school—when we studied poetry. It's when you put two words together that contradict each other.”

“She's right, son,” Mr. Damico said. “She's gotten us good.”

I looked over at Mr. Damico and announced with authority, “Shakespeare uses it a lot. Like in
Romeo and Juliet
, when Romeo says, ‘O brawling love! O loving hate!' ”

Mr. Damico stroked his chin. “That's very impressive, Haleigh.”

I felt a little guilty for trying to out-trivia Mr. Damico but thanked him anyway.

Kevin gave a baffled look, mixed with some frustration because I'd gotten so many points. “How can hate be loving?”

I shrugged and looked around the table for someone else to answer.

G-Mags chimed in from the couch, “When you get to be my age, you realize such contradictions are everywhere—wise fools, poor little rich girls . . .”

Kevin was quiet for a minute. “I've got one! The living dead—you know, like zombies.”

Mrs. Damico laughed and said, “Leave it to Kevin to bring science fiction movies into it.”

I could tell that made Kevin feel better. We continued with the game until it was time for me to go.

On the porch, I gave G-Mags the usual hug before leaving. And I smiled when she told me to come back in the morning, like she did every night.

But as I walked away with Dad, I couldn't get the words “living dead” out of my mind.

T
hat night, I lay in bed thinking about pizza and how I might never again get a slice at Chris's Place. Mom, Dad, and I would go there every Sunday night. When Chris would see us coming, he'd throw the sausage and pepperoni on the half for Dad and shove the pizza in the oven before we were even in our seats. I'd never realized how special those nights were. Or how much I'd miss them.

I took another glimpse of the painting on my desk. Up until then, I'd told myself I'd made the perfect wish. But I was starting to wonder.

When I heard Mom's footsteps, I jumped off the bed and started packing.

“All set for tomorrow?” she asked, entering my room.

I threw a shirt in my suitcase and nodded. Before I'd found the paint set, I never lied. At least, hardly ever. There was that time I'd told Abbey her new dress was pretty—even though I didn't like the shade of red. But that hadn't been a bad lie. Ever since the time loop started, I'd been lying to everyone. I felt like something inside me was shriveling up, like a seed with no water.

I wanted to tell the truth, but if I did, who would believe that we were all repeating the same day over and over? I wasn't even sure if it was happening only here at the shore. Or in all of New Jersey. Or, maybe, all over the world.

Were artists everywhere doing the same sketches over and over again every day? Just like I was.

“I'll give you a hand,” Mom said. She picked up my sketchpad off the floor. “Did you do any drawings today?”

“A few.”

“I'd love to see what you've done.”

I flipped the cover and showed Mom some of the sketches I'd made earlier that day of Kevin and G-Mags.

She put her hand to her chest. “Oh my!” she exclaimed.

I dropped the pad and turned to her. “What is it? Are you okay?”

“These drawings. They're beautiful.”

“Mom, you scared me!”

“Why have you been hiding them?”

“Uh, I don't know . . . to surprise you?” I really did hate lying to her.

“I knew you'd been practicing, but I had no idea how much you'd improved this summer.” Her eyes got shiny.

“What's wrong?”

“I can't believe how lucky I am to have a daughter with this much talent. This drawing of Kevin . . . look at those details . . . just beautiful.” She stroked my hair. “And you haven't even started lessons with your new art teacher yet.”

My heart glowed inside me. “So you think he'll like these?”

“He'd be crazy not to.”

Before the time loop, Mom and I talked about art all the time. Saturdays were our special day together. Mom would make chocolate chip pancakes and we'd stay in our pajamas till noon. But there were no more Saturdays. No more Sundays, either. When I thought about it, my chest felt hollow.

I gestured to the book in Mom's hand, the one with the picture of van Gogh's famous painting
The Starry Night
on the cover. “Tell me more about van Gogh.”

“Let's see,” she said. “Here's a little-known fact: in Holland, they pronounce his name
van Hauck
.” She said it like there was something stuck in the back of her throat and she was trying to cough it up.

“Really?” I imitated her pronunciation—“van
Houck
”—and had to swallow several times before I could talk again. “Tell me more,” I said, “about his art.”

She pointed to the painting on the book cover. “Here you can see van Gogh made the swirls in the clouds look like a yin-yang symbol.”

“Yin-yang? What's that?”

“It's a symbol found in Eastern religions. It represents what we think of as opposite forces. Like male and female, destruction and creation, dark and—”

“But why would van Gogh put that symbol in the middle of the painting?”

“No one will ever know. That's the beauty of art. Perhaps it had something to do with the necessity of opposing forces: shadows can't exist without light. We wouldn't know something was sweet if we never tasted something bitter.”

“So, it's like an oxymoron?”

“Yes, sort of. Vincent van Gogh was a troubled soul. He might have been suggesting something about accepting both the good and bad aspects of life.”

“But what if we didn't have to accept the bad?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What if we could live in paradise, like the story of Adam and Eve before the apple—with nothing terrible ever happening?”

“I guess it would be nice for a while, but after too long it might be like eating dessert all the time.”

“What's wrong with that?”

Mom laughed and grabbed my hand. “Right now, absolutely nothing. In fact, how about we share that cannoli in the refrigerator?”

“Oops.” I let go of her hand.

“What is it?”

“I'm sorry. I ate it already . . . but don't worry. I'll save it for you tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Uh, I mean, maybe tomorrow G-Mags can make more for us to take home.”

Mom patted her stomach. “It's okay. It probably wouldn't have been good for me to eat it now anyway. I've been having a lot of indigestion these days.” She gave me a kiss on the head. “See you tomorrow morning.”

“Yup. See you tomor—uh . . . in the morning.”

T
he next day when I was filling the bucket with water, I studied the two girls walking by. When they laughed at the stegosaurus, I kind of understood. Even though I wasn't changing on the outside, I felt like I might be different on the inside—because I didn't feel mad at them anymore. I kind of wanted to become like them: older, more confident.

And then it hit me: I'd never
become
anything. Not an artist, not a professor like Mom and Dad, not anything. There at the shore, I'd always just
be
. I'd never
become
.

I reminded myself it was a good thing. The future
could be so much worse: G-Mags could die. Kevin and I could drift apart. And who knew what other bad things could happen to me or Mom or Dad or any of us?

I watched Mateo and how excited he was, working side by side with Kevin. I figured he, more than anyone, would want a never-ending summer.

Back at the stegosaurus, I grabbed a handful of sand. “Hey, guys, I have a question: What if you could live the same day over and over—without growing older or getting sick or anything bad happening, ever?”