The First Last Day (4 page)

Mom opened one eye into a tiny slit as I repeated the question. She hoisted herself up and leaned against the headboard. “Isn't he at his grandmother's?”

“I don't know. Did his parents come for him?”

“Come for him? Wasn't he at his grandmother's when you left after dinner?”

Why was Mom asking these questions? “Of course he was there when I left. But he was on our couch last time we saw him.”

“Our couch? Sweetie, you must have dreamt he came over.”

Was Mom so tired she forgot what happened? She
had
been more forgetful than usual. “Okay, never mind about Kevin,” I said. “Where are all our packed suitcases?”

Mom stared at me for a second and smiled.

My eyes locked on hers. “This is serious.”

“I think I know what's going on,” she said. “You had a wish fulfillment dream.”

“What's that?”

“It's when you dream something that you wish would happen.”

No way would I have wished G-Mags had a stroke.

Mom took my hand and continued, “You and Kevin have become such good friends, I bet you wish he could come home with us tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Aren't we leaving today?”

“For someone who never wanted to leave the shore, you're certainly pushing things.”

“What do you mean?”

“We don't leave until tomorrow. We have all day today.”

“We do?”

Mom shook her head. “That must have been some dream you had. You better change out of those pajamas if you're going to meet Kevin.”

Just as she said that, I looked down and gasped. I'd gone to sleep in my shorts and T-shirt. Where had those pajamas come from?

I darted to the kitchen to check the calendar. The day before I'd torn off the page that read
26
and thrown it away. I stopped short when I saw the number
26
staring at me.

Maybe I was remembering wrong. Maybe the sheet I'd thrown away read
25
. I took a step closer to see the Fun Animal Fact at the bottom of the page. My heart drummed faster and faster as I read the words:
A mayfly has an average life expectancy of twenty-four hours.

It was the same fun fact as the day before.

T
he second I hit the boardwalk, I spotted Kevin walking toward me with a smile on his face. He was wearing the same clothes as the day before: a red, white, and blue Captain America T-shirt and white shorts.

I looked him up and down for clues and then moved closer to smell his clothes for a sign that he'd already worn them. I got a whiff of lilac detergent as my face banged into his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” He grabbed hold of his shirt
and brought it to his nose. “Did I pull this out of the wrong laundry basket?”

I shook my head. “You're fine. I just had a weird feeling.”

“That my shirt would smell?”

“No. Like we did this all before.”

“You mean reincarnation?”

“No. Like yesterday morning we did the exact same thing.”

“We probably did. We've been doing the same thing every morning for almost eight weeks. I thought maybe you had a vision of us as a king and queen in a past life or something. That would be awesome.”

“Yeah, awesome,” I said as I caught sight of Kevin's knee. There was no Tweety Bird Band-Aid. And no scab. He couldn't have healed that quickly.

Was Mom right? Had I dreamt a whole day?

“So, what do you want for breakfast?” Kevin said. “I'm in the mood for one of Annie's egg and sausage bagels.”

My mouth dropped open. “That's
exactly
what you said in the dream I had last night.”

“Whoooo, spooky.”

“It's not funny.”

“It is, really, considering I've had an egg and sausage bagel for breakfast a bunch of times this summer.”

“I guess you're right.”

Heading through the door of Annie's Ark, we were greeted with the familiar smell of bacon, along with the sound of the local oldies station playing softly amid the chatter of early-morning diners.

Soon, Annie strolled over to our booth. Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and her eyeliner was painted way past the end of her lid on one side, exactly like in my dream. “What can I get for you two this morning?” she asked.

When we told her it was our last whole day down the shore, she got a little misty-eyed and sat next to me. “I'm really going to miss you two,” she said. “You remind me of when my Joey was your age.” She gestured toward the grill, where Joey was cooking up orders. “You kids just grow up too fast—soon Joey will be taking over the Ark. It seems like yesterday . . .”

As her voice trailed off, I looked over at Joey, who wore a hairnet over his short ponytail. He flipped a pancake high into the air. Cringing, I waited for what would happen next.

Splat!

The pancake landed on the floor, just like I'd anticipated. Annie smiled. “Maybe it'll be a little while longer before Joey's ready to take over.”

I wasn't sure if it was the smell of burnt toast or the fact that Annie had said the exact same thing in my dream that made me break out into a cold sweat. But the minute she finished taking our order, I excused myself to go to the bathroom and put water on my face.

By the time I got back, the food was already on the table. “You're really just having orange juice?” Kevin said.

“My stomach's a little queasy.”

“Are you okay? We can leave if—”

“No. It's nothing serious.”

“That's good,” Kevin said. “It'd be awful if we had to skip our last day at the shore together.”

I forced a smile and mumbled, “It sure would.”

O
nce we left Annie's, we stopped to look at Serena's sketches. Serena was a college student who paid for some of her tuition by drawing portraits of people on the boardwalk. She had long, strawberry blond hair and freckles that spread across her nose and cheeks like flecks of sand. Every day she wore a different hat. She said it was because the sun gave her even more freckles. But I liked to think it was an artistic statement. That day's hat was familiar. It was straw with a huge brim that held a bunch of grapes on one side and a banana on the other.

The little girl sitting across from Serena seemed familiar too. She was about six years old and wore a headband with a red and white polka-dot bow. Her mother pressed the girl's shoulder down to keep her from getting up from the wooden stool. Apparently, this girl had no interest in preserving
that
particular moment in a painting.

While Serena struggled with the portrait, I headed toward her table of artwork for sale. She loved to start drawing before dawn, and her new works were always at the top of the pile. When I spotted the pastel sketch of a dark sky and stars above the ocean waves, I stumbled backward in surprise. I'd already seen that one.

“You okay?” Serena asked between brushstrokes.

“I'm fine. But when did you draw this?”

“Before sunrise,” Serena said. “The sky was so clear, and the stars were gorgeous.”

Kevin stared at me. “Are you sure you're okay? You just got really pale.”

“I'm sure,” I answered, even though I was more confused than ever. “It's just the heat.”

After browsing in Mr. Sidhu's used book and video store, Kevin and I headed toward the water. Once we
passed the familiar crying toddler, the boys tossing the football, and the sunbathers lying on the beach, we settled into our spot by the pier. A slight fishy smell breezed by as I spread my towel out on the sand and anchored one corner with my backpack.

“Hey, guys,” a voice from behind us called. I turned to find Mateo heading toward us. His parents sat under a big beach umbrella, not too far away. “Want to build a sand castle?”

Kevin smiled at him. “Sure. In a little while.”

Mateo, who was nine years old, had been our shadow all summer. “Hey, listen to this one,” he said. “Why should you take your clock to the bank?”

I groaned before answering. “You just told us that one yesterday: to save time.”

Mateo scrunched his face into a pout. “I never told you that one. I just got it this morning—from a Popsicle stick I found on the boardwalk.”

“First of all,
ew
, that you picked up a strange Popsicle stick. And second, bringing your clock to the bank would actually
take up
valuable time for no reason,
not
save time.”

Mateo looked at Kevin for support.

“Dude, she's got a point. But I don't remember you telling it yesterday.” He turned to me. “You must have heard it somewhere else.”

I was sure I hadn't, but I didn't want to talk about it anymore. I pulled my T-shirt off and shimmied out of my shorts, determined to have fun. “Race you to the water!” I shouted.

Kevin chased me, yelling, “Cheater!” He dashed by me and dove into a huge wave.

I swam out and flipped onto my back. My mind wandered as the ocean rocked me from side to side. I thought about how great it was that I still had this whole day with Kevin. But as much as I tried to forget, the memory of him and his parents standing on our doorstep kept pushing its way into my thoughts.

When I lifted my head, Kevin was several yards away, waving in my direction. The surf had taken me farther out than we usually went. I waved and raced back to shore. By the time I got there, Kevin and Mateo were molding a pile of wet sand. “Hey, I'm the artist around here,” I said. “You couldn't wait before you started making the stegosaurus?”

Kevin squinted up at me. “How did you know we were making a stegosaurus?”

The swell of sand by my feet was just a blob. I collapsed onto my knees and began scooping large handfuls of sand onto the mound. “Lucky guess,” I lied.

“C'mon,” Mateo said. “Let's make it
huge
.”

We worked for nearly a half hour, molding the stegosaurus's head, body, and tail. When we were done with that, I grabbed a plastic bucket and headed toward the ocean. As I filled the container, voices behind me grew louder. I turned to find a couple of girls I'd seen before on the beach. One of them pointed to Kevin and Mateo and giggled. “I can't believe we used to do that.” She threw her long, dark hair back over her shoulder. I looked down at my bucket. She was just like those girls at school who couldn't think of anything else but clothes and makeup. I gritted my teeth, remembering I'd felt that same way the day before—or was it in the dream?

I hauled the pail back to the stegosaurus, and Kevin smiled up at me. I instantly forgot about those girls and dumped the water onto the beach. “Watch,” I said, squeezing a fistful of sand into my palm. My nails dug
into my skin for a second before I released my fingers to reveal a tiny disk. “See. A spike.” I placed it on the spine of the dinosaur.

Mateo's eyes widened. “Cool! I want to make some.”

I handed him a glob of sand. “Go ahead. We need a whole bunch of them.” As we worked together, I tried to get the vision of the two girls out of my head. What was so childish about what I was doing? Why couldn't I still have fun sculpting a dinosaur on the beach?

Once Kevin set the last spike in place, he announced, “Done!”

“It's just like the one in my painting,” I said without thinking.

Kevin looked up. “What painting?”

“Oh,” I mumbled. “Last night I painted a picture of a sand stegosaurus.” But as soon as the words came out of my mouth, I wondered: Had I painted the stegosaurus or just dreamt it?

Before I could think more about it, Kevin began filming the dinosaur and instructed Mateo and me to act scared and run down the beach. He followed us as we raced along the shore, screaming.

A few minutes later, he shouted, “That's a wrap!
Rise of the Zombie Stegosauruses.
Watch for it at your local theater.”

Mateo gave Kevin a big smile and a thumbs-up.

After we left the beach, the next few hours felt awfully familiar—the cow suit, the cannolis, Kevin's suggestion to go to Atlantic City.

As I headed back to our house to get ready, I recapped what I'd thought had been the previous day. I'd been positive the Damicos had knocked on our door with that terrible news. And even though I hadn't checked my closet before I left, I was pretty sure I'd found the paint set and used it. But there was no real evidence that any of those things had happened.

My head spun with theories. No matter what was happening to me, there had to be some good reason for it.

And then it hit me: I was supposed to save G-Mags!

I
burst through the door of our cottage and rushed past Dad to get ready for Atlantic City. I was on a mission. A mission to save G-Mags.

It was all so clear. As soon as I got a chance, I would somehow convince her that she should go to the doctor. Then everything would be fine.

The second I got to my room, I checked the closet to see if the painting was there. It wasn't. I guessed that was one portion of the dream that hadn't come true.

I showered in record time and looked up some things about strokes on Mom's laptop in the kitchen.
When I was through, I still had time before the Damicos were coming. I pulled up a chair next to Dad. “Have you ever had a dream that came true in real life?”

He peered up at me through his glasses. “I can't say that I have. But I do think dreams can change the future.”

“You do?”

He gestured to the papers on his desk. “Take Albert Einstein, for example. Legend has it that his dream about cows changed the future of science.”

“Cows?” A picture of Kevin in his costume came to mind, and I had to laugh.

Dad nodded. “Einstein supposedly dreamt about cows lined up against an electric fence. When the farmer turned the electricity on, Einstein saw all the cows jump back at the same time. He explained what he saw to the farmer, who had been across the field. But the farmer argued with Einstein, saying the cows jumped away one at a time.”