Read Online The First Last Day by Dorian Cirrone - Free Book Online Page A

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.
    â€œI’ll give you a hand,” Mom said. She picked up my sketchpad off the floor. “Did you do any drawings today?”
    â€œA few.”
    â€œI’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?”
    â€œThese drawings. They’re beautiful.”
    â€œMom, you scared me!”
    â€œWhy have you been hiding them?”
    â€œUh, I don’t know . . . to surprise you?” I really did hate lying to her.
    â€œI knew you’d been practicing, but I had no idea how much you’d improved this summer.” Her eyes got shiny.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?”
    â€œI 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?”
    â€œHe’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.”
    â€œLet’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.
    â€œReally?” 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.”
    â€œYin-yang? What’s that?”
    â€œIt’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—”
    â€œBut why would van Gogh put that symbol in the middle of the painting?”
    â€œNo 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.”
    â€œSo, it’s like an oxymoron?”
    â€œYes, 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.”
    â€œBut what if we didn’t have to accept the bad?” I asked.
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œWhat if we could live in paradise, like the story of Adam and Eve