Free The First Last Day by Dorian Cirrone Page A

was going on with my own mother?
    As soon as she got up from the couch, I took over the laptop and typed in her symptoms: stomach problems and tired eyes . A list of possible illnesses popped up: everything from lactose intolerance to mononucleosis to things so terrible I didn’t even want to think about them.
    I knew it wasn’t lactose intolerance. Mom would have been sick before summer—ice cream is one of her favorite desserts. Weight loss was another symptom, and earlier that day she’d complained her pants were getting tight.
    I clicked on the next disease. If Mom had mononucleosis, she’d have other signs, like a fever or a sore throat.
    I scrolled through the list. When I got to the end and read the symptoms on the last page, I gasped.
    Mom was having a baby!

CHAPTER 26
    T hat night, I stared at the painting and wondered how I could have been so selfish when I made my wish. I’d thought only of myself and about how much I wanted things to stay the same. But what about Mom? All summer long she’d been tired and sick, and I never even noticed.
    And G-Mags: even though she said her dizzy spells were nothing, who knows how she was when we weren’t there. Maybe she felt sick too, but didn’t want to worry everyone.
    I had to do something!
    After retrieving the yellow box from my closet, I studied the words: Paint your heart’s desire .
    Maybe if I did another painting, I could undo the first one. I had more oil paint. But not another canvas. Would the paints work on paper?
    I ripped two sheets from my sketchpad. On one page, I painted a calendar with numbers that went all the way to the end of the year. I figured that would get time moving again.
    On the second sheet, I painted the word “G-Mags.” I held up the two pages, squeezed my eyes shut, and wished for G-Mags to be okay and for time to keep moving.
    I hurried to bed and crossed all my fingers and toes, hoping my plan worked.
    But when the doorbell rang a little while later, that hope dissolved like a wave hitting a sand castle.

CHAPTER 27
    A lthough my plan with the paints hadn’t worked, I was determined to figure out how to get time moving. As I headed toward Mr. Sidhu’s store, the seagulls squawked and flapped around me with urgency. Was it because they were hungry for the breakfast scraps scattered along the boardwalk? Or did they have some special kind of bird ESP that made them aware of the time loop? I’d heard that animals could sometimes tell when a hurricane or tsunami was coming, way before humans had any idea. Were these seagulls psychic?
    As I passed the early-morning crowd doing their tai chi exercises on the beach, the smell of waffles sailed by. My stomach growled. I’d gotten up extra early so I could quiz Mr. Sidhu before meeting Kevin for breakfast. Mr. Sidhu had read all kinds of books. Maybe he could help me figure out how to stop the time loop.
    The bell above me jingled as I pulled the door open. As usual, Mr. Sidhu was reading the book with the spaceship on the cover. He looked up. “Good morning. You are early today? Yes?” I nodded as he added, “How may I help you?” His voice was as cheery as always. How would he feel if he knew he’d been flipping through the same pages in the same book for weeks and weeks?
    I strolled up to the counter. “I know you’ve read a lot of science fiction, and I was wondering if you’ve ever read a story about a time loop.”
    Mr. Sidhu put his book facedown on the counter. “I thought you liked mystery novels. Your friend is the fan of science fiction. No?”
    â€œWell, yes, he is,” I said. “But he told me I would like a particular story he read—about a time loop. It sounded interesting. He couldn’t remember the end, so I thought I’d read it and find out.” More lies .
    â€œMuch of science fiction is about time travel. What is the name of the