First Love Read online

  Robinson frowned. “We went to Portland because of the experimental immunotherapy program with Dr. Suzuki. She’s the best there is, right? But my parents were living in this terrible motel and going to the hospital every day, and it was just awful. It was too hard on them. I said, ‘Please go home. This isn’t what I want. I don’t want you to see me go through this.’ ”

  “And they just left?” I don’t know why it shocked me as it did, considering the way my own mother split town.

  “They didn’t want to, believe me. But I made them. I said if things got really bad, obviously they could come back. But things didn’t get really bad—they got better. The immunotherapy was helping, and I got discharged from the hospital.”

  “The same day as me,” I said, smiling at the memory of that perfect morning.

  “Right. And I’d planned to come back here, but then there was the problem of you.”

  “The problem?” I asked.

  He smiled. “The problem of having a giant crush on you and you not knowing it,” he said. “But conveniently, my uncle had just moved close to your hometown. You were going to K-Falls, and I decided to follow you. I wanted to be with you.”

  I flushed. “I’m glad you did. But still—I can’t believe they let you do it.”

  “I told them I’d come back here in the fall. Do senior year at my old school. They understood—I wanted to pretend like I was normal, at a school where no one knew I had cancer. I was just a kid who got to study somewhere else for a while.” He smiled. “A semester abroad, in bucolic K-Falls.”

  I snorted. “You’d better look up bucolic in the dictionary.”

  “I don’t have to, because I have you,” Robinson said, rolling his eyes.

  “Oh, right,” I said, nudging him with my foot. But his story still didn’t entirely make sense to me. “Why wouldn’t you ever talk about your family? Why were they such a huge secret?”

  Robinson sighed. “I didn’t like talking about them because I felt so guilty. I knew it was selfish of me to be away from them. But I wanted to see things, Axi. I wanted to have a bigger life.” He reached up and twisted a strand of my hair around his fingers. “I wanted to fall in love.”

  I nodded. It wasn’t totally insane, I guess. “But you, like, wrote them and stuff?”

  “Of course,” he said. “They knew I was okay.”

  “But what about this trip? How’d you explain that?”

  He smiled. “I told them school was out—”

  “Even though you weren’t in school anymore,” I interrupted.

  “Well, they didn’t know that. And they weren’t going to check the calendar and see that there were three more weeks of classes I should have been in. I told them I was going to Camp Motorsport. It’s a summer camp for gearheads.” He paused thoughtfully. “It sounded pretty cool, actually…”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re crazy.”

  “But you love me.”

  I leaned over and kissed him on the side of his soft mouth. “I do.”

  A blast of music came from the garage, where Robinson had said Jonathan was fixing up an old Buick into a custom racer.

  “Did you know we’d come here, then?” I asked.

  Robinson shook his head. “I thought we’d go back to Oregon first. But then…”

  He didn’t finish the sentence, but I could fill it in. He’d started feeling sick. And he’d wanted to go home.

  I understood that. I’d want to run to my mom, too, if I had one who was any use to me. If I knew what state she was living in.

  I looked out the window then, and I saw all these floating lights. They were yellowish green, flashing on and off. “What are those?” I asked.

  Robinson gaped at me. “Haven’t you ever seen a firefly before? A lightning bug?”

  “A what? No! We don’t have them in Oregon.”

  Robinson sat up and peered out at the lawn. “I had no idea you were so deprived. They’re the best bugs in the world because they can light their butts up. It’s how they find mates.”

  “They’re beautiful,” I said.

  Robinson reached up and brushed the hair from my face. “Not like you.”

  “Don’t be corny.”

  “I’m not. I’m dead serious.” He paused. “Dying serious, I should say.”

  “No, you should not say that.”

  Robinson sighed. “Oh, Axi, I’m tired,” he said. “Tell me a bedtime story.”

  “Sing me a bedtime lullaby,” I said with a smile. “Like in Vegas.” I had every intention of giving in this time, but not that easily.

  “Story,” he insisted.

  “Song.”

  “I’ll flip a coin,” he said.

  “No! Don’t!” I yelped.

  He looked at me strangely. “Why not?”

  “Just don’t.”

  “Okay, fine. Then you have to tell the story.”

  We lay back on the bed. I took a deep breath and began. A fairy-tale beginning. “Once upon a time, there was a girl and a boy.”

  “So far so good,” Robinson said. He rolled over so that his face was in my neck. “The girl was always bossing the boy around,” he said, his lips brushing my skin. “She kept telling him to eat better.”

  “The girl had only the boy’s best interests at heart,” I retorted.

  “Mmmm,” said Robinson. Already his voice was thick with sleep.

  “She wanted to take care of him,” I whispered. “And to be taken care of by him.”

  I paused, listening to the music coming from the garage. It was Bob Dylan, I thought, but I didn’t know the song.

  “She knew how lucky they were,” I went on, “because they had found each other. She understood that sometimes people had to search for years to find what they wanted. Whereas some—the charmed few—just stumble upon it. Like children on a beach. Some come home with only rocks and broken shells, while others unearth a perfect sand dollar, fragile but beautiful.”

  Robinson sighed. By now he was sleeping.

  “And the girl understood something else—and maybe the boy did, too. Love was magical and infinite. But luck, in the end, was not.”

  Out in the garage, Jonathan turned up the music, and Dylan’s nasal, sandpapery voice finally reached me clearly. “The future for me is already a thing of the past. You were my first love and you will be my last.”

  I clenched my fists against my sides. I looked out the window for a star to wish on, but clouds had come in the evening. The only lights were those of the fireflies, turning on and off, on and off.

  49

  ROBINSON’S PARENTS WELCOMED ME LIKE a family member—and they said nothing about me spending the night in their son’s room. Joe, who was a history buff, told me all about the Asheville tuberculosis sanitariums the next morning. (Even F. Scott Fitzgerald, my ninth-grade literary crush, had spent time in one.) Jonathan walked me around the car he was working on, explaining various things about its engine that I didn’t understand and promising to take me for a ride as soon as he got new tires. Lou bought tempeh bacon when Robinson mentioned I didn’t eat meat, and one afternoon she braided my hair.

  “I always wanted a daughter,” she said wistfully. “Those boys and their cars. I love them to the moon, but it’s horsepower this and carburetor that, and I always thought to myself, Who’s going to help me prune the roses?”

  “I don’t have much experience with gardening,” I admitted. Dad and I had had a spider plant in our apartment, but it was probably all dried up by then.

  “You’d like it,” Lou said. “You’re a careful person, I can see that.”

  Used to be, anyway, I thought.

  “It’s like the Little Prince says,” she went on. “ ‘You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose.’ You can’t tame a stock car, Axi. It’s not the same thing.”

  I smiled. “I’ve quoted that book to your son.”

  “Oscar—I mean Robinson, I guess—could never be persuaded to re
ad it.”

  And then we walked outside, into the soft summer air, and she showed me how to deadhead the roses so they’d bloom all the way until late fall. When we came back, we had armfuls of blossoms, enough to put in every room.

  The point is, life with Robinson’s family would have been perfect if only Robinson hadn’t been getting sicker, minute by minute. It was as if being back home allowed him to finally stop pretending he was all right. And had there been any doubt about his prognosis—or any denial of what it meant—a visit from his childhood specialist had wiped that away.

  “I recommend you call hospice,” the doctor had said. Meaning: all you can do now is keep him comfortable. Until.

  Word spread quickly around town, and visitors began to arrive, bringing casseroles and cookies and boxes of Kleenex. There was a procession of friends, neighbors, classmates, and soccer coaches who had known and loved Robinson.

  Robinson held court on the old sofa in the living room, pale and covered with blankets, even though the rest of us were in short sleeves and dabbing at our sweating upper lips. His spirits were high, though he tired easily. And though he was in pain, he rarely hit the button on his morphine IV—he said it made his head feel like a hot-air balloon.

  Everyone had stories to tell, like the time Robinson won the Soap Box Derby race, then just kept going for another half-mile because he’d neglected to give his car a set of brakes. About how he’d “borrowed” the high school’s mascot costume to perform a gut-busting bump-and-grind during halftime at the homecoming game. One neighbor told me that Robinson mowed and raked her lawn for her but always refused payment, and a pimply twelve-year-old told me that when he was eight, Robinson had saved him from drowning in Beaver Lake.

  It was as if I were seeing Robinson’s life flash before my eyes, in the words and stories of the people who loved him.

  When he felt good enough, Robinson entertained his guests with tales of life “out West,” which he made sound way better than it actually was.

  “If Klamath Falls has a boom in tourism, it’ll be because of you,” I told him one evening. “And they’ll all come home disappointed.”

  “K-Falls has its charms,” he said.

  “Oh yeah? Name one.”

  “Her name is Axi Moore,” he said. “Sheesh, that was easy. Oh, and Wubba’s BBQ Express has that great pulled pork sandwich.”

  See what I mean? Spirits high.

  During the days, I passed around snacks and reheated bowls of pasta or soup in the microwave. Even though we in the house weren’t hungry, everyone else was. It was like a dinner party that never ended.

  Lou moved through the house as if in a dream, or a nightmare. Joe looked pale and scared. Jonathan, on Robinson’s orders, hung a sign on the wall that said NO CRYING ALLOWED—not that anyone was capable of following that particular order. Even fat Leafy whined and barked, as if she had stories about Robinson, too.

  “She used to be an agility champ,” Joe said once, shaking his head. “Can you believe it?”

  “Now she’s an eating champ,” Jonathan added, tossing her a cracker.

  I bent down and rubbed Leafy’s feathery ears, and she responded with a warm lick of my hand. I had a sudden pang of longing for my old dog. Or maybe it was a longing for the healthy, loving family I’d never really had. It was hard to tell.

  50

  “CLOSE YOUR EYES,” ROBINSON SAID. HE was reaching into the drawer by the side of his bed. I pretended to squint, then opened my eyes wide as he pulled out a pocketknife with a gleaming silver blade.

  “When a knife’s around, I like to pay attention,” I said. “Sort of as a matter of policy.”

  He laughed, then coughed. “I’m not going to point it at you,” he said. “Only this.” He gestured toward the sleeping porch’s wainscoting.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “It’s a surprise,” he said. “You’ll see. Just close your eyes.”

  I watched him dig the tip into the wood, and then I did as he asked. I don’t know how much time passed, but I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, Robinson was nudging me awake. “Look,” he said.

  Carved into the wall of the porch was a message: B&C4EVER.

  “Bonnie and Clyde,” he said. He was smiling at me, his perfect, crooked grin. “That’s us.”

  “Forever,” I said.

  We lay back down, and Robinson wrapped his arms around me. I traced the veins of his wrist, their delicate blue lines showing through his skin like a road map, and I thought of the map in my backpack, the one we’d marked with every stop: LA. The redwoods. Detroit. I thought, too, of my bag of souvenirs. Magical objects—a snow globe, a glass orb—that in certain lights looked exactly like junk.

  “I miss you already,” Robinson said softly.

  “I’m here,” I whispered back. “I’ll always be here.”

  “But I won’t,” he said.

  In my chest swelled an ache unfathomably deep and dark. And I said nothing, because I knew he was right. I kissed his face, his lips—and then somehow, we slept.

  But in the middle of the night, we woke up, and without words we turned toward each other. Robinson’s hands reached for me, and his mouth pressed itself against my neck. I brought his face up to mine, hungry to taste his lips. We kissed, and I heard a low moan—mine. I realized I was trembling.

  Robinson smiled, lightly tracing the lines of my brow, my nose, my mouth. “Don’t be nervous,” he whispered.

  How could I not be nervous? I knew what was going to happen. The air was charged with it. We were going to kiss until we were breathless, and then… and then…

  I moved closer to him, running my hand along his hip and down his thigh. I felt him shiver as I brushed my fingers along the smoothness of his stomach.

  He caught my hand and held it. “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you back,” I whispered. And then I slid my fingers out of his so I could touch him again.

  We kissed for what seemed like hours—sometimes tenderly, sometimes almost desperately. Sometimes we stopped and just looked at each other. As if we were memorizing our bodies and memorizing this moment. I felt like I was made of nothing but longing.

  Then Robinson pulled away, and I watched as he slipped his shirt over his head. His white skin seemed to glow in the half-light. He looked at me questioningly, and then he reached for the buttons on my blouse. He was whispering my name.

  “Do you want to—” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  We wriggled out of the rest of our clothes, and then I wrapped my arms around his back. I guided him toward me. I wanted to pull him into my body—as if we could become one person; as if, finally, I could protect him.

  Robinson was breathing hard and we were kissing. I touched him everywhere, even as I felt myself dissolving. He was whispering words into my mouth, but I couldn’t concentrate on what they were, because something inside me was unfurling. I was no longer Axi Moore. I was me and I was him; I was the night and the stars. The two of us lay on that bed and shuddered with desire.

  Afterward, he slept right against me, and I stared at our initials in the flickering candlelight. B&C4EVER.

  And somehow I knew it was true. We would be together forever.

  51

  I OPENED MY EYES TO THE SOUND OF birds making a loud and unmelodious racket in the big oaks in the backyard. I snuggled closer to Robinson, glad they hadn’t woken him up, too. Leafy, who’d taken to standing guard outside his room at night, came in when she heard the rustling of blankets, and sat at the foot of the bed. She immediately began whining, because she knew I couldn’t resist those big brown eyes of hers. In the four days we’d been here, I’d already fed her almost an entire box of treats.

  “Hush, Leafy,” I said. “Be patient.”

  She wagged her tail and whined more loudly, and when I didn’t immediately go in search of the Milk-Bones, she began to bark.

  “Quiet,” I whispered. “Robinson’s asl
eep.”

  But behind me there was no movement, despite the noise, and a terrible, panicky feeling came over me. I turned to look at Robinson’s chest, and I saw that it wasn’t rising or falling. He wasn’t breathing. And suddenly I was backing out of the bed, my hands clutched to my face.

  Leafy began yapping even more loudly—a treat was coming any minute now, she was sure of it—and I didn’t bother to shush her because it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. I dug my nails into my cheeks, and the tears came out fast and hot. I was gasping for breath, and I couldn’t say his name, even though I wanted to scream it out.

  Robinson, come back! I’m not ready! I’m completely, totally not ready!

  Leafy’s barks took on a tone of wild confusion. I grabbed her by the collar and buried my face in her warm neck, and I thought, Oh my God, how am I going to tell Lou? How am I going to do anything ever again?

  I had a mouthful of Leafy’s hair and she was still barking, but more softly now, dissolving into a pitiful whimper.

  It was done. It was over.

  And I’d been asleep.

  52

  A HAND CAME DOWN AND TOUCHED MY shoulder, and I jumped like I’d been burned. I looked up through tear-blurred eyes.

  Robinson’s face, seeming to float above the bed like a ghost’s. And then his familiar low voice. He said, “Axi? Are you okay?”

  I nearly fell over. It was him. He was alive. “Do I look okay?” I yelled. I crawled back up onto the bed and gripped his hands as if he’d rescued me from drowning. Never in my life had I been more relieved. “Tell me: do I look okay?”

  “Your eyes are sort of red,” he said, his voice groggy but teasing. “Are you allergic to Leafy or something?”

  “I’m going to kill you,” I gasped. I let go of his hands and lay down next to him in the bed, pressing myself against his side and trying to calm my breathing. I’d been so close to losing him.