First Love

by Patterson, James

  “I’m going to miss Charley,” I said, my heart pounding.

  Robinson nodded. “Me too.”

  “But not Bolinas,” I added.

  “That was your idea,” Robinson reminded me with a smirk.

  I shrugged and let out a deep sigh of relief. The sun was flashing deep vermilion over the blue ocean, calming me as I watched it slip lower and then vanish before my heart rate had even returned to normal.

  Amazing how beauty can be so fleeting.

  10

  WE DROVE ACROSS THE GOLDEN GATE Bridge that night, gliding over a dark San Francisco Bay into the narrow streets of the Presidio. Since the car offered a solid roof over our heads—and since cops apparently frown on urban camping—we decided to spend the night in the Pontiac.

  I curled up in the backseat, and Robinson folded himself, with difficulty, into the front. There was no question of us touching (or, as the case may be, not touching) with all that upholstery in the way. A tiny part of me felt relieved, but a larger part of me longed for the so-cozy-it’s-claustrophobic tent.

  That was my realization for the night: I was capable of missing Robinson when he was less than two feet away from me.

  I was starting to develop a theory about missing things in general. It had started when we left Charley the Harley behind, and I hadn’t stopped thinking about it the rest of the drive. If I practiced missing small things—like the rumbling ride of a motorcycle, or the faint murmur of my dad talking in his sleep, or now sleeping right next to Robinson—maybe I could get used to missing things. Then, when it came time to miss something really important, maybe I could survive it.

  We listened to the radio for a while, Robinson humming along and me keeping my tuneless mouth shut until we drifted off. In the morning, fog rolling in from the bay blurred the streetlights into soft orange halos. I peered over the seat at Robinson’s tangled limbs.

  “Rise and shine,” I sang. He opened one eye and gave me the finger.

  Not everyone is a morning person.

  “There’s someone I want you to meet,” I told him.

  “Now?” Robinson asked. But I simply handed him his shoes.

  There was one book I’d gotten Robinson to read in the last six months. The Winding Road was a memoir about growing up as the daughter of an alcoholic father (I could seriously relate) and a beauty-queen mother (ditto) in a small town in southern Oregon. The author, Matthea North, could have been me, which is maybe why I found her story so fascinating. A couple of years ago, I wrote her a fan letter. She wrote me back, and an epistolary friendship—I guess you could call it that—was born.

  (Epistolary: a word I’m not going to use in front of Robinson.)

  You must stop by for a visit sometime, Matthea had written. We’ll drink tea and ponder the vagaries of love, the secrets of life, the mysteries of the universe…

  If ever there was a time for that conversation, it was now.

  Matthea’s house was on Nob Hill, at the top of an impossibly steep street. I rang the bell and we waited nervously on the stoop. Robinson didn’t even know what we were doing here, and I refused to tell him. If you ask me, a person doesn’t get enough good surprises in life. Birthday, Christmas… that’s only two times a year to count on.

  But when the front door opened, I was even more surprised than Robinson. Since Matthea North and I had so much in common childhood-wise, I guess I thought she’d look like an older version of me: slender, medium-sized, with the full lips and wide-set eyes of a beauty-queen mother somehow diluted into a slightly less remarkable prettiness.

  Matthea looked like Bilbo Baggins. In a Gypsy costume. Under five feet tall, bedecked in scarves and necklaces, she reached up to take my hand. “You must be Axi,” she said. Her green eyes, set deep in rosy cheeks, positively twinkled at me.

  I swallowed. “Yes!” I said brightly. “Robinson, this is… the one and only Matthea North.”

  He turned toward her, smiling his wide, gorgeous grin. “Hey, you wrote that book—the one about the town even worse than ours.” If he was fazed by her clothes, he didn’t look it.

  Matthea laughed. Older ladies love Robinson.

  We followed her into the darkness of her home, and already she was chattering about how Mark Twain never said the famous line about how the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco, but he should have, because it was absolutely Arctic today; how birdsong had evolved over decades to compete with the sound of traffic, and weren’t those sparrows outside just deafeningly loud; how she’d gotten a bad fortune in her cookie from Lucky Feng’s, but did we know that it was the Japanese who’d actually invented the fortune cookie?

  She motioned for us to sit on a dusty-looking Victorian couch. “I loved your short story about that old deli, Axi,” she said, “the one about that girl and boy who are best friends but maybe something more—”

  “Oh, yeah, thanks,” I said hurriedly, not wanting to cut her off but needing to.

  Robinson cleared his throat. I could practically hear him thinking: You wrote a story about Ernie’s? And us?

  I ignored him. Of course I’d written about him. He was my best friend, wasn’t he? The one who knew me like no other. The one I thought about approximately 75 percent of my waking hours, if not more.

  “Thanks for letting us come over,” I said. “I really wanted Robinson to meet you. I can’t get him to finish any book, ever, but he read yours in a night.”

  “It gave me… insights,” Robinson said, looking pointedly at me.

  Matthea laughed. “Axi and I share certain background details, don’t we? But Axi’s much smarter than I was at her age.”

  “She’s ornerier,” Robinson said. “That’s for sure.”

  I kicked him in the shins—lightly.

  Matthea produced a pitcher of iced tea and a plate of lemon cake, and Robinson helped himself to two slices.

  “So, how’s the writing going, Axi?” Matthea asked.

  “Um, not much at all lately,” I admitted, reaching for my own slice of cake. “Please tell me there’s some secret to keeping at it. Not giving up. Believing in yourself. That kind of stuff.” I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice.

  Matthea sighed and began to braid the fringe on her scarf. “My dear, there is no universal secret. There’s only the secret each writer discovers for herself. The path forward.”

  I could feel my shoulders slump. Of course. There’s no such thing as a magic bullet. Who doesn’t know that?

  “Are you aware that European kings used to have their hearts buried separately from their bodies?” Matthea asked.

  “Um… no,” I said, and I saw Robinson raise his eyebrows with that slight grin I loved. Clearly, he was amused by my weirdo writing mentor.

  “It was a way of offering their hearts, literally and figuratively, to their country. Forever.” Matthea sighed. “Macabre practice, if you ask me. But I like it as a metaphor. You give your country—which, in this case, is your story—your heart.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.” No wonder I hadn’t written the Great American Novel yet. My heart was still firmly planted in my chest. Wasn’t it?

  “Be patient,” Matthea said gently. “Keep writing, but keep dreaming, too. Remember that inspiration struck the brilliant mathematician Archimedes when he was in the bathtub.”

  And inspiration struck the brilliant physicist Richard Feynman when he was in a strip club, I thought. (I may be failing AP physics, but I did learn a thing or two.)

  That’s pretty much how the rest of the conversation went. We didn’t ponder the unpredictability of love or the mysteries of the universe, but since we touched on everything from the mummified hearts of European kings to Einstein’s theory that creativity was more important than knowledge, I felt like it was time well spent.

  After a fourth piece of lemon cake, though, Robinson excused himself, saying he needed to get a bit of fresh air. I watched his retreating back, feeling a vague sense of unease. My body gave an involunta
ry shiver, and Matthea looked at me piercingly. We continued our chat, but later, as we were leaving, she put her hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  For one tiny millisecond, I wanted to tell her everything. The real reason behind what Robinson and I were doing, which I hadn’t even wanted to admit to myself this whole time. It didn’t actually have anything to do with me escaping my boring life in Klamath Falls. But I couldn’t tell her.

  “I’m great,” I said.

  “And your friend?” She squinted toward Robinson, who was leaning against the car, staring down the hill toward the bay. He brought his arms up and almost seemed to hug himself, as if he were cold. Or as if, for a moment, he felt the need to reassure himself about something.

  “He’s great, too,” I insisted. Why are you lying, Axi?

  Matthea picked a yellow flower from one of the vines around her door and tucked it behind my ear. “Give your story your heart,” she repeated.

  It sounded reasonable enough. But when I looked at Robinson, I knew I’d already given my heart to something—to someone—else.

  11

  IF I DIDN’T KNOW IT WAS MEDICALLY impossible, I’d say that Robinson was born with a wrench in his hand. Or that as a baby, he sucked on a spark plug instead of a pacifier.

  This gearhead gene was why I was taking him to Torrance, California, next—because it certainly wasn’t my kind of place. Torrance breeds NASCAR drivers and semiprofessional cage fighters. (Ugh.) It has a racetrack, a giant rock ’n’ roll car show, and about five hundred stores that sell car parts.

  In other words, for a guy like Robinson, it’s the Promised Land. The kind of place he had to—he deserved to—experience.

  When we pulled into the parking lot of the Cal-Am Speedway the following afternoon, Robinson sucked in his breath and gave me his crooked, perfect grin.

  “Axi Moore,” he said, “you are greatest person I have ever known.”

  “You just wait,” I said, smiling back.

  I steered him away from the glass atrium entrance and toward a side door propped open with a rolled-up copy of Car and Driver.

  Brad Sewell was waiting for us in the pit. “Alexandra,” he said, stepping forward to give me a bear hug. “Long time no see, kiddo.”

  Robinson clearly wanted to know how this beefy dude with a Dale Earnhardt tattoo and I were acquainted. But I simply said, “Robinson, this is Brad. Brad, this is my friend Robinson.”

  “Nice to meet ya,” Brad said. “Let me walk you through a few things, and then we’ll get you in the cockpit.”

  It was only then that Robinson understood what he was actually here for, and he looked like he might spontaneously combust from excitement.

  He turned to me. “It’s like Say Anything,” he whispered.

  We’d watched that old movie a hundred times. One of the best scenes is when the geeky main character takes his reluctant date, one of the Beautiful People, to an art museum after hours. He can do this because he’s friends with the museum guard, and because he’s hung a painting of the Beautiful Girl in one of the galleries.

  Today was my museum moment for Robinson, but better. I’d bribed Brad with a chunk of my savings, and I’d shamelessly pulled the “I knew you when our sisters were in the cancer ward” card.

  Brad began talking gibberish to Robinson, something about “initial turn-in” and “apex of the curve” and “neutral throttle on the corner.” But Robinson was nodding confidently, and then he was climbing into a flame-resistant Nomex suit, and Brad was fitting him with a radio helmet and snapping him into a five-point harness.

  “Any fool can speed on the straightaway; it’s the curves that make a racer,” Brad said over his shoulder.

  “Oh, sure,” I said. Like I knew what he was talking about—I couldn’t even drive to the grocery store.

  Robinson revved the engine and then pulled out of the pit. He didn’t go that fast at first, but he must have gotten the hang of it after a while, because the engine got louder and the car became a green blur flashing past us again and again.

  “So how’s your little sister?” I asked Brad.

  “She’s in remission. Two years now.”

  “That’s fantastic,” I said. Lizzie Sewell had been really nice to Carole Ann. Lizzie, it seems, was one of the lucky ones.

  “And what about you?” Brad asked, and I pretended not to hear. Fortunately, just at that moment, the bright green car came screeching to a halt on the track outside the pit, and Robinson opened the door.

  “Axi, you have got to get in here!” he yelled.

  I looked over at Brad. I was hoping he’d tell me that the other seat belt was broken or that he was fresh out of helmets.

  “There’s a suit over there that’ll fit you,” he said.

  And that’s how I found myself in the passenger seat of a custom Chevy race car, outfitted like Danica Patrick and quivering with excitement.

  “On your mark, get set, go!” yelled Robinson, and we peeled out onto the track, zero to sixty in about a millisecond.

  The g-force slammed me against the seat, and the stunning, brain-shaking roar of the engine filled my ears. I could feel the noise as much as hear it. It vibrated in my chest and shook me deep in my guts.

  I couldn’t help it: in joy and terror, I screamed.

  I stopped, though, because I couldn’t even hear myself. And then I screamed some more.

  We came toward the first curve, and I noticed the tall chain-link fence that arced inward over the track. Somehow I understood—even though I was totally incapable of higher thought, of abstract things such as words—that the fence was to keep us from splattering our body parts all over the bleachers in a crash.

  The car had thick mesh netting instead of windows, so the wind came rushing in, hot and smelling like asphalt and oil. I couldn’t see how fast we were going, and I didn’t want to know.

  We banked around the curve, the engine squealing.

  As we pulled into the straightaway and Robinson hit hard on the throttle, suddenly my vision seemed to narrow. It was like looking through a tunnel. Everything on either side of me blurred and faded, and all that mattered was the airspace in front of us, and how lightning fast we were going to blast through it.

  My body was singing with fear and happiness and an incredible feeling of being completely alive in the moment. I was no longer Alexandra Jane Moore—I was a supernova strapped into a bucket seat.

  Go, go, go! I thought wildly. Because screaming, after all, was useless.

  We took three more sound barrier–shattering laps, and when we finally slowed, I turned to Robinson with wide and no doubt crazy-looking eyes.

  “Oh my God,” I said, pulling off my helmet and shaking out my sweat-drenched hair. “Oh. My. God.”

  Robinson cackled madly. Brad came over and said, “Whaddja think?”

  It took Robinson a moment to answer, probably because he had to wait for his brain to stop vibrating. Then he said, “I might have just had the best time of my life.”

  I started laughing like an idiot, because that was exactly what we’d come for, what I’d wanted to give him.

  Carpe diem. Because today, after all, was all we knew we had.

  12

  “I’M STANDING ON TOM CRUISE,” ROBINSON yelled. “Take my picture!”

  “You’re on his star, Scalawag,” I said. But I snapped the photo anyway: dark-eyed Robinson, handsome as any movie star, dressed like a hipster lumberjack. Even in Southern California, he couldn’t give up the flannel.

  We were fresh off the Cal-Am racetrack, still hopped up on the experience. Hollywood was a hop, skip, and a jump up the 110 from Torrance, so that’s where we went next.

  Of course we had to go straight to the Walk of Fame. While Robinson ogled the street performers (buskers, hustlers, and dudes dressed like Iron Man and Captain Jack Sparrow), I dashed around taking photos of the names I knew and loved: Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, James Dean… and, okay, Drew Barrymore and Jennif
er Aniston, because it’s 2013, people, and not all good movies are in black and white.

  “This place is nuts,” Robinson said, hopping over to Snow White’s star. “Look, now I’m on top of a fairy tale.”

  “ ‘I used to be Snow White, but I drifted,’ ” I said. Then I cocked a hip and gave my best sultry wink—like Mae West, whose line I’d just stolen.

  Then I turned, and together we walked up Highland Avenue, toward the golden Hollywood Hills and the giant, iconic white sign. Our destination: the Hollywood Hotel. Robinson didn’t know it, though, because I wanted to keep surprising him. The delight on his face—the way his eyes went wide when he was taken aback—I wanted to keep seeing that for as long as I possibly could.

  The fact that we would be alone together in a hotel room had nothing to do with my decision.

  (Quit laughing!)

  When Robinson saw me striding up to the reservation desk, he said, “Do we have enough money for this?”

  I wasn’t sure if we did, but it didn’t matter. “My back can’t take another night in the car, and I am not camping out with those shirtless dudes I saw in the park.” (If I couldn’t tell him the truth, didn’t that seem like a good enough reason?)

  “I thought that guy with the python looked nice,” Robinson joked. “But hey, I’m down with creature comforts. Are we gonna get room service?”

  I shook my head. “Nice try,” I said. “Spendthrift. Profligate.”

  “I totally don’t know what those words mean,” Robinson said, “but I’m not the one who booked us the expensive hotel room.”

  We rode the mirrored elevator to the fifteenth floor in silence. We didn’t meet each other’s eyes, either in person or in our reflections. Did Robinson feel shy, the way I suddenly did? I didn’t know, because I couldn’t look at him.

  A minute later, we opened a door onto a spacious cream-colored room, with a giant flat-screen TV, floor-to-ceiling windows, a little seating area, and one giant boat of a bed.

  I felt my breath catch in my throat. Robinson and I had slept in a tent, as close together as spoons. And this bed was so stupidly huge that we could be on either side of it and not touch at all. And yet—it felt way more intimate.