Three Day Summer (5 page)

chapter 14

Michael

Two enormous brown eyes are staring into mine. Thick lashes frame them. They look like feathers. Wait, no. They
are
feathers. They are the brown circular orbs found in peacock feathers. And now they are multiplying. There were two, now four. Only this bird is red and white, with thin stripes like rivulets of deep red blood going through every feather.

Her plumage is fanning out, so many eyes and rivers. It's impossible for it to be contained.

“Tell me about your family, Michael.”

Oh my God. She knows my name. This beautiful, rare bird is talking to me.

I have to do it. Very softly, I reach out and touch one of the feathers. It's like silk.

I snap my hand away like it's been burned. Idiot. I'm too impure to touch the bird. Don't I know that?

“I'm sorry,” I mumble, hoping she is forgiving.

“It's all right,” the bird responds calmly. “Everything will be fine. Just tell me. Start with your parents. What are their names?”

“Charles and Annemarie Michaelson.”

“And do you have any siblings?”

“Just me. Michael Michaelson. Michael M. Michaelson. The M stands for Mitchell.”

The bird lets out a small coo. A laugh? “You're joking.”

“Never!” I yell, terrified. What happens to those who joke with a creature such as this? The words “fiery death” keep blinking on and off in my brain. “Please, I'm sorry. I wasn't.” I think I can feel hot tears crawling inside my face and up my tear ducts.

“No, no,” she says. “It's okay. Please don't worry.”

One of her feather eyes bends down and touches my arm. I inhale sharply. It feels like a balm, reaching into my skin and drawing itself to the water in my tear ducts like a dowsing rod. Everything suddenly becomes cool and calm.

“I like it. Michael Michaelson. How did you get here, Michael?” she asks.

So I tell the bird everything. About my mother's purple Chrysler, picking up Amanda and the girls and Evan. I tell her about yesterday's burger. I hope she's proud that I didn't eat bird. Never again. Not now that I've been touched by the feathers of a goddess.

Time has stopped again. This gorgeous creature has been with me for only a millisecond. No, nine days. No, thirty-two minutes.

chapter 15

Cora

It's been six hours since Michael Michaelson was dropped off at my tent. His friends have not come back for him. He sits in a corner now while I tend to other patients. I've been keeping my eye on him, though, and it seems to me like his gaze has become just a bit more focused in the past half hour.

The sun is still blazing high in the sky when we all hear it: the very first strains of music. I look at my watch. It's a few minutes before five p.m. Quite a few anxious patients informed me that the concert was supposed to start hours ago. I can hear some of them start fidgeting now. When I look up, my eye catches Michael's. His face breaks into a grin.

I hand the cup of tea to my latest freak-out patient and walk over to him.

“How are you doing?” I ask.

He shakes his shaggy blond hair. “Okay. A little . . . groggy. You still look a little . . . odd.” He blushes then, the pink of his skin rooting to his peach fuzz and reminding me even more of the summer fruit.

“I get that a lot,” I joke. I lower my voice conspiratorially. “It must be because I'm part Seneca.”

“Really?” Michael's eyes get just a little brighter. “What part?”

“My grandmother,” I say, surprised he's interested.

“Ah. Far out,” he responds. “Do you look like her?”

Sometimes, I feel self-conscious about how obviously different I look. When I was younger, I'd compare my summer tan to my brothers' and, every now and then, wish mine wasn't quite so much darker. But I don't feel that way when I tell Michael yes, not with the way he beams at me.

We can hear some lyrics now, something about marching to the fields of Korea.

“Do you know who this is?” I ask Michael.

“I'm not sure. I thought Sweetwater was supposed to perform first, but this doesn't sound like them,” he responds.

“It's Richie Havens,” a blond girl drinking one of my teas offers from a corner of the tent. “I need to get out of here so I can see him.”

I walk over to her with my penlight. “Okay, let me see your eyes,” I say. A little glassy but focusing okay. “You feel like you can walk?”

“Definitely,” she says.

“Okay, take it easy.”

“Peace, sister.” She gives me a hug, before taking out a pair of blue-tinted sunglasses from her shirt pocket and reaching the front flap of the tent in six long strides.

“Hey,” a voice says softly from behind me. I turn around.

Michael is smiling sheepishly. “Think I'm okay to go too?”

I shine the light in his eyes, and they turn them an even lighter green, like the peridot in a ring my mother has.

“I think you're okay,” I say.

“Great. Thanks. For everything. Sorry I was so messed up.”

“I've seen worse,” I offer.

He stares at me then for a moment too long and I wonder if he's maybe not okay to leave.

“Okay,” he finally says. “Bye.”

“Bye,” I say, and turn around to busy myself. I can always cut more gauze strips.

I go to the bin where they're kept and grab the scissors from one of the makeshift shelves.

“Um . . . your name?” comes from somewhere right beside my ear.

I jump, nearly poking myself in the cheek with the scissors. I turn around to see Michael staring at me apologetically again.

“Sorry,” he says right away. “Oh, man, I feel like ‘sorry' has been half of all the words I've said to you.”

I laugh. There have been a lot of other words, but he probably doesn't remember them. Not sure he wants to, either.

“It's okay.”

“Kara?” he says to me. “Is that right?”

“Cora, actually.”

“Sorry! Aaaah!” he slaps himself in the forehead.

“It's okay. I'm actually impressed you almost remembered. You get a B+ in freaking out.”

He grins at me. I notice his two upper teeth overlap slightly. “So, Cora . . . would it be too forward of me to ask when your shift is done here?”

“Um . . . seven . . .” I hesitate. I was not expecting that. Nor am I expecting what comes out of my mouth next. “But you have to go find your girlfriend again, right?”

He blushes once more and his smile droops. “Amanda,” he stammers. “Yes. Her.”

“Amanda,” I repeat, picturing the back of her head as I saw it that morning, in Michael's tight grasp. Then, for no reason at all, I grin like an idiot.

“Okay,” he says. “Well, thank you. Again. And, for good measure, sorry.” He gives me a smile before turning around and walking out of my tent.

chapter 16

Michael

Cora still has a couple of feathers sprouting from her arm when I leave her, but I choose not to bring this up with her. She's right. I need to find Amanda. And Evan, Catherine, Suzie, and Rob. I guess.

I slowly move toward the music. At certain moments, I can see trails of color undulating in time to Richie Havens's voice. He's singing a slowed-down version of “Strawberry Fields Forever” now, and some of the thousands of people around me leave pink and orange hues in their wake, including a shirtless, redheaded guy dressed in tight white pants who is gently swaying with a sheep.

“I still think the Beatles are coming, man,” I hear a guy in a long purple tunic say to his friend, who just shrugs noncommittally. My sources would say: wishful thinking. Rumor has it they're on the verge of a breakup.

There are all sorts of people around me: short, tall, dark, pale, redheaded, blond, brunette, bald. A lot of people around my age, but also children and some old folks. Even when I visited Times Square with my family three years ago, I never saw this many people all in one place.

There is one problem. None of them are my friends. And as I slowly trudge my way closer to the music, I cannot fathom how I will ever find them. This is an ocean of heads and bodies. How can you find five specific drops of water in an ocean? Just when I start mulling that impossibility, I catch a glimpse of red and white from the corner of my eye, and immediately whip around. Only when I see that it's some stranger in a striped dress do I remember that Cora is not the one I'm supposed to be looking for. “Get it together, Michaelson,” I mutter.

Eventually, I make it as close as I think I can get to the stage for now. It sits at the bottom of a hill, level with me, but I see that a lot of the audience is camped out on various parts of the slope, staring down into the stage like a crystal ball. Havens is a hazy orange blob who stands at the center in front of a microphone and, I think, is brandishing a guitar.

It's taken me all this time to realize that I am actually inside the festival, despite the lack of tickets. I silently thank Evan—wherever he is—for however he made that happen.

And then I just close my eyes for a moment and listen. As Havens sings about freedom, I think about my own. Freedom from my parents. From Amanda. From school, and the war, and even the limits I put on myself. Why can't I be anything, go anywhere? What is there to stop me?

Thinking about going anywhere only brings one image to my mind. I open my eyes and slowly turn my head to find it: the yellow medical tent. It's far away now, even farther than the stage. But somehow I realize the thing that's been bobbing up and down just below the surface of my thoughts is the long dark hair of a part-Seneca girl.

I look around and, after a few moments, spot a girl with a slim Timex on her wrist. “Excuse me, could you give me the time?” I ask her.

“Six thirty,” she says gleefully, her eyes shining with the same sort of warmth toward mankind I can see in most of the faces surrounding me.

“Thanks,” I say, reflecting her feelings back at her.

I amble back to my yellow landmark, trying to take as close to half an hour as possible, and not even looking for the flash of blond hair I'm supposed to find. Richie is singing about freedom and this is mine, a yellow that is full of possibility instead of weight.

chapter 17

Cora

I bandage up my last bloody foot (these people really need to stop walking around barefoot) and tell Ruth, who relieved Anna about twenty minutes ago, that I'm off for the day. She gives me a brief nod of acknowledgment before turning back to her latest patient, a guy who must be in his sixties at least. I admire his tenacity even as I think him a great big idiot for being in the middle of this overcrowded field at his age.

There's music when I walk out of the tent, but no singing. Instead, I hear a gentle voice reverberating throughout the fields. Some guru is giving a speech about celestial sounds and the universe and vibrations. “The future of the whole world is in your hands,” his voice echoes across the field.

“Hey,” a voice says near my ear. I turn around and see, to my surprise, Peach Fuzz.

“Michael,” I say. “What are you doing here? Are you feeling okay?” I squint into his eyes. They look clear and bright.

He laughs. “Yes. I came to enlist your services. Though not your nursing services.”

I stare at him blankly and he clears his throat nervously. “I just mean,” he continues, “I thought I'd invite you to the concert.”

“Invite me?” I can't help laughing. “How kind of you.” The roots of his stubble turn pink. I really didn't mean to embarrass him. “What about your friends?” I ask, remembering the blonde again.

“I can't find them,” he confesses.

“Ah,” I say. Being invited to a concert I'm already at by a boy who is only doing it because he's missing his girlfriend. This might be a new low.

“Wait,” Michael says, touching my wrist. “That's not what I meant. I mean, me not finding my friends is not why I want to go to the concert with you.”

“It isn't?”

“No,” he says solemnly. “I figured it would be good to have a nurse around in case I have a flashback.” He waits for a beat before breaking into a grin. “I'm just being an ass,” he admits.

“I'll say.” But I can't help smiling at him. “Anyway, I'm not a nurse yet. Just a candy striper.” I indicate my ridiculous uniform.

“Well, you're good at it,” he replies easily. “And seriously, I would just like to listen to some music with you. Is that all right?”

I admit there is something sheepdog-adorable about him as he stands there staring down at me with smiling green eyes, both hands jammed into the pockets of his bell-bottoms.

But then I think of all the reasons to say no. It's been a long day already. Dinner is waiting for me at home. Besides, how will I tell my parents if I decide to stay? There's a small pay-phone bank nearby but I can see how far the lines for that stretch back. It'll take three hours just waiting in that line to call them. And Dad will definitely be sending out a search party by that point.

“N . . .” I say the letter, intending it to start the word no. But then it makes a different, heart-sinking word. “Ned.” He's walking toward me and waving. Michael turns around to look at him.

“Hey there,” Ned says. “Getting ready to pack it in for the night?”

He smiles at me and my lungs hurt. Okay, so it's probably a different organ that's in the vicinity of my lungs, but it somehow makes me feel less pathetic to think I spontaneously have a respiratory problem.

But then Ned's trademark know-it-all smile steals across his face. “See? They're not checking tickets at all. Everybody can get in. Like I said.”

My respiratory problem is interrupted by a surge of anger that jolts the next words out of my mouth. “Hey, Ned. Are you heading back home soon?”

“Right now, I think. I can walk you home if you'd like.”

From the corner of my eye, I can see Michael staring rather intensely at Ned and, I have to admit, a part of me is feeling very pleased about it.

“No need,” I say slowly. “Actually, I was wondering if you could do me a favor. Could you just stop by my parents' house and let them know that I'm going to be at the concert for a while? I don't want them to worry.”

Ned's eyebrows furrow in confusion. “You are?” he asks.

“Yup.”

“But I thought you said—”

“See you later!” I cut him off as I grab Michael's arm and saunter away toward the stage. I have to settle for imagining Ned's stunned face since I won't give him the satisfaction of turning around to look at it.

Pompous ass. I will get over him somehow and my alveoli will go back to properly distributing oxygen and carbon dioxide. And in the meantime, I'm going to stop thinking of all the reasons to say no to the cute boy who has not really asked me out at all.

This is a weekend for yeses. And thousands of people agree with me as I hear them chanting, in unison, “Hari Om, Hari Om” over and over again. I don't know the language but I somehow know exactly what they are saying.

Yes. Yes. Yes.