There is movement behind her. Someone’s at the flap of the tent, and Cora immediately gets up like she can sense it. A professional through and through. “Look, I have to get back to work,” she says. She goes to a bin next to me and takes out two white pills. “Aspirin,” she says. “I’d give you ice for your eye, but we’re out.”
“Cora . . . ,” I start, but I don’t even know how to finish that sentence.
Either way, she doesn’t let me. “Look,” she says again. I’m starting to hate that word. “Amanda’s waiting for you outside. She’s worried about you. And also . . . we really need the stretcher. Besides, someone is playing out there and you don’t want to miss it, do you?”
I look at her, frustrated because there seems to be nothing I can say to make her listen to me. To make her understand.
“Who is playing, by the way?” she asks gently.
I listen carefully to the strains of music drifting through. “I think it’s Joe Cocker,” I finally say.
She smiles at me then, wholeheartedly. “I knew you would know,” she says. She offers a hand to help me up.
I begrudgingly take it. At least it’s an excuse to touch her one more time. She leads me to the exit, and I feel emboldened by the gravity of the situation. And by the fact that I knew it was Joe Cocker even after being punched unconscious.
“Wait,” I say. “Can I just . . . can I get a good-bye kiss?”
Cora looks at me and the smile disappears. She sighs in frustration. I see her look around the tent at one of the older nurses who is busy with a patient. Then I see her stare at someone else. Only then do I realize that her ex has been here the whole time, the one with the glasses. He’s pretending to be busy, but we can both see that he’s glancing over our way every chance he gets.
Suddenly I’m angry. Sure, I’m going back to Somerville and I momentarily have a girlfriend, but what bullshit excuse does he have for letting her go in the first place?
Cora’s looking back at me then. She leans over and I close my eyes out of habit. I plan to savor every moment of this. Only all I get is a brief touch on my cheek. A peck. My eyes fly open again.
“Good-bye, Michael,” Cora says.
Her hand is on my back and for a moment, I think she’s going to pull me in for a real kiss.
Instead, she uses it to firmly guide me right out of the tent.
chapter 59
Cora
I don’t look outside to see Michael’s reunion with Amanda. I just take a deep breath and try to gather myself. My face is warm and, I assume, flushed.
“Cora.”
It’s Ned. God, I am so sick of boys saying my name. I turn to him with a glare he doesn’t entirely deserve. “Not now, Ned,” I say, and sweep past him looking for something to busy myself with. Something medical.
He frowns but doesn’t come after me. I tell Anna I’m ready for my next assignment, and she sends me over to an old man who needs his vitals checked.
When I say old, I mean it. He must at least be in his seventies if he’s a day. I wonder what on earth he’s doing here. His arms are bony and spotted and his back curves like a question mark in a white sleeveless shirt. But there’s a spark in his eye that tells me he’s at the festival by design.
He tells me his name is Ray.
“Was just having a little trouble breathing,” he explains when I ask him how he’s feeling.
I listen to his lungs.
“And how old are you?” I work in casually.
He looks at me and grins. “Why? Are you interested?” He laughs heartily at his own joke. “I’m just kidding. You’re definitely young enough to be my granddaughter. How about we leave the age thing at that?”
“Okay by me,” I say. “Any other medical history I should know about?”
Ray tells me he had a heart attack a few years ago and then tells me some of the medications he’s on. I write it all down on his chart.
“I couldn’t miss all this, though. Not the music,” he says.
I stop and stare at him then, at this stranger six decades my senior who suddenly sounds so familiar, and I’m staggered by a rush of thoughts and memories that blow through me. Of Michael.
Just a few minutes ago, he was here, pouring his heart out to me, and I just brushed it aside. Told him we had a nice day, like it meant nothing more than that. Like he meant nothing more than that. When really, if I let myself think about how he said he felt around me, I felt exactly the same way. Like I was made of more than I thought but also lighter at the same time. And like someone believed in me.
Drops of water fall onto the chart I’m writing on. I’m crying.
Oh, no.
This is no good. No good at all. Crying for me is like showing anger. I don’t do it very often but when I do . . . it’s usually pretty epic. And uncontrollable. I can’t even remember the last time I let myself cry in front of anybody.
The hiccups have already started, and Ray peers up at me.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I mean to say yes but instead, I let out a huge wail.
I see Anna look at me in alarm and walk over. Out of nowhere, Ned has suddenly popped up at my other side.
In the meantime, the snot has started flowing freely from my nose and I am officially heaving. Loudly.
“Oh my God. Cora, are you okay?” Anna asks.
I make the mistake of trying to talk again, and bleat one more time. Then I make the mistake of trying to apologize for my bleat, with the undesired result of a loud honk. I shut my mouth and clasp my hands over it.
Anna has never seen me cry and she looks understandably horrified.
She takes the chart away from me and hands it to Ned. “Okay, you can’t work like this right now. Let’s start by breathing deeply.”
I shake my head, not wanting to open my mouth again. My whole body is racked by sobs.
“Yes, you have to breathe,” she says. “Here, put your head between your legs.”
She helps me bend from the waist as I make gasping noises.
“Cora.” I hear Ned’s panicked voice and I shake my head violently. Funnily enough, he has never seen me cry before either. The night we broke up, only the hens were around for the result.
“Ned, please attend to the patient,” blessed Anna says before turning back to me.
She strokes my back and gently helps me to stand tall again. She looks me in the eye with a small frown. “Cora,” she says quietly. “I have to ask you. Did you take anything?”
I shake my head no before being racked by another hiccup.
“Okay, then what . . .” Anna looks at me and tilts her head. And in that moment, I think she understands. I suddenly appreciate that she was once a seventeen-year-old girl too. “You figured out what you want,” she declares.
I take my hands slowly away from my mouth and open it cautiously, to make sure no strange noises escape. “I . . . think so.” My voice comes out as a croak. “I think I have to go.” I hear the scratching of Ned’s pen stop. He’s staring at me too.
“Of course you do,” Anna says.
“I’m sorry to leave. I’ve been no help at all this weekend,” I babble as I untie my candy striper apron. “I’m sorry.”
Anna just smiles at me. “There’ll be plenty for you to do at the hospital later.”
Ned doesn’t take his eyes off me as I leave the tent, but I barely notice. I feel a heady combination of foolish and giddy; I feel invincible and simultaneously fit to burst with emotion, like I’m one pinprick away from becoming unbound.
Outside, I search in the immediate vicinity of the tent but Michael and his friends are gone. I head in the direction of the stage, knowing that I have to find him.
chapter 60
Michael
Joe Cocker’s gritty voice is pouring sand into my wounded soul.
> We’re not too close to the stage; we’re near the top of the hill, in fact. But the day is clear and I can see him pretty well, a thin man in striped blue pants roaring into the microphone with the most gorgeous primal scream I’ve ever heard.
I should be reveling in it. Instead, I’m thinking of everything that hurts, starting with my eye. Deserved pain, really. And it feels better than my insides right now, anyway, so I keep focusing on it.
Amanda has continued to pretend that we never started a conversation in the woods. She is talking excitedly about Cocker, how he’s palpitating energy. How it’s radiating up the hill and through all our fellow festivalgoers, who sway and twirl with him. She’s right. But I can’t feel it myself. Everything looks duller. It might be my eye. But I doubt it.
Amanda loves Joe Cocker. She loves a lot of the same music I love. I used to think it was a miracle. And now it’s starting to dawn on me that it doesn’t really matter, does it? That just because we like some of the same things, or just because I think she’s so beautiful, it’s not enough to keep us together. Or it shouldn’t be at any rate. Because that’s not really what all these love songs, some of my very favorite ones, are actually about. They’re about how someone makes you feel. Maybe, I’d even go so far as to say, they’re about how someone makes you feel about yourself.
I have to finish what I started, even if it seems pointless. Even if I never see Cora again. I just can’t keep up the charade of something, not when I’ve experienced the real version of it. It’s disrespectful to everything I feel.
I move closer to Amanda and say her name softly. She pretends she doesn’t hear me, continues to stare down at the stage in rapture.
“Amanda,” I say again, more firmly. “Please. I need to talk to you.”
She turns to me then, her gaze steady, her neck high, as if her perfect face is daring me to go through with it. “What is it, Michael?”
“What we were talking about before . . . before . . . you know.” I gesture to my eye.
She continues to gaze at me, her expression blank. Does she really have no idea what I’m talking about? Do I have to start all over? I clear my throat. “I think, sometimes, two people aren’t really meant to be together, you know?”
“Happier,” she says slowly, out of nowhere.
“What?” I ask, bewildered.
“Before, you said we should be happier.” So she does remember. “You meant happier. As in, with other people,” she says.
“Well, yeah . . . ,” I say, though I don’t think I like where this is going. Amanda is getting a black pinprick in the center of her eye. I recognize it; it comes along like the wick attached to dynamite.
“And by other people. You, of course, mean that bitch in the stripes.”
“I . . . ,” I falter. “No. I mean . . . Look, you and me . . .”
“You slept with her,” she says matter-of-factly.
“What? No,” I say. “I didn’t.”
“What did you do with her?” she asks, and her voice is calm. In fact, she is entirely still, like a cobra just about to strike.
Should I lie? I should lie. “I . . . nothing.” But then I decide maybe I should do one honorable thing amid this shit fest. As my girlfriend, though soon to be ex, Amanda deserves the truth. It’s not that bad compared to what she thought, is it? That we slept together. “We kissed,” I finally say. “That’s it.”
Amanda doesn’t move. She doesn’t say a word. She looks me up and down slowly.
And then, an arm gets pulled back, and I feel a big blow to my shoulder. “You.” Another blow. “Fucking.” And another. “Cheater.”
Soon she’s flailing, her arm getting dangerously close to my busted eye.
I deserve the beating, so I just let her have at me, doing my best to keep my face out of her way. But then, suddenly, she stops. I look up, slightly afraid of what she could possibly have in store for me next.
But she’s not looking at me. Her eyes are wide and they are staring somewhere right behind my back.
“YOU,” she screams, and she’s running up the hill behind me.
I turn around, confused until I see what she’s running toward.
Cora.
chapter 61
Cora
I am frozen. Funny, because inside I feel like a thousand birds have just been released. I’ve found Michael and I saw the whole thing. He really and truly broke up with her. Even after what I said to him.
I want to laugh.
But then, I also have an extremely angry hundred-and-thirty-pound girl stalking toward me. The malice in her eyes is a force to be reckoned with. I don’t think I’ve ever had something so deeply rage-filled directed at me before.
I take a deep breath and bring my arms up to my sides, ready to defend myself if it comes to blows. But before it gets to that, Rob grabs Amanda’s arms and holds her back. She screams in frustration.
Michael is running up now and places himself between us. “She didn’t do anything,” he keeps saying over and over again. “She didn’t . . . seriously, Amanda. Stop it, please.” Amanda continues to furiously struggle, trying to get out of Rob’s grasp. “I’m not worth it,” Michael continues. “You could get a million hotter guys. Right?”
“I CAN!” Amanda screams at him.
“I KNOW!” Michael yells back.
Amanda stares at him blankly. He’s stumped her. Then she pulls her head back and spits in Michael’s face before slumping down in Rob’s arms.
“I’m done,” she says. “I’m done. Let’s go.”
Rob looks at her suspiciously and then up at Michael, as if asking if he can let her go. Michael shrugs his consent.
Rob loosens his grip and Amanda doesn’t look any of the guys in the eye. With her head held high, she glances at her two girlfriends. And together, almost as if it was planned, they forward-march down the hill and away.
One of them thinks to look back, probably realizing that Michael is their ride. But then, in a show of solidarity, she turns around and follows her blond leader.
Evan and Rob stand there watching them, not sure what to do.
Finally, Evan turns to Michael. “Er . . . so are we all driving back home together or what?” he asks.
Sometimes, you gotta love boys for their bluntness.
Michael laughs. “I’ll meet you by the yellow medical tents. As soon as the concert’s over.”
Evan grins. “Cool, man.”
He turns around to follow in the girls’ wake. Rob walks over to me, takes my hand, and kisses it. “It’s been a pleasure,” he says as he winks at me. He pats Michael on the back with a “Good one” and saunters away.
Michael and I are left alone. Well, as alone as we can be in a sea of four hundred thousand people. He smiles at me and I smile back. Neither of us says a word until Michael takes my hand.
“Come on,” he says, and he pulls me up the hill and away from the stage.
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t care,” he says, practically skipping across the grass. “But everything seems brighter, doesn’t it?”
Not really. In fact, some mighty dark and eerie clouds are rolling in and the wind has picked up, blowing flyaway hair all around my face. But I nod anyway. Michael’s green eyes and his white teeth, they are all sparkling, like he’s made of light.
“You were wrong back there, you know,” I say as we walk, barely recognizing the airiness of my own voice.
“Probably,” Michael admits, still with a full grin. “Though about what, specifically?”
I tug at his hand to stop him. “She can’t do better than you.”
His smile gets even wider and then, following my cue, he pulls me in and kisses me, slow and sweet.
“She can,” he says when he finally pulls away. “And you definitely can. But I appreciate the ego boost.”
>
“Well,” I say, touching his chin lightly and scraping his peach fuzz with the tips of my fingers. “Maybe with someone who can grow a decent beard.”
“Hey!” he yells.
I laugh and use my hand to direct his face back to mine.
I never knew how wonderful a little rough stubble could feel against my face.
chapter 62
Michael
The skies are not reflecting my feelings at all.
Joe Cocker killed it on “With a Little Help from My Friends,” but it’s almost like the intensity of his voice brought in the storm clouds.
The wind has picked up and is whipping our clothes and hair around us. When Cocker gets off the stage, an announcement is made to hold on tight as we sit out the rainstorm.
As if on cue, a huge rumble of thunder cracks the sky wide open and it is immediately pouring.
This isn’t like the rain of Friday night, or the short sprinkle of yesterday. This is an honest-to-God deluge. We are soaked in moments.
Some people are trying to find things to go under, but most just follow the instructions of the announcements and stay where they are. A chant of “No rain” starts among the crowd and ripples out amid the claps of thunder.
I look down at Cora and I know exactly where I want to go. “Will you come with me?” I ask, taking her hand.
“Of course,” she says. She doesn’t ask where.
I lead her through mud and grass in a sort of high-knee march as our feet keep getting sucked into the wet ground.
I take her to the lake. I want my memory back. Or I want to create a new one, an even better one now that she’s truly my girl.
The lake is almost completely empty, just beautiful symmetric ripples of water as the rain pounds into it. It almost looks like the water is falling up. It’s perfect.
I try to lead us in, but Cora tugs my arm back. “Michael,” she says gently. “Lightning storm. Electrocution?”
Oh. Right. I vaguely remember something about that from science class. That’s why the lake is empty.
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