Three Day Summer by Sarvenaz Tash
To Graig—
for all the summers of love
(and winters, falls, and springs, too)
Thursday, August 14
chapter 1
Cora
“You. Are. A. Candy. Cane.”
The boy grips me by the arms, his enormous glassy eyes staring right at my chest through his long bangs.
Under normal circumstances, I would feel terrified and violated. Instead, I roll my eyes.
“He means candy striper,” Anna says as she zips across the tent, bringing paper cups of water to the zoned-out patients slumped against the far side.
“Yeah, I get it,” I say before calmly extracting the boy’s fingers from my arms. “Sir,” I say as firmly as I can. “Have a seat.”
Of course, there are no available chairs to sit on, but the ground is probably a sea of fluffy marshmallows to this guy. At least, based on the way he momentarily forgets he has knees and goes crashing to the floor.
“He’ll feel that in the morning,” Anna says as she zips back.
“He’s not feeling it now,” I mutter as the boy stares at the hem of my dress with a goofy grin plastered on his face. He’s drooling.
“Mmmmm . . . candy.”
It’s only eleven a.m. on Thursday. The concert hasn’t even started yet.
It’s going to be a very long weekend.
chapter 2
Michael
“We need to be there, Michael. Have you seen this lineup? It’s going to be the event of the year. Maybe even the decade.” Amanda had been flushed with excitement when she’d shown me the newspaper ad a month ago.
The thing was that I agreed with her. At the time, I was just too pissed off at her to let her know that. She’d thrown a fit in front of my friends just the night before, getting hysterical because I’d casually said I didn’t know how I felt about maybe getting drafted.
“How can you not know?” she’d screamed. “They are going to drag you into a swamp and make you kill people all in the twisted name of capitalism. Your apathy is the problem, Michael.” Then she’d stalked off, expecting me to follow.
Which, of course, I had. Not without a few choice words from my friends. “Make sure you get your pecker back from her purse, dude,” was the one ringing in my ear the loudest by the time I reached her.
Standing by my mom’s car, Amanda had berated me again before dissolving into tears at the thought that she cared more about my life than I did. Unfortunately, Amanda was beautiful when she cried, especially in that moment, with the teardrops clinging to the curve of her cheek, glittering with the reflection of starlight. Before I knew it, I was kissing her and apologizing, telling her that it was going to be okay.
But in the glare of daylight, I was annoyed that I’d let her spew some nonsense I wasn’t even sure she believed in—she’d probably just been rummaging for an excuse to make me chase after her. And I’d given in to her drama.
I didn’t want to do it again, especially as she’d clutched the festival ad and said dramatically, “And if you don’t take me, we are over. Once and for all.” She’d turned to another Amanda standby: the puffed-out lips move.
Yes! That’s what I wanted. To be over. Only . . . every time I got up the nerve to try to tell her that, I’d catch a glimpse of her blueberry-colored eyes or the way her soft, tanned skin peeked through something she was wearing and then we’d be kissing and . . . I couldn’t do it. In fact, I was pretty sure I’d never be able to. Let’s face it, blaming my pecker was not entirely inaccurate.
But then she’d actually shown me the lineup for this festival. Jefferson Airplane, Canned Heat, the Grateful Dead, and Jimi freaking Hendrix on one bill? 3 DAYS OF PEACE & MUSIC, the ad promised. Three whole days. Not to mention it was all happening less than two hundred miles away from us.
I looked at Amanda’s big blue eyes and the flower she’d drawn on her perfect face. She knew these bands almost as well as I did; she knew what having them all in one place would mean. And I thought, maybe this would be an ideal reason not to want to break up. Maybe we would go and bond over all that glorious music, like we had in the beginning, and I’d realize that the inside of Amanda matched the outside after all, and, for the love of all that is holy, we would finally do it.
Which is how I find myself driving my mom’s purple Chrysler Crown Imperial, Amanda in the front seat, her friends Suzie and Catherine giggling in the back with my friend Evan. The car is a boat, which is why the large-and-in-charge Evan can fit back there with two other people. At six foot five and with 1) the charm and sense of humor of a Smothers Brother and 2) a seemingly bottomless stash of hash at his disposal, Evan is popular with everybody. But especially the ladies.
It’s like two different worlds happening in the front and back of the car. A full-out riotous party in the rear and all the tension of the Cuban missile crisis up where I am.
Amanda is complaining about how hot it is. She’s been doing so for the past hour, during which we’ve been crawling along Route 17B. I keep looking nervously at the hood, waiting for smoke to come billowing out. It wouldn’t be the first time it’s overheated. Something Amanda also knows and keeps repeating.