Authors: Sarvenaz Tash
chapter 46
Michael
I can't even watch Cora walk away. Amanda is asking me why I called out for her and I don't have a proper answer at all, but I know I can't continue to stare after her.
So I do something horrific.
I kiss Amanda to shut her up. It feels awful. I don't mean the kiss itself or Amanda. I mean me. Knots of guilt are forming in my throat, making it hard to breathe (especially while kissing, where breathing is already a carefully choreographed sport). I kiss Amanda and I think about Cora and wish she were the one here with me now.
Which, of course, makes me a really shitty person.
All this time, I've assumed that Amanda would eventually cheat on me. In fact, just a couple of days ago, wasn't I hoping for it? With Rob? But she didn't. It was me. Maybe she's been right to be preemptively pissed at me this whole time. Maybe I am a loser and she is, after all, way out of my league.
I've been feeling so much inner turmoil that the Grateful Dead have switched over to Creedence and I've hardly noticed. I don't think I could even tell you one thing about the Dead's set.
Now Creedence is playing “Bad Moon Rising,” a faster-paced version than they normally play, and the word “bad” cuts through the humid night air, headed straight for me.
I've been a bad boyfriend
, I think as I look at the top of Amanda's head. She seems calmer now, swaying to the music. She looks like she should be on the cover of a magazine, like the poster child for our generation or something. A little mud-speckled, a flower still drawn on her cheek, long blond hair, blue eyes. Woodstock's dream girl.
But not for me. For me, it was a striped apron and someone who couldn't even tell Hendrix from Townshend. Someone who didn't come for the music at all, who came just to help. Someone who helped
me
by making everything seem in focus for once. After all the time I've spent with Evan relishing things going fuzzy, it's funny that it's the exact opposite that has made me feel the lightest I've ever been.
But she's gone now. And what can I do about it? I can't run away from my friends again and show up at her doorstep. Her dad definitely seems like the type who owns a shotgun and knows how to use it. I can't even break up with Amanda. Not for a . . . whatever . . . that would last one more day at the very most. And that is only if Cora ever talks to me again. Or, for that matter, if I ever even see her again.
I can't do anything.
Can I?
Creedence starts a new song, and after a few moments I recognize it. It's a cover of a song my mom owns actually, one of her beloved jazz records. Nina Simone, I think. “I Put a Spell on You.”
Black magic really must be at work because soon I'm thinking,
Maybe I'll see Cora at her medical tent tomorrow
. Even though I shouldn't think that at all. What would be the point of seeing her when I have Amanda and home and a whole life nowhere near Bethel, New York, starting the day after tomorrow?
But it doesn't matter. Hope doesn't listen to logic. And by the end of the song, I'm pretty sure it's not hope at all. I will see Cora tomorrow because I will make it happen. What do they call that?
Oh. I think it's determination.
All in all, a totally foreign feeling for me.
Sunday, August 17
chapter 47
Cora
It's past midnight by the time I arrive home. I guess I stopped walking briskly as soon as I was out of Michael's sight, feeling heavy and sluggish because of everything I was walking from and walking to. What difference does twenty minutes here or there make anyway? I'm dead meat no matter what. Dead meat with the stench of someone else's boyfriend on her lips. In an instant, this day has gone from exhilarating to disastrous.
Approaching my house, I'm surprised to see that all the lights are off. I was sure the house would be blazing, that there'd be neighbors strewn across our front yard organizing themselves for the search, and that Mom would have resurrected the nuclear raid siren. Instead, everything is still and silent and nothing but crickets greet me at my door.
I try to let myself in and am surprised when the front doorknob meets me with resistance. Locked. We never lock our doors here, and I immediately can't help but wonder whether it's punishment against me or a precaution against the hordes of hippies my father thinks might come barreling through.
It takes me a moment to remember there is a spare key under the doormat. It's covered in dust and cobwebs when I find it, but I fish it out and unlock the door.
I tiptoe in, still amazed at the silence. Out of curiosity, I head into the kitchen and glance at the cuckoo clock on the wall, just in case Amanda played a trick on me with the time and it's really ten o'clock. But nope, it's after midnight.
I turn around to go up to my room, and am greeted by a solid wall of shadow. “Cora.” It spits out my name. I jump a mile.
The lights get switched on and the shadow becomes a fuming, squat man glaring at me. Dad.
“What,” he says in a dangerously quiet voice, “is the meaning of this?”
“Dad,” I say, my heart pounding from the scare and from the dread of what's about to happen. “I'm sorry. Time just ran away from me. . . .”
He shakes his head. “Time
ran away
from you? What happened to your watch?”
Dad points at my wrist and I quickly draw my hand away. I don't think telling him my watch died because I was skinny-dipping in the lake with a boy is going to help defuse the situation.
“It's just been so busy,” I start to quickly say. “And then the music was so good, I just lost track. . . .”
“That. Goddamn. Music,” he seethes. “Do you really think you can use that horrible, drugged-out assault on humanity as an excuse? For coming home
after midnight
?”
I grimace. “No, sir,” I say. Probably best to just get this over with.
“For the rest of this weekend, you will stay right in this house.”
My eyes widen. “But . . .”
“You will help out your mother and me around the farm. You won't leave our sight for the next forty-eight hours.”
“Dad . . . ,” I begin.
“And then maybe in a few weeks we can discuss whether you can even go back to the hospital again.”
I stare at him. “You can't ban me from the hospital.”
“I most certainly can.”
“For coming home an hour after curfew?” I say incredulously.
“Because Bethel is declared a war zone and you're in the trenches,
enjoying the music
, as you say.”
My heart rate is still up, but this time I can feel the anger that's surging through my blood. “This isn't a war zone, Dad,” I start out calmly enough. “Mark is in a war zone.” But then I can't stop myself. “And do you know who are the only people trying to get him out? Those damn hippies you're always going on about.”
“Get him out?” he counters. “By doing what? Carrying signs and getting high? Those spoiled kids who have no idea what a real battlefield is like? Or what an honor it is to fight in one?”
“I'm pretty sure Mark doesn't think it's an honor. Not anymore,” I mutter.
He snorts. “And just what would you know about it? Your brother is out there fighting for . . .”
“For what exactly? I'd love to know. Give me one good reason Mark is being shot at instead of being here with us.”
“For his country,” Dad says with finality. As if that should answer everything.
Now it's my turn to snort. “What does a government halfway across the world have to do with our country?”
“For freedom. Those people . . .”
“Want him out of their country, I'm assuming,” I say in a mocking tone.
Which might be the final straw for my father. “You don't know anything, girl,” he shouts, his dangerous whisper now blossomed into full-volume wrath. “And you should learn to shut up about things you know nothing about.”
Here's the thing with me. My dad gets visibly angry often, but I don't. But when I do, you can take seven times his anger and still not be able to fill up the hot-air balloon of rage that inflates inside me, just waiting to be untethered.
“NO,” I yell back. “I will not shut up. And I know plenty, Dad.” I say “Dad” all drawn out, like it's a joke to call him that. “I know about medicine and surgery and educated people. I know more than some hick farmer from fucking Anytown, USA,
ever
will.”
I stay just long enough to see his eyes widen. Then, without thinking, I push past him, and run right out the front door.
chapter 48
Michael
Janis is onstage now, and she's killing it. It's so dark that I can hardly make her out at all; she's just a silhouette with big floating sleeves. But I can hear every word that she sings, every note drawn out with passion and conviction. It's hard to believe this is the same soft-spoken person we came across at a hotel bar just earlier today.
It's hard to believe at all. Where I was today. Who I was with.
I can't believe Cora's not here with me to hear Janis. Not after Janis called her “sister.”
A brass section wails on Janis's song and I watch the top of Amanda's head in front of me, moving in time to the music. In the dark of night, I can almost pretend her hair is jet black, that she is someone else entirely.
And that's completely unfair, isn't it? If there's one thing Janis's voice is pleading with me to do, it's this: Man up. I should tell Amanda that it's over.
And then, as if I dreamt her back into life, Cora is suddenly beside us again. I stare at her, for a moment positive it's a hallucination, even though I haven't taken anything all day. But then I see Rob grin at her too.
“Hey, Miss Cora is back,” he says.
Everyone turns to her now and she gives a wave and a smile back, but it's directed at Rob. She hardly even looks at me. “Figured I can't really miss the greatest rock concert of all time when it's right in my backyard. Right?”
“No, ma'am,” Rob counters.
She walks over to him and I follow her with my eyes. Trying to think of something to say. Amanda looks from my face to Cora's, a scowl screwing up her features.
“What about your dad murdering you?” Amanda demands of Cora.
“Yeah,” Cora says. “Screw him.”
My jaw almost drops. Cora is a surprising girl but I still never expected her to say that.
Rob laughs, though. “Yeah, screw all the parents,” he says.
Cora smiles. “Screw all the parents!”
Rob takes the opportunity to lift her hand and then spin her around underneath it before bringing his arms behind her back to end in an impressive dip. Cora laughs.
Smooth freakin' asshole.
“This is Janis, right?” Cora asks him.
“The one and only,” he responds.
“Do you know I met her today?”
“What? Get out of here, you big liar,” Rob says.
“Nuh-uh,” she says. “Totally met her.” And I immediately realize she said “
I
met her,” not “
we
met her.”
She launches into a version of our story that doesn't include me and I feel like shit.
Cora is here, but she's really not. She's not here with me.
chapter 49
Cora
After I tell Rob my story, I listen to Janis Joplin, really listen to her, for the first time. I've heard a song or two from her before but before today, she wasn't a real person to me. She wasn't someone you could have a conversation with, someone who could buy you a drink.
Now that she is, I think I finally understand why someone would be so obsessed with music. Everything Janis is and has ever felt, she's pouring out onto the stage right now. She's inviting us all in to witness it. It takes my breath away, the bravery of it.
Eventuallyâtoo soonâJanis's set ends and Rob gets extra-excited because Sly and the Family Stone come on next. I can't make out much on the stage; the lights they have up there don't seem powerful enough to counter the darkness of a country night. But I can tell there are a lot of band members and, of course, as soon as the music starts the vibe completely changes. This is dancing, party music and all around me, people are jumping around and swaying wildly.
Rob takes me for another spin and I let him. Every time I twirl or swing or dip I keep my eyes trained to look away from Michael. It's pretty impressive, actually. Like my own psychological choreography.
About a half hour into their set, Sly asks the audience to join him in a sing-along. “Most of us need approval from our neighbors,” he starts out, before asking us to shun that concept and sing the word “higher” with him, throwing our peace signs into the air. “It'll do you no harm,” he claims.
At first, I just watch everyone around me following suit. But then Rob grabs my hand and makes me pump it into the air. “Get into it!” he yells, as he starts yelling “higher” in time with the rest of the crowd.
I smile and say it softly at first, but as it goes on and on and everyone is shouting, I do too. Why shouldn't I? “Still again, some people feel that they shouldn't,” Sly says from the stage, again encouraging us to “get in on something that could do you some good” without worry about embarrassment or approval. I realize Sly is speaking directly to me. I raise my arm higher, wave my two fingers in the air, and yell into the damp night. The red Hog Farm fabric still wrapped around my wrist glows bright against the starry sky like a triumphant banner. I close my eyes to savor how amazing it all feels.
Except that emblazoned on the back of my eyelids is the silhouette of a person I haven't looked at in hours. Michael.
I immediately open my eyes and fix them on Rob, whose head is swinging wildly to the music.
Rob is beautiful, just like when I first saw him. He's also energetic, fun, and funny. Most importantly, he doesn't do weird things to my stomach or make me think too hard about things like feelings. Feelings are crap. That's why I'm going to be a doctor, dealing with the wonderful, solid world of physical ailments.
Sly has gone into the “higher” chorus again and it's louder than ever, now that everyone is taking his advice and not waiting for approval from their neighbors.
I don't need approval either, I finally realize. I will be a doctor, no matter what anyone thinks or says.
I say “higher” one extra time than everyone else, not realizing the song has ended and they've already broken into applause. But I don't care. I'm sure I clap harder than anyone else too. Something has just become so very clear to me about myself, about who
I
am, and I have the music to thank for it.
Which, I guess, is what Michael was trying to tell me just this afternoon.