Woodstock Day Two
Woodstock
Day Two
Noon
After standing in line at the Hog Farm kitchen, which was a piece of cake compared to the madhouse at Food for Love, we inhaled our brown rice, vegetables, and cantaloupe in minutes.
It wasn’t all that great, but when you’re starving, quality doesn’t matter much.
It was far better than cold hot dogs, that’s for sure.
What’s more, the food was free, piping hot, and made with love.
We lingered in the soft grass before throwing away our plates.
“Who taught you to play guitar?” Leon asked. “You’re really good at that too.”
“Thank you. Ron taught me. He’s the one who’s good.”
“That’s right. You told me he’s a musician. Is he a Beatles fan?”
“Big Beatles fan. He taught me to play those songs before he left for Vietnam.”
I’d been doodling Paul, Paul, I love Paul in my school planner when the sound of Ron’s guitar wafted down the hall. I jumped from my bed, paced over to his bedroom door. “Will you teach me to play something?”
He lifted his eyes but kept strumming. “What do you wanna learn?”
“‘I’ve Just Seen a Face.’” I wanted to learn all Paul’s songs.
Ron patted the space next to him. “You’ll need a capo for that one.” He reached over to his nightstand and pulled out a capo, then clamped it onto the neck of his guitar.
“What does that do?”
“Changes the pitch,” he said. He went on to explain that even though a chord is fingered the same way, a capo shortens the strings and takes the music up a step. He handed me the guitar. “Find your E chord.”
I did as he asked.
“Now find E minor, and play two notes, together, a sixth apart. Got it?”
I glared at him. “No.”
He chuckled. “Watch me.” Ron took back the guitar, starting the song in a slower tempo. But when I joined in to sing along with him, he notched it back up, and we finished the song together.
“You’re a much better singer than me,” he said.
“No way.”
“Oh yeah you are. Emotion bleeds through your voice in every note. I have dreams for us, SuSu. We’re gonna be the next big family duo. Like the Everly Brothers.”
I crooked my pinkie and reached for his. “Pinkie swear?”
“Pinkie swear. What should we call ourselves?”
With a finger to my chin I said, “Suzannah and Ron sounds pretty good to me.”
He laughed and rubbed his knuckles atop my head. “Yeah, but R comes before S. Ron and Suzannah. Much better.”
I couldn’t have cared less what we called ourselves. All I knew was I wanted to sing in a band. With my brother.
We threw away our plates in an overflowing garbage can, then headed back toward the bowl.
As we strolled down Ho Chi Minh Trail, I obsessed over asking Leon about a girlfriend.
I knew I had to ask him, whether I wanted to or not.
My crush had blossomed into something I never thought possible, certainly not at Woodstock.
In a matter of hours, we’d be saying goodbye. I couldn’t afford to fall for someone whose heart was elsewhere. Not even for this weekend of free love. Maybe others could do it, maybe Livy could do it, but I sure couldn’t.
I had to find out.
As we passed through an opening in the woods, he led me over to a flower patch—a weed patch, actually—with tiny daisylike blooms. He picked several, then tied the long stems together before placing the wreath on my head. “Can you pretend these are lavender blossoms from France?”
I reached up to touch the wreath. After taking an exaggerated sniff, I said, “I smell the lavender. It smells sweet. Like you.”
Leon sneered. “I bet my sisters would argue with you about that.”
“Why? Aren’t you sweet to your sisters?”
“Sometimes.”
I drew my shoulders back, peering at him in jest.
With a toothy, kindhearted smile, he said, “Just kidding. I love my sisters. I’m not ashamed to say it.”
“Are you sweet to your girlfriend?” I asked casually, even though my pulse blasted inside my eardrums. It seemed like a benign way to find out.
I expected him to say, What are you talking about?
I don’t have a girlfriend. Instead, he blinked, jerking his head back like he’d been caught red-handed.
A dazed look transformed his face as he shifted his eyeballs skyward.
My heart plummeted. A heaviness settled inside my stomach, like a tapeworm shredding my intestines apart. A tear or two, much to my dismay, sprang into my lids, stinging my eyes. No! You will not cry, I told myself, biting down on the insides of my cheeks.
“Not anymore.”
A beat passed before his words sank in. “You aren’t sweet to your girlfriend anymore?” I blurted out, rather sarcastically.
“I don’t have a girlfriend anymore.”
The relief was undeniable. My body even felt lighter. But the word anymore gave me pause. “Since when?” I asked.
Leon swayed his head from side to side. “A month. Or so.”
“That’s like yesterday. What happened?” I tried to say it in a sweet tone, but it was pure fake.
He breathed in, then exhaled slowly. “It ran its course.”
“Are you sad?”
“Not really.”
What was not really supposed to mean? “Aw, that’s too bad.” I acted aloof, pretended I didn’t care, even though I cared far too much.
It got weird when he didn’t respond. He looked down at his muddy high-top tennis shoes, wouldn’t even make eye contact with me. “Shelly is . . . complicated,” he finally said.
Still feigning indifference, I fidgeted with the tail of Livy’s pink top—now brown—all the while conjuring an image of what Shelly might look like. Livy’s face flashed in my head, along with her big boobs. “Lots of girls are complicated,” I said, thinking about Livy, not me.
Leon peered at me earnestly. “Are you complicated?”
Was this an interview question? If so, I had to give the correct answer. I tugged at my earlobe. “Not particularly. In some ways, maybe, but I think I’m pretty normal.”
“Normal’s good,” Leon said, as if there was no other way to be. Note to self.
“I agree.”
“So what about you?” he asked. “Do you have a boyfriend back home?”
Without missing a beat, I lied straightaway. “We broke up.” I blinked. “At the end of the school year.”
“Are you sad?”
I twisted my mouth, playing like I was giving his question serious thought. “Sometimes.”
When neither of us spoke, creating a long awkward pause, I was sure I’d blown it.
I cursed myself for lying. Now I’d have to tell even more lies to make sure I wasn’t caught in the first one.
What’s worse, I always got paid back when I lied.
Like what had happened in my closet the night I’d left home.
What would God’s punishment be this time?
We both looked away, wondering what to say. More seconds passed before he broke the silence. “Looks like we’ve got something else in common, Suzie Q.”
Determined to hide my deceit and even more determined that it would be my final fib, I forced myself to look at him. His somber expression had changed to a grin. It no longer felt awkward between us.
He tilted his head, letting his face drift toward mine. As heat rushed up my body, I lifted my chin and closed my eyes.
At that second a stoner stumbled past, high out of his mind, tripping down at our feet. I nearly fell on top of the dude, trying to get out of the way.
Leon bent down to help him. “You okay, man?”
Without a response, the dude pushed up on his forearms and stood. After he regained his balance, he wobbled back down Ho Chi Minh Trail toward the Hog Farm, never even saying he was sorry.
A wave of more people streamed past. Maybe they had heard about the free kitchen too. At that moment, I didn’t care if anyone got fed. They were interrupting a crucial moment. Leon may have kissed me for real. It sure seemed like it.
Once we were alone again, instead of kissing me, he gave my head another damn knuckle massage. “What do you say we find Johnny and Livy to let ’em know they’re friends with a star?”
This knuckle massage was the biggest disappointment of all. It made me think I was imagining the whole thing and that friendship was all he wanted. Maybe Livy was all he wanted, and he was using me to get to her.
Whatever the case, Leon slung his arm around my shoulders, tucking me in close. He sang a bit of “Suzie Q,” letting me know he liked the way I talked and the way I walked. Then he cracked up at himself. “If John Fogerty could hear me, he’d send me to jail for murdering his song.”
I’d heard Creedence sing “Suzie Q” on Thursday, in the car with Livy.
If someone had told me in less than forty-eight hours a boy as beautiful and wonderful as Leon Wright would be singing the song to me, much less tugging me in next to his beautiful body, I may have had a stroke and died on the spot.