Three Day Summer by Sarvenaz Tash Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
    â€œHow 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.
    â€œI get that a lot,” I joke. I lower my voice conspiratorially. “It must be because I’m part Seneca.”
    â€œReally?” Michael’s eyes get just a little brighter. “What part?”
    â€œMy grandmother,” I say, surprised he’s interested.
    â€œAh. 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.
    â€œDo you know who this is?” I ask Michael.
    â€œI’m not sure. I thought Sweetwater was supposed to perform first, but this doesn’t sound like them,” he responds.
    â€œIt’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?”
    â€œDefinitely,” she says.
    â€œOkay, take it easy.”
    â€œPeace, 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.
    â€œHey,” 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.
    â€œI think you’re okay,” I say.
    â€œGreat. Thanks. For everything. Sorry I was so messed up.”
    â€œI’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.
    â€œOkay,” he finally says. “Bye.”
    â€œBye,” 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.
    â€œUm . . . 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.
    â€œSorry,” he says right away. “Oh, man, I feel like ‘sorry’ has been half of all the words I’ve said to you.”
    I laugh.