“Ugh,” I moaned. “My leave of absence from Livy is over.”
Leon laughed. “Don’t you wanna tell her goodbye?”
“Not really.”
“Then let’s ignore it. Johnny will page me later.”
I wasn’t ready to share what little time Leon and I had left with Livy and Johnny, not to mention Professor Henry, but I was afraid to ignore the page. “We should make sure he’s okay,” I said. “After the acid and all.”
He pressed his lips together, trying not to grin. He knew Livy was the one I was worried about.
Hand in hand, we strolled toward the information booth. I couldn’t remember a day in my life when I’d been as happy. Nor could I have fathomed the kind of freedom Woodstock had offered. As we approached the Message Tree, I felt weightless. None of my family problems encumbered my mind. Not Dad, not Mama, not even Ron’s enlistment in Vietnam. Music had come back to my life, and I had danced the night away without anyone telling me not to. At last, the world seemed like a beautiful, peaceful place.
Hundreds of notes and paper plates were pinned to the Message Tree. Many more than the last time I’d been there with Livy. We scanned the writing on each, reading about people in search of people, rides home, hunts for good LSD, lost car keys, even a notice about a poor lost dog. But we found nothing for Leon.
We spied a girl with curly brown hair manning the inside of the booth and stood in line. We waited five minutes while she finished her conversation with a girl who rambled on and on about nothing. Onceshe left, Leon stepped up to the window. “Hey, man, I’m Leon Wright. I heard Chip Monck say I have a message here.”
The girl searched around the inside of the booth before shuffling papers and Best Cola cans. She picked up a bag of pot, looked underneath, and put it back down. She even peeked inside a pair of muddy cowboy boots on the counter. “No messages for Leon Wright that I can see,” she said, in a Boston accent. “Have you guys checked the Message Tree?”
“Yeah, man. We’ll check again, though. Thanks.” He tapped the counter with both hands.
Before walking away, the girl handed me aLife of Yogipamphlet, then took a sip of her Best Cola. “Good luck.”
“What gives?” I said, fanning myself with the pamphlet. For the first time all weekend I was hot.
“My cousin’s a master prankster. He’s somewhere looking at us right now laughing his ass off.”
We turned circles, scanning the area for Johnny—and I for Livy—but saw neither. Leon even shouted his cousin’s name. “Come out of hiding, Handsome J. You got me.” He waved both hands in the air, crossing one over the other. But Johnny never showed up.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“Go listen to Joe Cocker.”
Joe’s backup band, the Grease Band, had already been introduced and was jamming in the background.
“Sounds good to me,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Leon didn’t answer.
“You ready?” I asked, but his gaze had fixated over my head on something else.
I pulled on his sleeve. “Leon? Are you ready to head over?”
He shifted his eyes toward me, but only briefly, then diverted his stare back into the crowd. I looked, too, curious as to what had captivated his attention. A gorgeous blonde was waving at him. She must have just arrived, because she wore a spotlessly clean white dress.A ring of white daisies crowned her long, waist-length blond hair. She could have passed for Livy’s twin.
Leon waved back, with a curve in his lips.
Another gorgeous girl, wearing a matching white dress and daisy wreath, waved too. After a second look, I realized they were not only dressed like twins; they were twins. Identical twins.
The two Livys moved swiftly in Leon’s direction.
He shot me another brief glance. This time with a pall of panic on his face. With a mere six-foot distance separating him from the twins, he ran a hand through his hair. He held it back from his forehead, then slowly let go. “Shelly” was all he said. Then gave her a wide grin.
My heart dropped like an elevator. Shelly, the girl he was “not really” sad about breaking up with, answered him, but the roar of my pulse inside my ears drowned out her voice.
Both girls melted into his arms.
“Good to see you, Leon,” I heard Shelly’s twin sister say before they all broke from the embrace. She looked at me curiously. “Hi.”
