“OMG, Grammy. You snuck out!”
Bobbing my head from side to side, I give her a wry grin. “You could say that.”
Her smile explodes. “You were a badass!”
“I guess maybe I was,” I say, flashing back to the heinous confrontation I’d had with Dad.
Adelaide whirls around, steps in front of me. “Details. I need details. Starting with how you snuck away.”
I lean in, pressing my cheek against hers. “It’s a long story, with twists that turn into plenty of agonizing knots.”
She checks her phone for the time. “We’ve got an hour and a half till our tour. Is that long enough?”
“Not even close.” I chuckle, then guide her toward the psychedelic-painted school bus in the middle of the museum. Fifty years ago, I would have killed for a peek inside.
“You can’t leave out one single detail. I want to know it all.”
I’m sure she does want to know it all; there’s quite a bit I want to tell her. But there’s even more I’ll have to keep to myself.
Fifty Years Earlier
On the Road to Woodstock
Somewhere in West Virginia
Friday, August 15, 1969
6:00 a.m.
My bare feet rested on the dash. The wind blew the hair around my face. And our road trip was getting long. “Ugh,” I moaned, leaning my head back. “How many more hours do we have left?”
“An hour less than last time you asked me. Jeez. You sound like a little kid,” my no-longer-ex-best friend said, using her middle finger to flick her cigarette out the window. “Look at the map.”
Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined Livy Foster and I parting ways. She was the sun, and I a planet desperate for her warmth. But Dad forbade me to ever see her again. She’d embraced the free love movement with gusto, Jesus was not her Lord, and Dad believed I’d end up just like her. He was dead wrong. I never wanted to be just like her; I simply longed for her beauty. And her confidence. And her ability to have any boy she wanted.
We had been friends again only three weeks and had already fallen back into our old patterns. She could say jump, and I’d ask how high.That may have been because she was nine months older and inherently cooler, but I’d idolized her for as long as I could remember. She’d taught me everything I needed to know about becoming a woman, and I felt older whenever she was near.
Livy had betrayed me,twice, both times crushing me to the bone. Even still, having her back in my life was almost as good as having the Beatles back. Dad had banished them too.
I reached for theSgt. Pepper’seight-track, shoved it inside the player, and turned up the volume. So loud there’s no way we could have heard a siren. I sang the whole chorus of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” at the top of my lungs.
“That’s a reference to LSD,” Livy shouted.
With haste, I reached over and turned off the music. “What did you just say?”
“I said ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ is about LSD.”
I sat up straight, shooting her an incredulous stare. “Do you think the Beatles do that?”
“Drop acid? Of course they do that.”
I nearly passed out. The thought of my Beatles doingLSDmade me choke on my own breath. As I sat with the awareness, shame crawled up my sternum. It was yet another reminder of my sheltered upbringing. I wished I could take my question back.
Livy brushed back the hair flying around her face. “They aren’t the only ones singing about it. Jimi Hendrix wrote ‘Purple Haze’ about LSD. Guarantee you there’ll be tons of it at the festival.”
As ridiculous as it sounds, the idea of drugs had never crossed my mind when I’d decided to go with her to Woodstock.
She stole a quick glance at my face. “Uh-oh. Does acid scare you?”
