Livy jerked her head back. “How’d you know that?”
Johnny tapped a finger to his forehead. “My superior intellect.”
No one asked me if I was homecoming queen. Or a cheerleader. Not that I cared all that much.
While I looked back at the army of festivalgoers from this vantage point, a forever tableau imprinted my memory. It was as if I was standing on the shore of an ocean, staring into the horizon, unable to see the water’s end. Blanket to blanket, kids packed in together like a mammoth jigsaw puzzle, each person fitting snugly into the next.
It was hard to imagine how or where we would carve out our own puzzle piece. I could only hope Nick was somewhere in the gargantuan crowd, preserving a decent viewing spot—with four extra seats.
The air reeked of an unfamiliar odor. At first, I wondered about it; then it hit me.Marijuana.I wasn’t sure what I’d thought it would smell like, but certainly not a skunk. I figured it would have more of a grassy scent, like a fresh-mowed lawn. Boy, was I wrong. I wasn’t too fond of the aroma, but it sure smelled a heck of a lot better than the other scent in the air. Cow poop.
Without thinking it through, I leaned over to Livy. “Can you get high from smelling pot?”
She covered her mouth to muffle a full-on guffaw.
But it was plenty loud enough for the boys to hear, and it piqued Johnny’s curiosity. “What’s so funny?”
“She’s wondering if smelling weed gets you high,” said Livy.
If only the earth could have swallowed me whole. I wanted to kill her.
As my distress over what my ex–best friend had just revealed about me grew, I longed to reach over, grab her, and slam every single word back into her big fat mouth. But it was too late. The damage was done. What was worse, I had to act like I was fine about it. With the guys eyeballing me, I had no choice but to fake laugh, then disguise my fury—not to mention my humiliation—behind a phony smile.
“I wish!” Johnny said, throwing his head back with a chuckle.
Leon didn’t chuckle. “I don’t think so, Suzannah,” he said.
A pretty hippie girl wearing a brown suede hat like Livy’s walked by on her way through the backstage gate. A round white pin, bearing a dove resting atop the neck of a guitar, was attached to her belt loop. Another pin readJoyce.
Livy called out to her. “Excuse me, Joyce.”
Joyce turned around.
“We’re looking for the information booth.”
“That way,” she said, pointing to the right. “Next to the Message Tree. You can’t miss it.”
Livy adjusted her hat; her bracelets jangled. “I just gave an important message to a dude onstage. Do you know when it will be announced? My boyfriend is missing, and I’m desperate to find him.”
“Your boyfriend and many others. Try to chill out,” Joyce said. “You’ll find him.”
“I better.” Livy kicked at the dirt, as if not finding her boyfriend was Joyce’s fault.
Joyce disappeared through the gate in a hurry, leaving us all to sit in the residual muck of Livy’s pot comment.
Now what? The guys might not have been aware of my fury, but Livy sure was. With a slight tightening of my eyes, I glowered at her, shooting her a deadly hairy eyeball just like the ones I was famous for in my family.
Right away she hooked an arm inside mine, pulling me away from the earshot of the boys. “I’m so freaked out about not finding my boyfriend” was the first thing out of her mouth.
“You embarrassed thecrapout of me” was the first thing out of mine. I spoke to her through gritted teeth; she could hear the anger in my voice.
“I’m sorry,” she said, laying a hand over her heart. “I shouldn’t have said that. It was an accident.”
An accident? How does someone say something like that by accident? It reminded me of the day she accused me of spreading her deepest, darkest secret—the first time she betrayed me.
Back at Central High School, Livy and I had been known as the Duet. Everybody had called us that, and it had driven Marianne Gentry insane. Livy was the most beautiful girl in school—worshipped by all the boys—and Marianne couldn’t stand it that I was her best friend.
I wasn’t dumb. I knew I gained my acclaim from Livy, but Marianne never missed an opportunity to remind me. “Livy’s the reason you get invited to the cool parties,” she often said when Livy wasn’t around.Marianne got invited to the cool parties because of her outside. On the inside, she was a black widow spider.
