Three Day Summer by Sarvenaz Tash Page B

smiles at Michael and me as she goes back inside.
    â€œThanks for helping out,” I say to him.
    â€œThanks for the apple. And all the food last night.”
    â€œOf course.”
    There’s an awkward moment of silence that I finally break with a very smooth “Well . . .”
    â€œWould you be able to come see the concert with me some more today?”
    â€œOh . . . ,” I say. “Well, I have to work.”
    â€œRight,” Michael says. “Maybe during your lunch break?”
    â€œUm . . . I’m not sure. It seems busy. . . .”
    â€œShe has a lunch break at one,” Anna says as she swishes by me again, this time to help one of the other nurses, who is carrying a tray of paper cups filled with water. “And we have extra medical personnel today so no problem if she’s gone for an hour.”
    I blush as Anna whizzes back into the tent. The woman gets too much pleasure out of my nonexistent love life. Being in your forties must be really boring.
    Michael just looks excited, though. “So, I’ll meet you here at one, then?” he asks.
    â€œOkay,” I say, not sure what excuse I could possibly give now. Although why I would even want to give an excuse, I honestly have no idea. Sometimes, it’s really confusing being me.
    â€œOkay,” he says, and stands there some more.
    I’m worried he’ll kiss me again and I don’t think I can handle the whirlpool of crazy that brought on the night before. So I give him what I think is a friendly pat on the shoulder and say, “See you later, then,” before I lift the tent flap and go inside.
    It’s busy but Anna is right: There’s a noticeable increase in the doctors and nurses milling about.
    â€œCute,” Anna says to me, as I find a corner to stash my picnic basket. “Looks a little like one of these rock star guys.” She hands me some Band-Aids and points me in the direction of two mud-spattered girls with cuts on their legs.
    â€œI thought you wanted me and Ned to get back together,” I shoot back.
    Anna shrugs. “Nothing wrong with a little friendly competition to get a man to come to his senses.” Then she pauses. “Do you want you and Ned to get back together?”
    â€œNo idea,” I mumble before walking over to my new patients.
    While I clean up their wounds, the girls tell me about an epic dance party in the mud that apparently led to an equally epic tumble. But it sounds like a few scratches here and there were worth the fun.
    â€œWe really need to make an announcement about the brown acid,” I hear from behind me. A guy with dark, curly hair—one of the newer personnel—is flipping through our charts. “There seem to be a lot of incidents with it here.”
    â€œOooh, yeah. I heard about that,” one of my patients says, and I turn back around to her. “Someone told me it was poison. Like some guy took it last night and then this morning was having convulsions. He almost died!”
    â€œReally?” her friend asks. And then, after a moment, “What did we take?”
    â€œShrooms. Totally different. We’ll be fine.”
    It’s only as I put on the final Band-Aid that I let their words really sink in. As soon as I’m done, I run over to the charts and flip through them too until I find the page with Michael’s name on it.
    There, in Anna’s neat penmanship: “tripping out/brown acid.”

chapter 32
    Michael
    I am going to die.
    I don’t remember much about yesterday morning, but that thin piece of film on Evan’s palm, I can suddenly see the color plain as day. The same color as the dirt.
    My mind starts to race. Sure, the guy who just told his friend he heard the brown stuff is poison doesn’t look like the world’s foremost medical expert.
    But I am definitely sweating now. In a way that seems unhealthy, like I have a fever. And then my right temple starts to