“How soon do you think Pops and CeCe will get here?” Andi wondered.
Bex looked down at her phone. “I’d say by ten?”
“I can’t wait!” Andi smiled. “How awesome is it that Bowie was able to get so many VIP passes—and that he’s going to be playing with the Renaissance Boys tonight?”
“So awesome. Incredible, even.” Bex took a deep breath. “Truly incredible—and all thanks to you.”
Andi crinkled her nose. “Me?”
“Shyeah!” Bex said. “I mean, if you hadn’t come up with that plan to drag him to all those performances—especially that open mic—he might never have realized what he’d be missing.”
“But that was your plan.”
“Well, it was our plan…and you and Jonah really made it happen.”
Andi thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I guess so. Maybe…”
Bex shivered and walked over to the tent opening, taking a quick peek at the sky. “I can’t believe how cold it is today! It’s even cloudy—I hope it doesn’t rain.”
Andi frowned. “Do you think it will?”
“I hope not. But at least I brought those rain ponchos, and we may need to rethink today’s outfits a bit and dress in layers. Hopefully the clouds will burn off, but you never know up here in the mountains.”
Fortunately, the gauzy yellow tunic Andi had been planning to wear looked super cute over the jeans she’d worn on the ride up to the festival the day before—and Bex still looked like a bohemian goddess, even with leggings under her tie-dyed skirt and a long-sleeved white thermal under her leather vest.
“I’ll just pack the tank top in my backpack and change out of the thermal if it warms up later,” Bex noted.
Once all their primping was out of the way, Bex and Andi were ready to board the shuttle and head for the Orchid Arena to meet up with the others. When they arrived in the main tent, Andi spotted Buffy and Cyrus immediately—mostly because Cyrus was laughing hysterically and screaming “That tickles!” while trying out a massage chair. Meanwhile, Buffy was standing over him and trying to shush him.
Andi ran over and gave Buffy a huge hug from behind, then pulled Cyrus out of the chair and hugged him, too.
“Thank you!” Buffy sighed and tilted her head at Cyrus. “All that laughter was getting embarrassing.”
“Maybe for you, but my parents say it’s extremely important to laugh loud and laugh often,” Cyrus replied, holding up an index finger. Then, quickly switching topics, he scanned Andi from head to toe. “So you look faaabulous!”
“Thanks,” Andi replied. “You both look fabulous, too!”
Buffy really did look great. Her dark curls were big and glossy, falling just below her shoulders, and she had on a flowery boho-chic tank beneath a brown suede jacket, along with matching suede lace-up boots and dark skinny jeans. For accessories, she wore a simple leather choker and a few silver bracelets, plus the friendship bracelet she’d made at the sleepover with Andi a few weeks earlier.
Cyrus was decked out in what Andi had come to realize was standard music festival wear for a lot of guys—a Hawaiian shirt (Cyrus’s was dark red with pink flowers), along with black jeans and red sneakers.
“How was the drive up?” Andi added. “Where are Pops and CeCe?”
“Oh, they’re already in the disco tent!” Cyrus said. “Those two know how to pa-ar-tay!”
Andi giggled and turned toward the tent with the DJ, only to see Jagger, Luke, and Zane approaching.
“Oh my gosh!” Andi spun back around and grabbed her friends’ hands. “I have so much to tell you about yesterday—but the most important thing right now? See those three guys walking this way? I think the one with the blond hair may have stolen Bex’s wallet, but he won’t admit it!”
Cyrus craned his neck to look over Andi’s shoulder and she gave his arm a light smack. “Don’t look at them!”
“But you said, ‘See those three guys,’ ” Cyrus loud-whispered. “I’m just following directions!”
Andi sighed. “Okay, okay. My point is…we have to figure out if they’re lying or not.” Andi stared into Cyrus’s dark eyes and gave him and Buffy a quick recap of what had happened on the way up the mountain—the flat tire, Jagger picking them up in his truck because he and Bex went to high school together, Luke chewing on his lower lip and saying they had VIP passes, and then the wallet going missing. “How are your lie-detector skills this morning?”
“My lie-detector skills are always en fuego,” Cyrus said, slowly nodding and winking. “That means ‘on fire’ in Spanish, of course.”
“Of course,” Andi replied impatiently. “Then get ready to bring the heat—they’re here.”
Jagger was the first to tap Andi on the shoulder. “Hey, Andi! How’s it going?”
“Good!” Andi pasted on a smile and turned around. “How are you guys?”
“Awesome!” they all replied at the same time.
“Where’s Bex?” Jagger asked, running a hand over his slicked-back hair. He was wearing the exact same thing he’d had on the day before—white T-shirt, black leather jacket, jeans—and Zane and Luke also appeared to be wearing their same jeans, flannels, and T-shirts.
“Oh, um, I’m not sure,” Andi replied. “I think she went to find our…I mean her parents—Pops and CeCe to me.”
Jagger chuckled. “Wow—hanging with the ’rents at Mountain Jam. Cool!”
Eager to get to the lie detecting, Andi turned to Buffy and Cyrus and introduced them to Jagger, Luke, and Zane.
“Great to meet you cats,” Cyrus said, attempting some weird kind of guy handshake with each of them that eventually ended in everyone awkwardly crossing their arms.
Andi turned to glare at Cyrus and gave him a sly but suggestive few taps on the arm.
“Oh!” Cyrus bounced on his feet a few times. “There’s, um, so much I’d like to know about you guys. Andi mentioned that you really helped her and Bex out yesterday after they got a flat tire. True or false?”
Jagger’s chiseled features broke into an amused smile. “Uhhh…true?”
“And, Luke,” Cyrus continued. “Such an interesting name! Are you the child of Star Wars fans…or, perhaps, did they give you that name because of the late-seventies soap opera power couple Luke and Laura?”
Luke’s blue eyes widened. He leaned in close to Cyrus and whispered, “Dude. I usually tell people it’s because of Star Wars, but my mom was obsessed with General Hospital. I can’t believe you know about that show!”
Cyrus smiled and gave Luke a pat on the shoulder. “Your secret’s safe with me, buddy,” he whispered back.
After Cyrus had run the guys through half a dozen more questions, Jagger finally cut him off. “Hey, this has been fun, but we really need to get over to the Sierra Stage or we’ll miss the Cavemen—they go on at eleven.”
“Right on, my man,” Cyrus said. “Love the Cavemen! See you there, maybe!”
“Cool!” Jagger and his friends gave little waves and walked away.
“So? What do you think?” Andi asked Cyrus as soon as they were out of earshot.
Cyrus shook his head and stared at the laminated wood floor. “I’m sorry, Andi, but those are three of the most honest people I’ve ever met in my life—especially Luke. I don’t think that dude would be capable of stealing anything, let alone lying about it.”
“Darn it,” Andi muttered. “But you didn’t even ask him about the wallet.”
“I know. But I feel quite confident in my interrogation methods. There must be some other explanation for the missing wallet,” Cyrus insisted. “Any other theories?”
Before Andi could reply, Buffy turned to Cyrus. “I don’t have any theories about the wallet, but I do have a theory about your breath.”
Cyrus immediately clapped a hand over his mouth. “Oh, no! Is it bad?”
Buffy grimaced and nodded apologetically. “Might be time for a breath mint?”
The moment Buffy said the words “breath mint,” Andi�
�s memory was jogged. She, too, clapped a hand over her mouth, and then she reached into her backpack. After rifling around for a few minutes, her fingers touched the edge of Bex’s wallet, and she felt light-headed—almost as if she was going to pass out. She grabbed Buffy by the arm to steady herself.
“What is it?” Buffy asked, noticing the pained expression on Andi’s face.
Andi cringed as she pulled Bex’s wallet from her backpack and flipped it open, allowing the two original VIP passes to dangle down from their purple lanyards. “Mystery solved.”
“But…how is that possible?” Cyrus asked.
“When Jagger gave us a ride to the repair shop, my stomach was growling like crazy,” Andi explained, replaying the events in her mind. “So Bex gave me her wallet because it had some old mints stuck to the bottom of it!”
“Oh my gosh…” Buffy gasped.
“I totally forgot that I put the wallet in my backpack instead of giving it back to her.” Andi frowned. “I think I was just in a hurry to get out of the truck. All this time I thought Luke was guilty, when, in reality, I’m the guilty one.”
Andi felt as though she might cry.
“It’s okay,” Cyrus said softly. “These things happen.”
“But why did it have to happen to me…this weekend?” Andi said.
“You do seem to be messing up quite a bit lately,” Buffy noted coolly, crossing her arms.
Ouch. Andi had expected both of her friends to help her feel better. But she realized she still might need to work on making Buffy feel better first.
Glossing over Buffy’s comment for the moment, Andi proposed that they go find Bex so she could give her back the wallet and also say hi to CeCe and Ham. Sure enough, they were all in the DJ area, and CeCe was throwing down some impressive moves on the dance floor—moves Andi and Bex had only recently realized CeCe had when she let them tag along to one of her dance classes. CeCe and Ham had dressed for the occasion: CeCe wore an olive-green maxi dress with white floral embroidery, and Ham was in a blue-and-gray bowling shirt and jeans.
Thankfully, Bex was completely understanding about the whole wallet situation, and noted that it seemed way more like something she would have done.
“Not true,” Andi insisted. “You’ve been so on top of everything this weekend—making sure I was okay when I got queasy and after we got the flat tire…planning ahead with the driver’s license thing, which meant we could still get into our Summit Suite…going way overboard with making me wear sunscreen and layers and—”
“Okay, okay!” Bex laughed. “When you put it that way, I guess I deserve the Mother of the Year Award!”
“You kind of do,” Andi agreed. “Not only are you great at taking care of me, but you make my whole life more fun and exciting, too.”
“So you’re really not bored anymore?” Bex asked.
“No way!”
“Awww.” Bex sighed and ran a finger over the little feathers in Andi’s dream catcher headband.
“But since you’re Mother of the Year,” Andi added, pulling Bex to the side, “do you maybe have any motherly advice about how I can finally get Buffy to forgive me? She still seems pretty annoyed that I forgot about our Mountain Jam plans and then lied about it.”
“Seriously?” Bex scowled. “That’s kind of crazy, considering how much you’ve already done to make it up to her. But maybe it’s just going to take her a little more time to get over it.”
“Maybe…”
“A little time and a lot more Mountain Jam!” Bex added, clapping her hands and bouncing up and down in her strappy gladiator sandals.
Andi figured Bex was probably right. If she was going to get Buffy to forgive her completely, she would have to make sure Buffy had the absolute best time ever at the festival. And what better way to do that than by taking her around to at least some of the things that had made the previous day so fun for Andi?
Unfortunately, no matter how excited Cyrus got when they visited each new place—from the giant balloon animal area to the Crafting Coliseum—Buffy didn’t seem to be feeling it. Sure, she cracked a smile once or twice, but Andi soon began to wonder if there was something else going on with her—something that had nothing to do with Andi’s forgetting their original plans.
“Hey!” Andi said, spotting a tent draped in red-and-gold material, with a sign on the front that read TARA’S TATTOOS.
“Oh!” Buffy saw the tent, too, and her whole face lit up.
But before they could take another step toward it, someone came up behind Andi and covered her eyes. “Guess who!”
“Jonah!” Andi laughed, pulling his hands from her eyes and turning around.
“How’s it going, guys?” Jonah asked, giving Buffy a wave and high-fiving Cyrus.
“We are rocking this jam,” Cyrus replied, snapping and shooting a finger gun at Jonah.
“Where’s Mona?” Andi asked.
Jonah rolled his eyes and sighed. “At that makeup place again. Honestly, I think she would take a bath in glitter if she could.”
“She actually can,” Cyrus noted in his usual matter-of-fact way.
“Huh?” Andi said. Andi, Buffy, and Jonah all stared at Cyrus in disbelief.
“Oh, yeah.” Cyrus shrugged. “It’s a whole thing with the kids these days—just don’t ask me how I know.”
Andi laughed. “We definitely won’t.”
“So what are you up to now?” Jonah asked.
Andi locked eyes with Buffy. “I think we might want to get…henna tattoos?”
Buffy blinked a few times and nodded, allowing a tiny hint of a smile to cross her full glossy lips. “Yeah. That would be fun.”
“All of you?” Jonah asked, shooting a sideways glance at Cyrus.
“Um, that would be a no,” Cyrus said. “Tattoos are forbidden by my religion. If I got one, I couldn’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery.”
Buffy gave Cyrus a light smack on his arm. “They’re not permanent tattoos, crazy.”
“Pssshhh, I know! But why start down that rabbit hole? It could be a gateway to some serious ink, and then—BOOM—suddenly I’m erased from the Goodman family cemetery plot…forever.”
“Well, speaking of cemeteries,” Jonah said, “I was about to go check out Tombstone Playground’s set on the Rockslide Stage. Do you guys want to join?”
“Sure!” Cyrus agreed immediately.
Buffy and Andi locked eyes again, and Buffy shook her head.
“I think Buffy and I are going to stick with the tattoo plan, if that’s okay,” Andi said. “Maybe we could meet up with you guys after?”
“Totally.” Jonah turned to Cyrus. “Ready?”
“Hello? I was born ready,” Cyrus replied.
As soon as Andi and Buffy went inside the tattoo tent, which smelled of sandalwood incense and was adorned with cushions, rugs, candles, and lamps, Andi heard a familiar voice: “Oh, it looks sssooo preciousss.”
Andi squinted at the woman sitting behind an ornately carved wood table as the girls who had just been tattooed handed her some money and slipped out of the tent.
Oh my gosh! Andi looked more closely at the woman behind the table. It was Tara, the waitress from the diner! Although she had changed out of her little pink uniform and into a colorful bohemian dress and scarf, Andi recognized the voice and those sunken blue eyes right away. But the turquoise ring on her finger sealed the deal. It was definitely her.
“It’sss you, it’sss you!” Tara said, recognizing Andi, too. “You were at the diner yesterday! I have your ring!”
“Well, you have my mom’s ring,” Andi corrected her.
“Please, sssit down!” Tara motioned to two big velvet poufs on the other side of her table.
Buffy shot Andi a look of mild terror but went ahead and sat down next to Andi while Tara clapped her bony hands and said, “You’re here for tattoos?”
“Yes,” Andi confirmed, putting a hand gently on Buffy’s shoulder to reassure her that she was in a safe place. “Match
ing ones.”
“Lovely, lovely,” Tara replied, pulling out a binder containing page after page of ornate design options, which Buffy and Andi proceeded to flip through while Tara continued to talk. “I mussst tell you, this ring has brought me so much luck this weekend! My customers have been thrilled with their tattoos. I’m convinced this ring has been helping my technique.”
Andi looked up and smiled. “I can understand that.”
“Yesss?” Tara asked.
“Sure. I totally feel like certain things I wear make me more creative.”
“Exactly!” Tara smiled. “Ssso have you decided on a design?”
Andi looked over at Buffy, who had stopped on a page featuring a beautiful image with all sorts of intertwining leaves and vines. “I think this one?” Buffy turned to look at Andi.
“That’s beautiful,” Andi agreed, then glanced at Tara. “Does it have any particular meaning?”
“Oh, yesss.” Tara nodded solemnly. “Vines and leaves represent longevity, devotion, perseverance—for you, perhaps this would be an expression of your long-lasssting friendship?”
Andi’s eyes welled up with tears, and she noticed that Buffy’s were doing the same. “That’s perfect,” Andi said. “Isn’t it?”
Buffy took a deep breath. “Yeah. I think so?”
With that, Tara proceeded to give Andi and Buffy the most beautiful henna tattoos they had ever seen—one on the back of Andi’s left hand and the other on the back of Buffy’s right hand.
“They’re gorgeous,” Andi told Tara when she’d finished. “Thank you so much! What do we owe you?”
Andi reached into her backpack to get out the money Bex had given her earlier and plunked down some cash. “Is that enough to cover the tattoos and the lunch check from yesterday?”
Tara’s smile instantly faded. She stared at the turquoise ring, twisting it on her finger, looking forlorn.
“Or, hey,” Andi added, “maybe you can keep the ring a bit longer, especially if you think it’s making that much of a difference in your work.”
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