Side Effects May Vary Read online

  Dr. Meredith grasped my dad’s outstretched hand. “Now we’ll see Alice next week. We’ll stick to the regular schedule,” he said, “because you never know. This could be the eye of the storm. We don’t know. That’s the hard truth. But be happy for today.”

  Mom doubled back to me and ushered me forward, nudging me with the tips of her fingers at the small of my back. I knew what she wanted, so I played along. It had been quite a while since I had made nice for Mom and Dad, and now it looked like there would be some making up to do. I reached up to pat Dr. Meredith on the shoulder and thank him, but he pulled me into a bear hug instead. The sweat seeped through his dress shirt, and I wanted to pull away, but I didn’t. Because if I did, my parents would have seen the few tears rolling down my cheeks and onto Dr. Meredith’s lab coat. I’d grown so used to the terms of my life—the conditions—that now I didn’t know how to tell the difference between the good and the bad. But I knew, unless the cancer came back, that I was going to live. Now, I had to decide who and what I could live with.

  Harvey.

  Now

  After grabbing my keys, I headed out to my hand-me-down car. I had parked out by the buzzing Grocery Emporium sign with the rest of the employees. I spent most of my childhood with this car, a midnineties red Geo Metro. It was small, but it’d always been me and my mom so it was never a problem. For my sixteenth birthday my mom bought herself a shiny new Jetta, slapped a Miss P’s Ballet Academy car magnet on the driver door of the Geo, and called it my birthday present.

  Technically, it was more than a ballet academy. When I was younger, my mom had all these requests for jazz and tap classes, so she expanded her courses after her first couple years in business. Not until I was about nine or ten did she hire a hip-hop–and–jazz teacher and a lyrical/modern dance teacher. I tried to convince her that changing the name of the studio to Miss P’s Dance Academy would bring in more students, but she refused. The name was something she wouldn’t budge on. When she’d first decided to open a ballet school, she wanted to call it the Poppovicci School of Ballet, but Bernie told Mom that people don’t like to do business with a place whose name they can’t pronounce. Eventually Mom caved and settled on Miss P’s.

  The bumper of the Geo was covered in recital stickers (Martin, Alice’s dad, designed new ones every year). One day I tried to scrape them off, but my mom threatened to take the car right back if I touched her stickers. So, essentially, my car was on loan from my mom until further notice.

  It wasn’t really a guy car, but it was my car. The fact that it had an engine and wheels outweighed the fact that the steering wheel bumped against my knees when I turned and that I always hit my head when I got in and out of the car.

  Before reversing out of the parking lot, I glanced through the call history on my cell. No missed calls. I’d spent the last couple months teetering on the edge of insanity, so scared of getting the call.

  I took the back roads to Alice’s house, hoping to beat the five o’clock traffic, which sounded more pressing than it was. We lived in a small suburb, where traffic existed solely because modern roadways did not. Every street was a two-lane street, and many streets were one-way.

  Racing past the studio, I prayed my mother wasn’t outside greeting students at the door. If she was, she might see the Geo speeding down Little Ave and know that I’d skipped out on work early. Again.

  I didn’t really have big plans for tonight, but Alice had been so tired lately and I was scared. Every night could be the last. By the time my shift ended at seven thirty she was usually about to fall asleep, so I tried to cut out early as much as I could. Her body was starting to wind down on her, drowning bits of herself a little more every day. It wasn’t what I’d expected, dying.

  As I shifted the Geo into park, Alice’s front door closed. Either Bernie or Martin must have just gotten home. Like I’d told Dennis, on the menu tonight was The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Dennis said it was hilarious and a little sad too. The sad I could handle; it was the hilarious that worried me. The funny movies had been the hardest to get through, because you’re supposed to laugh and Alice was too tired to laugh. When she couldn’t laugh, I tried to remember her laugh for her, and for me too, in case I forgot it. But every time I recalled it in my head it sounded distorted and faraway, like the screams you hear when you’re waiting in line outside a haunted house.

  I grabbed the DVD from the passenger seat, not even bothering to take off my Grocery Emporium apron. Running past Alice’s mom’s car, I could still feel the warmth transmitting from the engine.

  I knocked on the door as a formality. I had my own key anyway. But before I had a chance to shove the key into the lock, Bernie answered the door, her normally smooth face a red mess.

  “Harvey, we just got—”

  I interrupted her because I was scared of what she would say. “Hey, Bernie, I brought over another movie.” I began to step toward the front door, looking down at her as I asked, “Alice in her room?” But Bernie wasn’t shifting to let me through. Her body stood wedged in the crack between the door and the frame, like I was a threat.

  “Stay put for a minute, Harvey.” She shut the door without giving me a second to respond. Then the lock clicked.

  The muscles in my back tensed.

  Through the door, I heard Bernie say, “It’s Harvey. You should tell him.”

  Silence.

  My throat closed and my heart hammered a hole in my chest.

  “You should be the one to tell him,” she said, more insistent this time.

  Dead air.

  I tried peeking through the curtains, scared of what I might find, but the blinds were pulled down too tightly. I heard hushed voices. And I knew. They were trying to figure out how to tell me she was gone. I wanted to walk right in and tell them I knew. I knew last night when she told me. I’ll miss you most.

  I was a stranger on their doorstep, certain that I’d lost my connection to Bernie and Martin that mattered most. Sticking my empty hand in the pocket of my jeans, I shook around some loose change and thought about the list. When she first told me about it, I told her she was crazy. But if it hadn’t been for the list, I might not have had her all to myself this last year. So, I guess we both got a little bit of what we wanted. She got the last word and I got her.

  A minute later, Martin came to the door. Of course Bernie would send Martin out here to tell me, but I didn’t want to think of this moment every time I saw him. He wore his usual ripped jeans, an old, threadbare T-shirt, and loafers. He looked even more exhausted than Bernie. As he stepped out onto the front porch, he closed the door behind him. No one had ever called Martin the father figure in my life or my male role model or some crap like that, but he was. And I didn’t want him to be tied to this memory, the moment I found out she was gone.

  What if she’s in there? Her lifeless body might have still been in there—maybe in her bed, tucked in like she was asleep—waiting to be picked up by the funeral home or the ambulance or whoever did that sort of thing. I closed my eyes, but panicked when my memory of her face was fuzzy. I wanted to see her, but it would be all wrong and I was too chickenshit for that. I couldn’t see her like that. Seeing a dead body outside of a funeral home would be like seeing your teacher out at a restaurant or at a concert.

  “Hey, Harv,” said Martin. He rubbed his hand up the back of his short-cropped hair and puffed his cheeks full of air before slowly deflating them.

  He smiled. He was smiling.

  No. That had to be wrong. You can’t smile—she’s dead. Don’t tell me her pain is gone. Don’t tell me she’ll be at peace. Because she’s not at peace, she’s gone. I wanted to scream all these things at him. My blood boiled and my knuckles begged to connect with his face. All that anger felt sour in my mouth, but Alice was gone, and now I was waiting for that other half of me to disappear.

  “It’s gone, man.” Martin wasn’t the type of guy who spoke like a teenager so he could be hip and “connect with the kids.” He
talked like a teenager because he still was one, in a way. But I didn’t hear Martin call me man, which would normally lift at least a corner of my lip. I heard it. I didn’t know what it meant.

  “It?” I asked. My voice was too high and strangled, like puberty wasn’t done with me quite yet.

  A whole river of tears loomed behind my eyes waiting for the word. I tried to picture myself falling apart on their front porch. I didn’t even care about what I would look like or who would see me. Would they invite me in to comfort me or were they bandaging their own wounds now? Maybe they’d send me back to my car, then call my mom to warn her of the storm. What really stung was that if she was gone, I should have known. I should’ve felt it.

  “The cancer.” Martin choked on his words. “She’s in remission.”

  Three words. Three words I never thought I would ever hear. Three words that could build enough tomorrows to last me forever.

  “Can I come in and see her?” I asked, reaching for the door. Really, I needed proof that she was still here and alive.

  He opened the door and stuck his head inside. After whispering a few words to whoever stood in the entryway, he turned back to me. His eyes shifted a little. “She’s resting. Her body’s still got a lot of work to do, but we’ll call Natalie and plan a celebratory dinner.” He shrugged his shoulders, like he was trying to communicate something else to me, but I didn’t get it.

  It was the first time they’d ever told me no, the only time they’d ever not let me into their home.

  But she was alive. Martin reached for me, and I stood there, shocked, as he hugged me with my arms glued to my sides. He squeezed me so hard that the DVD in my hand slipped from my fingers and clattered to the front porch.

  I walked to my car, my feet knowing what to do without my mind ever telling them to do so. We could be together. Alice and I. That could be my life. I unlocked my car and sat behind the wheel for a moment, letting all of last year flood me. She’d have to make up for a lot of lost time at school. But it was okay. It would all be okay. My white-knuckled fingers gripped the peeling steering wheel as a smile tugged at my lips. Pulling the rearview mirror down to face me, I saw that I wore the same stupefied smile Martin had worn moments ago.

  I shifted gears into reverse, and squinted at Alice’s house before rolling down the driveway. And there she was, watching me through a crack in the blinds of the big bay window in the office. The blinds shifted and she was gone. I told myself every reason why she might not let me in. Especially now, after everything. And then I told myself, it was okay, because now we had time on our side.

  What should have been our end had become our beginning.

  Alice.

  Then

  I was dizzy, my sixth dizzy spell in three weeks. The first had been that day in Luke’s car after I’d seen my mom with that man. I thought it was just a reaction to being so overwhelmed, but after the fourth dizzy spell during World History last week, I started to think something might be wrong. But it felt like a dumb thing to go to the doctor for. What was I supposed to say? I saw my mom with some guy, and I’ve been feeling dizzy ever since? I probably needed more iron or something like that. Then last night I woke up shivering and covered in sweat, and now I didn’t know what was wrong.

  I sat down on the bench in the locker room. Everyone else had already changed into their school-issued gold shorts and gray T-shirts and left for gym. Closing my eyes, I pulled at the neck of my T-shirt. It felt too close to my throat, like I couldn’t breathe.

  “You look really tired.”

  I recognized that voice. I took one more deep breath before opening my eyes. Celeste stood a few feet away from me, holding her arms to her chest as she tried to find her T-shirt in her gym bag. She wore a black-and-white-striped bra, the straps cutting deep into her shoulders.

  “What are you staring at?” She rolled her eyes as she maneuvered, trying to hide her stomach. “Is that your thing now? Staring at girls in the locker room?”

  Celeste had always been the thickest girl in ballet. When we were in sixth grade, I heard Natalie telling my mom that she had to select a different costume for our entire class because Celeste didn’t fit into junior sizes anymore and the costumes didn’t come in regular adult sizes. It’s not like she was fat. She just didn’t have a ballet body, and that was something she would never get by practicing. Height and curves, that was Celeste. She would do things like eat lettuce and drink lemon juice for six weeks and call it a “cleanse.” I wanted to feel bad for her, but she made it so damn hard. She might not have had the body of a dancer, but Celeste was good. When I was still in ballet classes, the solos always came down to me and her. Ballet was different for her than it was for me. Ballet was my life. For her, it was a vehicle. Celeste wanted nothing more than to be a triple threat—dancer, singer, actress—and it killed her that, when it came to dance, I’d always have her beat. She probably thought our competitive rivalry was over when I quit right before freshman year. But then I started dating Luke and it got even worse because Luke wasn’t something Celeste could audition for.

  “Yeah, I just want you so bad,” I said, my voice monotone. “That’s why I have a boyfriend.”

  She flinched for a second, but made an effort to act cool as she searched her gym bag for her T-shirt. “You really do look like shit.”

  I touched my fingers to my cheeks, warm and clammy. “Luke doesn’t seem to mind. What are you doing without your one-girl minion anyway?” I asked, referring to her eternal sidekick, Mindi, who was best known for her runner-up beauty pageant titles. The only thing worse than losing was almost winning.

  Celeste ignored my question and pulled her T-shirt on over her head. She bit down on her lip for a second before she said, “I heard about your mom.”

  I stood. I wished I hadn’t, but it was like a reflex and it was the exact response she was looking for. “What are you talking about?”

  She threw her bag into her locker. “That’s got to be hard,” she said, “catching your mom with some other guy.”

  Luke. Oh my God. I didn’t think he’d actually seen anything worth remembering. I ground my teeth as panic, betrayal, and rage coursed through me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Those batshit cleanses must be going to your head.”

  Her lip twitched and she took three steps toward me. We stood nose to nose, a few inches apart. “Really? No idea? I can’t even imagine. Skipping school to lose your V-card to your boyfriend only to find that your mom’s getting more action than you ever will.” Her lips twisted into a pout and she shrugged. “Rough stuff.”

  I hadn’t told a single person—not even my dad—about what I’d learned that day. Luke must have seen her. Why would he have told Celeste? I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of me asking. “Fuck you, Celeste.”

  “No,” she said, “your boyfriend’s got that pretty much covered.” She turned and walked off toward the gym.

  I sat. Not on the bench, but right there on the floor. Her words hit me like a gunshot, so quick I hadn’t noticed it, until blood had pooled around the wound. It would have been easy to call her a liar, but I didn’t see any other way she could have known.

  Maybe Celeste was lashing out. Maybe Luke had just told her for the umpteenth time that he was going to break up with me for her. Maybe I’d sent her over the edge or maybe she hated me that much. I wouldn’t ever know, but it was in that moment that she and I went from frenemies to mortal enemies. I could believe that Luke was fooling around with other girls. The doubt had already been there. But he was cheating on me with her. Her, of all people. And on top of that, he had shared a secret that wasn’t even his to share. I wanted to destroy them both, but all I felt was powerless and foolish. A burning sensation spread across my chest as I began to cry.

  You start high school and it feels new and shiny, but what no one tells you is that the sophomores, juniors, and seniors all have these tricks and games they’ve been playing for a while now. That
’s the thing they don’t tell you at freshman orientation. And everyone is totally aware of this stuff except for the doe-eyed freshmen. I should have known better than to date Luke. Laurel had warned me, and I should have believed her.

  It hurt to know the truth. Not because I loved Luke, but because I was mad at myself for not knowing any better. I had to break up with him and it had to be public. I was going to send a message.

  The next morning, he found me at my locker again.

  “I’m bored,” I announced, my voice carefully controlled.

  “You want to cut out of here early today? Maybe go do something not so boring?” asked Luke, and his eyebrows rose with expectation.

  Two days ago I would have thought that he was kind of adorable, but now I thought he looked like a severe case of herpes. I rolled my eyes. “No, Luke, I’m bored. With us. We never do anything anymore that doesn’t involve the backseat of your car.”

  “So we’ll grab some dinner on Friday and go to a movie.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” I said, raising my voice. “I’m more bored with the you part of us.”

  Luke leaned toward me. “What the hell, Alice?” The words spilled out of his mouth in a rushed whisper. “Are you trying to break up with me?”

  “I’m not trying to. I am breaking up with you.”

  Bodies froze all around us, and life felt slow like when you turn a snow globe right side up and everything falls into place again. Onlookers whispered behind us, and a few girls pointed at us. To the side of me, some guys whistled, saying things like “That’s busted.” Another group of girls directly behind Luke smiled, ready to pounce. I hoped Harvey was watching too, but I couldn’t risk a glance.

  “What are you looking at, homo?” yelled Luke.