Side Effects May Vary

  We walked out to my car with Alice bundled in a layer of sweaters and jackets despite it being an unseasonably warm March. Once we were in the car and away from the shadow of the clinic, I turned to Alice and said, “You know you’re going to have to give me more details.”

  Harvey.

  Then

  “Who are we supposed to be meeting again?” asked Alice.

  “Some kid named Glen,” I said. “He’s the one who got the dress rehearsal video.”

  We stood in the alley behind the school auditorium, waiting to be let in. It was the first week of April and the last performance of Oklahoma!, starring none other than Celeste. Glen was Dennis’s inside guy, who did all the lighting design for the school plays. I’d never heard of him, but from what Dennis said he never ventured far from the theater tech warehouse behind the auditorium. When I asked Dennis how we should compensate Glen, he said that these guys operated strictly on favors and that he’d take care of it. I didn’t want to know, so I didn’t ask.

  Alice and I rented Oklahoma!, but we only made it through the first half, which was all that mattered anyway. From what I gathered, this girl named Laurey liked these two guys named Curly and Jud, but she really loved Curly. Anyway, right before intermission there’s this big ballet number, which is some dream sequence where Laurey realizes she loves Curly. All I can say about Oklahoma! is that I officially have no desire to visit the state of Oklahoma.

  “Hey, you guys!” I turned to see Dennis jogging up behind us. “I texted Glen. He said we’ve got about twenty minutes and that he’s on his way down to let us in.”

  And then, as if on cue, the stage door opened. “Come on,” said a voice from the shadows of backstage.

  I looked to Alice, and she motioned for me to go ahead.

  It took a minute for my eyes to adjust, but when they did I found a guy two heads shorter than me with greasy black hair, round glasses, and translucently white skin. He wore cargo shorts and a T-shirt with a fire-breathing dragon flying through a rainbow. He had to be Glen.

  “Bro,” said Dennis, giving him some kind of handshake-high-five combo. “Harvey, Alice, this is Glen.”

  “Hey,” I said. “Thanks for helping us out.”

  Alice nodded. “Yeah, thanks.”

  Glen crossed his arms over his chest and widened his stance, claiming his territory. “No problem,” he said. “All the leads are always assholes to us anyway. This should be good.” He rubbed his hands together and smiled. “I have to head back up to the booth. Good luck.”

  We did our best to blend in with the theater kids. Glen had advised us to wear all black so that we might be mistaken for techies. The three of us hid behind a rolling staircase made of plywood that had been painted to look like marble flooring (an old set piece, I assumed).

  Alice shed her coat to reveal her pink gown, the one from Nifty-Thrifty. The dress dipped down in the front, lower than I’d realized at the store. So low that . . . Alice wasn’t wearing a bra. I felt her eyes on me, catching me staring at her chest. My cheeks flushed, and I pretended to study an old paint splatter on the concrete floor. We were about to sabotage the school play, and all I could think about was her lack of bra.

  “Okay,” said Dennis, not noticing the tension I so obviously felt. “I’m headed up to the rafters.”

  I nodded.

  Dennis pulled a delicate tiara and a honey-blond wig out of his backpack, handing both to Alice, then left.

  A moment later, the stage went black in preparation for the next scene.

  “You look fine, Celeste,” a girl assured from a few feet ahead of us.

  “The skirt feels tighter than it did last week,” answered Celeste.

  “Totally not your fault,” said the girl. It sounded like Mindi. “I think Kinsey screwed up everyone’s alterations. And you’re going to kill this number anyway.”

  “I think I might use a recording of one of the performances for my musical theater program audition tape as part of a montage. Like a best-of-moments thing.” She paused. “I’ve heard some people apply as early as two years out.”

  I looked to Alice, my eyes wide.

  The stage lights came up.

  She shook her head and mouthed to me, “Don’t worry—she has this coming.”

  I shook my head again and Alice took my hand, pulling me to her.

  “Please,” she whispered, so close to me that when she spoke, our lips touched.

  “Fine, but after this I’m done.”

  She smiled with her mouth closed.

  We stood, watching the scene, waiting for the dream sequence to begin. Finally, Celeste sat down in the rocking chair and pretended to fall asleep—our cue.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be waiting for you on the other side of the stage.”

  She nodded and tugged the wig onto her head. With the wig, she almost looked normal. Alice was at that good point, a couple days before she would be going back for another round of chemo. Her body had recovered long enough for her to get in a few days of freedom only to return for her next round. Sometimes I wondered if the chemo was too much for one body to handle. And maybe it did more harm than good. Yeah, the chemo might kill the cancer, but it might kill Alice too.

  I didn’t know either of the guys who played Curly or Jud, but the one playing Curly went out onstage and began to dance with Celeste. Actually, he just sort of stood there while Celeste danced around him. She spun and leaped across the stage, putting her ballet experience to use while making everyone else look like amateurs.

  The one who played Jud stood in the wings, waiting for his entrance. I bounced on my toes a little, trying to psych myself up before tapping him on his shoulder. He was huge, the kind of guy who basketball coaches saw on the first day of high school and fawned over.

  I just hoped I didn’t get my ass kicked.

  He turned around and whispered, “What?”

  “We’re having some issues with your mic. I’m supposed to re-mic you.”

  He shook his head. “Wait till intermission. There’s no singing in this number.”

  “I’ve got shit to do at intermission. I’m fast, I swear.”

  He looked over his shoulder to see Celeste still dancing around the other guy and nodded reluctantly.

  I led him to the small dressing room off stage right. Once inside, he unbuttoned his shirt.

  “We’ve got to make this fast,” he said.

  “Yeah, I’m on it.” I dug through my bag, my heart pounding and sweat pooling at the back of my neck. “Oh, hey, man. I must have dropped the cord right outside. Give me a second.”

  He sighed. “You’re killing me, dude.”

  “Be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

  He paced up and down the length of the dressing room, doing some voice exercise.

  I almost told him to forget it and that I’d get his mic later. But instead, I flipped the thumb lock on the door and left him there in the dressing room, locked inside, as I ignored the twinges of regret prickling up my spine.

  Running around to the other side of the stage, I had a second to process what was happening in the play. Celeste danced with a group of girls, holding bouquets while they placed a veil on her head. I remembered this part from the movie. Laurey and Curly had danced around and I guess that somehow meant they should get married, and because girls can smell marriage, all Laurey’s friends had rushed to help her prepare for her dream-sequence-certainly-doomed-wedding.

  I spotted Alice in the wing opposite me, and for a second that moved so fast it might as well not have existed, she looked nervous. But the moment passed, and soon her icy exterior was back and multiplied. She slid the tiara into her wig and stepped forward.

  If this was any other performance of Oklahoma!, Laurey/Celeste would be running around like an idiot and then stand with her eyes closed waiting for her groom (Curly), only to find Jud, who would then pick her up and make her his most miserable wench wife.

  But that didn’t happen because Jud was l
ocked in a fitting room and Laurey/Celeste had bigger things to worry about than that sack of muscles.

  From where I stood, Alice looked small and harmless with her light pink dress, blond wig, and tiara.

  Then she walked out onstage.

  From the back, she wove through the chorus—whose feet kept moving but whose faces said What the hell? She mimicked what would have been Jud’s choreography as all the techies and cast backstage buzzed with confusion. The stage looked like one of those “Which of these things does not belong?” puzzles, and it was so obvious that Al was the odd piece out. She faked the choreography long enough to weasel in right alongside an unsuspecting Celeste, with her eyes closed, waiting for her groom. The techies argued back and forth, saying “Go get her!” and “You go get her!” Ultimately, none of them were brave enough to interrupt the show completely.

  The stage manager finally reasoned, “Maybe no one will notice her.”

  Yeah, no one would notice the girl dressed as a prom queen in the middle of turn-of-the-century Oklahoma.

  Everyone backstage went quiet as Alice paused in front of Celeste and lifted her veil. Celeste jumped back, the exact same reaction she should have had to Jud—but more authentic.

  Alice’s lips twitched as gallons of homemade fake blood rained down directly over Alice and Celeste. I looked up and could faintly make out the figure in the rafters, and only because I knew he was there. Most of the cast members avoided the worst of it, but none of them got it quite as bad Celeste, whose shrill scream rang through the auditorium.

  Alice stood facing Celeste and drenched in red. It was so obvious. She was Carrie, Stephen King’s Carrie.

  For a second, the whole world froze with shock. Everyone stared, and no one did anything. Except the orchestra. They kept playing until, one by one, each chair began to falter as they noticed the spectacle onstage. Alice opened her eyes and wiped them with the only part of her arm left untouched by the fake blood. Then she turned and ran directly to me.

  I’d stuffed her black coat in my backpack, and was ready for her with a huge brown fleece blanket. I wrapped it around her body and we were off. She kept tripping over her long dress, slowing us down.

  We were nearly to the emergency exit when I saw how exhausted she was. Without thinking, I ducked down and wrapped my arms around her thighs, throwing her over my shoulder with the fleece still pulled tightly around her. Alice shook against my body, laughing so hard I almost thought she was crying.

  I stiff-armed the bar on the emergency exit door. The Geo waited for us outside like a chariot. Unceremoniously, I threw Alice into the front seat and raced around to the driver’s side. I sped off and headed for my apartment. Alice sat forward a little, doing her best not to stain the passenger seat, but really I didn’t care.

  We’d made a clean getaway. I glanced at my cell to find a text from Dennis saying he was in the clear too, but the place was A fucking zoo, man.

  In the car, Alice and I retold the story of what had happened with huge animated gestures. I felt like we were kids again and the only thing between us was nothing at all. Once we’d exhausted the memory from every angle, a quiet settled between us. All I could think about was the feeling of her hot breath on my back as I carried her to the car, and the way she leaned against me in the fitting room of the Nifty-Thrifty, and how we hadn’t kissed since Lake Quasipi. We hadn’t even talked about the kiss; I was starting to think I’d made the whole thing up.

  Alice bobbed in her seat, unable to keep still. I could feel it too—the adrenaline rush from doing something so completely crazy. It made my head feel busy, like I was feeling too many things at once.

  At home, I gave her an old beach towel that my mom wouldn’t miss and a clean bar of soap. I closed my door to change my clothes, then opened it and sat on my bed, giving myself a clear view of the bathroom door on the other side of the hall. Steam curled out from beneath the door like an invitation. But it wasn’t.

  I went to the kitchen to make a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. When I returned, Alice sat on my bed in one of my T-shirts and a pair of drawstring shorts. She was the most perfect thing I’d ever seen.

  “I forgot my change of clothes in my locker. I didn’t think you would mind,” she said, her skin pink and raw. “I left the wig in the tub. We’ll have to throw it out later. I need to sit here for a minute.”

  I sat down next to her on my bed and handed her half of my sandwich. We took turns taking sips from the glass of milk I had poured. When we finished the sandwich, Alice leaned her head on my shoulder and sighed, saying thank you without saying anything at all.

  “I’m going to lay down for a few minutes,” she said.

  “Sure. Okay.” I took the empty glass to the kitchen and threw out the wig while she slept. I wanted to ignore these moments and pretend like this wasn’t happening, but the truth was that her dying had become too real.

  On Monday morning, Alice was called into the principal’s office. No one besides Celeste knew for sure that it was her, so they couldn’t really prove anything. In the end, it didn’t matter. The next day her white blood cell count plummeted, and she had to spend a month in the hospital.

  When I’d visit her, the nurses would give me this look that was all pity and knowing as they handed me a blue surgical mask to wear inside her room. If she was awake, she’d ask me about school and if people were talking about her and what they were saying. Any time I brought up Celeste or Mindi she’d look at me, her eyes lighting up for a moment, and say, “Bitches.” And that gave me a strange sense of comfort. In mid-May, Alice’s fever broke long enough for them to send her home. We threw a little welcome home party, like this was a good thing, and she hadn’t been sent home to die.

  Harvey.

  Now

  This time last week I’d stood in Alice’s entryway asking her to choose me. She stood there in that idiot’s jacket while I waited for her answer, but it never came. How could it be that she and I were at our best only when her health was at its worst? How did that make any goddamn sense?

  The nice thing about the Grocery Emporium was that it was never quiet. There was always a constant cycle of cash registers, bar-code scanners, Muzak, and the nonstop thrum of voices. This morning, Dennis and I had been assigned to stock the canned food from the pallets in the back.

  “Sardines.” Just the taste of the word in my mouth made me want to gag.

  “I know, man,” said Dennis as we filled in back stock, pulling the oldest cans to the front of the shelf in a neat row.

  On Monday, I’d asked my manager, Collin, for extra hours, and because Dennis was a good friend he’d done the same. I didn’t need free time. I needed mind-numbing work that got me through the hours when I wasn’t at school or asleep.

  “Why do we even sell these? Hasn’t society mutually decided sardines are gross?” I asked.

  “Who even buys these things?” he asked, not answering my question. “I mean, obviously someone does, or we wouldn’t be filling stock. The better question is why.”

  “The only people who buy sardines are people like Luke and his dumbass friends so they can dump ’em in kids’ lockers and gym bags.” It was true, happened all the time.

  “It’s like the solution is so obvious. Stop selling sardines and no more sardine-ing,” said Dennis, like he had solved world hunger.

  “Sardine-ing?” I laughed.

  “Just invented a word,” said Dennis. “That just happened.”

  This was why Dennis was my best friend, because everything else in my life could be shit, but he would still be Dennis.

  We’d finished the crate of sardines and moved on to tuna.

  “I saw Alice looking at you yesterday,” said Dennis.

  “That’s like saying I saw lockers in the hallway. It was probably coincidental. Plus, she made herself perfectly clear about where we stand.” It sucked, but at least she finally did it.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it’s for the best. You’ve done so
me pretty extreme shit for her and—”

  An old woman made a “hmph” noise from behind us at Dennis’s swearing.

  “Crap,” he said. “I meant to say crap,” he called over his shoulder. “Man, I hope she doesn’t say anything to customer service. I’m on my second write-up.”

  I shrugged, watching the old lady go.

  “Dennis! I’ve been waiting outside for ten minutes,” called a voice from the front of the store.

  Debora speed-walked down the aisle of canned food, headed straight for us with an armful of dry cleaning. Her corn-husk bob swished with each step. She wore a teal, fitted oxford shirt tucked into a straight black skirt that tapered in at the knees and hugged her hips, with a pair of pointy shoes that made my feet hurt just from looking at them.

  Dennis turned to me and tilted his head to the ceiling, letting out a loud groan.

  Without any sort of greeting, Debora shoved the dry cleaning into Dennis’s chest and said, “Here. You’re going to make us late. We’re supposed to be at the portrait studio in ten minutes, and unless I hit all green lights, it takes me fifteen.”

  Dennis looked at me. “Family pictures. Totally forgot.”

  Debora squinted her eyes and leaned in closer. “You didn’t even shave, did you?” She shook her head and sighed. “Go change.”

  Dennis turned for the break room and Debora followed him, so I did too. Their family did pictures every year at the same portrait place in old downtown. They always wore black bottoms and a different-colored shirt every year. I knew this because the portraits lined their staircase, starting with the most recent picture at the bottom.

  Mom and I had never taken real family portraits, only pictures at Christmastime and sometimes for one of our birthdays.

  In the break room, Dennis slipped into the small employee bathroom while Debora and I sat down at one of the lunch tables.