Side Effects May Vary

  He kissed me, a quick kiss at first, his lips sealed. I remembered that night at Lake Quasipi and then again at prom. If there was going to be another step, I would have to be the one to make it. I held the back of his neck and pulled him down to me. I expected him to be sweet and slow, but he wasn’t. His hands ran over my sides and down the slope of my back as he kissed my shoulders. His fingers left a scorching trail over my skin, nothing like Luke’s sweaty hands. Harvey’s lips met mine. I felt the coppery taste of blood on my tongue. I didn’t want to, but I pushed him back.

  “My mouth,” I said. “My gums have been hurting.”

  “I think I can find other things to kiss besides your mouth,” he whispered.

  A shiver of heat spread up my spine and through my belly as his lips fell on my cheekbones and my forehead and my eyelids and my neck. For a moment, I forgot about my droopy bathing suit, and my bleeding gums turned into a whisper as the pain in my joints eased.

  My chest tightened. “Stop,” I breathed.

  He did, but held me up by my shoulders.

  “I can’t—I need to catch my breath.”

  He pulled me into his arms while Goliath licked my toes. In this moment, it wasn’t fair, and I wanted to stay. I was scared and angry, but mostly angry, because I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to die and leave Harvey and my parents and Natalie. I could have had this, but whatever lottery decided life and death chose differently. My whole life could have been this—Harvey and me standing as close as physics would allow. Panic began to knot in my chest. I would be gone. I would die and be nothing but remains and my memories would be lost forever, and that made me want to scream and claw at the universe, begging it to let me stay.

  Harvey began to sway from side to side, with me still in his arms.

  We stayed like that for a while, and I let his touch soothe me as we danced to a silent song only we could hear.

  The next step I left up to Harvey. I told him to take Goliath next door along with the bag of food, treats, toys, and information from the shelter. Harvey had strict instructions to tie Goliath’s leash to the light post in Miss Porter’s front yard, ring the doorbell, and then haul ass out of there.

  For a moment, I thought about keeping Goliath for myself. My parents wouldn’t say no. Not right now. He’d looked so scared. But I couldn’t. In a few months, I’d orphan the poor dog all over again.

  I collapsed onto my bed and eyed the collection of prescription drugs on my nightstand until I found the painkillers that knocked me out like damn elephant tranquilizers. The good stuff, the stuff doctors doled out when they felt really bad for you.

  The next few minutes were spent drifting in and out of consciousness. I heard a loud squeal of sheer delight, loud enough to penetrate the double pane of my bedroom window. Harvey cracked open my bedroom door, his face flushed red, his chest heaving. He had this enormous grin on his face, and before he could say anything, I beat him to the punch.

  “Good deeds are tiring, and entirely overrated,” I said, laughing a little. I was exhausted, but it had been worth it.

  Harvey collapsed into the old wicker rocking chair in the far corner of my room. He said nothing, but his stupid smile said everything. I fell asleep to the sound of Goliath’s nervous yelps echoing from next door and the rhythmic squeaking of the floorboards beneath the rocking chair.

  Alice.

  Now

  Eric ran to the front of the café to pick up our steaming mugs of cider. He sat down in the chair opposite me and placed our drinks down on the round, wobbly table between us. Whenever either of us accidentally hit the table leg with our knee the cider sloshed around and splattered onto the surface.

  It was a freakishly chilly night for the month of April, especially considering my half-packed suitcase at home full of shorts, tank tops, and swimsuits. Natalie had decided, for the first time ever, to close the studio for spring break. Tomorrow was a half day at school, and my parents, Natalie, Harvey, and I would all be driving to the beach on Sunday morning. My mom’s boss had a house there on the water, and he was letting her use it for the week.

  This all sounded great, perfect even. Except that Harvey and I hadn’t talked in over a month. My mom kept trying to pry me open and find out what was wrong, but when her attempts at cracking me had failed, she sent in backup—my dad, who had even worse luck.

  I should have been relieved that Harvey had backed off. He’d started dating Dennis’s twin sister. I’d seen them together in the hallways and suspected something, but it was my parents who officially broke the news to me. We all sat at the kitchen table, eating dinner, when my dad asked if I’d hung out with Harvey and his new girlfriend.

  I swallowed my food and bit down on my lip.

  My mom looked at me questioningly. “Yeah,” she said. “Natalie said he’s dating Dennis’s twin sister. She’s the blond one, right?”

  I nodded.

  “She’s cute,” said my mom.

  That night, I barely slept. My entire body was on fire.

  At school, I punished myself by watching them. They held hands. They kissed. They did . . . couple’s shit. And, God, of all the people he could have picked, he chose Debora. Debora who was a snotty little overachiever, the type of girl who reminded the teacher that there had been a homework assignment due. She’d intruded on our trip to Lake Quasipi and now she was intruding on my life. She may have been cordial to me a handful of times, but now she was dating Harvey and that seemed to cancel everything else out.

  Whenever I saw him walking her to class or searching for her hand with his as they shuffled down the hallways, I found myself plotting her demise. This wasn’t okay. He couldn’t be with someone, not so soon. I wanted to destroy her. But then I stopped myself, which surprised me. This little, minuscule spot of good inside of me told me that Harvey was happy, and anything I did to ruin her would ruin him. And that would be unforgiveable. Even if I did manage to ruin her and split the two of them up, what would I do then? I didn’t know how to be with Harvey.

  Going to the café with Eric had been one of the few times he and I had gone out in public together. Typically, our time together was limited to our little fort under the bleachers and sweaty makeout sessions in the back of his rusted Range Rover. Eric had avoided me for a couple days after the incident at my house with Harvey. I didn’t go out of my way to track him down; I knew that in time Eric would find me.

  He found me under the bleachers during third period. Plopping down next to me, he held out a mini sleeve of Oreo cookies from the vending machine. After the bell buzzed announcing the beginning of the period, Eric said, “So what’s the real deal with you and that Harvey guy?”

  “We were friends.” I lay back on the gym floor. “Then he fell in love with me.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but it wasn’t a whole lie either, and I thought that more than fair.

  Not talking to Harvey meant that if I wasn’t with Eric, I was alone, and when I was alone, Celeste always seemed to find me. It was more of the same empty threats and promises of revenge. You might want to watch your back. Don’t for a minute think you’ve gotten away with anything. Nothing she said could scare me because I didn’t have anything left to lose.

  “Alice?” Eric said, snapping his fingers in front of my face. “Where are you, Allie Cat?” I hated that nickname. Eric blew on his mug of cider, gripping it with both hands.

  “Sorry, what’d you say?”

  “Are you going to be around for spring break?”

  “No. Going to the beach with family.”

  Silence sank between us, and I wondered why we were here and not pressing our bodies together in the back of his car, but he’d insisted on going somewhere to talk.

  “What about you?” I asked. “Plans for spring break?” Talking and not just playing Go Fish or making out turned out to be almost uncomfortable.

  “Kind of,” he said.

  I’ll admit I didn’t know Eric very well. But I did know if he had something to say he always c
ame right out and said it. “Kind of?”

  “Yeah, we’re, uh . . . moving.”

  I sat up straight, looking directly at him. “What do you mean you’re moving?”

  “My aunt’s job transferred her again.”

  His aunt? It had never even occurred to me to ask Eric about himself. I didn’t even know he lived with his aunt, which made me wonder where his parents were. I’d had plenty of opportunities to ask Eric about himself, but I hadn’t. I thought he was like me, just running.

  “We moved here in November, but her job shuffles us around a lot.” He set his arms down on the table, rocking it, and pulled at some dead skin around his thumbnail.

  “Oh. So, next week then?” I asked.

  “I guess.” He cleared his throat. “I probably won’t see you after tomorrow.”

  “I guess not.” We both stared holes through the little table separating us. “So you live with your aunt?” I didn’t know why I even bothered. This wasn’t exactly the opportune time to get to know Eric.

  “Yeah, my parents were never really around.”

  “I didn’t know,” I said quietly.

  “You never asked.” Those three words drifted down between us like three feathers that would inevitably hit the ground, but took their time. Gravity at its finest.

  “I’ve never moved” was the only thing I knew to say.

  Without really thinking about it, I reached across the table and held his dry hand in mine. We sat there for a while having our own silent conversation until the bell above the door chimed, jolting us back to the little café. In walked Harvey with his hand on the small of Debora’s back, guiding her to the counter. I watched them, and Eric watched me. They held hands loosely, the way people do when they’ve been together for a long time. All the animosity I felt for Debora rose up through my body like vitriol. I wanted to annihilate her. I wanted to dismantle her perfect little life piece by piece, leaving only Harvey intact.

  Eric squeezed my hand, but I barely noticed. “You okay?”

  My breath caught and the anger inside of me deflated. “Fine,” I answered, still watching them over Eric’s shoulder. As they left, Harvey’s gaze paused momentarily on Eric and me. I so wished that he’d given me a hint of something—some kind of reaction—but he didn’t. He just left.

  I pulled my eyes from the door and smiled at Eric, but it felt sad on my lips. “I can’t believe you’re moving next week.”

  “Well, actually,” said Eric, suddenly perking up, “my aunt’s got a couple months left on her lease. She says I can finish out senior year if I really want to. What do you think I should do, Allie Cat?”

  The nickname pricked at my nerves, reminding me of myself. This was the part of the conversation where I was supposed to tell him to stay.

  “Do whatever you want, Eric. You’re a big boy. I’m pretty sure you can make your own decisions.”

  His shoulders fell. “Well, I guess you’ll find out what I decide next week,” he said.

  I was sad for Eric because he’d never known a home, not like I had. But I wasn’t sad enough to give him one.

  Harvey.

  Then

  “Harvey, do you even know what you’re doing?”

  “Yes, Alice, I do. I watched a video online.”

  “Give me that,” she said, yanking the apple out of my hand.

  I handed her the pen along with the knife. She fumbled with the utensils but didn’t get very far.

  Before she had the chance to cut our last good apple to bits, I swiped it from her.

  “Hey!” She sat on the bench in a huff. We had already gone through eight apples, all victims of Alice’s frustration.

  I held the pen between my teeth and sat down next to her. After placing the apple on the picnic table, I carefully maneuvered the knife through the apple, trying to create a tubular shape. “I can’t believe you put this on your list, Al. It’s so stupid,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “Harvey, I can’t even think of a single person who has graduated high school without smoking marijuana.”

  “I can think of plenty. And come to think of it—they’re all really successful. Maybe they’re on to something,” I said. “And the fact that you refer to pot as marijuana shows how much of a non-pot-smoking kind of person you are.” She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could I cut her off. “And, Alice, you have cancer! Aren’t people with cancer not supposed to smoke?”

  “Harvey, I’m going to be biting it sooner rather than later. I don’t think my future success is all that valid of a concern here, okay? It’s not like I’ve got lung cancer. And I could probably get medicinal marijuana, you know, so it’s not all that illegal.”

  In the last year, Alice’s attitude toward mortality had turned from accepting to cavalier. But now she was to the point of being capricious. Whenever she said anything about dying or expiration dates, I wanted to slap my hand over her mouth, because I was scared that somehow Death would hear her taunting him and smite her for it.

  “We’re nearly done with the list,” she continued. “Not doing this now would be half-assed. And I’m not going to this fund-raiser unless I’m stoned.” The pothead terminology sounded so foreign coming from her.

  “But won’t everyone know you’re high?”

  “Blame it on the pain meds. What are they going to do? Kick me out of my own fund-raising event for trying to dull my pain?”

  Alice didn’t verbalize it much—that she was in pain. But it was everywhere, all over her. This weird part of me wanted to feel everything she felt, including the pain. It wasn’t even that I wanted to carry her burden, but I was scared of her going somewhere I couldn’t follow. “You can’t play the cancer card forever, Alice.”

  “You’re right, just until I’m dead. Then I dub you the carrier of the card, which shall henceforth be known as the ‘my friend died of cancer’ card.”

  If it weren’t so true, I would have laughed.

  Things were getting worse. I overheard my mom talking to Bernie and Martin the other night. They said that they were going to focus on Alice being “comfortable.” The thought made me numb. I didn’t ever think it would come to this, that the sum of Alice’s life would amount to her level of comfort. I always thought we would look back on this and I could say, “Hey, Alice, remember that time you had cancer?”

  I worked diligently on the apple and came up with something manageable. I stood and pulled a little mini ziplock baggie from my pocket that screamed illegal substances. Alice’s gaze followed the baggie, her pale blue eyes eager and only slightly apprehensive. “We can just say we did it, Al. I won’t tell anyone.”

  She bit her lip in thought; she looked sweet. I blinked my eyes and sweet Alice was gone. “Stop being a pansy, Harvey.”

  I sighed loudly and stuffed the dry green flakes into the top of the apple where I had used a pocketknife to create a long cylinder that ran to the core. “Ready?” I asked, giving her one last chance to say no, but she stood up next to me and nodded once.

  I handed her the apple, and she pressed her mouth to a horizontally running cylinder that cut straight through the bottom of the vertical cylinder. All of this was fancy talk for Apple Bong.

  Alice looked at me expectantly. I took my little plastic gas station lighter and held it to the top of the apple. “I’ve never done this before, but online it said to suck in, hold for a couple seconds, then blow out slowly. And in case you didn’t get it by now, I think this is a horrible idea.”

  I lit the lighter, the leaves crackling, and then she sucked in like I told her to. She held the smoke in her lungs for a couple of seconds before trying to blow out smoothly, but instead unleashed a fury of coughing and wheezing. She held her hand to her chest as she tried to catch her breath and stumbled backward. I wrapped my arm around her waist and guided her back to the picnic bench.

  We had decided that the best place to do this would be in a public park. Craven’s Park was on the outskirts of town and had recently been p
artially redone, so we opted for its older, less-trafficked area. The leaves were beginning to change, most of them still clinging to their branches. At the moment, I was supposed to be working the after-school shift at Grocery Emporium, but I had called in sick last night.

  “This is stupid, Alice.”

  I’m sure she would have had some snarky remark to bite back with if she wasn’t trying to catch her breath. I patted her back, smoothing the nonexistent wrinkles in her paper-thin T-shirt. I tried my very best not to think of the outline of her bra beneath my fingers. Her shoulder blades stuck out, each vertebra of her spine visible through her shirt. “Alice, there are so many things wrong with this picture. I am officially the worst friend of all time for letting you do this.”

  She said nothing, but pulled the apple back to her lips. I lit it again, and this time the process went a little smoother. She inhaled twice more and passed the apple to me. I took one hit and passed it back to Alice again. We went like this for a while, just stopping to add more crumpled leaves to the top of the apple.

  A breeze pushed through the park, leaves whispering as they fell to the ground.

  “Harvey.” It came out like a breath, like she needed my name to breathe. “Harvey,” Alice repeated back to herself quickly. “Harvey, tell me why on earth Natalie gave you that name,” she demanded with her eyes closed.

  “You know why, Alice.” My name had always been a little bit of a sore spot for me. I hated it; it sounded so old and . . . old. I always wondered what my life would have been like if I were a Nick or a Carson or an Asher.

  “Tell me again.”

  “My mom wanted my name to sound American.” My mom lost both her parents soon after graduating high school. The two of them were Romanian immigrants and neither of them spoke English. When she got pregnant with me, she dropped out of her touring ballet company and settled in the nearest town. I’d asked about my dad—Was he part of the ballet? A local? A stagehand? Dead? Did she tell him about me? Is that why he left us?—but no answers. My mom met Bernie at a student-run legal clinic where she sought custody advice. They’d been friends ever since. I rolled my head back a little, watching the clouds slide across the sky. “She saw my name on a list of popular American names in the back of a dictionary.”