Side Effects May Vary

by Julie Murphy

  “You’re going to have to give me more than five seconds,” I said, trying to play along.

  She didn’t laugh, but plopped down on my bed.

  “Do you remember when we were kids and your mom was watching me and she had to take you to a doctor’s appointment, so she took me too?”

  I didn’t answer. Things like that had happened all the time when we were little.

  “Your mom went to the bathroom for a minute while we waited in the examination room. You sat in the chair, and I walked around looking at everything, sticking my hands in the cotton balls. You kept telling me to sit down.” She turned to me. “Do you know what time I’m talking about now?”

  I laughed. “Yeah,” I said. “You told me the rubber doorstop on the wall behind the door was a nose-cleaner. And then you kept saying, ‘What’s that on your nose, Harvey?’ so I knelt down in front of the doorstop and rubbed my nose around inside.”

  “And then the nurse came in and hit you with the door. Oh my God, and then your mom came in!” She pressed the tips of her fingers to her smiling lips. “She was so pissed.”

  I sat down next to her. “Yeah. I didn’t figure out that you were making it up till I was, like, ten.” I wanted to ask her why she was here, but I didn’t want this moment to end.

  She had probably said fewer than twenty words to me since the beginning of freshman year. I was trying hard not to count her words now. One hundred and thirteen.

  “You don’t even like playing the piano, do you?” she asked, changing the subject.

  I like creating the rhythm of your body. That’s what I wanted to say. If I was suave I would say shit like that, the kind of stuff that made girls’ clothes fall off. I wanted her to keep talking so I told the truth. “I don’t know. I quit.”

  “That’s dumb.”

  I needed her to say it. Whatever it was she came to say. Because after a year of silence, why else would she be here? “Alice—”

  “I have leukemia, Harvey.”

  Your life changes sometimes and it only takes a few words to bridge the gap between now and then. My first instinct was shock. It didn’t make sense. She didn’t look sick. “I’m sorry.” It was all I could think of to say.

  “Yeah,” said Alice, “because I must have caught it from you.” She slid in closer to me. “Don’t be sorry.”

  I nodded. “So, is this, like, the type of cancer they just cut out of you and then it’s all ‘Hey, everybody, remember that one time I had cancer?’ Or is this, like, the bad kind?” The type of cancer that decimates you and everyone you know.

  She didn’t answer, and because she didn’t say so, I assumed it to be the latter. If it was okay, if she thought she would be all right, she would have said something like but it’s not serious. I tried to talk, but the words stuck to the back of my throat. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  “Acute lymphocytic leukemia. I’m starting the first round of chemotherapy next week.”

  “How do you feel?” Words, sounds I didn’t know I was making.

  “The same, I guess. I don’t know. I can’t tell if I’ve felt like this for so long that I can’t tell or if I genuinely don’t feel any different. Does that make sense?”

  One hundred and ninety-six words. All those words in a matter of minutes but only four words that mattered. Only four words played on repeat in my head.

  I have leukemia, Harvey. I have leukemia, Harvey. I have leukemia, Harvey.

  I wonder if she practiced how she was going to say it. Harvey, I have leukemia. Leukemia have I, Harvey. Maybe she tried different inflections of each word. I would have. I have leukemia, Harvey. I thought about all the other people she might have told before me—the list was short— and I hoped that, besides her parents, I was the first to know. It was selfish, but I wanted to know I came first even if it was only when shit was falling apart.

  I ignored her question because I wasn’t sure if what she said did make sense and, too, I thought maybe it was the type of question you didn’t answer. “Is it bad?” There should have been an online course that covered appropriate questions to ask when someone tells you they’re terminally ill, but nothing could have ever prepared me for the hole that was growing inside of me. The absence I was already feeling at the thought of losing her.

  “It’s not good.” She licked her chapped lips and even now, when she was trying to tell me that some disease was eating away at her, my fucking hormones took over.

  I thought about my mom because if anything could extinguish my sex drive, it was her.

  I wondered if my mom knew. Bernie probably figured out a way to time it so that we both found out at the same time. That would be fair, and Bernie was nothing if not fair.

  “They said the younger you are, the higher your chances are for recovery. But, I dunno. The doctor said it can be dicey. Dicey,” she repeated to herself. “All the good shit is supposed to happen when you get older. Driver’s licenses, concerts, sex. So that’s really fucking ironic,” she whispered.

  “Did they do, like, a bunch of tests?”

  She flexed and unflexed her feet. “Yeah. They kept saying things like ‘inconclusive’ and this ‘warrants further testing.’ They did a bone marrow biopsy and finally came up with something.”

  It sounded painful. “Did it hurt?”

  “They gave me stuff for while they were doing it, but now it’s just sore.”

  I wanted to have an answer to that, a way to fix everything. “What do we do now?” We. It sounded presumptuous, but it’d just come out. And even though I knew it shouldn’t have been the case, the last year felt inconsequential—minuscule in comparison to the weight of her confession.

  “Let’s turn off the lights and look at the glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling.”

  It wasn’t the answer I was looking for, but I wanted to do it all the same. “Okay.”

  I turned off the lights and navigated my way back to my bed by moonlight. Alice lay on my bed and patted the empty space next to her. Didn’t have to ask me twice.

  “Are you scared?” It was the question game, but this time I was asking all the questions.

  “I don’t want to be.” I heard the words she didn’t say.

  “I am.”

  “Good,” she said, her voice a whisper.

  “Are you staying in school?”

  “My parents haven’t said otherwise.” We were quiet for a moment. “Do I tell people at school? How does that work?” She hadn’t told anyone else.

  “The booster club is going to have a field day with this.”

  “Oh God,” she groaned, rubbing her eyes, and when she did, her T-shirt shifted, revealing a sliver of cream skin in the moonlight. I slid my hands beneath my back. Look, but don’t touch.

  “I think I’m going to die.” There was an eerie calm to her voice that terrified me more intensely than any cancer.

  “Don’t say that, Alice.”

  “We all die. We are dying. I’m just in the fast lane, I guess, dying faster than the rest of you slugs.”

  My knowledge of leukemia was limited. I knew that leukemia involved blood and that there were two major types of leukemia—chronic and acute. And I also knew that Katie Cureri’s little sister Emma had leukemia when we were in fifth grade and she was in third. The elementary hosted a ton of events and fund-raisers for her and her family. The more money they raised, the better Emma got and now she was fine.

  Money was the cure to cancer.

  I wished I was rich.

  I couldn’t think of anything that would piss off Alice more than a charity event in her name. I cracked a smile and laughed.

  “What?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said. “Do you think you’ll be eligible for handicapped parking?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Without giving me a second to respond, she continued. “That would be incredible.” She paused. “I don’t drive yet, though.”

  “Yeah, but I bet your parents could get one.” />
  “Yeah,” she agreed, and then after a moment, “I could, like, sell it online.”

  “I don’t think it works like that.”

  She sighed.

  I wanted to ask her if whatever was going on right now, between us, would end when we turned the lights on and she walked out of my room.

  “I have something I want to talk to you about.” Her voice filled my dark bedroom.

  My stomach flipped in anticipation. “Okay.”

  “I’ve got some research to do first.” She shimmied down to the edge of my bed and made large steps over piles of clothes and books, ranging in height and mass. She headed for the door, and I wished there was a dead bolt on the other side so she could never leave. So we could never leave.

  “Good night, Harvey. I’ll be in touch,” she said, like she was the godfather of cancer. She flicked the light back on and slunk out of the room. Did girls with cancer even slink? Alice did.

  This felt like a dream. Tonight had been the best and worst night of my life, and the only logical explanation was that it had been a dream. I stretched out my limbs like a starfish with my feet hanging off the edge of my bed, staring at my plastic stars, their colors muted and dull beneath the bright lights. My room was too small for everything inside of me.

  After a while, my mom came in my room without knocking. Normally, I would have made some smart-ass remark about things teenage boys did behind closed doors, but not tonight.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, right where Alice had been only a little while ago.

  With her eyes glued to the empty space ahead of her, my mother wiped a tear from each cheek. She squeezed my hand once, stood up, and left without a word. On her way out the door, she flicked off my bedroom light, leaving me to my stars.

  Alice.

  Then

  “Harvey, I appreciate you being here,” I said, taking a seat at my kitchen table.

  I had seen Harvey at school, but I hadn’t talked to him since last week when I told him I’d been diagnosed. In the last year, his obnoxiously curly hair had relaxed into waves, but his face would always have that permanently sleepy look to it. His thin, muscular build had finally stretched past my five foot nine by at least two or three inches. When we were kids, Harvey used to say we were going to get married, as if it was predetermined, like the color of your eyes. “Not going to happen,” I would say. “You’re shorter than me, and girls can’t marry boys shorter than them.”

  When I told him, last week, that I had leukemia, it was the first time that the cancer had belonged to me, the first time the news was mine to share. His optimism broke me, but I didn’t have time to be broken.

  “Yeah, why aren’t you in school right now?” he asked, sitting down at the kitchen table.

  I guess he wasn’t impressed when I phoned the school claiming to be Natalie and said that there was a family emergency. The good boy that he was, Harvey had turned his phone off during school hours, so I went about getting him out of class the old-fashioned way. After turning his phone on, he would have found this text from me: Call me. And call me he did, but amused he was not.

  “Faked sick. Told my parents I didn’t feel well. They propped me up on pillows with stacks of magazines, Sprite, and a bag of mini marshmallows.”

  “Seems a little callous, Al, don’t you think?”

  “What do you mean, callous?”

  “You just found out you have leukemia, and you lied to your parents about being sick. I think they’re on edge enough as it is without you lying to them so you can skip school.”

  In light of recent developments, I could see his point. “I hadn’t thought of that.” And really I hadn’t. Technically, I hadn’t lied. I had leukemia, therefore I was eternally unwell. I only took advantage of my circumstances, but still, a small bit of guilt twisted in my stomach.

  I’d stayed home for two reasons. One, to snoop around my mom’s office, which yielded no evidence of her cheating. And two, I needed time to gather my thoughts. Since being diagnosed, no one had left me alone, and I just wanted one day. Dad had been home twice to grab “some stuff” he’d forgotten. I knew he was here to check on me, and him not saying so irked me.

  “I needed the house to myself.”

  I scooted my chair closer to Harvey. Animosity seeped through his roll-with-the-punches exterior. Turning into him, I pressed my full body against his side and placed a hand on his thigh. His resolve crumbled beneath my touch and his whole body tensed. I loved the way this control over him made me feel. The feeling scared me, but not enough to do anything about it, because now all I felt was assurance and purpose.

  “I need your help,” I told him with my hand still on his thigh.

  He watched my hand. “With what?”

  “I’m sick. You know that. And because of that, there are some things I need to do, and I need to know that you’ll be there to help me when the time comes.”

  “What do you mean, things?”

  I shrugged.

  “What do you mean, like, a bucket list?”

  “Well, I guess you could call it that, but I think Just Dying To-Do List has a better ring to it.”

  “No,” said Harvey, his voice solid. “Those are for old, retired people.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, shaking his head; my hand fell away. After a moment, he threw his arms up and said, “God, what the hell, Al? This is so screwed up. You don’t talk to me for a year and now—no, this is ridiculous.”

  He didn’t get it yet. He didn’t get that the blood inside of my body was revolting against me. He hadn’t been there for the cold sweats in the middle of the night. He wouldn’t have to go through chemo so that he could be made even sicker for the sake of some sad sense of hope. I had to make him understand this, for me. “Harvey, what about ‘I have leukemia’ don’t you get? I mean, maybe we should all have a list. You could get hit by a car tomorrow and die a virgin.”

  “How would you know if I’m a—?”

  “Harvey.”

  He looked the other way, out the window above the sink.

  “Harvey, if I . . . if I die and you don’t help me with this, you will always regret it. Doing these things with you, that’s part of my list in a way.” I bit down on my lip. “Maybe there are some things that you want to do with me that are on your list, ya know?”

  He sat in silence, watching his fingers, woven together in his lap. “What’s on the list?” he asked, his voice low and scratchy.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  He laughed to himself in a sad way and rubbed his eyes. “You want me to help you with a list of things you won’t disclose to me.” He leaned forward and bit the skin around his thumb. “Classic.”

  “I would tell you on a need-to-know basis.”

  Writing down a list and showing it to Harvey made this thing more tangible and more of a commitment.

  “This isn’t going to be, like, riding-a-horse-bareback-down-the-beach type of shit, is it?”

  I smiled and leaned in to him, only a few breaths between us. “No,” I said. “No, it’s not.” Cancer would take away plenty. My hair, my body, my life. What I’d never realized, though, was that there was one privilege to dying: the right to live without consequence.

  “I’m in.” He said it like it was inevitable, like he could say no, but it wouldn’t matter.

  “You won’t regret it.”

  “You have a plan, though, right?”

  “I’m still working on the logistics.”

  “But—”

  “Harvey,” I said, my voice low. “Trust me.”

  I knew what this looked like. It looked like I was using Harvey. But here was the reality of the situation: the minute my life went from semipermanent to most likely temporary, I decided to latch on to everything in my world that had always been permanent, and for me, Harvey was so permanent he was concrete.

  Harvey.

  Now

  Today was Alice’s first day back in school. I didn’t see her until third
period. I wanted to pick her up that morning. I could feel us slipping again, like freshman year. But this time was different. It was worse. This time there was so much more to lose. Last night, I told her I loved her. I’d said it in a no-big-deal kind of way. She’d always known, and I’d practically said it before she went into remission. But last night I needed her to know in case there was ever any doubt.

  When she entered the classroom, her eyes traveled the rows of desks and barely flickered with recognition when she saw me sitting in the third row. She wore a red beret, baggy jeans, and a striped purple sweater that I recognized from seventh grade. Alice was always thin, but now she was transparent. Still, even in her mismatched ensemble, she looked cool.

  She walked down the aisle without acknowledging me. Just when I thought she was going to pass me by altogether, she slid into the desk I’d saved for her. She sat with her legs crossed at the knee and with her head on her desk, one hand resting beneath her cheek and the other arm stretched out so far it hung off the desk. And closed her eyes.

  Last night, she’d acted so bizarre, and before that she’d avoided me for weeks. I could understand, in a way. I saw how all this might be difficult for her, like the shock of a bright light in the middle of the night. But now, here at school, her avoidance felt so deliberate. And she seemed . . . mousy, which was the most un-Alice word I could think of.

  Before the final bell rang, Celeste appeared in the doorway with Mindi at her side, who happened to be in this class.

  With a vicious smile, Celeste whispered in Mindi’s ear. She nodded and walked past us to the back of the classroom, kicking the leg of Alice’s desk on her way.

  Alice startled a little, but turned to see the back of Mindi’s head and then spotted Celeste outside the entrance to the classroom.

  They had this weird girl moment. No one said a word, and the only thing that broke their stare was Margaret Schmidt—class treasurer and member of the world’s saddest color guard—as she shouldered her way past Celeste.

  Margaret gasped when she saw Alice. “We all thought, like, you know, that you were still sick.” Margaret’s springy curls bounced, not because she was moving, but because they seemed to move with energy. Dennis said she probably snorted her prescription Adderall every morning. “So, are you better?”