Side Effects May Vary

by Julie Murphy

  Debora took a napkin from the center of the table and pushed a few stray crumbs into a neat pile. “So,” she said, “have you thought about where you want to apply?”

  I tilted my head to the side. “Excuse me?”

  “Colleges, Harvey.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t thought much about the future in the last few years. “I guess I’ll go to a community college until I figure it out.”

  She nodded.

  “What about you?”

  “Well, Mom graduated from Cornell and Dad’s a Dartmouth grad. Personally, I’ve got my eye on Cornell.” She continued to sweep the crumbs into little piles, micromanaging them.

  I watched her hands, smiling. “You’ll get in. Besides, if you can’t get into those places, nobody can.”

  She smiled with her lips pressed tight together. “What about you?”

  I shrugged. “I just hope a school accepts me.”

  “Oh, you’ll be fine,” she said.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “You’re smart and talented and . . . I know these things. If you don’t get into a decent school, it will only be because you didn’t apply.”

  I leaned back in my chair. “Okay, what else do you know, Oracle Debora?”

  She closed her eyes, still smiling. “I see you volunteering to wear the big foam diploma costume at the college fair I’m planning next Saturday.”

  I laughed. “So not going to happen.”

  Her smile widened and, for the first time, I realized she wasn’t wearing her glasses. “Hey,” I said. “No glasses. You look nice.”

  “Yeah, contacts irritate my eyes. I only wear them for pictures.”

  I nodded.

  “Come on!” she called to Dennis.

  “Chill, sis!”

  She rolled her eyes and returned to the pile of crumbs. “I know I’m, like, a year late or something, but Dennis said you quit the piano.”

  “I did. Yeah, I don’t know. I felt like I had no life.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I know what you mean.” She paused. “I don’t really know much about music. I sort of listen to whatever’s on, but I always thought you were good.”

  My lips twitched. “Thanks.”

  “Okay,” said Dennis, bursting through the door. “Who picked the color this year? Because I look fine. This is way better than the burnt orange we did last year.”

  “Let’s go,” said Debora.

  “Later, man!” called Dennis. “I’ve got to tell the front I’m leaving.”

  I stood and gave him a wave, but he was already gone. “See ya, Debora.”

  She turned, before following Dennis out the swinging door. “Bye, Harvey.”

  I sank down into my chair. The doors to the break room swung back and forth. I’d just had an entire conversation without once thinking of Alice. The knot that had been in my chest since last Saturday didn’t feel so big. And, for that, I had Debora to thank. I couldn’t help but wonder what else she could make me forget.

  Alice.

  Then

  Prom wasn’t always on my list, but after having been released from the hospital two weeks ago, my days felt even more finite. It was the type of thing that I never wanted to go to until I’d realized I never would. Prom was for juniors and seniors and their dates, and I was a sophomore. But that was okay. It’s not like I planned to walk through the front door or anything.

  I was done with chemo too. Or maybe it was done with me. Either way, chemotherapy hadn’t helped. In fact, most recently it had done more harm than good and had begun to attack the healthy parts of me. Dr. Meredith said lots of different things about my blood counts and my immune system, but what I took away from the conversation was: chemo equals bad, for now.

  It was almost a relief to find out that the chemo was no longer an option. I knew the treatment had taken a toll on me, but living without the weight of it “added to my quality of life,” which was the exact wording Dr. Meredith used when he discussed other treatment options. My parents, though, had left the decision up to me and I decided no more.

  With our shoes dangling from our fingers, Harvey and I walked across the golf course behind the Shady Grove Country Club.

  “Maybe we should have dressed up,” said Harvey.

  “We’re not going inside,” I said. “I just want to see it, that’s all.” We couldn’t have bought tickets even if we wanted to. Only upperclassmen were allowed to buy tickets, and they’d sold out weeks before it even occurred to me that I might want to crash the thing.

  “How close do you want to get?”

  “I don’t know; close enough to see everything.” We walked across the green so that the lake was at our backs. In front of us was the event space. The grass was so perfect it made me want to throw my shoes in the lake.

  Hughley High’s prom was always held inside the ballroom overlooking the golf course. Glass doors stretched from the floor to the ceiling, and girls in tacky dresses and boys in matching ties spilled out onto the ornate terrace.

  I took a few steps closer and sat on the ground. “Here. This is perfect.”

  Harvey sat next to me, with his leg pressed against mine. “I’m kind of surprised that your mom let you go out tonight.”

  “Why? What am I going to do? Die?”

  He turned his head away from me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You know what I mean.”

  Touching my leg, he said, “Don’t be sorry.”

  I wish I could say that I said something profound, but that didn’t happen. We sat there and watched the juniors and seniors of Hughley High fall in and out of love, say no and say yes, let go and hang on. A few couples tripped off into the darkness together while others stood on the terrace, yelling back and forth as the tension brought on by prom and graduation slipped between the crevices of their cracking relationships. There were groups of friends too, posing for pictures and dancing in circles. Peppered throughout each scene were a few loners, looking for a place to settle for the night. All these people in one room, sharing this same event, while each of them would carry a completely different memory of this one night.

  Harvey and I sat there as spectators, watching a show that felt like it had been put on for us alone.

  “Thanks for being my prom date,” he said after a while.

  I smiled. “No way. This isn’t a date. This is just a warm-up for when you really go to prom.”

  Music pounded from the dance, and the sound of girls shrieking echoed all the way down to us.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I think this is probably as close as I’ll ever get to prom.”

  I lay back in the grass. “You have to go to prom, Harvey.”

  “When did you join the prom committee?”

  “If you don’t go, you’re going to be moping around on your porch with your wife when you’re old and gross, talking about how you should have gone to your prom.”

  Still sitting up, he continued to watch the dance. “If you hadn’t gotten sick, you wouldn’t say that.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but I am sick, and aren’t you supposed to get some life lesson out of the whole thing?”

  He didn’t answer.

  I propped myself up on my elbows. “What’s that big banner say?”

  Harvey squinted. “‘Heaven on Earth.’ It’s the prom theme.”

  I laughed. “That’s depressing.”

  “Seriously,” said Harvey.

  I don’t know how long we sat there before he asked, “What did Celeste do to you?”

  I draped my arm over my eyes. I could still see Harvey. I didn’t have anything to hide from him, but I’d gotten so used to keeping secrets. “She was hooking up with Luke.”

  “Oh. I think I heard about that.”

  “And she rubbed it in my face.”

  He turned, facing me. “But that’s not what you were getting back at Luke for?”

  “No,” I said. “He saw something I didn’t want him to see and told Celeste about it.” He w
as probably in there. Both of them probably were. I hoped they were miserable. From inside the dance, the music transitioned into a softer song that I couldn’t quite make out the words to.

  Harvey leaned in closer. “What did he see?”

  I didn’t want Harvey to know about my mom. He loved her so much, and I didn’t want to ruin that for him. And part of me also felt foolish. Harvey only had one parent, and here I was, bitching because one of mine had slipped up.

  I sat forward and turned to Harvey. “Dance with me. Please.”

  He stood and held his hand out for me. I took it and let the warmth of his skin travel through my veins.

  “You want to get closer?” he asked.

  “No, this is good.”

  He placed his hands on my hips and I looped my arms around his neck, sinking into him as I did.

  This part of dying felt good, the letting go. It made everything easier. Watching his throat, I said, “You can kiss me.”

  I looked up and his lips met mine. It was soft and quiet.

  We danced, and when my body got tired, he held me up. I wanted to dance every dance with Harvey. And no one else. For the first time, that didn’t scare me.

  Harvey.

  Now

  It had been twelve days since I told her she had to choose. Talking with Debora had been a nice reprieve from this gnawing at my gut, but I couldn’t make that feeling last on my own.

  There was one blind spot in Dennis’s backyard—a small space behind his parents’ shed—and it had taken us years to find.

  Dennis popped the top on a beer and handed it to me.

  I took a sip. And immediately spit it back out. “Oh, gross! This is warm!”

  “Well, it’s sort of hard to steal a six-pack right off the refrigerated shelves, you freakin’ ingrate. Billy will only slip me beer from the stockroom, so suck it up.” For the last year, Dennis had been saying he could get us beer from the Grocery Emporium, but this was the first time he’d actually come through. Everyone had always said that Billy, the stockroom manager, sold damaged six-packs to under-twenty-one employees, but I’d never had the guts to ask.

  I rolled my eyes and took a swig, making no effort to hide how shitty the beer tasted.

  “You talked to Alice?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let me play devil’s advocate for a sec. Were you guys even dating? It’s not like she cheated on you.”

  “Well, no. Not technically, but she knew how I felt and I’m pretty sure she felt the same.”

  “Did she say so?”

  She said she’d miss me most, but now she wasn’t going anywhere. I wished I could take back my “I love you” from the night of her birthday, but even that wouldn’t make me mean it any less. “I don’t know. I guess not.”

  Dennis took a sip of his beer and shrugged his shoulders like I should say, Oh yeah, thanks, man, for solving that dilemma for me.

  “I kind of feel like you need to move on, ya know? Maybe date around or something.”

  I shrugged. He was right, though. I had to force myself to get over her, because it wasn’t the type of thing that would happen on its own.

  “I took the SAT,” he said, changing the subject. “Did I tell you that?”

  I shook my head.

  “Freaking bombed it. Well, according to my parents’ standards. They’re making me take three-hour-long SAT classes every Saturday morning starting the week after spring break.”

  “Blows.” I hadn’t even thought about the SAT, but I guess I’d have to take it. I didn’t know what exactly I wanted to do in college, but isn’t that half of it, figuring shit out?

  I don’t know. I’d told Alice I was done, but I still couldn’t figure out how to remove her from the equation of my life. I wanted to be over her. And I wanted to make decisions that didn’t involve her.

  “Dennis?” called Debora from in front of the shed.

  “Hide the beer,” he whispered.

  “Uh. Okay.” I chugged my can and shoved the unopened ones up my T-shirt.

  “What are you guys doing back here?” asked Debora, peeking around the corner.

  “Talking,” I said just as Dennis said, “None of your business.”

  She took a few steps closer and crossed her arms over her chest. “Mom wants to know if you did your homework.”

  “Geez. Of course I did.”

  Debora tapped her foot against the dirt.

  “Fine,” he said. “I didn’t. Tell her I’ll be inside in a sec.”

  Debora turned to walk back to the house. “You guys smell like cheap beer.”

  I laughed and let the cans roll out of my shirt and into my lap.

  “Don’t tell Mom!” called Dennis in a loud whisper.

  We chugged the last few cans, and Dennis threw the empties over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. We chewed half a pack of gum and called it a successful night.

  Inside, Mrs. Yates cornered Dennis in the kitchen, so I snuck out through the front door.

  I walked through the living room where Debora sat on the couch with one foot tucked beneath her, reading a thick biography of Hillary Clinton. “Light reading?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, holding up the book.

  I never saw Debora in anything that didn’t look like she’d walked out of a J.Crew ad, but tonight she wore a regular sweatshirt and jeans. Everything about her always looked severely precise, but under the warm light of the reading lamp, the angle of her jaw wasn’t so sharp and I could see the little baby hairs at her temples curling in a little.

  “You want to go out? Maybe, like, next week?” The words left my mouth before I could do anything about them.

  She popped up from the couch. “Okay,” she said, and bit her lips, like she was trying to hide a smile. “Yeah, next week sounds good. Call me.”

  “I can talk to you at school,” I offered.

  “Oh, yeah. Okay, talk to you at school.”

  “At school,” I repeated.

  Letting myself out the front door, I walked out to my car parked on the street. Debora was cute and smart, and I was willing to give this a try. I had to try something. If I couldn’t stop loving Alice, I could at least learn how to live without her.

  Harvey.

  Now

  “So, Debora, you’re doing Model Arab League this year?” I asked.

  “Yes. I’ll be acting as head delegate.” Debora folded her napkin in her lap for what felt like the millionth time.

  “Oh. So, like, you guys pick a country? Is it like Model United Nations?”

  “Sort of,” she said. “But it’s more than picking a country. This year we’ve made quite the strategic move and have decided to represent the country of Djibouti. It’s a little risky, but I believe it will pay off.”

  “I see.” I nodded. I’d taken Debora to Prespa’s. It wasn’t very busy, but you wouldn’t know that from the sound of Debora’s voice. It was loud—I sank down in the booth a little—the kind of loud you are when you’re trying to have a conversation in a crowded room. But I’d worn a shirt with buttons and cleaned the pile of soda cans out of my backseat, so this was definitely a date. My first real date.

  “Last year we were the delegation representing the United Arab Emirates, which was such an amateur move. I mean, everyone goes for U.A.E.,” she said as she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “It’s almost as predictable as being the United States at Model United Nations.” She laughed. “But, you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, totally.” Nope, no idea at all.

  Thankfully, Debora and Dennis were not identical twins—is that even possible for brother/sister twins to be identical? The problem was they still looked related and that made things a little weird—especially when I tried to strategize how I might kiss her at the end of the night. But then Debora would start talking, and I’d remember how big of a slacker Dennis was or at least pretended to be—he was no-studying-required smart—and how different the two
of them really were.

  We pretty much talked about debate strategies and the value of SAT prep courses until dessert. Our conversation ratio was a solid 10:1. Debora ten, me one. Back at Grocery Emporium, our conversation had sort of flowed, but tonight felt like she’d come up with an agenda for the whole date and hadn’t sent me a copy.

  When the waitress, the same one I’d had when I was here with Alice, set down Debora’s cheesecake and my tiramisu, Debora took a large gulp of water and cleared her throat. “Why did you ask me out, Harvey?”

  The good news was my mouth was full of tiramisu, giving me time to process her frank question. The bad news was she had caught me so off guard I was unable to enjoy the best part of our date so far, the tiramisu. “Well, Debora, in many western societies when a male adolescent is attracted to a female adolescent the male will ask the female to accompany him on several introductory dates before finalizing the details of their courtship.”

  “So, you like me and you want to take me on a date before we call each other boyfriend and girlfriend?”

  From Rhodes Scholar to sixteen-year-old girl in seconds. “Yeah, something like that,” I said.

  She thought about that for a moment. “Why me?”

  “Are you fishing for compliments here, Debora? You’re pretty and, you know, good at stuff. I’m not going to spend our whole date convincing you that you’re dateable.”

  She wasn’t buying it. “I’m only trying to understand your motives.”

  My single motivation was to get over Alice and maybe meet someone in the process. I liked Debora, and I liked that being with her didn’t always feel like I was stumbling down a mountain. She was all the things—direct, uncomplicated, reliable—that Alice was not and maybe that would help me forget her. And I didn’t want to go searching for some imitation Alice.

  I guess she’d taken my silence as a nonanswer, because she said, “You must be really happy about Alice. It’s pretty incredible.”

  I stared out the window and into the parking lot, where Alice and I had kissed only weeks ago. “Yeah, she is.” Quickly, I corrected myself. “It. It is pretty incredible.”

  Debora leaned forward, her cheesecake untouched. “Harvey, I’m smart. I don’t need you to agree with me or tell me that I am. I know that I am above average. Maybe that’s cocky or arrogant, but it’s a fact. But there’s a difference between myself and others with my same attributes: I pay attention to the human condition. I see actions and reactions; when Alice acts, you always react.” The more she talked, the more I realized how much I liked the way her lips curved when she did. “Even if I weren’t so astute, I would know that you were in love or infatuated or whatever it is you want to call it with Alice. I like you. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t, but I wonder. I wonder so much I have to know: Why, Harvey, did you ask me out tonight?” She took a sip of her water and a bite of her cheesecake.