Side Effects May Vary

by Julie Murphy

  I made another lap around the parking lot, my foot getting used to the gas and the brake. “What would be on your list, Harvey? If you knew you were going to die.”

  He reached over again and cupped his hand around the back of my neck. “You,” he said. “Being with you.”

  I nodded, blinking for a second too long, trying to make his words last a moment longer.

  “I don’t know how, but I’d want to make sure my mom was okay. And your parents too. I’d quit my job too, like fuck-this-I’m-out-give-me-all-the-gourmet-cheese quit my job.”

  I laughed. We were so different. Harvey wanted good. He wanted to leave the ones he loved in a good place. I’d just wanted the last word. But I wouldn’t be sorry for that now. It was too late for sorry.

  “And, maybe,” he said, “I’d want to find out what the deal was with my dad. Just so I could know once and for all.”

  I nodded. There had to be answers to his questions. But Harvey was never very good at getting what he wanted. Even when we were kids and he stumbled upon his mom’s Christmas present hiding spot, I was the one to dig through the shopping bags and find the Rollerblades he’d asked for every year for the last three years.

  Without warning, my mouth went dry and my head began to pound to the point of dizziness. I hit the brake and slid the car into park.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Give me a sec.” An echoing pain spread through my body. I concentrated on the dashboard to stop myself from bursting into tears as I breathed in and out through my nose.

  Harvey came over to my side and opened the door. “Come on,” he said. “Let me take you home. Maybe we’ll start watching a few of those movies Dennis gave me.”

  He helped me out of the car and walked me to the passenger side.

  “Thank you, Harvey,” I said.

  “For what?”

  I sat down, taking a deep breath. “For always saying yes.”

  Harvey.

  Now

  The last day before spring break was always torture. It was even worse than the last day of school because teachers were still trying to teach. Thankfully, though, today was a half day. But that still didn’t change the fact that I was fourteen minutes into second period and my ass was already falling asleep.

  Last night, I’d gone to Debora’s house to help get stuff ready for the senior luau put on by the student council every year before spring break. After making a few signs, we ran out for caffeine and that’s when I saw Alice and Eric. I thought that having a girlfriend would soften the blow of Alice not choosing me, but it didn’t work like that. Debora was great; she just wasn’t Alice. Mr. Ramirez droned on about the meaning of “full faith and credit,” putting all of us to sleep. I watched the door, ready for the bell to ring so I could escape. Dennis’s head bobbed in the window. He motioned for me and mouthed, Now.

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  Not kidding, mouthed Dennis, his eyes wide and his face manic.

  I raised my hand.

  “Something to add to the conversation, Mr. Poppovicci?”

  I hated my last name. “No, sir. I need to go to the restroom.”

  Ramirez thought for a moment, then held out the hall pass. “Make it quick.”

  I took my backpack and ducked out the door with the hall pass in hand.

  Dennis waited for me a few feet down, out of breath.

  I stuffed the hall pass into my back pocket. “Dennis, what’s going on?”

  “They—” He shook his head and waved his hands around, searching for words. “Outside the gym there’s this— Damn it, just come with me.”

  I followed him and we cut through the auditorium to the other side of the school.

  “I wish you would stop and tell me what you pulled me out of class for.”

  Dennis didn’t slow down. “It’s hard to explain.” He was acting weird. Like, weird for Dennis.

  “Well, try. Now,” I said.

  He rubbed his hands down his face and groaned. “They made some kind of shrine to Alice, like a memorial.”

  I froze. “Wait. What?”

  “It’s fucked up, man,” he said, his nostrils flaring, his eyes wide.

  I couldn’t connect the dots. “What do you mean a memorial? Who’s they?”

  “Like the type of memorial they would have given if she had, you know, died. Candles and pictures. The kind of stuff you see on TV, but worse. And I don’t know who they are, but I have three people in mind.”

  I stuffed my hands into my pockets to stop them from shaking. “Shit. What—”

  “I couldn’t find her,” said Debora, bursting through the main entrance at the top of the aisle.

  I turned to Dennis. “You sent Debora after Alice?” I whispered. “Do you have dementia?”

  “I had to get you out of class. I saw her in the hallway. Game-time decision,” he said, his hands held up in defense.

  “Okay. Okay. Let’s go.” I turned to find Debora behind me. She nodded, her lips pressed in a thin line.

  We ran out of the auditorium and into the athletics wing, trophy cases lining the walls. Dennis ran ahead, and I followed him to the farthest end of the hallway where all the old, dusty, sun-stained trophy cases sat untouched.

  We stopped in front of the last case. Every surface was covered in cloth. Old, dying flowers had been thrown across the surface. There were candles; those idiots could have started a fire. And pictures of Alice. Her eyes had been crossed out and things like bitch or whore had been written across each print.

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. This was too cruel. And low. My stomach twisted. I was horrified by the possibility that anyone could even be capable of something like this. This was wrong. Even by Alice’s standards.

  Part of me wanted to let Alice see this and feel this, like maybe she needed to. But the other part of me—the bigger part of me—wanted to fix it all for her. And maybe if I fixed this, I could fix us.

  “So sick.” My voice peaked on the word sick. “It’s just sick. I can’t believe Luke and Celeste would do this. I mean, I can, b-but . . .” My voice trailed off. I might have been mad at Alice, but I couldn’t let her see this. There was no question.

  “Those assholes,” gasped Debora.

  I looked at her, a little shocked. I’d never heard her swear before. It sounded awkward, almost.

  “I searched everywhere,” she said, “but I couldn’t find her.”

  “What do I do?” I asked. She would know what to do. She always knew what to do.

  “Nothing. We get a teacher,” she said, like it was so obvious.

  “No,” I said. “No. We can’t do that. If we get a teacher, then the administration will find out, and they’ll call Bernie and Martin, and then Alice would really freak out.”

  “Harvey, not only is getting a teacher the right thing to do, but I don’t know how else we’d get this case cleaned out. It’s locked.”

  Sometimes I had to remind myself that she was my girlfriend, and I don’t think that’s how it was supposed to be.

  Dennis stood behind her, shaking his head.

  In any other world, Debora would have been right, but things were tense enough between Alice and Bernie. This would be one more thing.

  “Okay,” said Debora. “We’ll try it your way, but no promises. I’m going to go find the key to this case. Dennis, you stand guard here. Don’t let any crowds congregate. We don’t want to draw any attention to this. Harvey, you find Alice.”

  With her clipboard tucked beneath her arm, Debora speed-walked down the hallway.

  “Wait,” I said, and jogged to meet her. “What about your senior luau?”

  She ran a hand over her normally smooth but currently frizzed hair. “It’ll be fine. I’ve got a few freshmen helping.”

  “Thank you?” I didn’t know what else to say.

  She smiled for a second. “Find Alice.”

  I had no clue where Alice was, but I had to find her. A bad dream, this was a bad dream.
The kind where your feet are stuck in quicksand and your throat is dry and you can’t scream because if you could fucking scream it would all stop.

  Alice.

  Now

  I didn’t have it in me to go to first period. To my surprise, no one had confronted me about the classes I’d skipped since being back at school. But if they tried to, I’d tell them that I was puking my guts out in the bathroom and that I still felt weak.

  It was true, though. There were still times when I felt just as sick as I had before. Dr. Meredith had told me I’d feel like that sometimes. The only difference was that I didn’t get the awesome pain meds anymore. During my last appointment with Dr. Meredith, he confessed that he had yet to discover what triggered my remission. Since my recovery had been steady, and I had had such a negative response to that last round of chemo, he agreed to let me finish the rest of the school year before beginning my closely monitored intensification treatment. Everyone seemed confident that my stint with cancer was a thing of the past, but I didn’t know where their absolute positivity came from. Because, for me, cancer would always be a shadow I lived in, an addiction that was never quite through with me.

  Between first and second periods, I waited in the second-floor girls’ bathroom for the first bell to ring. After the hallway cleared, I traced a path through each corridor, dragging my fingers along the walls—leaving invisible signs of life. I wondered where Eric was and if he’d even bothered to come to school today.

  Shuffling through the music hall, I heard a teacher coming and slipped into an unused classroom. When the hallway was empty again, I opened the door, but saw Harvey and shut it immediately. I flipped the lights off in the classroom and squatted down, so I could still see him as he sprinted past me and turned the next corner. Where was he going?

  I headed for the gym, where I usually met Eric beneath the bleachers. Maybe if he was here, I could at least say good-bye. I didn’t know. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be alone. When Eric left, he would take my distractions with him. And now here I was, with a whole week of family and Harvey ahead of me, and it seemed like the things I’d been running from all along might find me anyway.

  Inside the gym, I glanced beneath the bleachers to check, but no Eric. The first-period girls’ phys ed class played dodgeball on one side of the gym while the student council set up for the senior luau on the other side. The game of dodgeball looked brutal. There were only six girls still standing and Celeste was one of them—of course. I watched from beneath the bleachers. Now it was four to two. Celeste’s team held the two balls still left in play. Celeste pelted hers at one of the two girls, a chubby freshman. The ball bounced off the girl’s hip and hit her shorter counterpart in the boob.

  Coach Wolfen blew his whistle from where he sat in the volleyball perch and yelled, “Game!”

  The girls filed into the locker room as I jogged across the court to see if maybe Eric went to the snack machines.

  “Watch out!” yelled Celeste from where she stood by the locker room door. “Walking dead!”

  I didn’t stop, but just gave her my favorite finger.

  “I don’t know where you’re supposed to be,” called Coach Wolfen, his finger pointed at me, “but you’d better get there!”

  Walking into the hallway, I found myself in a crowd of gasps. There was some laughter too. At the back of the crowd, I saw Mindi, her lips curved into a cold smile.

  The door behind me opened. Celeste leaned forward and whispered, “I know how you love to be the center of attention.”

  Dennis shoved through the crowd. “Alice.” He pulled me by my arm. “It’s stupid. Don’t waste your time. Harvey’s looking for you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I glanced down at my arm. “Let go.” All I felt were bodies huddled together and hushed whispers as everyone turned to me. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty students, all seniors headed to the luau, but it felt like hundreds. And the weight of their eyes almost sank me all the way through the cracks in the linoleum floor.

  Dennis gripped my arm a little tighter.

  I pulled away from him. If I spoke, I didn’t remember what I said.

  I pressed through the crowd. It wasn’t difficult. No one pushed back.

  Fingers brushed my elbow and my eyes followed them to Debora, reaching past two or three people, trying to grasp me. My brows furrowed, but I pulled back and continued moving forward.

  I stepped into a small open space surrounding an old trophy case, and I swore my ears popped and all I heard was static. Black fabric covered the glass shelves. And wilted carnations. I hated carnations. There were a few mini arrangements of flowers too, like the ones you see at funerals on wire stands, but smaller. There were signs with things like In Memory Of and Rest in Peace. Where there weren’t carnations, there were candles, mostly in those tall cylinder glasses like they used in Catholic churches. Some had decals with saints or Jesus or the Virgin Mary. Peppered between the flowers and candles were pictures.

  Pictures of me. Pictures of me laughing and dancing.

  There were a few school pictures too, going as far back as elementary school. Some were big, some were small, but every picture had one thing in common—my eyes had been crossed out with a black ballpoint pen, insults clouding my vision. Whoever had done this—and I knew who it was—had dug the pen so hard on the pictures that the glossy finish had been scratched off so all that remained was white paper. It looked angry and violent.

  The only thing I could hear were my shallow breaths as it dawned on me. This was my memorial. In the late-night hours, I’d wondered—fantasized even—about what it might look like and who might be there. Would there be music? Tears?

  Here it was, the proof of my life in a dusty old trophy case. This was life’s memory of me. Scratched-out eyes, wilted flowers, and melting candles. I touched the glass in wonder, like a child at an aquarium where a whole world lived behind the glass. And beyond this glass existed a whole world without me, where I’d died and left behind this. Because I knew who did this, I could close my eyes and see it all play out. This was Celeste’s master plan. The key to the trophy case—that must have been Luke. He could have stolen it from Coach Wolfen’s office without the coach even knowing. And Mindi had probably taken care of every little thing in between.

  My eyes drifted to the bottom right corner of the case. Propped up against some sad-looking flowers was an old photo of me; I was no older than seven or eight. I sat on the floor of the studio with my hair smoothed into a bun, and Harvey sat across from me with his fists held out, hiding an object—probably a penny or something—in one of them. My eyes were scratched out, but I’m sure they’d been squinted, trying to discern which fist the penny was in. I took the smallest of steps back and saw the whole thing. Each picture was a milestone in my life. And here it was—my life—all gathered in one case for everyone to see, like a simple thing that could be explained.

  The marvel of living through my own funeral slipped away as sheer horror swept through me. Tears spilled down my cheeks. I couldn’t be here for this. I wasn’t supposed to witness my own memorial.

  That girl in the case was dead. And that girl in the case was me.

  Harvey.

  Now

  The third bell for second period buzzed. I’d covered every inch of school property and no Alice. Her phone went straight to voice mail every time I called.

  The hallway leading to the old trophy case was congested with students, many of them going in and out of the gym. I fought against the current of bodies. There were murmurings of Messed-up shit and Was that the girl with cancer? that made my feet move faster.

  The crowd shrank slowly, like the show was over. The last warning bell buzzed. And then I saw her.

  Alice was there, standing in front of the case, and all of a sudden I was drawing a blank. I knew I was supposed to find her, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to say when that happened. And I didn’t expect to find her here of all places.r />
  I placed my hand on her shoulder to let her know—I’m here.

  Her chin lifted as her gaze fell on my hand. When she recognized the hand as mine, she let out a shaky sigh. Standing next to her, I caught a glimpse of a few stray tears still sliding down her cheeks. The shrine thing in front of us was hideous, with drying flowers and too many candles. It was garish, a cartoon version of a memorial.

  Alice took three deep breaths and exhaled slowly, hiccuping a little.

  We stood in silence for what felt like hours, waiting for an interruption.

  Alice’s eyes followed every detail as she stood with her arms crossed, holding herself together. She dropped her hands to her sides, and we stood so close that when her hand brushed past mine, I grabbed it and held on to it. You don’t expect this. You don’t expect to stand next to the girl you love at her own funeral.

  “I couldn’t find the key.” It was Debora.

  Alice’s shoulders tensed at the sound of her voice. She pursed her lips together and dropped my hand. Silently, she walked off, past Dennis and Debora.

  I almost called out for her to wait, but what would I tell her then? What magic words would I say that would fix us and this fucking mess?

  “So sorry for your loss,” Luke called out, laughing from where he stood in front of the gymnasium door.

  Alice spun around and marched straight over to him. I had these moments when I wanted to protect her, but in this case she wasn’t the one I was scared for.

  Luke smirked. “I bet you didn’t—”

  There was no warning, just Alice’s swinging fist connecting with Luke’s nose. And then there was blood too.

  Luke screamed, holding his hands over his face.

  Debora clapped her hand over her mouth, gasping.

  “Get out of here,” I told Debora, and she ran inside the gym without a word.

  Alice lifted her fist again, but Dennis pulled her back. Luke stood there laughing at them, and the anger that simmered inside of me boiled over.