Side Effects May Vary (22 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollinsPublishers

Harvey.

Now.

E
very little thing between us had led to this moment. I should have known Alice would tell me to leave. I think, maybe, part of me did know. Everything about it felt desperate yet inevitable, and no matter which way we went, this was the end of our story. But still, standing out there on the edge of the beach, I expected something to happen. Even though she rarely ever gave me any reason to think she might be anyone other than herself.

I was so angry.
You were a means to an end, Harvey. There's nothing else you can do for me, so leave. I don't need you. I don't want you.
She couldn't say those things to me. She couldn't. I should have told her about Debora, and that was my fault. But it didn't feel like that mattered anymore. The world around us had exploded, and there was no determining what blame belonged to whom.

I trudged back up the beach to where my mom, Bernie, Martin, and Debora all waited on the back porch. The wind whipped around me, sand burning my legs as I began to jog toward them and away from Alice.

Last night was an anomaly, one last night of good. But now that was gone, and with it so were we. I couldn't go back to her again. Because if I did, I'd never be able to look at myself, and she would always know that when it came to us, she called all the shots. I loved her—but it didn't make me happy anymore. Not even a little bit.

Even though I didn't want to care, I kept hearing what she'd said to Bernie, about another man. I wanted to ignore it. My mom hadn't seemed shocked and neither had Martin. I didn't have the balls to ask them what was going on, not with what had happened. There was something going on, though, and maybe Alice didn't have the whole story, but she had more than I did. I was the only kid at the kids' table.

I popped my knuckles before shoving my fists into my pockets. Even though neither Bernie nor Martin were my parents, I couldn't ever picture it being true—that she'd cheated on him. Marriage didn't ever really work, but it worked for them. They'd always been the exception to the rule.

I took the steps to the beach house two by two. Bernie stood there waiting for me, still in her robe. “Where is she?”

“Is she okay?” asked Martin.

My mom stood behind them, staring over my shoulder at the little dot on the horizon that I assumed was Alice, while Debora bit her lip nervously, her eyes darting from me to the wood- planked floor.

“She wants to be alone.”
Forever
. “She'll be back later.”

Martin clapped his hands together. “All right, gang, let's enjoy our best vacation weather yet! Debora, let me help you with your bags.” He guided Bernie by the elbow with Debora at their heels. “Watch for the glass,” he said.

The three of them went inside, leaving my mom and me.

She approached me slowly, like you would a wounded animal. “You okay?”

I mashed my lips together, the way you do when you're trying to smile but your body's telling you to cry or scream or something.

“Hey, talk to me.”

A tear spilled from the corner of my eye, and I pushed the tips of my fingers into my tear ducts as hard as I could. When the tears came anyway, I gave up, and raked my fingers through my hair. My mom stood right where she was, letting me have my moment.

When we were kids, this boy at school shoved me into the mud after accidentally cutting in line at the monkey bars. When Alice saw what he'd done, she pushed him to the ground and straddled him, getting in one good punch before the teacher supervising recess pulled her off him. Our parents were called, and my mom ended up coming to get us both and taking us to the ballet studio to get cleaned up before her next class. After she bandaged me up, I sat on the office floor reading a book while she fixed Alice's hair into a fresh bun. She had run out of bobby pins and was crouched down in front of this box she used to keep safety pins, needle and thread, and hair stuff in. She sighed and shook her head. “She'll break his porcelain heart.” She said it so quietly her lips barely moved. I didn't know what it meant then. I didn't realize loving Alice would be a curse.

My tears stopped and the salty winds dried my cheeks. Mom took a step toward me and held both my hands with hers.

“You can't save the world.”

I nodded. “I know that, but why can't I at least save her?”

She stepped even closer to me, so that we were nearly nose to nose. I expected her to say something, to answer my question because that's what moms did. But she didn't, she wrapped her arms around me, her fingertips barely touching as her arms circled my shoulders. I should have felt stupid, slipping into my mom's arms like a little kid, but it felt okay.

“Let's have a good day today, okay?”

I couldn't talk, because I didn't know what sounds might come out, so I nodded into her shoulder and agreed.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollinsPublishers

Alice.

Now.

I
t was well past one in the morning before I got back to the beach house, and thankfully my parents had left the porch light on.

“Shh . . .” I pressed my finger to Brian's lips after he tripped over a pile of flip-flops at the door. We'd met that afternoon on the boardwalk. “Watch your step, Brian.”

“My name's Trevor.”

“Right, Trevor. I'll call you Trevor and you can call me Ashley,” I said and rolled my eyes as we stumbled through the dark living room of the beach house. A pile of a person slept on the couch, their shadow breathing in and out. The person, I assumed, was Harvey. I swallowed the lump in my throat. I thought about telling Brian to leave, but the image of Harvey's eyes on Debora as she stood there on the doorstep wouldn't let me.

“No, really, my name is Trevor.”

“Whatever.”

After Harvey left me on the beach, I spent the day walking around the boardwalk, which was really a sad tourist trap. Most of the stores were poorly stocked. A couple even had
OUT TO LUNCH
signs up for more hours than they had actually been open. The shops were half-assing it because spring break was just their warm-up for the long summer season.

That's where I met Brian or Trevor, whatever his name was.

He was close to my height and a little muscular, but at least a year younger. Freckles sprinkled his nose and cheeks. His rusty brown hair flopped with every step. I couldn't recall the color of his eyes. That information seemed to fall into the same abandoned mental folder as his name.

When I first saw him there on the boardwalk, he looked like a candy striper in white shorts and a red-and-white-striped polyester polo shirt. It all looked very uncomfortable. “Smile!” he said, holding up the camera around his neck.

I crossed my arms over my chest, and said, “Get me out of here.”

“Did you say something?” he asked, as he pulled the camera away from his face. He tore an orange ticket from a ring of tickets hanging around his wrist.

I squinted. “When's your shift over?”

“Uh . . .” He looked at his watch. “Thirty minutes. Your picture will be ready in an hour. What's your name?”

“Alice.” I think he was waiting for me to ask his name, but I didn't. “Any townie stuff going on tonight?”

“Well, yeah, I guess. Nothing big, but yeah. You want to come?”

I held out my palm to him. “Address.”

He fumbled for a pen and finally found one in a cargo pocket of his hideous white shorts. He was cute in a second-string kind of way. When he finished scribbling on my palm, I pulled my hand back to study the address.

“Thanks,” I said and began to walk in the direction of the beach house.

“I could pick you up!”

“I'd rather you didn't,” I called, not turning around.

I walked back to the beach house. Thankfully, everyone was out for dinner. I hadn't showered last night and still smelled like the ocean, but worst of all I still wore Harvey's sweatshirt. I was quick to shower and let my hair air-dry, which was still very short and had only recently grown into something manageable—a sort of sun-kissed, messy, golden brown coif. I'd begun to work my way back into some of my old clothes too. Over a white two-piece I wore a blue-and-white seersucker spaghetti-strap dress. I looked whole, but I didn't feel it.

Before leaving, I left a note for my parents saying I'd be back later. When I showed up at the address (which was within walking distance from our beach house), I found mostly locals and mostly guys. The few girls present gave me dirty skank looks for intruding on their territory.

Brian/Trevor instantly attached himself to me, fetching me drinks and introducing me to anyone who would listen. Most of the guys at the party were the type of people who pronounced “bro” as “bra,” and I had the sneaking suspicion that Brian/Trevor was someone's little brother. When the party began to disperse, I sweetly asked him if he could give me a ride home. In the driveway, I invited him inside. He hesitated for a moment, but then followed me through the front door.

We squeezed down the narrow hallway and I waved him into my bedroom.

“You have a bunk bed?” he asked.

“Come on.” I climbed the ladder to the top bunk.

“Wait, top bunk? Why don't we use the—” He ducked down to take a look at the bottom bunk. “There's someone down there!” he whispered, pointing frantically at the bed below me.

He continued to stare, dumbfounded, at the bottom bunk. I unzipped my dress and pulled it over my head, standing there in my white swimsuit. “Brian, are you coming or not?”

His eyes widened. He climbed up to the top bunk in two steps, skipping rungs.

I pulled him down to me, wrapping my legs around his waist. Our lips collided roughly, our pace mismatched and wrong. I moved fast, my kisses harsh. He tried to be slow and gentle, giving soft pecks. His hands slid down my shoulders, so I did him the favor of moving them to my chest. He gasped. I wanted to smash his body against mine until I became just as much of a stranger as he was.

“Wait, Alice.” I tried to silence him with my lips. “Alice,” he murmured. “I think you're a great girl.” A great girl? Who was this guy? “And you're beautiful, God, you are so beautiful.”

“Yeah, you're okay too.”

He rolled off me and rested on his side between me and the wall. “Alice, I have a girlfriend.” He went quiet. It took me a second to realize that he expected me to react and that his confession was supposed to be shocking, like a big reveal or something.

From below us came a quiet sigh. Debora.

“Oh. Okay,” I whispered. “Let's just have tonight.”

His eyes lit up, like he'd won the hormonal jackpot. “You're okay with that?”

“I'm great with that, Brian.”

“My name is—”

I pulled his face to mine and made our lips move together. It didn't matter to me what his name was or whether or not he had a girlfriend. I only cared that he could make my life melt away for however long he could last. All I wanted was for him to do this to me and take away the raw misery I felt. My heart throbbed, reminding me that I was alive, even though all I felt was everything but.

We rolled over so that I was straddling him. This time he got the point and his hands roamed my body more aggressively. He pulled the string that stretched across my back, holding my swimsuit top in place. I leaned down closer to him and a moan fell from his lips. I felt myself disappearing.

A sharp memory of my body pressed against Harvey's on this very mattress last night. His kisses on my eyelids and my cheeks and—I froze, completely paralyzed. The whole situation came into focus. This stranger. In my bed. Debora on the bottom bunk. Harvey in the living room.

I grasped for the strings of my bikini, trying to hold my swimsuit top in place as I scrambled off his lap and into the corner of the twin bed farthest from him.

“Get out. Go.” I felt disgusting. This was wrong. Maybe I had lost Harvey, but I couldn't lose myself; especially not when I had a choice.

“But you said—”

“I said get out.
Now
.”

He practically fell from the top bunk, then gathered his shoes and combed the carpet for his car keys, tripping his way to the door. I closed my eyes tight with my knees pulled to my chest. The bedroom door clicked shut behind him. I felt like I was drowning again, like last night. And again, it was all my fault.

When I heard the front door shut, I climbed down the ladder to lock the dead bolt. On my way back, I heard the buzz of the kitchen light and tried to tiptoe past Harvey, who was standing there with half a piece of cold pizza in his hand.

Too late. He had already spotted me, pinning me in place with his eyes. He dumped the rest of the pizza in the trash. I watched him as he stood there, his chest bare, wearing only blue plaid boxer shorts. His hair was disheveled and his face lined with pillow creases.

Humiliation crept up my chest to my cheeks, I crossed my arms. Not in defiance but in defense.

Then he spoke to me, which I never expected to happen again. His voice was detached and cold. “He didn't know how much to leave for you. I told him first one's on the house. Isn't that right, Al?”

The worst part was that he called me Al. It felt familiar, but really it was a knife in my ribs. My chest tightened, and my eyes burned, holding back tears. I didn't say anything.

He didn't mean it, I told myself. He only said it to get back at me because I had hurt him.

In my bedroom I found Debora sitting upright on the bottom bunk, with the blankets neatly folded back on her lap. She reached for her glasses on the nightstand and unfolded them carefully before pushing them up the bridge of her nose, her eyes relaxing, as her world fell into place. The little lamp on the bedside table let out a small pool of light.

I wanted her to disappear. I wanted her to dissolve.

“Get out, Debora.” Maybe if I told enough people to get out they finally would.

“No.” She folded her hands in her lap. She wore pink-and-white-striped pajamas, the type of PJs that button up the front and look like they should be ironed. Each of her even blond hairs sat uniformly in place.

“Leave.”

“You are hollow on the inside, Alice, did you know that?” she asked. “Rotten too. And no one cares. No one cares because you make it so difficult to. I should tell you to go on being rotten on the inside, but I can't because Harvey is so invested in you. Here's the sad truth: Harvey cares for you. He more than cares for you, and he still would even if you were as ugly on the outside as you are on the inside. Harvey, the one you string along mercilessly. Not some slob who wants you as arm candy, but Harvey. He loves you, and for whatever reason this transcendental devotion he has for you defies the laws of science and love.”

Tucking her hair behind her ear, she said all of this in a calm, even tone, like she was reading from a history book. Regardless of her tone, her words hit me and drilled into my chest, burrowing deep and deeper. I
was
rotten on the inside, and I didn't know if that had happened over time or if it had always been so. For a moment, I felt bad for Debora. Here she was telling me how much her boyfriend loved me. The worst part of it was that she was more deserving of Harvey than I was and she knew it.

I sat down next to her on the bottom bunk, and the tears that I had swallowed back in the kitchen with Harvey poured down my face. My shoulders shook as sob after sob broke through my chest.

I loved him too, but it wasn't that happy ending bullshit. It was disfigured and crushing. “What do I do?”

“About Harvey?”

“No, well, yes, but no. What do I do—” I stopped, letting my tears eat up my words. “About what's wrong with me.”

“I don't really know, Alice. I think it's different for everybody. But maybe you should figure that out on your own, before dragging Harvey through it.”

Wiping my nose with the back of my hand, I nodded.

“I know what happened last Friday with the memorial stuff must have been hard. I still can't believe someone would even do that. I don't know what to say except that I'm sorry that had to happen to you.”

“Thanks.”

“Listen,” she said, “I can't tell you what to do. I mean,
you
of all people, obviously. You don't listen to anyone. But don't destroy Harvey. Because you can. You have that power. Love's different for him. For Harvey—”

“Do you like him?”

She didn't answer.

“You should tell him,” I said.

“I don't think there's room in his heart for me or anyone else, not when you live inside of it.”

More tears. I felt an awkward hand on my back, patting me.

“Stop,” I said, not at all comforted by the touch.

“Thank you.” She sighed.

I smiled.

I knew the first step to filling the black hole inside of me, and it started with an apology. The most difficult things usually did.