Side Effects May Vary (20 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollinsPublishers

Alice.

Now.

M
y dad gave me that look. That fucking look that said,
You
owe us this
. And, okay, I did owe them this, but I also felt like the world was crumbling beneath my feet. Still, I tried to smooth my attitude around the edges just enough so that everyone could have a nice week. After the last year or so, my parents, Natalie, and Harvey deserved a week of peace. But peace, as it turned out, wasn't really my thing.

In every quiet moment, all I heard was the throbbing silence of Friday morning. Every inch of it—the flowers, the pictures, the candles—haunted me, and I knew that no matter how hard I tried to forget, I would die with those images. Maybe I should have let it be a good thing, and maybe I should have left all the horrible parts of me there in that hallway to be forgotten in that graveyard of memories, but I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know how to separate out the wrong parts of me, while keeping everything else. It felt like the cancer—forever inside of me. I didn't think it worked like that, though. I didn't think I could cut out the pieces of me that no one liked. There would always be remains and that version of me would always exist. On top of all of that was this huge weight of devastation. The more time I had for all of this to sink in, the worse it felt, like an untreated wound.

It rained all day Sunday, which was fine because everyone was exhausted. My mom failed to mention that the beach house, on loan from her boss, had only three bedrooms. When Natalie offered to share the bunk bed room with Harvey, I almost agreed with her, but my mom froze me with one of her signature glares and told Natalie she was being ridiculous. I shrugged, deciding it wasn't worth the effort.

I walked into our room on Sunday night and found Harvey in the process of putting his sheets on the top bunk. I threw my duffle bag on the floor and said, “I call top,” and walked out of the room.

When I came back after brushing my teeth, Harvey lay on the bottom bunk flipping through an old
MAD
magazine he'd probably found in the closet. I closed the door behind me and twisted the thumb lock.

“We're supposed to leave the door open,” he said, not looking up.

“I have to change.”

It was dark out, but the white nighttime clouds brightened the blackness. I turned off the light and, with it, the buzzing ceiling fan. The slat blinds cast long lines across the dim room. Under the blanket of darkness, the room didn't look so bad. Everything always looked better in the dark, including me.

I strode over to my duffle bag on the floor, turned my back to Harvey, and yanked at the button of my denim shorts. The sound of my zipper sliding down cracked the silence while the ceiling fan whirred to a stop.

Harvey's eyes slid down my back. I could feel them in the same way you could feel the sun on your face while you're sleeping. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him. But now it was him and Debora. On Friday morning, Harvey had been there for me, like always. And I thought I was ready to be there for him until Debora showed up, reminding me that Harvey wasn't mine to be there for anymore. Right now, though, Debora wasn't here.

I wiggled out of my denim shorts and yanked off my T-shirt.

Harvey gasped, which he tried to disguise with a cough. I pulled my tank top on over my head and reached my hand up my back, beneath my tank, unhooking my bra with two fingers.
Teach my mom to let me sleep in the same room with a teenage boy, even if it was only Harvey.
I slid the straps off my shoulders, pulled my bra out from underneath my shirt, dropped it on the floor, and then pulled on my boxer shorts. I unlocked the door and climbed up to the top bunk. Slowly, my body was filling in again, and I could get used to this, this healthy body. But I knew it could be temporary, and that this time in remission might only be a short reprieve. I listened as Harvey turned over in his bed in a huff, the springs creaking against his weight.

And just like that, the Harvey/Alice balance had been restored to the universe.

 

Monday morning, I woke to the sound of rain splattering against the window. Harvey stood on the edge of the bottom bunk, his elbows looped through the wood slats, peering down at me.

“I'm kicking your ass at Sorry in five minutes,” he said, pointing to the closet on the other side of the room, which was completely cleared out except for a tall stack of old board games.

“Huh?” My brain wasn't awake yet.

“The board game—Sorry.”

I propped myself up on my elbows and said, “Oh, I think you're the one who's going to be sorry.”

“Your ass is grass, Al.”

It was like he woke up and decided that we were okay. We didn't have to talk about it or our feelings or whatever bullshit. We were okay. And I wanted to live in that state of blind happiness for as long as I could.

Tuesday was Operation. I couldn't hold my hand steady enough and got frustrated, so I sabotaged Harvey by punching him in the armpit. Wednesday was Monopoly. I won and foreclosed on every inch of Harvey's property. Thursday was Life. I was in charge of doling out the little peg figures and made the executive decision that all of Harvey's stick people would be pink and mine blue. I chose not to marry and sold all my children to a traveling eastern European Iron-Curtain-era traveling circus. Harvey and his life partner, Rhonda, had nineteen children, which we caravanned in other cars using twisty ties found in the kitchen drawers. Friday was Clue. I killed everyone, using every weapon, every time. The end. (Actually, it was the maid.)

I took every chance I could to bend over with my ass in the air or to brush my boobs up against Harvey's arm. I felt pretty stupid, but I didn't know how else to stop him from forgetting. Because now that I couldn't have him, I knew that I would never get over him—at least not any time soon. It could've been because Eric was gone, but every time I thought about him with Debora, I felt like someone was ripping off my fingernails one by one.

But what if this worked? What if he couldn't resist me and he broke up with Debora? His happiness would depend on me, and that was a weight I didn't know if I could carry. I thought about all the ways I could give Harvey happiness, but everything I could do for him seemed to rely on my inability to be consistent and present—to be
always.
There was still that one thing on my list that I hadn't been able to complete. Something I could give to Harvey, a little piece of satisfaction that would be all for him and not at all for me. It was the thing I planned out in my head in those moments between asleep and awake when my brain was unable to tell the difference between dreams and reality.

 

After playing Clue with Harvey on Friday afternoon, I passed out on the couch. I woke to a darker, quieter house than what I'd fallen asleep to and a blanket tucked around my shoulders. Rain tapped against the windows as the smell of coffee wafted in from the kitchen. I followed it to find my dad sitting at the table with a half-empty mug of coffee, reading a bright green book about new wave music.

“Where is everybody?”

“Oh, hey,” he said, sitting up a little straighter and pulling on his earlobe. “Picking up Chinese food. Should be back soon.”

I sat down in the chair next to him. “How long was I asleep?”

He folded over the page he'd been reading and closed his book. “Only a few hours.” He took a sip of his coffee.

I nodded and touched my fingers to my cheek, feeling the creases left by the couch. “Hey, Dad?”

“Yeah?” He looked at me and I couldn't hold his gaze, because I was scared he would see all the things I'd ever seen and know all the truths I'd never told him. Not telling him about Mom made my throat ache. I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek. “Did you ever meet Harvey's dad?”

He shook his head. “Never met the guy.”

“You don't know anything about him?”

“Nope. Natalie only talked to your mom about that stuff.” He leaned forward. “How come? Did Harvey say something?”

“No. No, I was—”

“We've got egg rolls!” called my mom from the front door.

Dad patted my arm. “Grab some plates, would you?”

“Okay.”

We ate dinner and when we were done, we each plucked a fortune cookie from the bag full of leftover soy sauce packets. Mom made everyone read theirs out loud. Dad's was about taking a chance on a sudden business venture. Natalie's said something about patience making the world go 'round. Mom's told her to let compassion guide her decisions.

Harvey cleared his throat. “‘Every road has a fork.'”

It was my turn; I cracked my cookie open, but it was empty.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollinsPublishers

Alice.

Now.

“A
lice. Alice, wake up.” Harvey hovered over me. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms, and stretched my muscles so hard they stung. “You just fell asleep, but—”

“No shit,” I mumbled.

He stared down at me the way teachers always did. “Like I was saying, you just fell asleep, but look,” he said, pointing to the window at the foot of our bed.

I pulled myself upright. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the lack of light. I twisted around and slid onto my stomach, facing the foot of the bed. Harvey stood on the ladder, watching me.

I stuck my neck out over the edge of the bed and immediately saw what he was referring to.
Stars
. Thousands, probably millions or trillions of stars hung against the black velvet sky. The rain had stopped and the clouds were gone.

“I can't wait to get in the ocean tomorrow,” Harvey said. “I wish we could go in tonight.”

Harvey had always loved to swim. I told myself that I didn't mind it, but the ocean always made me uneasy. It was so bottomless and unknown. That's why I surprised myself when I said, “Now. Let's go now.”

Skipping the ladder, I jumped off the top bunk and rummaged through my duffle bag for a bikini top and bottom. I didn't even wait to find a matching set and found myself with a neon green bottom and navy-and-white-striped top. Harvey grabbed his trunks and went to the bathroom.

I met him on the deck. He held two towels and was wearing his trunks and a sweatshirt.

“It's a little cold,” he said. “You okay?” He wrapped a big, fluffy towel around my shoulders in such a familiar way.
Maybe
, I thought,
maybe this thing between us isn't gone
.

I didn't answer and just ran right off the deck and down to the ocean. The beach house itself was a piece of shit, with this faint mildew smell, but the view was what counted. And when it wasn't raining, the view was worth it. Dropping my towel, I ran into the ocean.

But then I stopped when the water hit my knees. The shock of the cold ocean water sent a shot of terror up my spine. Harvey ran ahead of me, the water splashing up around him. The moon soaked him with dim light. He had filled into his long, lean frame—even more so over the last few months. Slim muscles coated his bones, clearly visible beneath his skin. Not until he was in up to his waist did he turn around to see where I was.

“You want to go back?” he asked.

The way Harvey looked back at me, with the moonlight dancing shadows across his features, made me wonder if he had known all along that I was uncomfortable with the ocean. It made me feel weak, so I forced myself to ignore the crippling scream in my chest and ran to meet him.

His hand drifted through the water to find mine and I took it, my body easing with relief. Suddenly, my mom and Luke and Celeste mattered a little less.

As we went out farther, the ocean floor began to disappear out from underneath us, and I gripped Harvey's hand a little tighter. I knew how to swim, but he pulled me along anyway. The ocean was quiet except for the sound of lazy waves lapping against jagged rocks. Finally, Harvey let go of my hand so he could float on his back. I wanted to cling to him, but I settled for treading water and staring at the moon. If I stared at the moon long enough, I could forget about the abyss beneath me.

“Question game,” I said. “If the government was populating another planet and they asked you to go, would you?”

“Would you be there?” He moved upright and dipped his head beneath the water, his wavy curls springing when he resurfaced.

“Maybe.”

“Then yes. If you had to eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?”

“Peanut butter.” My guilty pleasure. Give me a ticking bomb slathered in peanut butter and I would gladly dig my own grave.

“What would you do if your mom got married?”

“That would be weird. I guess if he was an okay guy it wouldn't be bad. I've never really thought about it. I wouldn't, like, call him Dad or anything.” His voice was a little lost, reminding me of the boy version of Harvey. I think he was genuinely considering this possibility for the first time ever. “It would be good, I think,” he said, a little unsure of himself. “What about Eric Guy? How's that going?”

I smiled. “He's good.” I didn't know why, but I didn't want to tell Harvey that Eric was moving. It felt like I would be losing some game.

“How's it going with Debora?”

Harvey blew bubbles in the water, which I found to be a little gross. “I like her. Dennis thinks it's weird. She's nice, though. And pretty brilliant.”

“And pretty in general,” I added. It was true. Even if I didn't want it to be. She was pretty in a first-day-of-school kind of way.

“Yeah,” he concurred. “Yeah, she is.”

Harvey swam out a little farther, but I couldn't make myself follow. I couldn't feel the ocean floor beneath me, but I knew the farther out I went the less the floor beneath me would exist. Something slid against my leg.
Seaweed, please be seaweed
.

“What do you want to do tomorrow, Harvey?” I asked, trying to distract myself.

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that.” His voice echoed from somewhere ahead of me, but I couldn't spot the silhouette of his bobbing head because the moon had slid behind a cloud, blocking the light from our little world.

“Okay.”

Silence.

“Harvey?”

Silence.

“Harvey?” I called again, the anxiety in my voice rising.

Silence.

“Harvey!”

The ocean was still.

I began to panic. “Harvey!” I screamed, my voice choking on sobs. My muscles tightened, but I couldn't make myself be still and float. There was a jackhammer in my chest, completely obliterating my attempts at breathing. The salty water was wet in my mouth. Then I realized my lungs were full, not with air but with salty ocean water, and my eyes stung. All four of my limbs thrashed, creating splashes at the surface. I looked up to see the moon creeping out from behind the cloud; it looked wavy and distorted from beneath the water. My limbs wouldn't push me forward. A pane of glass sat above my head, keeping me from the surface.

Something torpedoed past me, grabbing me underneath my arms as it did. Water spilled from my mouth as I broke through the surface. My eyes were blurry, and I choked on the rush of oxygen. Harvey held me tight. I wrapped my legs around his waist, leaning my head against him. I was freezing, but his body warmed me. He treaded water for the both of us.

“Hey! Al, it's all right. Are you okay?”

I nodded against his chest.

After I caught my breath, Harvey swam back to the beach with me still clinging to him. It was slow going, but every muscle in my body felt useless. When the seafloor returned to us and we were able to walk, Harvey pulled me in front of him with my back to his chest and his arms wrapped tightly around my waist, squeezing me like I might disappear.

On the beach, my legs wobbled, my muscles having forgotten the laws of gravity. Harvey held my hand and spotted me as I stumbled through the wet, cool sand. If I hadn't been in complete shock, I would have relished the feeling of it sliding through my toes. I stood in the moonlight, shivering violently. We reached the pile of clothes and towels, and carefully he surveyed my body for damage before pulling his sweatshirt over my head and guiding my limp arms through the sleeves. I stared over his shoulder at the ocean, the unknown, the answers to questions I didn't want to ask. Then he wrapped one towel around my waist and the other around my shoulders. I tore my eyes from the ocean, turning my focus to him.

Then I kissed Harvey. I stood on my toes and kissed him on his salty lips. He didn't say anything or push me away. He stood still, not kissing me back. His jaw twitched, but then that was it. My mouth went dry as my lips slipped into a wordless, “Oh.” I didn't know what I expected to happen. But I did not expect for him to place his hand around my shoulder and walk me back to the beach house in silence, which was exactly what he did. Was it Debora? Was she why he wouldn't kiss me? Harvey didn't say no to me. Even when he said he would or even when he wanted to, he didn't. My breath quickened, and I walked past him and back into the house.

Inside our room, he said, “You've got to change out of that bathing suit, Al. You're shaking. I think you went into shock or something.” Then he left, giving me some privacy. I dried off and stripped out of my soaking mismatched bikini in favor of fresh underwear, boxer shorts, and his sweatshirt. I slid onto the bottom bunk bed, Harvey's bed, and rolled over on my side, curling into the wall.

I heard the door open. Harvey climbed up the ladder and pulled the blanket off the top bunk, and then he pulled both his blanket and my blanket over my body, tucking me in. He wasn't going to sleep next to me. Completely disappointed, my eyes stung with the threat of tears. I'd lost him, and this time he wasn't coming back.

But then his weight sank into the mattress as he climbed under the blankets behind me. His hand slid up my bare back beneath the sweatshirt, and he began to trace letters of the alphabet on my back, like Natalie used to do to us when we were little.

“Q,” I said. My muscles eased beneath his light touch, despite my racing heart.

He tried again.

“W. Harvey, where did you go?” I asked in a small voice that I had never heard myself use before.

“I thought I felt the key to the beach house fall out of my trunks while we were swimming.”

“Oh. B.”

“Then I remembered I left it on the towel, back on the beach.”

He continued to trace letters and some numbers too, even after I stopped guessing.

“Al, it's okay to be scared.”

I swallowed. My mouth was dry and wordless. Just images of the water rushing around me, as I created my own panic. A nonexistent storm that had only been real in my head. My cheeks flushed.

“Huh,” mused Harvey.

“What?”

“Did you notice the plastic stars on the ceiling?” Harvey stopped tracing on my back, the absence of his touch jolting me.

I rolled over and leaned past him to look up at the ceiling. “Like the ones in your room,” I said. “Let's sleep on the top bunk.” I crawled over him, the heat of his body pressing against mine for a moment, and climbed the ladder before he could object. He followed me up the ladder with both blankets thrown over his shoulder, but not before opening the window next to the bed.

“It feels so good outside,” he explained. “But I'll make sure you stay warm.” I didn't say anything, because that's exactly what I wanted, for him to keep me warm.

We lay down flat on our backs, side by side, our bodies barely fitting in the twin-size bed, beneath the glow-in-the-dark stars, the secrets between us thinning.

“Someday,” I said, “when we're married to different people, we won't ever be able to talk to each other.” Turning on my side, I draped an arm over his chest.

“I know,” whispered Harvey, running his fingertips along my arms.

I slid in closer to him. “I couldn't be happy for you, you know.”

I'd always heard that when you truly love someone, you're happy for them as long they're happy. But that's a lie. That's higher-road bullshit. If you love someone so much, why the hell would you be happy to see them with anyone else? I didn't want the easy kind of love. I wanted the crazy love, the kind of love that created and destroyed all at the same time.

But Harvey had moved on, and all we had was whatever was left of our spring break. Here, tonight, Harvey felt easy and right, but tomorrow the light of day would melt the simplicity of night to reveal what we really were—a complicated, confused mess.

He squeezed my hand once. “Me too,” he confessed. “It would feel wrong.”

He turned into me and did that thing that always crushed me—he kissed my cheeks and my eyelids, saving my lips for last. His mouth was salty, but it didn't make me thirsty. My hands drifted along the waistband of his shorts and up the back of his T-shirt. My body kept moving, even as I could feel the ground slipping out from beneath me, like in the ocean. His hands did the same, sliding up the sweatshirt I wore and up the length of my back and around to the front of my chest. I exhaled in his mouth.

And then he pulled back and sighed. For a second, my lips continued to move, confused by the absence of his. The echo of his hands on my skin left a searing heat in my chest.

I laid my head against him and he wound his arm around my shoulder. “What's going to happen to us, Harvey?”

He pressed his lips to my head and said, “It's a surprise, I think.”