Side Effects May Vary

Two days ago I would have thought that he was kind of adorable, but now I thought he looked like a severe case of herpes. I rolled my eyes. “No, Luke, I’m bored. With us. We never do anything anymore that doesn’t involve the backseat of your car.”

“So we’ll grab some dinner on Friday and go to a movie.”

“I don’t think you understand,” I said, raising my voice. “I’m more bored with the you part of us.”

Luke leaned toward me. “What the hell, Alice?” The words spilled out of his mouth in a rushed whisper. “Are you trying to break up with me?”

“I’m not trying to. I am breaking up with you.”

Bodies froze all around us, and life felt slow like when you turn a snow globe right side up and everything falls into place again. Onlookers whispered behind us, and a few girls pointed at us. To the side of me, some guys whistled, saying things like, “That’s busted.” Another group of girls directly behind Luke smiled, ready to pounce. I hoped Harvey was watching too, but I couldn’t risk a glance.

“What are you looking at, homo?” yelled Luke.

I looked over my shoulder to see Tyson—one of the few openly gay students at our school—rushing off in the other direction. I rolled my eyes. “You’re such an ass.”

Luke slammed his hand against the locker, catching my eye for a second before glancing over my shoulder once more. “Is it some other guy?”

I wanted to scream at him and tell him of course there weren’t any other guys, but all I could think of was Celeste saying, Rough stuff. The cheating hurt, but him telling Celeste about my mom was unforgiveable. “Oh, Luke,” I said, “there are plenty of other guys.”

I turned around and walked down the hallway with the eyes of the entire school on me. Without turning back, I lifted my hand and gave a little wave. Good-bye, Luke.

Harvey. Then.

The roads were a little slick, but they were nothing I couldn’t handle. I’d always been a good driver. My mom had hated driving for as long as I could remember. I don’t think she ever had to do a lot of driving until she had me.

Mom flipped the radio over to some easy rock station and leaned back into the passenger seat, closing her eyes. Not normal behavior for a mother while her fifteen-year-old son sat behind the wheel of the family car.

Every night after we closed down the studio, I would say, “Hey, Mom, I’ll drive home tonight.”

“Ha-ha, Harvey. Get in,” she would reply.

But one night when I was fourteen years old and about halfway through eighth grade, she tossed me the keys and said, “Back roads only. Don’t forget, gas is right; brake is left.”

This became our nightly ritual four days a week. Before then, my mom had let me skid around parking lots, but this was the first time I was ever allowed to drive on real streets.

Every night after that, her body seemed to melt into the passenger seat. Once I had a solid handle on the drive to and from the studio, she got in the habit of tilting her head up and closing her eyes the whole way home. Sometimes she was sleeping, other times just relaxing. I think my mom had been waiting a long time for me to be old enough to drive because by driving us home every night, I was fulfilling one of her needs. It wasn’t the first time I had felt like that. We’d had this partnership. It was hard not to share responsibilities when it was only the two of us. She didn’t talk much about her life before me. It’s weird to think that your parents had this whole world and you had nothing to do with it.

When I was four years old, my mom decided it was time for me to learn her craft. This was fine with me, it was. I wasn’t like most boys. I had grown up with ballet and even my four-year-old self knew that both boys and girls could be dancers. The problem being: I was horrible at ballet.

Sure, every four-year-old is horrible at ballet, but I was exceptionally tragic. I begged my mom to let me quit. I never took an issue with ballet; it was the me-being-horrible-at-it part that made it unbearable.

A few weeks after my fifth birthday, my mother took me to Mrs. Ferguson’s house for my first piano lesson. It wasn’t love at first sight, but it wasn’t as gruesome as ballet had been. By the time I was eight years old, I was playing piano for a few of the intermediate classes; and most of my after-school time on Tuesdays and Thursdays was spent at Mrs. Ferguson’s house. At the age of twelve, my lessons were limited to Sunday mornings, and I spent Monday through Thursday playing the piano for most of my mother’s classes. She had always loathed the bulky black stereos usually found in the corners of dance studios, but hiring a pianist would slice right through her budget. My playing the piano for her was sort of like that night when I was fourteen years old and she tossed me the keys. She was waiting for me to be ready.

With just the two of us, we had no other option except to be resourceful, but sometimes I wondered what it would be like to go home after school and watch TV or play video games with Dennis.