Side Effects May Vary

Noise bounced off the linoleum floors, traveling, as the fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. I’d heard about her and Luke breaking up. It took a few days for the news to trickle down the social totem pole to Dennis and me. I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, but I did know that Celeste now occupied Alice’s seat next to Luke with Mindi at her other side. Mindi had always taken dance classes at my mom’s studio, but she’d never been very serious about it. She was there for Celeste and because she needed a talent for all the pageants her mom entered her in.

Since she didn’t sit with Luke anymore, Alice sat at a table by herself. But, every day, people sat with her. She hadn’t really talked to any of them, but they all sort of talked around her, waiting for Luke’s ex-girlfriend to make her next big social move.

The last time I really talked to Alice was the week before high school. Bernie had made partner at her law office, so Martin threw a party for her. The attendees were basically old fat men wearing khaki pants and dress shoes without socks and accompanied by their wives. The backyard smelled like barbecue, cigars, and beer.

Alice had reached this point in the night where she’d stopped verbally responding to all the old people trying to ask her questions about school and ballet—especially since she’d just quit.

The old guys who’d managed to leave their wives at home flocked to my mom in her usual all-black attire with her hair done up in a bun.

Alice’s eye caught mine from where she stood next to the dessert table. She mouthed to me, Driveway. Question game.

I nodded, unable to stop myself from smiling.

I may have been a mediocre piano player, a horrible dancer, and a little too easygoing, but I had always been a supreme lip reader.

I sat in the grass waiting for Alice since the driveway was full of cars.

She plopped down next to me and handed me a beer.

“How’d you swing this?” I asked. Bernie was careful to separate the beer cooler from the soda cooler so she could police us. Alice’s parents may have been cool with swearing and stuff, but drinking was not on the okay list.

She shrugged. “Old guys love me.”

“Gross!” But it was probably true.

“Not like that,” she said. “Okay, well, maybe like that. But who gives a shit?”

She wore cutoff denim shorts and this really tight navy blue tank top with little flowers. I wanted to kiss her so bad. I wanted to know what it would feel like to lie in the grass with her on top of me and nothing but clothes between us.

She held her bottle up to mine. “Cheers!”

It wasn’t the first time I’d ever had a beer, but it tasted as sour as I remembered.

“Question game,” said Alice.

The question game was a game we played growing up. Well, really, I guess it wasn’t a game, just a conversation. But when you’re a kid, everything’s more fun if you can call it a game. My mom used to call cleaning the clean-up game. Alice and I would race to see who could clean up their mess of toys or construction paper first. We never won anything. Well, except gloating rights—which, to Alice, was the only thing worth winning.

Alice asked first. “If you had to choose to sleep on your back or your stomach for the rest of your life, which would you choose?”

“What about my side?” I asked.

“Not an option.”

I took a sip of beer. “My stomach.”

“Me too.”

“My turn,” I said. I wanted to ask her why she quit ballet, but Alice quitting ballet felt a lot like me not knowing who my dad was. We tiptoed around it. “If you had to choose a brand-new first name right now, what it would be?”

“Joey,” she said without pause.

“That’s a guy’s name.”

She stretched her legs out on the grass. “I think it’s sexy when girls have boy names.”

I didn’t know if my hormones could survive her bare legs and the word sexy all in one moment.

“What would your name be?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Something like Mike. Something normal and not old.”

She laughed and her hand brushed mine. “I love your name.” Sounding out both syllables, she said, “Harvey.”

If she kept saying my name like that, I might not mind it so much.

“If you could take a test right now and skip all four years of high school, would you?”

“That’s a good one,” I said, feeling the bubble of beer in my chest. I thought for a second. “I would . . . not. It’s going to suck so hard. That’s all anyone tells us, but I think maybe there’s some stuff that might be worth it, and I don’t want to miss out just in case. What about you?”

“In a freaking heartbeat,” she said. “I wish I could wake up tomorrow and be on the other side of graduation.”

I didn’t know what to say back to that. “It’ll be okay.”

“Alice,” called Bernie from the side of the house. “There’s someone who wants to meet you.”

“Oh, shit. Dump these.” Alice handed me her half-empty beer and ran off to the backyard.