Side Effects May Vary (8 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollinsPublishers

Alice.

Then.

M
ost everyone who's undergone chemotherapy has a hair story.

Plenty of people had told me that when my hair grew back, after all the chemo was said and done, it would look and feel a little different, a new texture or maybe even a whole other color altogether. The first person to tell me this was a stranger, a random woman at the Grocery Emporium. I was in the juice and soda aisle when she came up behind me, touching my elbow lightly, like I might break. She had had breast cancer and rebelliously curly hair, but after remission it all grew back straight as a board. Then she gave me a reassuring smile and hugged me, which honestly creeped the shit out of me.

Harvey stood a few feet away, stocking apple juice in his Grocery Emporium apron with his name tag hanging upside down, witnessing this exchange. With my chin resting in the dip of this stranger's shoulder, I watched him concentrating on his task, avoiding my gaze.

I had lost my hair a few weeks before. Most people let their hair fall out slowly—clogged in a bathtub drain or clumped in a hairbrush—until it was time to let go and shave it all off. But I guess I've never been very patient.

It was Christmas Eve, and I had finished up my first round of induction chemo the week before. I'd seen enough Lifetime movies to know it was coming—plus it was a major bullet point in the “So, you're going through chemo” pamphlet. The pamphlet also said that the process of losing hair can feel more manageable if the patient cuts her hair first. I'd stood in the bathroom the night before starting chemo with the scissors in my hand. Before I'd made the first cut, I noticed my pile of hair ties next to the sink. I couldn't do it. The pamphlet also said I should be attending a support group, but I didn't take that advice either. Nothing would have made me feel dead faster than sitting in a room full of dying people talking about their feelings.

At treatments, I'd see girls with scarves wrapped around their heads, and they looked at me like they knew all my secrets. And they probably did.

We usually spent Christmas Eve at home. Natalie and Harvey would come over and we'd have a big dinner and take family pictures, blending the six of us together for various combinations. Natalie would make lots of traditional Romanian desserts, like amandine—which translated to
insanely delicious chocolate cake
. When we were kids, Natalie and Harvey used to stay the night and we'd all open presents together in the morning.

I stood in front of the bathroom sink, splashing water on my face. I'd spent the entire previous day puking up every piece of food I'd ever so much as looked at. The prospect of Christmas Eve felt better, as long as the nausea didn't kill me.

Pushing my hair back to put it half up, I ran my fingers through to the ends to find a clump of hair in my fist. I'd noticed it before, in the shower and in my brush, but this was the most at one time. I dropped the hair into the sink, wishing I could count the strands. I closed the lid to the toilet and plopped down.

I'd never been all that vain.

Okay, that was a lie. But I'd never had to try with my looks. They just were.

Tucking my knees into my chest, I pulled on another small patch of hair, just to see if maybe it was a fluke. A drill. I loosened my fingers and let the strands fall to the ground, hitting the white tiles of the bathroom floor.

I was fine.

I was absolutely fine until I realized the last person who had played with my hair had been Luke. And I would never put my hair into a sleek dancer's bun again. I had this certainty about death, and, for me, there was never a possibility of it growing back. I knew it the way most people expect they'll wake up in the morning.

“You all right?” called my mom through the door. “Everyone's ready for pictures.”

“Just a minute,” I said, my voice a little shaky.

I pulled my fingers through my hair once more and a fistful of hair fell into the sink.

My mom knocked on the door. “Alice?”

I turned the thumb lock, unlocking the door, and the minute it clicked she twisted the knob. She looked me over once before noticing the hair in the sink and the loose strands on my shirt. Reaching for me, she tucked me beneath her arm. I was too tired to pull away. She spoke to me in a soothing language only she and I knew. For that moment, her lies dissolved and I melted into her side. She held me, as though the sheer force of her could keep me on this earth.

The next day, we shaved my hair in the kitchen with the brand-new electric razor my mom had bought my dad for Christmas.

There were no family pictures that year.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollinsPublishers

Alice.

Now.

H
arvey was pissed at me. I really didn't care, though. My first day of school was horrible, even worse than I'd expected. And Harvey's feelings weren't at the top of my list right now. He was livid the entire way home, making sharp jerking turns and shifting his foot between the brakes and the gas.

When he pulled into my driveway, he didn't even cut the engine to come inside like usual. He sat there with his hands on the wheel, drumming his long fingers. I leaned across the center console and gave him a kiss on the cheek. That was exactly what I needed to keep Harvey in reach. Not too close, but still in my line of sight.

My mom watched from the porch.

“You're home late,” she observed as she followed me into the house.

“Yeah, lost track of time.”

“I see. Got home a minute ago—court was shit today. I knew I wasn't going to make it in time to pick you up.”

I doubted court was the only reason she was held up.
How's your boyfriend, Mom?
I'd carried this knowledge of her with me for so long that it had become as much a part of me as the cancer had. And now when I saw her, I saw nothing else.

“It was very nice of Harvey to drive you home.” My mother was impatient by nature, and her job always showcased the worst sides of people, so she wasn't very forthcoming when it came to caring for others. But she loved Harvey. In the eyes of my dear mother, Harvey hung the moon. Hell, he
was
the moon. “Why didn't you invite him in?”

“I don't know, Mom. Why didn't
you
invite him in?”

“Drop the attitude, Alice.” She thumbed through her box of teas and pulled out two different individually wrapped tea bags. “After school teatime. Lavender or hazel?” she asked, holding them up.

“Neither,” I said. “Hot chocolate.”

She closed the tea box.

“With extra marshmallows,” I added.

When our bags of grainy powder had turned into steaming mugs of cocoa, she sat down next to me at the kitchen table.

“Talk to me.”

Talking. It's something we used to do all the time, just talk. I'd tell her all about school and dance and even Celeste. Two summers ago, when I was headed to tenth grade, we even talked about going for birth control soon. I told my mom over and over again that Luke and I weren't having sex, but she insisted that we take the precaution and that I could always be honest with her.

“How was it?”

Horrendous.
“Nothing to report.”

“Anyone give you a hard time?”

“Not really.” Lie.

“And Celeste?” she asked.

“Didn't see her.” Another lie.

“Girls can be barbarians. But you know that—you are one.”

“A girl or a barbarian?”

“Both.” She paused. “I talked to Natalie on my way to work this morning. She's not doing any spring-break camps at the studio this year. She was thinking maybe the five of us could go on a little mini vacation. What do you think? I mean, if you're still feeling okay.”

What did I think? I thought that sounded great and horrible all in the same breath. “I don't care.”

My mother pursed her lips. She probably wanted to tell me to stop acting like a brat, but she didn't. “We'll play it by ear.” With her still sitting there and her cocoa barely touched, I got up to go to my room. But my mother wasn't done. “Do you have any homework?”

“I guess,” I called over my shoulder. Instead of replying with an equally biting remark, she let me walk right out of the kitchen without a word left between us.

I wanted her to yell at me. I wanted to hear the truth. The lack of truth—that's how I knew she was still having an affair. And today, with her getting stuck in court, I couldn't believe it. No matter how true it might have been, I would always be suspicious. Because if she'd ended it, she would have told my dad, and then they would have told me. Working in criminal law, my mom saw the fruit of lies every day, and she wouldn't tolerate it at home. Growing up, she would say, “Inside our home, we always tell the truth. Even when it does more harm than good.”

In my room, I checked my cell phone and found three missed calls from the same unknown numbers, presumably my newest acquaintance, Eric. Funny, I hadn't taken him for eager.

 

After having been out of school for months, I started my first day back with Luke in first period. Since he was a senior, we shouldn't have shared any classes, but he'd always been horrible with dates and names, so I wasn't surprised to find him in my eleventh-grade history class. I sat in the only seat available, which was about midway to the back of the room. When our teacher, Mrs. Morrison, told us to break into groups for a project, I excused myself to avoid the risk of ending up in a group with Luke. I needed some serious air anyway. In the hallway, I dug around my pocket for the tiny slip of paper with my locker number and combo.

After some trial and error, my locker sprang open, and I realized I didn't have anything to put inside of it. All I had brought with me to school was a single pencil. I laid my pencil down in the locker and spun it between my two fingers.
College
. It'd been gnawing at me since last night. College could take me away. Far, far away. But college meant making plans. And plans meant hoping for something. Unless medical science had been magically revolutionized and remission was now synonymous with cured, I was wary of plans and all the goddamn hopes that came with them. I sighed, tucking my pencil back behind my ear, and slammed the locker door shut.

“Never thought I'd see you again,” said a voice.

I turned around to see Luke.

“Get the hell away from me,” I said coolly, even though I was fully aware of how alone I was, here in this hallway with Luke. I'd never been conscious of things like that, but I'd never had good reason to be.

He laid his hand on my shoulder. “Hey, now, Alice, I'm just the beginning of the welcome wagon.” I slapped his hand away.

He stepped back. “You'll be seeing me around. I haven't forgotten,” he said, “and I don't think Celeste has either.”

This was Luke's senior year, so if I could survive until May, I'd be fine. If the cancer didn't come back, I'd be here next year with Celeste and I could handle her. I wondered if Celeste got her wish and finally got to do Luke. Luke didn't really have standards anyway.

Of Celeste and Mindi, only Mindi was in any of the classes I'd attended. I saw Celeste for a brief moment, though, sneering at me from the doorway of my classroom. The scene with Margaret Schmidt had been the same version of scenes in my first- and second-period classes. The questions, the few well-wishes—authentic and not. It all made me feel like someone else, someone I'd never wanted to be, someone fragile and lonely, who went home to scrawl all her feelings in her fucking journal.

After second-period algebra with Mindi and Harvey, my school day was o-v-e-r. Well, not technically. I skipped out on the rest of the day, including my little meeting with Mr. Slaton.

On my way to anywhere that wasn't class, I stopped by the bathroom. As I washed my hands, the door swung open.

“I thought that was you.”

From the mirror, I watched Celeste. She stood with her arms crossed and her little designer wristlet dangling from her wrist.

“You know, I'd already bought a dress in case you didn't make it. I mean, it was such a steal, and who doesn't need one more little black dress?”

“You're sick.”

“I wore it for New Year's instead. Luke took me to Three Forks off I-9.”

I laughed. “Oh, so that little charade is still going? Do you guys like to do it with the lights on? We never got that far, but I always wondered.”

She didn't answer my question, but her lip twitched for a second, making me think that Celeste's dreamboat might not be such a dream after all. I blinked and her vicious smile was back. “How's your mom doing?”

I turned around and crossed my arms, mirroring her, as I leaned up against the sink. I wanted to say something equally low, like how it must be really nice for Luke to be dating someone his own size. But I didn't and it was Harvey's fault. He was the closest thing I had to a damn conscience. “What do you want, Celeste?”

“All I want is for you to feel welcome. It's cute how people are so excited to have you back.” She took two steps closer to me. “They don't know what I know. The cancer might be gone, but the bitch isn't.”

 

I'd met Eric under the bleachers in the gym after my run-in with Celeste. I'd never seen him before. He looked as though he hadn't been to class in weeks, if not months. A few copies of
SPIN
magazine sat piled up beside him, like he'd set up a little home there. He was playing a game of solitaire and chewing on sunflower seeds, spitting the shells on the floor for the janitors to clean up.

When I saw him there, I almost told him to leave because I intended to stay there until May. But before I did, he sprang up from his spot on the floor. He wore jeans tucked into combat boots and a black T-shirt. He looked older than most students, and I wondered if he was even a student at all. On the floor next to his pile of magazines were an olive green army jacket and a bright red scarf.

“Hey,” he said after looking me over, like he was trying to figure out if I posed a threat. He must have decided he was more interested than threatened because then he spread his arms out, displaying his little area. “Looking for a place to hide?”

“Yeah, I really am.” I pulled my red knit beret off my sparsely haired scalp as a warning: damaged goods approaching.

He didn't flinch. I liked that.

After I sat down, I expected him to ask me about my wisps of hair, but he just offered a handful of sunflower seeds.

“I like to suck the salt off of them and that's it. They'd be a waste on me,” I said.

He was unperturbed. “So suck the salt off and give them to me. I just care about the seeds.”

Normally, this would gross me out, but I had a feeling we'd be sharing germs before long anyway. Eric rolled over on his stomach, holding his face up by his knuckles, like a little boy watching Saturday morning cartoons.

“First day of school?” he asked.

I thought for a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, it is. You?”

“Nah. Started two weeks ago.”

And for the first time ever, I was the new kid. I didn't ask any more questions and neither did he because I don't think either of us was all that interested in answers.

We hung out for the rest of the day, under the bleachers. At lunchtime he treated me to a vending-machine buffet. My beret stayed on the floor all day, and when I shivered, he tossed me his jacket, which was big enough to use as a blanket. Without asking to, he put on my bright red beret, like we were even, and we continued our game of Go Fish. By the end of the day, Eric must have thought we were at the point in our relationship where we would trade “Daddy doesn't love me” stories, because he asked me out of the blue, “Who are you hiding from, little girl?”

“The boogeyman. Go fish.”