Side Effects May Vary

“My mom wanted my name to sound American.” My mom lost both her parents soon after graduating high school. The two of them were both Romanian immigrants and neither of them spoke English. When she got pregnant with me, she dropped out of her touring ballet company and settled in the nearest town. I’d asked about my dad—Was he part of the ballet? A local? A stagehand? Dead? Did she tell him about me? Is that why he left us?—but no answers. My mom met Bernie at a student-run legal clinic where she sought custody advice. They’d been friends ever since. I rolled my head back a little, watching the clouds slide across the sky. “She saw my name on a list of popular American names in the back of a dictionary.”

“Yeah, popular fifty years ago,” mumbled Alice. “Harvey, there’s a play about you, did you know that, Harvey?”

The air around us was gray. A bittersweet smell filled my nostrils, making me dizzy like the perfume section at Feldman’s Department Store.

“Harvey,” she said and then looked at me expectantly. “The play is called Harvey, Harvey!” She was saying my name too many times and in too few sentences. I hoped it was because my name felt good on her lips.

Alice broke the silence with a shrill, high-pitched laugh. It sent a shiver up my spine. “I looked it up once,” she said, still talking about the play. “I did a search on your name. I don’t know why.”

And I didn’t know why either, but I was happy to know she thought of me when I wasn’t around.

“That’s funny, isn’t it? I don’t know.” She was talking a lot and quickly, a sort of nervous chatter. It made me anxious. “It’s about a man, Harvey. A man with an imaginary friend. Can you guess which one of them is named Harvey?” She didn’t give me time to respond. “The friend is named Harvey!”

My mouth was dry and my brain couldn’t form words. Alice was rambling. Alice, whose words were always so perfectly chosen to be the right amount of bitter and sweet, was talking nonsense. I shook my head. This was a bad idea.

“Harvey,” she said abruptly, her voice completely sober. She sat up, and turned to me, scooting in closer to me and hiking one knee into her chest. “Harvey, you are my Harvey.”

“Har-har, Alice.”

“No, you’re my imaginary friend,” she said, like it was so obvious and should make complete sense. “You’re my Harvey.” She picked up my arm, draping it over her shoulder, then rested her cheek against my chest.

I wanted to ask her what she meant, but Alice thought she was high as a kite so maybe now wasn’t the time. But was I invisible? Imaginary? Or maybe I was so crucial to her that she didn’t care what other people thought when she talked to me, her “imaginary friend.” Either way, there was one thing I knew for sure. Being an imaginary friend was a one-way street. If that’s what I was to Alice, then maybe she only ever saw me when she needed me. I wondered what would happen when I needed her.

“Alice, come on!” I held Alice’s elbow as she stumbled at my side through the church parking lot.

We didn’t go to church, but Mrs. Barton, the head of the Parent Teacher Association and Mindi’s mom, did. When word spread about Alice, the PTA moms armed themselves in preparation for extreme fund-raising.

At first, Bernie and Martin thanked them but declined. However, in recent months the hospital bills had multiplied, and slowly each “No, thank you” turned into a “Yes, please.” So here we were, at Alice’s third Breakfast for Dinner Fund-raiser. I’m not going to lie; last time the omelet bar was pretty solid and the pancake chef was equally legit. The caveat was the pricey tickets at forty bucks a person. Which was a lot of money, especially for a family with kids, but I’d quickly learned that people loved to give when the giving was public knowledge.

“Harvey, on a scale of one to ten, how good do I look right now?” asked Alice with her hands on her hips, striking a pose in front of the church.

She lost her balance, and I caught her just before she toppled. “Ten. Alice, let’s go home. I’ll call your dad and tell him you don’t feel good.”

“No.” She wiggled out of my arms and stalked through the church entrance.

Mindi sat at the registration table with a little gray cashbox in front of her and twirled her gum around her finger. I was tempted to tell her how grossly unsanitary that was—especially while handling money—but I didn’t.

“Hi, Alice,” said Mindi, her voice rhythmically drab.

“Hey, bitch,” said Alice. Sometimes girls call each other “bitch” in a friendly comrade type of way. That, however, was not the tone Alice was going for.

“Your hair looks nice,” said Mindi, motioning to Alice’s bare scalp. My jaw dropped. Who said that kind of shit? It was ruthless and cruel, but Mindi was totally mindless and always loyal to Celeste.