Side Effects May Vary

Sometimes I had to remind myself that she was my girlfriend, and I don’t think that’s how it was supposed to be.

Dennis stood behind her, shaking his head.

In any other world, Debora would have been right, but things were tense enough between Alice and Bernie. This would be one more thing.

“Okay,” said Debora. “We’ll try it your way, but no promises. I’m going to try to find the key to this case. Dennis, you stand guard here. Don’t let any crowds congregate. We don’t want to draw any attention to this. Harvey, you find Alice.”

With her clipboard tucked beneath her arm, Debora speed-walked down the hallway.

“Wait,” I said and jogged to meet her. “What about your senior luau?”

She ran a hand over her normally smooth but currently frizzed hair. “It’ll be fine. I’ve got a few freshmen helping.”

“Thank you?” I didn’t know what else to say.

She smiled for a second. “Find Alice.”

I had no clue where Alice was, but I had to find her. A bad dream, this was a bad dream. The kind where your feet are stuck in quicksand and your throat is dry and you can’t scream because if you could fucking scream it would all stop.

Alice. Now.

I didn’t have it in me to go to first period. To my surprise, no one had confronted me about the classes I’d skipped since being back at school. But if they tried to, I’d tell them that I was puking my guts out in the bathroom and that I still felt weak.

It was true, though. There were still times when I felt just as sick as I had before. Dr. Meredith had told me I’d feel like that sometimes. The only difference was that I didn’t get the awesome pain meds anymore. During my last appointment with Dr. Meredith, he confessed that he had yet to discover what triggered my remission. Since my recovery had been steady, and I had had such a negative response to that last round of chemo, he agreed to let me finish the rest of the school year before beginning my closely monitored intensification treatment. Everyone seemed confident that my stint with cancer was a thing of the past, but I didn’t know where their absolute positivity came from. Because, for me, cancer would always be a shadow I lived in, an addiction that was never quite through with me.

Between first and second period, I waited in the second-floor girls’ bathroom for the first bell to ring. After the hallway cleared, I traced a path through each corridor, dragging my fingers along the walls—leaving invisible signs of life. I wondered where Eric was and if he’d even bothered to come to school today.

Shuffling through the music hall, I heard a teacher coming and slipped into an unused classroom. When the hallway was empty again, I opened the door, but saw Harvey and shut it immediately. I flipped the lights off in the classroom and squatted down, so I could still see him as he sprinted past me and turned the next corner. Where was he going?

I headed for the gym, where I usually met Eric beneath the bleachers. Maybe if he was here, I could at least say good-bye. I didn’t know. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be alone. When Eric left, he would take my distractions with him. And now here I was, with a whole week of family and Harvey ahead of me, and it seemed like the things I’d been running from all along might find me anyway.

Inside the gym, I glanced beneath the bleachers to check, but no Eric. The first-period girls’ phys ed class played dodgeball on one side of the gym while the student council set up for the senior luau on the other side. The game of dodgeball looked brutal. There were only six girls still standing and Celeste was one of them—of course. I watched from beneath the bleachers. Now it was four to two. Celeste’s team held the two balls still left in play. Celeste pelted hers at one of the two girls, a chubby freshman. The ball bounced off the girl’s hip and hit her shorter counterpart in the boob.

Coach Wolfen blew his whistle from where he sat in the volleyball perch and yelled, “Game!”

The girls filed into the locker room as I jogged across the court to see if maybe Eric went to the snack machines.

“Watch out!” yelled Celeste from where she stood by the locker room door. “Walking dead!”

I didn’t stop, but just gave her my favorite finger.

“I don’t know where you’re supposed to be,” called Coach Wolfen, his finger pointed at me, “but you’d better get there!”

Walking into the hallway, I found myself in a crowd of gasps. There was some laughter too. At the back of the crowd, I saw Mindi, her lips curved into a cold smile.

The door behind me opened. Celeste leaned forward and whispered, “I know how you love to be the center of attention.”

Dennis shoved through the crowd. “Alice.” He pulled me by my arm. “It’s stupid. Don’t waste your time. Harvey’s looking for you.”