Side Effects May Vary

We stood in silence for what felt like hours, waiting for an interruption.

Alice’s eyes followed every detail as she stood with her arms crossed, holding herself together. She dropped her hands to her sides, and we stood so close that when her hand brushed past mine, I grabbed it and held on to it. You don’t expect this. You don’t expect to stand next to the girl you love at her own funeral.

“I couldn’t find the key.” It was Debora.

Alice’s shoulders tensed at the sound of her voice. She pursed her lips together and dropped my hand. Silently, she walked off, past Dennis and Debora.

I almost called out for her to wait, but what would I tell her then? What magic words would I say that would fix us and this fucking mess?

“So sorry for your loss,” Luke called out, laughing from where he stood in front of the gymnasium door.

Alice spun around and marched straight over to him. I had these moments where I wanted to protect her, but in this case she wasn’t the one I was scared for.

Luke smirked. “I bet you didn’t—”

There was no warning, just Alice’s swinging fist connecting with Luke’s nose. And then there was blood too.

Luke screamed, holding his hands over his face.

Debora clapped her hand over her mouth, gasping.

“Get out of here,” I told Debora, and she ran inside the gym without a word.

Alice lifted her fist again, but Dennis pulled her back. Luke stood there laughing at them, and the anger that simmered inside of me boiled over.

Yanking the collar of his T-shirt with both hands, I pushed Luke up against the wall. “Give me those fucking keys to that case, or I swear to God I will break every one of your fingers and when those heal, I’ll break them again!”

He spat in my face.

The gymnasium door swung open.

“In my office, all of you. Now,” barked Coach Wolfen.

Coach Wolfen may have been the head of the athletic department and the coach of, like, six teams, but his office wasn’t made to fit any more than three people.

Luke leaned on the edge of Coach Wolfen’s desk, while Alice sat in a chair and Dennis and I stood behind her.

“You,” said Coach Wolfen, motioning to Dennis. “Clean out that case. Now.” He opened his desk and threw Dennis a key ring.

Dennis left, and Coach Wolfen pointed at Luke. “You said you needed those keys for some project the pep squad was working on. You lied to me, son. Your ass could get expelled over something like this.”

Luke held up his hands. “It wasn’t even my idea!”

Of course it wasn’t.

“You and I are not done talking,” he said to Luke. “You two.” He pointed to Alice and me. “Detention for a week, starting the Monday after spring break. Get out of here. And you,” he said to Luke. “Have a seat.”

I shut the door behind Alice and followed her out into the hallway.

Dennis stood in front of the case. He’d dragged a big black trash can right up next to him and was tossing everything. He looked at me, his eyebrows raised.

“A week of detention,” I said.

I turned, expecting to see Alice behind me. But she was gone, walking down the hallway. I watched her go, her silhouette shrinking as she went.

Harvey. Now.

“I wouldn’t have to work hard,” sang Martin.

He couldn’t sing, but I thought everyone had at least one song that was meant for them, one song that they could sing. “If I Were a Rich Man,” from Fiddler on the Roof, was Martin’s song—his one and only.

It was pouring outside, those big, fat raindrops so heavy they could crack your windshield. So far our spring break vacation was turning out to be pretty dreary. Bernie navigated from the front seat while Martin drove. Alice, my mom, and I were crammed into the backseat. Both Alice and my mom had been adamant about not sitting in the middle. I would have been adamant about that too, but I was the last to be adamant about it. Therefore, I was stuck with the bitch seat.

Alice wasn’t talking to me. As we loaded the car this morning, she sat outside her house, on the porch, watching everyone else do the work. She seemed eerily calm, shell-shocked, almost. Like how people act when someone they know has died of a freak accident. I didn’t even know how to talk about what had happened at school. How to ask her if she was okay. So, really, I wasn’t sure who wasn’t talking to whom. But the sum of it was that we weren’t talking to each other.

Due to their time-consuming jobs, my mom and Alice’s parents rarely took us on vacations. In my entire life, I had been on four vacations, and they had all been with Alice, Bernie, and Martin. We always went places that only took a few hours to get to by car, mainly because our time was limited and no one wanted to waste it traveling. Mom’s Saturday classes went until three o’clock, so we did the four-hour drive to the beach on Sunday morning, giving us exactly one week of vacation.