Side Effects May Vary

Even though I didn’t want to care, I kept hearing what she’d said to Bernie, about another man. I wanted to ignore it. My mom hadn’t seemed shocked and neither had Martin. I didn’t have the balls to ask them what was going on, not with what had happened. There was something going on, though, and maybe Alice didn’t have the whole story, but she had more than I did. I was the only kid at the kids’ table.

I popped my knuckles before shoving my fists into my pockets. Even though neither Bernie nor Martin were my parents, I couldn’t ever picture it being true—that she’d cheated on him. Marriage didn’t ever really work, but it worked for them. They’d always been the exception to the rule.

I took the steps to the beach house two by two. Bernie stood there waiting for me, still in her robe. “Where is she?”

“Is she okay?” asked Martin.

My mom stood behind them, staring over my shoulder at the little dot on the horizon that I assumed was Alice, while Debora bit her lip nervously, her eyes darting from me to the wood- planked floor.

“She wants to be alone.” Forever. “She’ll be back later.”

Martin clapped his hands together. “All right, gang, let’s enjoy our best vacation weather yet! Debora, let me help you with your bags.” He guided Bernie by the elbow with Debora at their heels. “Watch for the glass,” he said.

The three of them went inside, leaving my mom and me.

She approached me slowly, like you would a wounded animal. “You okay?”

I mashed my lips together, the way you do when you’re trying to smile but your body’s telling you to cry or scream or something.

“Hey, talk to me.”

A tear spilled from the corner of my eye, and I pushed the tips of my fingers into my tear ducts as hard as I could. When the tears came anyway, I gave up, and raked my fingers through my hair. My mom stood right where she was, letting me have my moment.

When we were kids, this boy at school shoved me into the mud after accidentally cutting in line at the monkey bars. When Alice saw what he’d done, she pushed him to the ground and straddled him, getting in one good punch before the teacher supervising recess pulled her off him. Our parents were called, and my mom ended up coming to get us both and taking us to the ballet studio to get cleaned up before her next class. After she bandaged me up, I sat on the office floor reading a book while she fixed Alice’s hair into a fresh bun. She had run out of bobby pins and was crouched down in front of this box she used to keep safety pins, needle and thread, and hair stuff in. She sighed and shook her head. “She’ll break his porcelain heart.” She said it so quietly her lips barely moved. I didn’t know what it meant then. I didn’t realize loving Alice would be a curse.

My tears stopped and the salty winds dried my cheeks. Mom took a step toward me and held both my hands with hers.

“You can’t save the world.”

I nodded. “I know that, but why can’t I at least save her?”

She stepped even closer to me, so that we were nearly nose to nose. I expected her to say something, to answer my question because that’s what moms did. But she didn’t, she wrapped her arms around me, her fingertips barely touching as her arms circled my shoulders. I should have felt stupid, slipping into my mom’s arms like a little kid, but it felt okay.

“Let’s have a good day today, okay?”

I couldn’t talk, because I didn’t know what sounds might come out, so I nodded into her shoulder and agreed.

Alice. Now.

It was well past one in the morning before I got back to the beach house, and thankfully my parents had left the porch light on.

“Shh . . .” I pressed my finger to Brian’s lips after he tripped over a pile of flip-flops at the door. We’d met that afternoon on the boardwalk. “Watch your step, Brian.”

“My name’s Trevor.”

“Right, Trevor. I’ll call you Trevor and you can call me Ashley,” I said and rolled my eyes as we stumbled through the dark living room of the beach house. A pile of a person slept on the couch, their shadow breathing in and out. The person, I assumed, was Harvey. I swallowed the lump in my throat. I thought about telling Brian to leave, but the image of Harvey’s eyes on Debora as she stood there on the doorstep wouldn’t let me.

“No, really, my name is Trevor.”

“Whatever.”

After Harvey left me on the beach, I spent the day walking around the boardwalk, which was really a sad tourist trap. Most of the stores were poorly stocked. A couple even had OUT TO LUNCH signs up for more hours than they had actually been open. The shops were half-assing it because spring break was just their warm-up for the long summer season.

That’s where I met Brian or Trevor, whatever his name was.

He was close to my height and a little muscular, but at least a year younger. Freckles sprinkled his nose and cheeks. His rusty brown hair flopped with every step. I couldn’t recall the color of his eyes. That information seemed to fall into the same abandoned mental folder as his name.