Side Effects May Vary

She left, and I continued working through each position over and over again. The empty room left me nothing but my thoughts and those always seemed to drift toward Harvey. I had walked out onto the deck of the beach house fully prepared to tell him that I loved him. But when the time came, the words stuck to the roof of my mouth like peanut butter. It was the last piece that I didn’t know how to let go of. All I could think of was all the ways that love had failed. Standing in front of a mirror, in my room by myself, I could say it. I could say I loved Harvey. But when it was to him, the words sat trapped inside of me because we were in high school and we wouldn’t last, and because nothing—not even my parents—ever seemed to last, and because when someone loved you, you had power over them, and because love made people do really dumb shit. And that was why I couldn’t say it.

The few times I’d seen Harvey since spring break had been at school and he avoided me every time. I’d walked past him in the halls a few times, my hand lifting involuntarily, about to wave, before remembering he had no reason to wave back. Dennis and Debora were always there with him too. And of the three of them, Debora was the only one who ever acknowledged me with a wave or a nod, like we shared some kind of secret. And the weird thing was that we sort of did. She and Harvey had stopped holding hands. I didn’t want to take pleasure in that, but I did. I so did.

Since both Harvey and Eric were noticeably absent from my life, I spent most of my time at home. My mom didn’t really talk to me, only my dad. When we got home from our trip, I went straight to my room and only left it for food until I went back to school the next morning. Almost all communication had gone through my dad since the pan-meets-glass incident.

After my mom got home from work that first Monday night after spring break, she came into my room without knocking and said, “I’m angry. And I don’t think we should talk while either one of us still feels this way, but your father and I worked out our issues after you were diagnosed. I just needed you to know. And that little fit you threw was way out of line.” She stopped and took a deep breath, reining herself in. “As soon as you’re well enough to get a part- time job, you’ll be paying us back for that glass door. That’s all I’m going to say for now.”

Beyond a few yeses and noes, we hadn’t spoken since then.

At the end of my studio time, I felt like cooked spaghetti—completely limp. It didn’t hurt so much while I was moving, but the minute my body had time to catch up, my muscles were sorely displeased. As promised, Natalie drove me home.

“School’s out in six weeks,” she said as we pulled out of the parking lot.

“Yeah. Six weeks too long.”

“Your mom said you’ll be doing more treatments over the summer.”

I nodded, twisting the strap of my dance bag in my hands.

“Maybe you’ll want to work for me part time when all that’s over.” Her voice was quiet, but not at all tentative.

“That would be good,” I said. I’d always said that I’d rather not dance than have to teach. Especially in a small-town studio like Natalie’s where most people only signed their kids up for the tutus and not the ballet, but being inside a studio had made me feel a little more like the me I wanted to be.

When we pulled into my driveway, she put the car in park and said, “When you’re ready to go back on pointe, there’s a rosin box in the far corner of that studio you were in tonight.”

I nodded. “I remember.” I loved rosin boxes. The way they smelled. The way the powder from the rosin crystals left a trail behind me, giving my toes traction on the slippery wood floor.

We said good night and she waited for my dad to answer the door, before reversing out into the street.

Alice. Now.

I watched the clock as the minute hand fell on the two. Four thirty-two.

My mom would be home by five. She rarely used her home office except to store important papers. My dad had left for the grocery store forty-five minutes before, and I’d already been hunting through files for the past half hour. Nothing had pointed me in the right direction.

The silence between me and my mom was going on three weeks.

Since I’d sworn off the scheming and manipulating, life had been quiet and lonely. And not at all rewarding. So now I was scheming in a new way. Scheming for redemption. And this scheme required a great deal of snooping, which I’d been doing for the last week.

The front door creaked open. I whirled around and fell into my mom’s chair, in front of her computer. My mom shuffled through the mail, with her phone cradled in the bend of her shoulder. “What?” She sighed. “No, we’re going to have to file an appeal.” She looked up and saw me there at her desk.

“Paper due tomorrow,” I lied. “My laptop was moving slow.”

She nodded. “I’ll have your dad take a look.” She turned and left me with the sound of her bedroom door opening and closing. I went upstairs to get ready for ballet.