Side Effects May Vary by Julie Murphy Read Free Book Online Page A

of cars.
    She plopped down next to me and handed me a beer.
    â€œHow’d you swing this?” I asked. Bernie was careful to separate the beer cooler from the soda cooler so she could police us. Alice’s parents may have been cool with swearing and stuff, but drinking was not on the okay list.
    She shrugged. “Old guys love me.”
    â€œGross!” But it was probably true.
    â€œNot like that,” she said. “Okay, well, maybe like that. But who gives a shit?”
    She wore cutoff denim shorts and this really tight navy blue tank top with little flowers. I wanted to kiss her so bad. I wanted to know what it would feel like to lie in the grass with her on top of me and nothing but clothes between us.
    She held her bottle up to mine. “Cheers!”
    It wasn’t the first time I’d ever had a beer, but it tasted as sour as I remembered.
    â€œQuestion game,” said Alice.
    The question game was a game we played growing up. Well, really, I guess it wasn’t a game, just a conversation. But when you’re a kid, everything’s more fun if you can call it a game. My mom used to call cleaning the clean-up game. Alice and I would race to see who could clean up their mess of toys or construction paper first. We never won anything. Well, except gloating rights—which, to Alice, was the only thing worth winning.
    Alice asked first. “If you had to choose to sleep on your back or your stomach for the rest of your life, which would you choose?”
    â€œWhat about my side?” I asked.
    â€œNot an option.”
    I took a sip of beer. “My stomach.”
    â€œMe too.”
    â€œMy turn,” I said. I wanted to ask her why she quit ballet, but Alice quitting ballet felt a lot like me not knowing who my dad was. We tiptoed around it. “If you had to choose a brand-new first name right now, what it would be?”
    â€œJoey,” she said without pause.
    â€œThat’s a guy’s name.”
    She stretched her legs out on the grass. “I think it’s sexy when girls have boy names.”
    I didn’t know if my hormones could survive her bare legs and the word sexy all in one moment.
    â€œWhat would your name be?” she asked.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “Something like Mike. Something normal and not old.”
    She laughed and her hand brushed mine. “I love your name.” Sounding out both syllables, she said, “Harvey.”
    If she kept saying my name like that, I might not mind it so much.
    â€œIf you could take a test right now and skip all four years of high school, would you?”
    â€œThat’s a good one,” I said, feeling the bubble of beer in my chest. I thought for a second. “I would . . . not. It’s going to suck so hard. That’s all anyone tells us, but I think maybe there’s some stuff that might be worth it, and I don’t want to miss out just in case. What about you?”
    â€œIn a freaking heartbeat,” she said. “I wish I could wake up tomorrow and be on the other side of graduation.”
    I didn’t know what to say back to that. “It’ll be okay.”
    â€œAlice,” called Bernie from the side of the house. “There’s someone who wants to meet you.”
    â€œOh, shit. Dump these.” Alice handed me her half-empty beer and ran off to the backyard.
    That was the last conversation we had. It all made me wonder if maybe the Great Alice and Harvey in my head was a distorted version of reality—reality being that we were two kids, forced to hang out with each other because our moms had become best friends, but now we weren’t even that.
    Â 
    Dennis sat across from me, rehashing some stand-up act he’d watched online last night. I nodded my head along, but didn’t really catch what he was saying. Alice, her lips pressed together in a thin line, rolled her eyes at something one of the girls behind her