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

laugh, but plopped down on my bed.
    â€œDo you remember when we were kids and your mom was watching me and she had to take you to a doctor’s appointment, so she took me too?”
    I didn’t answer. Things like that had happened all the time when we were little.
    â€œYour mom went to the bathroom for a minute while we waited in the examination room. You sat in the chair, and I walked around looking at everything, sticking my hands in the cotton balls. You kept telling me to sit down.” She turned to me. “Do you know what time I’m talking about now?”
    I laughed. “Yeah,” I said. “You told me the rubber doorstop on the wall behind the door was a nose-cleaner. And then you kept saying, ‘What’s that on your nose, Harvey?’, so I knelt down in front of the doorstop and rubbed my nose around inside.”
    â€œAnd then the nurse came in and hit you with the door. Oh my God, and then your mom came in!” She pressed the tips of her fingers to her smiling lips. “She was so pissed.”
    I sat down next to her. “Yeah. I didn’t figure out that you were making it up till I was, like, ten.” I wanted to ask her why she was here, but I didn’t want this moment to end.
    She had probably said fewer than twenty words to me since the beginning of freshman year. I was trying hard not to count her words now. One hundred and thirteen.
    â€œYou don’t even like playing the piano, do you?” she asked, changing the subject.
    I like creating the rhythm of your body . That’s what I wanted to say. If I was suave I would say shit like that, the kind of stuff that made girls’ clothes fall off. I wanted her to keep talking so I told the truth. “I don’t know. I quit.”
    â€œThat’s dumb.”
    I needed her to say it. Whatever it was she came to say. Because after a year of silence, why else would she be here? “Alice—”
    â€œI have leukemia, Harvey.”
    Your life changes sometimes and it only takes a few words to bridge the gap between now and then. My first instinct was shock. It didn’t make sense. She didn’t look sick. “I’m sorry.” It was all I could think of to say.
    â€œYeah,” said Alice, “because I must have caught it from you.” She slid in closer to me. “Don’t be sorry.”
    I nodded. “So, is this, like, the type of cancer they just cut out of you and then it’s all ‘Hey, everybody, remember that one time I had cancer?’ Or is this, like, the bad kind?” The type of cancer that decimates you and everyone you know.
    She didn’t answer, and because she didn’t say so, I assumed it to be the latter. If it were okay, if she thought she would be all right, she would have said something like but it’s not serious . I tried to talk, but the words stuck to the back of my throat. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
    â€œAcute lymphocytic leukemia. I’m starting the first round of chemotherapy next week.”
    â€œHow do you feel?” Words, sounds I didn’t know I was making.
    â€œThe same, I guess. I don’t know. I can’t tell if I’ve felt like this for so long that I can’t tell or if I genuinely don’t feel any different. Does that make sense?”
    One hundred and ninety-six words . All those words in a matter of minutes but only four words that mattered. Only four words played on repeat in my head.
    I have leukemia, Harvey. I have leukemia, Harvey. I have leukemia, Harvey.
    I wonder if she practiced how she was going to say it. Harvey, I have leukemia. Leukemia have I, Harvey. Maybe she tried different inflections of each word. I would have. I have leukemia, Harvey. I thought about all the other people she might have told before me—the list was short— and I hoped that, besides her parents, I was the first to know. It was selfish, but I wanted to know I came first even if it