Free Side Effects May Vary by Julie Murphy

was only when shit was falling apart.
    I ignored her question because I wasn’t sure if what she said did make sense and, too, I thought maybe it was the type of question you didn’t answer. “Is it bad?” There should have been an online course that covered appropriate questions to ask when someone tells you they’re terminally ill, but nothing could have ever prepared me for the hole that was growing inside of me. The absence I was already feeling at the thought of losing her.
    â€œIt’s not good.” She licked her chapped lips and even now, when she was trying to tell me that some disease was eating away at her, my fucking hormones took over.
    I thought about my mom because if anything could extinguish my sex drive, it was her.
    I wondered if my mom knew. Bernie probably figured out a way to time it so that we both found out at the same time. That would be fair, and Bernie was nothing if not fair.
    â€œThey said the younger you are, the higher your chances are for recovery. But, I dunno. The doctor said it can be dicey. Dicey,” she repeated to herself. “All the good shit is supposed to happen when you get older. Driver’s licenses, concerts, sex. So that’s really fucking ironic,” she whispered.
    â€œDid they do, like, a bunch of tests?”
    She flexed and unflexed her feet. “Yeah. They kept saying things like ‘inconclusive’ and this ‘warrants further testing.’ They did a bone marrow biopsy and finally came up with something.”
    It sounded painful. “Did it hurt?”
    â€œThey gave me stuff for while they were doing it, but now it’s just sore.”
    I wanted to have an answer to that, a way to fix everything. “What do we do now?” We. It sounded presumptuous, but it’d just come out. And even though I knew it shouldn’t have been the case, the last year felt inconsequential—minuscule in comparison to the weight of her confession.
    â€œLet’s turn off the lights and look at the glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling.”
    It wasn’t the answer I was looking for, but I wanted to do it all the same. “Okay.”
    I turned off the lights and navigated my way back to my bed by moonlight. Alice lay on my bed and patted the empty space next to her. Didn’t have to ask me twice.
    â€œAre you scared?” It was the question game, but this time I was asking all of the questions.
    â€œI don’t want to be.” I heard the words she didn’t say.
    â€œI am.”
    â€œGood,” she said, her voice a whisper.
    â€œAre you staying in school?”
    â€œMy parents haven’t said otherwise.” We were quiet for a moment. “Do I tell people at school? How does that work?” She hadn’t told anyone else.
    â€œThe booster club is going to have a field day with this.”
    â€œOh God,” she groaned, rubbing her eyes, and when she did, her T-shirt shifted, revealing a sliver of cream skin in the moonlight. I slid my hands beneath my back. Look, but don’t touch .
    â€œI think I’m going to die.” There was an eerie calm to her voice that terrified me more intensely than any cancer.
    â€œDon’t say that, Alice.”
    â€œWe all die. We are dying. I’m just in the fast lane, I guess, dying faster than the rest of you slugs.”
    My knowledge of leukemia was limited. I knew that leukemia involved blood and that there were two major types of leukemia—chronic and acute. And I also knew that Katie Cureri’s little sister Emma had leukemia when we were in fifth grade and she was in third. The elementary hosted a ton of events and fund-raisers for her and her family. The more money they raised, the better Emma got and now she was fine.
    Money was the cure to cancer.
    I wished I was rich.
    I couldn’t think of anything that would piss off Alice more than a charity event in her name. I cracked a smile and