Some Side Effects May Occur

2. Healthy Volunteer-3

I even get some real speaking parts here in drama club now. Never leads, but real parts.

This semester, I’m Mrs. Paroo.

It took me the better part of four years to build the life I have here, and in six more months, that life as I know it will already be over.

In six months, Penner will get back from the exchange program his parents insisted on signing him up for so he could “gain some real life experience,” and he and Sophie will get to prove they’re mature and serious. They’ll probably get married, travel, and study art or philosophy or something on their parents’ dime.

What Aaron will end up doing, I don’t know. He won’t tell anyone.

Maybe he’ll go on to enthrall a state college audience for a while. Maybe a scout will swoop in before he can even accept his diploma and make him an offer. Maybe he’ll just get a job and a pretty wife and have pretty kids.

No doubt a more comfortable and alluring habit than I would be.

And I’ll be here in Hollywood, without this state-and-Camden-funded sandbox level to give me my fix of being myself by being someone else, hammering on that big professional door until it finally breaks.

I know all of this. But I’m not quite ready to say goodbye, and if these halls end up filling with the deliciously disgusting story of how funny, fat Rachel Blum has a crush on Aaron Hawking, then it’s already over, no matter what the calendar says.

Sophie: Do you want ME to tell?

Before I can type back an emphatic NO, another text displaces Sophie’s on my screen, at the same moment she acknowledges one on hers with a small exhale.

Aaron: I’m not trying to cheat, I swear. I don’t think you CAN cheat at this game.

We both look up at Aaron, who’s glancing inquisitively back and forth at the way our scrolls are both clutched furtively to our chests.

We both swipe our screens back to the game, where his representation of a winding brook waits to be identified next to our nearly random color splotches.

He shakes his head in the way that means, “Girls,” and labels my picture “Ketchup salad” and Sophie’s “Picasso’s omelet.”

“Harold,” Mrs. Cornwall prompts him. “Top of the ‘think system’ scene.”

Cadence is already onstage waiting for him, and he slips his scroll into his backpack and joins her with his smooth, Harold Hill confidence back in place.

“I’m sorry,” Cadence tells him when he reaches her, off the script. “Maybe I’m the one who was off the-”

“Apologies are what?” Mrs. Cornwall reminds us.

“A self-indulgent use of the troupe’s time,” we all recite back.

Cadence stops, Aaron holds her hands while they settle onto their knees where the porch steps will be when the set is done, and I know they’ll be officially back together for the fourteenth or fifteenth time by tomorrow morning.

Sophie restarts the game for two players, and types while it loads.

Sophie: If you don’t, I might have to.

I elbow her sharply in the ribs.

“What?” she whispers playfully. “I can’t in good conscience let him miss out on what he could have had, just because you’ve got the jitters, can I?”

“Don’t you dare.”

“You spend your free time inviting casting directors to stare down their noses at you,” she points out. “How can you have a problem asking a guy out?”

I want to poke her again, but she’s right. Expecting Aaron to be attracted to me isn’t that much more insane than expecting anyone to want to see me on their TV or movie screen or on a stage where they paid good money to be professionally entertained, rather than to support their own kid in the chorus.

I live for the hope that if I’m brave enough to keep on trying as many longshots as I can, I have to win eventually.

Just because what I want is different in this case doesn’t mean the principle is.

But when it comes to auditions, I also do everything I can to make that longshot as short as possible. That principle’s the same too, and choosing now to ask Aaron, when I’ve got six months left I could use to prepare, would be like showing up to an audition in my pajamas.

I crunch some numbers in my head.

“Two months,” I tell Sophie. “That’s when I’ll tell him.”

She snorts. “You mean two months from today today? Or two months away from whatever time it is, forever?”

“Two months from today.”

She doesn’t believe me.

“Ad roulette will decide,” she says.

I sigh and hold my scroll up next to hers, and after a silent count of three, we both jerk them to one side to simulate the movement of someone walking toward the soda machine in the corner of the auditorium.

The machine’s front screen, which usually cycles through its drink selection whenever the houselights are on, goes dark for a moment, and we wait to see which of our search histories it’ll decide to target.

The brightness of the image makes me sure for a moment that I’ve lost, that it must be a new book or TV show or game meant for Sophie, but then I recognize the purple and yellow logo of a lesser brand of diet supplements, before it yields the screen to a model more beautiful than Cadence.

Well, in her “after” photo, anyway.

Sophie punches me hard on the arm and says, “Level six.”

I look back at the Image Distortion Advisory symbol tucked into the corner of the screen, and she’s right, it’s an IDA6.

The IDA brands on digitally altered commercial images were introduced sometime in the 2030s as part of truth in advertising requirements, but they’re always really tiny, tucked away with the fine print about how medications should be prescribed by a doctor and stunt driving shouldn’t be imitated on public roads.

I have no idea how Sophie always manages to spot them so easily. We have a running game between us, searching for level five advisories and above, and she always wins.

But I won the roulette. I’m safe for now.

“Two months,” I promise.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sophie rolls her eyes.

“Two months. I’m just… not ready yet.”