Some Side Effects May Occur

Some Side Effects May Occur

Fiona J.R. Titchenell

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2017 Fiona J.R. Titchenell

All rights reserved

Cover art by Laura Gordon

https://bookcovermachine.wordpress.com/

Discover other titles by Fiona J.R. Titchenell:

Confessions of the Very First Zombie Slayer (That I Know of)

The Prospero Chronicles: Splinters

The Prospero Chronicles: Shards

The Prospero Chronicles: Slivers

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This one’s for every girl who’s ever been made to feel like anything but a real person.

Table of Contents

1. Wannabe

2. Healthy Volunteer

3. Lab Rat

4. Character Actress

5. Bitch

6. Funny Girl

7. Beautiful

8. Upstart

9. Scene Stealer

10. Girlfriend

11. Party Girl

12. Main Character

13. Cheat

14. Sellout

15. Freak

16. Daughter

17. Sucker

18. Loose End

19. Whore

20. Predator

21. Mess

22. Friend

23. Newsflash

24. Monster

25. Star

About the Author

Acknowledgements

1. Wannabe

I shouldn’t be here.

But then, I knew that when I answered the audition notice. It’s never stopped me from showing up yet.

The rest of the girls in the lobby cross and uncross their surgically extended femurs in their uncomfortable folding chairs. Willowy arms fidget and adjust blouses over breasts that hold their own shape and waists smaller than my thighs.

All of their enlarged, color-enhanced eyes scan and size each other up. A few look at me with confusion or a raised, sculpted eyebrow, but they move on quickly.

I am not a threat.

I will be, one day, when I can qualify for a loan for my own procedures, but not today. Today, I am hardly the same species as the rest of them.

The girl across from me and one chair to the right is having some sort of panic attack. She keeps looking up at the clock, rubbing her face with her hands, and making these squeaky little sounds in the back of her throat.

I’m not sure why. She’s probably the most beautiful girl in the room; I could fit my hands all the way around her waist with room to spare. Maybe this is even more nerve-wracking for people who stand a chance, because what happens on that stage will actually make a difference for them.

Just another hurdle for me to look forward to.

I’m both relieved and sorry I made Sophie wait in the car. When she comes in to auditions with me, all I want her to do is stop putting her feet up on the chairs and telling me how much ass I’m going to kick and how worrying is neither helpful nor fun at an inappropriate volume.

When she doesn’t, I kind of miss it.

And now, when I get the urge to whisper something even more inappropriate about the resemblance between one girl’s sweater and what the preserved pelt of a popular children’s show puppet would probably look like, there’s no one for me to whisper to.

Is there any way I can go next? the panicking girl asks when the door to the auditorium opens. I’m not feeling so good.

She has to take her hands away from her face when she makes her request, far enough for me to see why. The left half of her mouth has gone slack, like she’s just had heavy dental work done. Or maybe she’s having a stroke.

The receptionist puts a firm hand on her upper arm and pulls her out of the chair and toward the street exit before the woman in the auditorium has to answer her.

No! the girl protests. It’s nothing, I’m okay!

A security guard joins the struggling receptionist and escorts the girl efficiently outside. The other girls stare at their shoes, the glowing screens of their mobile scrolls, or at the woman in the doorway, so the meltdown girl can’t see their expressions, the same one I know I’m wearing in spite of my own negligible chances.

One down.

The woman in the auditorium squints down at her clipboard-sized business scroll.

Rachel Blum?

Part of me wants to follow that guard outside and pretend I was never stupid enough to come here in the first place, but it’s an urge I’m used to squashing.

I don’t keep coming to professional auditions because I expect to be picked. I come for the free practice, and the free chance to let industry professionals see my work so that someday, when I’ve lost enough weight for them to see a glimmer of the potential star underneath, one of them might say to one of their contacts at the Public Aesthetics Endowment or one of the private talent agencies, Rachel Blum? Oh, yeah, I think I’ve seen her do a monologue or two. She’s pretty good, if you’re willing to make the aesthetics investment.

As Mom would say, Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Besides, backing out now would mean wasting Sophie’s time even more completely than usual. When I can afford my own car, I can take wasted trips when I want and cut my losses when I want and feel like shit about it when I want, but until then, I’m going to be excited and good-nervous and kick what little ass I can, and thank Sophie for every single audition she drives me to like it might be the one.

There aren’t exactly a lot of other people lining up to help me.

I stand up in answer to my name.

The woman with the business scroll looks up from it and almost completely conceals her look of apprehension when she sizes me up.

Almost.

This won’t take long.

I follow her into the auditorium and down the darkened aisle, focusing on the nearly invisible scars along her hairline from her last facelift, in exactly the same place my mom has them. She looks nearly forty, long past her leading lady days, but I can tell she was gorgeous.

She directs me up the steps onto the stage and takes a seat in the front row between two other scroll carriers I can’t see properly through the blinding stage light, which must be throwing every detail of me into harsh relief.

Whenever you’re ready, one of those front row shadows sighs, his features made twisted and ghostly by the glow of the screen beneath.

I am here. I am on a stage with an audience, and I will make the most of it.

With one slow, focusing breath, I disappear.

In my place is another girl, one from my book of monologues, the one who is written, suspended forever in time, in a pivotal moment. She’s having an argument with her best friend, begging to stay at her house for the weekend to get away from her stepfather.

Please, she begs, using my mouth. I can’t be alone with him. I’ll be out of your way as soon as my mom gets back from her trip.

This other girl is unaware of being watched. She does not ask permission to take up space, or apologize for taking too much of it. She worries about things I will never have to, things too big to leave room for any of the commonplace details that will determine my life.

Tell who? she says. Tell what? Nothing’s happened yet, and it won’t, as long as I can stay out of his way for two more months. Just two more months, and I’ll be away at college! I’ll be safe!

This girl does not care about me, and for a moment, forgotten in the boarded up attic of her mind, I am free.

Please, Beth, don’t walk away.

Then her words run out, the little snippet of her existence is over, and I am alone under the stage lights again, able to make out the outlines of the casting directors, looking away from me at the easier sights on their screens, waiting until they can stop humoring me.

I step down off the stage without being asked.

Thanks for that, I whisper to them on my way out, too soft to fill the space the way that other girl did, not waiting to be told not to call them; they’ll call me.

Not.

The back exit of the theater opens onto an alley, and for a moment, I’m turned around.

I reach into my purse for my scroll and start the GPS app, starting toward the nearest real street at a brisk walk while I wait for the ancient software to load.

It may not be as dangerous for me to wander downtown alone as it is for the richer, prettier, more delicate girls, but being lost and alone here, even for a few seconds, makes me nervous.

Nervous enough that I almost think I’m imagining the cold fingers scrabbling at my skin, until they wrap around my upper arm and yank me to a stop.

Help me! she cries out, turning me roughly around to look at her.

I scream with startled revulsion, even as I begin to recognize her.

The meltdown girl.

Please, tell them I can fix this! Just let me borrow your compact for a sec. I’ll buy you a new one. I’ll pay you double what it cost!

If she was melting down before, it’s nothing to what’s happening to her now. This is no stroke or nervous problem, and it’s nothing makeup can help. The flesh of the left side of her face is drooping almost to her collar bone, pulling away from her hairline, her shaved back eye socket, her pale little cheekbone implant. Something other than blood is oozing down her neck and staining her pale pink shirt a rusty orange, an infection of some sort, or maybe what that implant was supposed to be filled with.

I’ve seen a few botched bootleg procedures before, but nothing like this. Looking at her when the auditions began, I’d never have guessed hers weren’t professional.

Please! she tightens her grip painfully on my arm, her blood- and goo-caked hands colder than wet clay, and I throw her off of me with a hard jab of my elbow.

I’m not usually squeamish; I can’t afford to be, but the fermented smell of that orange fluid stirs the acid in my stomach, and I nearly trip over backwards trying to lengthen the distance between us.

I’m sorry, I tell her.

I shouldn’t feel guilty about running.

There’s nothing I can do for her. But after all the times I’ve been the smallest threat in the room, the one begging for a chance to try, you’d think I’d be able to think of something comforting to say to her.

I sprint out onto a street that looks vaguely familiar and take what I hope is the long way around the block, back toward the front of the theater. I’m briefly glad, for once in my life, for my unaltered legs. As fat and stubby as they are, the work it takes to prevent them from getting any worse keeps me a lot faster than the meltdown girl.

After the first two corners, the welcome purple-and-blue paint job of Sophie’s car comes into view, and I slow down to make sure the girl’s given up on me before heading toward it, remembering to practice my smile.

I’ve perfected this smile. Big enough to prove the audition went well, not big enough to make Sophie think it went so well that I’ll be heartbroken when I don’t hear back. Nothing to invite pitying follow-up questions later. It’s a business as usual smile. Another day, another audition.

All part of the fun.

Certainly not the kind of smile that says I was just accosted in an alley by a girl with a melting face, because then Sophie would insist that we find her. Then Sophie would meet her, try to argue her into an ambulance, and not understand why she wouldn’t want to get in while the auditions are still in session.

And then she’d spend the next few weeks marveling at what a poor, sad lunatic she is, what lunatics people like me are, people who actually care about making it, who can’t afford not to, who love what we do with our whole hearts.

I’ve tried explaining this concept to her before. I don’t need to again.

I rap on the car window, and Sophie unlocks the door.

That was fast, she says.

I go on smiling.

But the meltdown girl has thrown off something in my smile performance, and Sophie sees something on my face that makes her backpedal. Maybe she thinks fast sounds like they kicked me off the stage.

"I mean, finally. That took forever. You so owe me dinner."

Her backpedaling accelerates.

Um, well, your company for dinner. Your moral support, so I’m not sitting in a booth alone just because I’m dying for crispy shrimp and the microwave kind suck. I’ll buy.

I actually like that Sophie routinely forgets that her dad sells houses to other rich people, while mine sells computers to chumps, or tries to.

It makes things less weird.

I like her mild obsession with crispy things a lot less, though, so I hesitate.

Oh, come on, like you’ve got other plans? she says, tapping the ignition to life and starting up her scroll where it sits in the dock. The soundtrack we were listening to on the way over picks up where it left off.

Well… I shrug. "I was thinking of whisking Aaron Hawking and the male half of the cast of Swear off to Paris for a weekend of secret passion. But for you, I guess I can take a raincheck."

2. Healthy Volunteer

Sophie’s favorite crispy shrimp luckily come from a place with a decent salad bar, so I’m able to keep her company cheaply enough and without doing anything I’ll regret. I talk her into a few rounds of virtual soccer in her house’s enormous basement afterwards, and Mrs. Chen barely looks up when Sophie mentions me staying the night and getting a ride in the morning.

I stay over as often as not.

The only problem is that Sophie’s house is closer to school than mine, which naturally means we end up sleeping longer and somehow arriving later, getting stuck in the tide of students shuffling in right before the bell.

There’s one important reason why I prefer to get to the work scroll dispenser before the morning crowd does, and on this late morning, that reason comes barreling through that crowd toward us, as if the wall of bodies in the way are so many wisps of smoke to him.

I shove Sophie in the direction of the nearest bathroom.

Rachel, seriously, she says, watching his approach with cautious eyes. He hasn’t seen her yet, but he knows where to look. You don’t have to-

I wave her off forcefully, and with that slight, reluctant look of gratitude she gets, she disappears behind the door with the Ladies plaque.

I don’t particularly like having to deal with Craig Price, but I know it has to be less unpleasant for me than for Sophie, seeing as how I’ve never fucked him.

Or, rather, never let him fuck me. It doesn’t take any of the experience I thoroughly lack to know that’s how it would work with him.

And if intercepting that kind of fallout isn’t what friends are for, I don’t know what is.

I manage to enter my PIN and retrieve my work scroll from the slot before Craig slams it in my face, blocking my way to get Sophie’s as well.

Craig is tall and narrow for the team wrestler he is, with his dark hair buzzed unflatteringly short and a pale, sharp face that could almost be cute if he’d just shave his sparse, patchy excuse for a beard and maybe smile now and then.

That is, when he’s not laughing at someone.

Neither of those things are remotely likely, not with Sophie out of the way. He doesn’t bother to pretend he’s any nicer than he is when it’s just me.

No one bothers to pretend things for me.

Where is she? he demands.

I’m not crazy enough to risk escalating a fight with Craig, but lucky for me, whenever there’s something I’m not crazy enough to do, I’ve got plenty of stand-ins waiting in the wings to step in for me.

Scared Rachel retreats to the boarded up attic, and Clown Rachel eagerly takes the helm.

I look over my right shoulder, then my left, tap my chin thoughtfully, and then open my backpack and peer inside, as if Sophie might be hiding there.

Unamused, Craig knocks the pack out of my hands.

You been talking to her about me?

Hmm. I lean casually against the ancient, 2040s work scroll dispenser. Its metal knobs dig into my back. Nope, I don’t think your name’s come up. It’s Greg, right? Or Cal?

I know it’s you, he says, leaning closer to corner me against the dispenser. I have to crane my neck to see his face. You’re the one who keeps messing with her head every time I think I’m close to making things right, but it stops now.

Or… what? I raise one eyebrow expectantly.

Clown Rachel is fucking suicidal.

Thankfully, the security cameras are enough of a deterrent to make Craig slam his fist into the dispenser next to my face, rather than into my face itself.

He means to make me flinch with the clang of sheet metal, and he’d probably succeed if I weren’t used to bracing myself for sudden blasts of stage light.

Instead, I grab my backpack and duck under his arm toward Sophie’s scroll slot.

Craig follows me, knocking aside three freshmen unlucky enough to leak between us in the crowd.

All I ever did to Craig’s relationship with Sophie was point out the obvious to her, repeatedly, like any friend would, and then share ungodly amounts of ice cream and tears with her when she finally started to believe it.

And sometimes before then.

You’re going to tell her you were wrong about me! he calls out, beginning to draw an audience around us.

That’s fine. I like audiences.

Yeah, I can see that now. I project to make sure no one misses a word. Needy, possessive. You’re a real catch. Isn’t he a catch, ladies and gents?

I fly through Sophie’s PIN -- I know it better than my own -- jerk the slot open, and grab her slightly scratched, oversized work scroll, its software locked into the school’s database and local network.

Craig grabs at the pair of scrolls in my arms so I have to turn and fight to hold onto them.

"Jesus, Craig, it’s been a year!"

I yank on the scrolls, my full strength in one burst, and it catches him off guard enough that he pretends to let go of his own free will, rather than hold on and risk losing a tug-of-war to me in front of a crowd.

"It’s love. He says this like a child who’s just learned a new word, explaining its half-understood meaning to a younger one. Wouldn’t mean much if it couldn’t last a year. Isn’t that what she’s been telling everyone?"

"Sure, just not about you."

Craig looks like he wants to stick his fingers in his ears and start humming, rather than hear me mention Sophie’s not-so-new boyfriend, the one he tries so hard to pretend doesn’t exist.

So naturally, Clown Rachel runs with it.

Hey, Noel! I call on one of the faces in the crowd, hanging on our every word. Do you remember Penner Corbin?

Noel looks like the name almost rings a bell, but he can’t quite put his finger on it.

How about you, Sage? I pick someone else, dancing my way out of Craig’s reach when he turns to look at Sage.

Super quiet guy? she recalls. Like five feet tall, terrible acne?

That’s the one! I confirm. Would you date him?

Uh… Sage struggles to be polite. Probably not?

Gotta love audience participation.

These people are not my friends, or even my fans, but Clown Rachel does have a way of collecting casual regular viewers.

Craig is seething.

Penner’s always been sweet to me and, more importantly, to Sophie. I’d never sic the wrath of Craig or the ridicule of Roberts High on him if it still mattered. Not even Clown Rachel would do that. But he’s currently a good, safe, five thousand miles away, and will be until after graduation.

And this is for a cause he’d appreciate.

I scope out the crowd. How about you, Evan? Would you-

Leave me out of this, Rachel.

Okay, not Evan. Kyle! I point to a new target. Would you be embarrassed if your girlfriend left you for Penner Corbin?

I’d never show my face in public again!

Do you guys remember the time that totally happened to someone? I ask.

The onlookers turn to check with their friends, to see if anyone does remember.

No one? I prompt. It’s only been a year. Isn’t anybody still talking about it?

Most people shrug, but Sage must get the joke, because she shouts back, Not one!

Oh, well, Craig Price, I point at him just in case anyone missed the start of the show, "… just wants to remind everyone that he’s still not over it!"

Without stopping to take a bow, I exit stage left at a full sprint, leaving Craig with the whooping crowd and staking out two desks in math class for when Sophie circles around to find me.

Clown Rachel disappears into her dressing room, leaving my heart pounding worse than opening night.

Craig and I only live three streets apart.

Thank god (and Sophie) that I’m not riding my bike home today.

****

After classes, Sophie and I take our usual seats in the fifth row of the school auditorium, messing around on our personal scrolls while we wait for drama club to convene.

The leads are already onstage, warming up. This semester, we’re doing The Music Man, and Marian and Harold are, to no one’s surprise, Cadence Camden and Aaron Hawking, Sophie’s and my part-time third musketeer.

They’re both good.

Roberts High has one of the best drama departments in California, so good that a lot of kids who could have gone to private school go here instead if drama’s their thing. Both Aaron and Cadence have a solid real world shot.

She has a theater fellowship in New York already confirmed for after graduation, and most of her basic procedures are already done. Her silhouette is the definition of willowy, her professionally bleached hair manages to retain its shimmer, and much as I hate to admit it, she really can pull off that dark violet shade she picked for her eyes.

Aaron… Aaron needs no alteration.

Sophie nests sideways in her chair, leaning back against the armrest between us, utterly unconcerned with the competition. She only takes drama to hang out with me, and for the weeks when she gets to volunteer to paint the sets.

Her naturally straight, shiny black hair flares out all over my lap, exhaling the coconut scent of the plain drugstore shampoo that’s all she needs to keep it that way.

She doesn’t mean to show off, to