Every Little Piece of Me Page 12

  “I have no idea,” Ava said. She kept her eyes focused on her book, an Alice Munro short story collection from the library with plastic on the cover that crackled when she opened it.

  “Why didn’t you call them?”

  Ava shrugged. Without even lifting her eyes she could tell that David was on the verge of spitting rage. She’d thought all this success would have made him more relaxed, but as the show climbed higher and higher in the ratings, David’s fuse grew shorter and shorter.

  “This is a disaster,” he said.

  “Leave her alone, David,” Bryce said. “It’s not her job to keep tabs on these kinds of things.” He walked over to her and kissed her on the top of her head, which made her flinch involuntarily. He straightened up awkwardly, adjusting the button on his shirtsleeve. “Anyway. We’ll figure it out. I’ll go check on the crew and see if they’re ready.”

  Ava didn’t know why she was always doing that. Wanting to be touched, but physically recoiling whenever someone tried. No wonder everyone liked Eden better. When she looked up from her book, her sister was standing in the door, New York still glowing off her—the electric charge in the backs of her eyes, the imprint of the pavement in the soles of her feet, the smell of exhaust on her clothes. Their eyes met.

  “Hi, Ava.”

  “What do you want?” Ava asked sharply.

  “Nothing.” Eden brought her thumb to her mouth and began gnawing on her cuticle, in what Ava assumed must be the latest evolution of her oral fixation. For a moment, she thought Eden was going to cry. Well, what did she expect? A parade? This wasn’t New York or L.A.; no one was going to kiss her ass here. Ava had seen the comments on Eden’s heavily curated Instagram posts, and she scrolled through every single one of the hundreds that appeared every time Eden posted anything—Eden I love you Eden follow me Eden you are a perfect please be my friend. Everyone seemed to think there was something magical about her because she had that thousand-watt smile and scrunched up her face when she was embarrassed and said things like “Who’s George Clooney?” when interviewers asked if she’d rather meet him or Brad Pitt. But Ava knew she was just a regular kid—a thumb-sucking, Harry Potter–loving, horse-obsessed, annoying, bratty little kid. There was nothing special about her. There was nothing special about any of them.

  Of course, Ava only assumed Eden was still all those things. She hadn’t actually spoken to her in months, other than when she was scripted to. Off camera, Ava deleted her texts and stayed out of the house as much as she could when Eden was home. Ava would never admit it, but what had started as anger toward Eden for the part she had played in the show’s renewal had hardened into a deeper resentment. Ava knew it was unfair, but she didn’t care. Eden had everything now. She would be fine without Ava.

  David pulled out his phone. “Go upstairs and unpack,” he said to Eden. “We’ll find out what’s going on, okay? Eden?”

  “Okay.” Eden picked up her bag and headed for the stairs. “Ava, do you want to come see the new sneakers I got?”

  “No thanks,” said Ava. She flipped the page of her book, the shape of the paragraphs on the page shifting slightly. If she flipped the pages fast enough, would they gallop like ponies, thick wedges of words racing toward an invisible finish line? She flipped another page, then another.

  “Stop that,” David snapped, snatching the book from her hand.

  The hairs on the back of her neck bristled. She grabbed the book back and clutched it to her chest. “Why are you mad at me? Val’s not even home.”

  “I’ll deal with your brother when he gets back.” He glared at her, taking in her holey sweatpants, her Spider-Man T-shirt. “At least change your clothes. We want the world to think you care about your sister.” He pulled the phone away from his ear. “Why aren’t you answering? Aren’t you running a business?”

  Ava stretched her legs out, resting them on the plastic tub of decorations, which was on the floor in front of her. “I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in,” she said under her breath.

  David swatted her feet off the tub, and they hit the ground with a loud thump. “Go upstairs with your sister. And stop quoting Virginia Woolf to me. I played Archduke Harry for an entire summer at the Forestburgh, I’ll have you know.” He glanced down and sighed. “Don’t worry, I’ll hang these up too, since I’m the only one who cares about this party, apparently.”

  Ava followed Eden upstairs. “They’re Nike Zooms,” Eden said over her shoulder. “They gave me two pairs, do you want the other?”

  “Your feet are, like, three sizes bigger than mine,” Ava said.

  “Oh.” At the top of the stairs, Eden paused. “I have some sunglasses too, if you want to see them.”

  “Eden, I don’t want any of your stupid free garbage,” Ava said, pushing past her sister and heading for her own room. “Tell David to call me when they need me. I have homework.”

  “Wait!” Eden called after her. Ava stopped in the doorway to her room, rolling her eyes. “I…I wanted to ask you something.” She pulled out her phone. “I know I’m not supposed to be on Facebook, but I was so bored when I was at the hotel.” She fumbled with it for a minute, then turned the screen toward Ava. “What does this mean? I know what some of the words are, but they don’t all make sense together.”

  Ava took the phone from her. It was a screencap of a comment from the show’s Facebook page in response to one of Eden’s videos. Ava read the first two lines, then deleted the photo. “You shouldn’t be reading this,” she said, handing the phone back to Eden even though part of her wanted to smash it on the floor right there in front of her. “Social media is a cesspool of human garbage. These people are literal trash.”

  “But Dad said it was important. Dad said it’s where the real people are. He said I should go on my Instagram and talk to people, the way Taylor Swift does, and it’ll make people like me more. But I don’t even know the password.” She held her phone in her hand like it was a weight dragging her down. “I don’t want to talk to literal trash people.”

  “Dad doesn’t know anything. Don’t listen to him.” Ava crossed the room and sat down on her bed. Despite herself, she was starting to feel bad for Eden. “Don’t you have other people to help you with this stuff? Handlers or publicists or, I don’t know, personal life coaches or something?”

  Eden frowned. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, you should. Because it can’t just be Dad.”

  “Maybe you could help me.”

  Ava rubbed her temple. Don’t let her con you, she thought. Don’t let her play this poor little famous girl card on you. She is the reason your life is this daily gauntlet of nonstop humiliations. But still, Eden was her sister. “I can’t,” Ava said. “I don’t know anything about being famous. You’re the expert, you figure it out.”

  She saw the hurt in Eden’s eyes, and she felt her resolve crumbling. It was easy to forget, watching Eden mostly through the lens of the camera as she did, that she was still a kid. “Okay,” she said, reaching her hand out. “Let me see…”

  “Ava!” David’s voice was a hailstorm thundering up the stairs. “Get down here.”

  Shit. Ava dropped her hand and gripped the sides of her bed, trying to stay upright as the force of David’s anger pushed her backward.

  She could tell that Eden felt it too. “What happened?” she whispered.

  “Nothing,” Ava said.

  She waited, feeling the seconds that passed like a heartbeat in the room, duh-dum, duh-dum vibrating the air slightly as she held her breath. Then, footsteps, growing nearer, louder. The shower curtain was ripped down from her doorway as David exploded into her room.

  “What did you do?” he said, grabbing her roughly by the shoulders, her skin yielding like soft fruit under his fingers. “What did you do?”

  “Let go of me,” she shrieked, trying to twist out of his grip.

  “David!” Bryce yelled from the doorway. David
let go of her shoulders and she crumpled to the bed. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Do you want to tell him, or should I?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  David glared down at Ava, who made a show of rubbing her shoulders as she scowled up at him. They held each other’s eyes for what seemed like minutes. She could hear his breath rasping through his lungs and she knew he was trying to regain control of himself, to keep from lashing out at her again. She hadn’t been frightened—she knew he would never actually hurt her. But the intensity of his anger had surprised her. It was just a stupid party. What did it matter?

  When he finally spoke, his voice was calm. “Ava cancelled the event planners. You know, the ones that Bob and Tess flew in from New York. We have no chocolate fountain. No fireworks, no ponies, no parade.”

  Bryce turned to her sharply. “What?”

  “No, I didn’t,” she said, her cheeks growing hot.

  “Oh, you didn’t? Then who answered when they called, pretending to be someone named Cindy?”

  “I didn’t pretend to be Cindy,” Ava said under her breath. “I pretended to yell at Cindy.”

  “Either way, Beth from Beth’s Event Planning is on her way back to New York as we speak.”

  “Who cares?” Ava retorted. “Why don’t you just get her a Dairy Queen cake? Or is that not good enough for your precious little princess?”

  David laughed, but there was no joy in it. “Ava, my darling. I am sorry if you didn’t like your birthday. I am sorry if you’re unhappy with your sister’s success. But let me be clear. This is not some little family get-together. This is supposed to be a television extravaganza. We have no event planner, which means we have no party. Which means no shoot.”

  Ava wrapped her arms around her knees, sinking back against her pillow. She had only wanted to ruin the party a little, to take away Eden’s stupid chocolate fountain. She had only wanted the party to suck. She hadn’t meant to ruin everything. “Why can’t you have the party without all that stuff? Why do you have to cancel everything?”

  “The whole point of the party was all that stuff, Avalon. Now we’re going to have to fly Beth and her team back on another day, bring back the crew, the actors, everything. How do you think Bob and Tess are going to feel about paying all these people to come back, Ava?”

  “I didn’t think—”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  Ava could see the anger building in David’s face once more. She turned to Bryce, looking for backup, but he had his eyes closed, as though he were praying for a beam of light to transport him to the next realm.

  “Do you think this is a game, Ava? This is our livelihood here. This is our life.”

  “No, I don’t think it’s a game,” she said. “I don’t. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry.”

  “She’s sorry, David,” Bryce said. “Let’s forget about it and concentrate on getting things back on track.” He looked so tired, so defeated. Did I do this? Ava wondered. Am I the reason my dads are both so miserable?

  David spun around to face Bryce. “You’re always defending her,” he spat. “You never let her take responsibility for her own actions.”

  “Well, one of us has to watch out for her,” Bryce said. “One of us has to act like a father.”

  “If you figure out who, let me know,” Ava said.

  “Get out,” David said, his voice low, face dark. “I don’t want to see you for the rest of the day.”

  “But this is my room.”

  “This room is the network’s room, actually. Everything here belongs to the network. Do you understand what I’m saying? Nothing is yours, Ava. You have nothing.”

  Ava stood up, her legs shaking, her eyes coming to rest on Eden, who she had forgotten was there.

  “It’s okay, Ava,” Eden whispered, her thumb at her mouth, ripping at her cuticle. “I didn’t even want a chocolate fountain. I didn’t want any of this.”

  “Go to hell,” Ava said, running past her down the stairs and out the door.

  * * *

  She walked for what seemed like hours along the side of the road, wearing only her sneakers in the frozen winter wasteland, her toes growing numb as the sun set and the temperature dipped. It was after six when the van pulled up ahead of her. She felt a flutter of hope that David had come to get her, and they could have a moment alone so she could tell him how sorry she was. Because she was sorry, regret etching deeper into her heart with every step she took away from the B&B.

  But as she approached the van, she saw Antonio was at the wheel. He leaned over and opened the passenger door. She thought about walking away, but the pull of the van’s heat was too strong. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Aren’t you freaking out about this party too?”

  Antonio shrugged. “I was more worried about losing one of my key actors to frostbite.”

  “I probably deserve it.” She got in the van and pushed her frozen hands against the vent, feeling them start to thaw. She glanced at him. “Shouldn’t you be turning around?”

  Antonio shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you want me to?”

  “Not really.”

  “Me either.”

  Antonio drove out of Gin Harbour and onto the secondary highway that curved along the edge of the ocean. While they drove, Ava kept her legs tucked under her, feeling the headlights of the oncoming cars track across her body while she watched the ocean breathe in and out from the shoreline and timed her own breath to the waves. They drove until they reached the neighbouring town of Mahone Bay. To Ava it might as well have been the same town as Gin Harbour—it had the same candy-coloured houses and harbour full of boats, their masts gently clanging in the breeze. Antonio parked the van behind a tall building and Ava followed him up a set of stairs to a pub on the second floor.

  “Javier says he comes here sometimes when he gets tired of drinking in the one good pub in Gin Harbour,” Antonio said as he held the door open.

  Ava hesitated. “What if someone recognizes us?” she asked.

  Antonio pulled his baseball cap off his head and put it on Ava’s. It was far too big for her, and fell low over her eyes. “There,” he said. “You’re like a totally different person now.”

  Like the B&B, everything inside the pub was decorated with a nautical theme—on every surface there was an anchor or rope or sail. At one end of the bar a band was playing, several men with guitars and fiddles singing the kind of jig-and-reel, pseudo-Irish crap that Ava had come to understand was the only music people ever seemed to play in Nova Scotia. Behind them was a female backup singer, all fiery red hair and in a kilt, looking as if she would prefer to be anywhere else but there. Ava didn’t blame her. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have to play this music, night after night. In front of the band, a few older couples were dancing, moving awkwardly together and apart and then together again, their feet moving too slowly to keep up with the music.

  Ava sat at a table in the corner while Antonio went to the bar to get them drinks. “If you ever tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you,” he said as he put two pints of beer down.

  “That’s okay, because my dads would kill you, and then we’d both be dead,” said Ava, taking a sip. “We’ll have so much fun together in the afterlife.”

  “There are no cameras in the afterlife, at least.”

  “Well, not in heaven, anyway.”

  “I don’t believe in heaven.”

  “Neither do I.” She stuck her finger in the foam at the top of her beer and swirled it around. “Why are you being nice to me? I’ve been kind of an asshole.”

  Antonio laughed. “You really have.” His eyes dropped down to his beer. “But I get it. I understand why.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure.” He took a sip of beer. “I’m the enemy. It’s kind of my job.”

  “Right now, you’re actually the only friend I have. I mean, my dads hate me right now.” Her stomach twisted as she thought of the exha
ustion on their faces, the disappointment.

  “Don’t worry. They’ll get over it.”

  “Yeah right. They’ll probably never talk to me again. It doesn’t matter anyway, it’s not like I’m ever on camera.”

  Antonio raised an eyebrow. “I would have thought you’d be happy about that,” he said. “Wasn’t that what you always wanted? To not be on camera?”

  “Yeah, but that was when it was my choice.” Ava sat back abruptly, surprised at her own words. It was supposed to be me, she thought. Despite all her derision, the games she played, she had assumed that the world would fall in love with her. “Anyway, it’s dumb. All of it is dumb.”

  “If you say so.”

  They sat in silence in the warmth of the pub, listening to the band singing something about how they wished they were in Sherbrooke now—a song Ava had heard a hundred thousand times since she’d arrived in Nova Scotia, a song that everyone in the province seemed to know, word for word.

  “I hate fiddles,” Antonio said after a while. “And I hate boats. And I really hate fish.”

  Ava toyed with the coaster on the table in front of her. “If you hate all that stuff, why are you here, then?”

  “It’s a job.”

  “There’s lots of jobs,” said Ava. “I’m sure you could have found one closer to home.”

  Antonio gave a half-smile. “I guess maybe that was part of it,” he said. “I thought it would be an adventure. I didn’t know it would be so hard to be away. Or that it would go on for so long.” That half-smile again. He pulled out his wallet and flipped it open. Inside was a picture of a blonde, chubby woman with an equally blonde, chubby toddler. The kid, which Ava couldn’t tell was a boy or a girl, was all its mother, had none of Antonio’s dark good looks. “Molly and Micah,” he said. “My wife and kid.”

  “Are you sure? That picture didn’t come with the wallet?”

  Antonio flipped the picture over. On the other side was a wedding photo: Antonio and Molly, outside in a park, autumn leaves artfully arranged in piles at their feet. “As far as I can remember, it’s real,” he said. “Five years now.”