Every Little Piece of Me Page 17

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ve been much too busy to talk to me.” There was a loud bang in the background. “Hey! I’m fucking using this stall!” Frankie yelled. Mags couldn’t hear the person’s response, but she did hear Frankie’s: a stream of expletives ending with the phone going momentarily dead.

  “Frankie? Frankie, I’m moving to Toronto. I thought you should know.”

  “Fine, get the fuck out of here!” Mags didn’t know if Frankie was talking to her or the other person. “Can I borrow fifty bucks before you go?” she asked, this time definitely to Mags. “I’m a little short on rent this month.” A pause. Then: “I’m coming out there and you can say that shit to my face!”

  Mags hung up the phone. She stared at the blank screen for a long time, trying to recall one good memory of her sister. There must have been some, from before Karolina died—watching Saturday-morning cartoons, walking to school in the winter when the snow-banks were piled higher than both their heads, crawling into bed together when Karolina had to work a night shift and talking under the covers until they both fell asleep. But Mags knew these were fantasies. For as far back as she could remember, she had watched cartoons alone, walked to school alone, fallen asleep alone. She and Frankie had been two strangers living under the same roof, each locked in their own private battle, each siloed by their own wild rage.

  Maybe they could have broken out of their isolation, if one of them had tried. Maybe Mags’s phone call had been too late. But as she stared at her phone, still hot in her hand, she knew that at least it had accomplished one thing.

  She was ready to go.

  * * *

  They arrived in Toronto the next Saturday, Sam and Mags in their car trying to keep up with Paul and Zac in a U-Haul as they zigzagged between traffic on the 401, the truck swaying ominously. Mags drove the entire way, while Sam slept in the passenger seat beside her. In the week since his fall, sleeping seemed to be all he could do. Even though he told Mags he wasn’t in pain, he still sometimes cringed when he laughed, holding his arm across his torso. Mags knew it had been a mistake not to take him to the hospital, but Sam had been adamant.

  “What would they have done, anyway?” he’d asked when she brought it up again in the car.

  “Uh, fix you?” Mags said as she pulled out into the passing lane, trying to keep her eye on the juddering U-Haul in front of them. “Or at least give you some dope painkillers to dull the pain while your body fixes itself.”

  “Painkillers are placebos. A modern conspiracy by pharmaceutical companies to steal money from sick people. You might as well give me a jellybean.”

  Ahead of her, Mags watched the U-Haul weave around a bus. She tried to signal to change lanes, but a steady stream of bumper-to-bumper cars was determined not to let her in. “Will a jellybean shut you up about conspiracies?” she said. “’Cause I have a whole bag of them in the back.”

  “Yeah, it might,” said Sam, turning around in his seat and rummaging through their stuff in the backseat. “But you have to pick out all the green ones.” He procured the plastic bag from under an avalanche of pillows and blankets and empty Tim Hortons cups, all the usual road trip detritus, and Mags pretended not to notice the grimace on his face when he turned forward in his seat again. She hadn’t told him about Frankie yet, but she would. She didn’t want to add to his pain.

  “You know, for a guy who’s all about the rock and roll lifestyle, you sure are weird about candy,” she said, focusing on the road in front of her instead of watching him squirm in his seat, trying to find a comfortable way to sit.

  “Dibs on Weird About Candy for my next band name,” he said. “You know, when I get sick of you losers and launch my pretentious side project.”

  “Not The Rock and Roll Lifestyle? Because that would make more sense for a bass-driven side project.”

  “Oh no. I’m moving into an experimental electronic phase. I might even bring in a keytar.” Sam dug into the bag of jellybeans. “You already took out the green ones.”

  “Don’t ever say I don’t do anything for you,” Mags said. She finally pulled out around the bus, which was wrapped in an ad for that television show Sam liked, Home Is Where the Hart Is. Beneath the windows was a picture of the family standing in front of a house—two men and a boy and a girl, looking up at a third girl, barely a teenager, with huge brown eyes that spread across three windows, and a smile that traversed the wheel well. How weird it would be, Mags thought, to have your giant face on the side of a bus.

  “Do you think they’re standing outside because of the deer?” Sam asked.

  “What deer?”

  “The one in the home.” Sam shot her a sideways glance. “Or did my joke get ruined because you don’t know what a hart is?”

  “Your joke didn’t get ruined,” Mags said. “It wasn’t funny in the first place.” She pulled in behind the U-Haul, safely past the cluster of traffic. Ahead on the road, a sign said Toronto: 132. Almost there. Almost home free.

  “I love that show,” Sam said. “Remember that episode where they went back to New York, and then Eden got in trouble for pepper-spraying a bunch of people? That was amazing.”

  “Oh, right, sure, I remember.” Mags glanced over at him. “Eden’s the deer, right?”

  Sam settled back against his seat, spreading his legs wide, and folded his hands over his chest. He closed his eyes and smiled. “You weirdo,” he said. “I love you.”

  “I love you too,” Mags said, but Sam was already asleep.

  ChatterFuel

  Celebrity

  June 15, 2014

  5 Things E-Hart Did This Week That Will Make You Say WTF

  ICYMI (JK we know you didn’t)

  By Stella Stewart

  Most of the world (and probably other worlds too) have been on 24/7 EdenWatch this past week, ever since the 15-year-old television star’s drunken fight with model Bebe Romano sparked a spree of increasingly bizarre behaviour that has been as entertaining to watch as it is baffling. But just in case you’ve been vacationing on the outer rings of Zeguma (where we hear there’s no WiFi), here’s a rundown of the five craziest things she did in the past seven days.

  1. Showed up at a New York Style Week after-party wearing a garbage bag that had YOU ARE ALL TRASH painted on it: She said later it was intended for the paparazzi, but we’re sure Bebe and her crew took it to heart. AS DID WE ALL, EDEN.

  2. Posted a photo on Instagram of herself eating a hamburger: Sure, this one doesn’t seem so weird, until you consider that Hart is a strict vegetarian, and has appeared in ads for the vegan fast food pioneers SoyBoy over the past year. Reps for the California-based chain were quick to publicly cut ties with Hart, calling her actions “barbaric” and “basically as bad as Hitler.” Come on, Eden, eat your shame in private like the rest of us.

  3. Sprayed ketchup all over LifeStyle Network president Bob Axelrod’s car: Maybe she was still hungry after eating that hamburger.

  4. Picked a Twitter fight with Cher: And Cher stans were NOT. HAVING. IT.

  5. Fired her manager, then rehired him the next day: We all knew that dad-ager David wasn’t going anywhere, but wasn’t it secretly kind of fun to watch her giving it to him outside the Ivy?

  Ava

  June 2014

  HIWTHI S06E08:

  Break Your Hart: Part One

  “I don’t understand how Delia lost her underwear in Art History in the first place.” Ava sat with a pickle jar tucked into the curve of her arm, curled up in the armchair where David liked to sit on show nights, his glass of brandy in one hand and his phone in the other, scrolling through the show’s social media feeds. “I’m pretty sure that sexy violinist she screwed was looking for books on Ravel, not Rodin.”

  “You are the only person in the whole world who would notice something like that,” said Val, who was sitting on the couch, his feet propped up on the coffee table without Bryce there to tell him to move them.

  Ava and Val were watching Librarians of Florida, a TV show
about young, hot librarians working and partying in the Sunshine State. As their own reality show continued on largely without them, they had become fans of several other reality shows. Ava liked Devon’s World, about a single mom of septuplets who goes back to school to become a pastry chef, while Val preferred Cats and Cons, about a cat rescue group run by a group of ex-convicts. But LOF was their favourite, the one that they watched religiously every Tuesday night. It had everything Ava and Val loved to hate in a reality TV show—trashy leads, ridiculous manufactured drama, and a lot of sex against bookshelves.

  “I just can’t believe they had Isobel find them,” Val continued, reaching over to take the pickle jar. “That whole woman-finding-her-lover’s-underwear-shelved-in-with-the-post-Impressionists trope is so done.”

  “Oh, yeah. Like the whole famous-person-tries-to-live-like-regular-folks thing is so fresh and innovative,” Ava said. “Prepare to be inoffensively charmed by these two glamorous but hilariously helpless big-city dads, their adorable, precocious youngest child, their brooding, sarcastic middle child…”

  “And their pain-in-the-ass oldest child.” Ava threw a pillow at him. “What?” Val said with a shrug. “You are.”

  “Maybe our next storyline will be about me finally snapping and murdering you.”

  “Doubt it.” Val stuck a pickle in his mouth and crunched. “We don’t get storylines, remember?”

  Ava shifted in her chair, sinking deeper into its David-shaped dent. “They’re missing out. I mean, who wouldn’t want to watch us sitting here in our own filth, ripping apart other reality TV shows?”

  “‘Our own filth’?”

  Ava gestured to the floor in front of her, which was littered with junk food, takeout containers, dirty clothes—the detritus of teenagers left unattended. These days they often both slept in the living room, each spread out on one of the couches, lying under quilts slightly damp from the fog seeping through the cracks in the windows, the light of the television flickering on the backs of their eyelids.

  Val shrugged. “Yeah, okay. That’s fair.”

  After five years of never being alone, it was strange to suddenly always be alone. The B&B, which in mid-June should have been bustling with people, sat eerily empty. Eden was off somewhere on her Instagram-filtered adventures and everyone else had been pulled along in her wake, filming the show that was now simply referred to as Where the Hart Is. “Home” might still be where some of the Harts were—namely, Ava and Val—but it wasn’t where the Hart who mattered was. Ava glanced to her left, where a row of decommissioned cameras sat against the wall, unable to fulfill their purpose but still always there. Sometimes she imagined them turning themselves on of their own free will, lenses slowly unfurling, cameras twisting on their stands to follow Ava as she walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water, or as she went upstairs to bed.

  “Do you ever feel like you’re being watched? I mean, now. Like, all the time.”

  “So you’re saying now, when there’s no one here and no cameras running, now you feel like someone is watching you?” Ava nodded, biting her thumbnail. “I think you’re suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.”

  “Of course I am. You are too.”

  “Maybe we should go and audition for other reality shows. We could be on, like, Celebrity Big Brother or something.”

  “No way. I’m setting my sights on LOF.”

  “Shhh,” Val said. “Look at this.”

  LOF was over and now a tabloid television show was airing its intro. “Tonight, on Hollywood Weekly…Eden Hart: From Television Treasure to Total Trainwreck? We have the exclusive, never-before-seen footage of her Style Week meltdown earlier this week.”

  “Eden had a meltdown?” Val asked.

  “They’re exaggerating. She got in an argument with a Victoria’s Secret model. She called her a few things she probably shouldn’t have and got kicked out of a club. I saw this ‘exclusive footage’ on ChatterFuel two days ago.” Val stared at her. “What? I read it for the quizzes.”

  Onscreen, they flashed to a shot of David yelling at a group of paparazzi, Bryce standing behind him, forever his shadow. After the pepper spray incident, both of them now travelled with Eden, to keep her in line and to stop her from slipping up again—or maybe, Ava imagined, half hoping she would. If wholesome, apple-cheeked Eden had been compelling television, hot mess Eden had become a national obsession. So far, all of her acting out had been relatively harmless, aside from the fight with Bebe Romano. But her misbehaviour was building toward something, Ava could feel it. And it would appear that everyone else could feel it too.

  “David, David!” the Hollywood Weekly reporter called out as her dad pushed past him. “Is there any truth to the rumour that Eden is in a relationship with a member of Boys Will B Boys?”

  “No comment,” David said, pushing Bryce ahead of him into the backseat of a car before climbing in himself.

  “Jesus Christ,” Val said. “That piece-of-shit band? What is going on?”

  “I’m telling you, it’s all made up. David thinks this stuff will get her more Instagram followers or whatever.” Currently, Eden had 2.6 million followers, not that Ava was counting. Not that Ava cared.

  “How do you know all this? You guys aren’t even talking.”

  It was true. Other than a few perfunctory texts, Ava hadn’t spoken to Eden in months. But she read the gossip blogs and tabloid sites with increasing ferocity, scouring social media daily for any information about Eden. She didn’t know why she did it. Maybe it was for the same reason everyone else did—to see her fall.

  “Can you please change the channel?” she asked. “I think Underwater Welders is on now.”

  But Val was glued to Hollywood Weekly. “You need to see this, Ave.”

  Ava reluctantly turned her attention back to the television, where one of the anchors stood on sky-high heels in a brightly lit studio, a picture of Eden frozen with her arm over her eyes hovering above her right shoulder. “Sources from within the show’s production team report that after several on-the-road specials following Eden Hart, the show will be returning to Gin Harbour, Nova Scotia, for the remainder of the season, where the Harts will presumably go back to doing what they are known for—running a bed and breakfast.”

  And that was how Ava and Val learned their family was coming home.

  * * *

  “I’m bored,” Eden said the minute she got home, wandering around the B&B like she’d never been there before. She had two friends in tow, both named Kayla. Ava knew one was the daughter of a film producer and the other was a model, but she didn’t know which was which. They followed Eden around everywhere she went, all tanned skin and perfect mouths, blonde hair swinging behind them.

  With her family and the full production crew back at the B&B, there was activity day and night, and more people around than Ava ever remembered there being—people jostling through the narrow halls, taking way too long in the bathroom, leaving their equipment all over the house. It had been easy for Ava to avoid Eden in the first few days, with so much going on in the house, but now, as they got back into the rhythm of daily shoots, it was getting harder. Eden and the Kaylas seemed to be everywhere, their long limbs and phone chargers draped over every piece of furniture.

  By the fourth day, even their dads had had enough. “Why don’t you watch television,” Bryce said as he untangled a giant knot of extension cords that the crew had left on the breakfast room table while Eden stalked through the house, tension radiating off her like soundwaves. “Or better yet, read a book. I’m sure Ava has some you could borrow.”

  From her seat in the front window, Ava glared at him. But her gaze softened as she took in his hunched shoulders, his face twisted in concentration. The more chaotic things became, Ava had noticed, the worse his compulsive cleaning tendencies seemed to get. What happened to you? Ava wondered. How did you let yourself fade away like this?

  “You can go in my room and look if you want,” she said. Was Eden old enough for T
oni Morrison? Or maybe she would like Jane Austen? It would be nice to have someone she could talk to about some of her favourites.

  “No thanks,” Eden said breezily, picking up the end of one of the cords and looping it around her neck. “I think I’d rather kill myself with this extension cord.”

  Right. How stupid of me. “You’d rather kill yourself than read a book?” Ava kept her eyes down on her own book. “Of course, you might learn something. You know, other than how to shape your eyebrows or whatever.”

  “That’s not in your book?” Eden asked, peering at Ava from across the room. “Oh, obviously not.”

  “It’s funny how you never really read any great literature about makeup,” Ava said, flipping her book over and squinting at the back cover. “Nope, not a single poem in here about lipstick. Not one measly line about contouring and highlighting. It’s almost as if, I don’t know, writers want to spend their time writing about things that actually matter.”

  “I never, like, got poetry,” one of the Kaylas said, all sharp angles and taut terracotta flesh curving against the chair she was perched on, a fashion magazine draped over her knees. “I mean, why not just write the words in actual sentences like a regular person?”

  “Ava loves poetry,” said Eden, dropping the cord and crossing the room to rest her chin on the top of Kayla’s head. “It’s all she ever reads. She’s very, very smart.”

  “The only kind of poetry I like is Drake lyrics,” said Kayla.

  “That makes so much sense to me,” said Ava.

  “Are you calling her stupid?” Eden straightened up, her eyes wide. “You’re going to sit there and talk shit about my friends in front of me?”