Every Little Piece of Me Read online

  At the sight of the flask, Ava’s stomach heaved. “You can have it,” she said. What she really wanted was a glass of water. A shower. To sleep for a million years. But Mags didn’t seem to want to go home. And Ava…well, she wasn’t sure she even had a home anymore.

  From down the street, Ava could hear music drifting out of one of the pubs. After a while she realized it was “Barrett’s Privateers”—the same song that had been playing the night Antonio took her to the pub. The memory brought an unexpected lump to her throat. Not because she missed Antonio. She was sad for fifteen-year-old Ava, who still thought everything could turn out okay.

  Mags rolled her eyes. “Fucking Nova Scotians and their TERRIBLE FUCKING MUSIC.”

  “Aren’t you a Nova Scotian? Haven’t you played this music all your life?”

  “Yes. Yes, I did. And I had to play my fair share of jigs and reels, let me tell you. I paid my dues.” Mags stretched her legs out in front of her. “And then I get to Toronto and what happens? I realize it’s full of FUCKING IRISH PUBS.”

  Ava tucked her hands in her pockets. “You can’t escape it, no matter what you do.”

  “No, you really can’t,” Mags said, tilting the flask back to excavate the dregs of the whiskey. Then she turned to Ava. “We should just embrace it. Go back there. We can move to Rum Cove or wherever it is you lived.”

  Ava laughed. “Just what I always dreamed of. We can marry fishermen and pop out a bunch of kids.”

  Mags shook her head. “No, no. Fuck that. We live together. We buy a cottage by the ocean and live off the grid. We raise chickens and goats, and preserve vegetables, and make our own soap, and we put up weird sculptures in the front yard and all the neighbourhood kids will be scared of us.”

  “I like that idea better.”

  “Me too.” Mags put her head on Ava’s shoulder. Ava was surprised by the weight of it, the warmth that she felt even through all the layers of winter clothes. Eventually, Mags raised her head and said, “Let’s go.”

  They walked out of the park to the street. It was only 8 p.m. and it was still busy, crowds of people trudging through the snow with gym bags, dogs on leashes, little hand carts full of groceries, the lights from the storefronts casting the frozen sidewalk in an eerie glow. Ava felt oddly invisible, slipping into the silent throng—her body enveloped in layers of down, her Raptors toque pulled low over her ears.

  The feeling didn’t last long.

  “Ava Hart!” she heard someone yell from across the street. People around her raised their heads from their hunched positions, curious about the commotion. “Ava Hart!”

  “A friend of yours?” Mags asked.

  “Oh yeah, sure. Meet my old pal Tina Celebritystalker,” Ava said.

  “Ava Hart! You’re a fucking whore!”

  Ava stopped, shrinking down in her coat, unable to move or speak. Mags turned toward the source of the yelling. “Better a whore than a cunt!” she yelled back. Then she took Ava’s hand and ducked down an alley, weaving in behind a building.

  “Thanks,” said Ava. “You never think you’re going to encounter an internet troll in person.”

  Mags pulled out another one of her smokes and lit it. “Do you get a lot of internet trolls?”

  “Of course.” Ava gave her a sideways look. “Don’t you?”

  “I guess. Probably. I don’t really go online much.”

  “I wish I could be like that.” Ava stopped, reaching into her pocket for her phone. Mags puffed her cigarette, watching her. “Shit, I lost my phone.” Then it came back to her. “Shit. I smashed my phone.”

  “Maybe I should do the same thing,” Mags said. She flicked her cigarette into a snow-bank and pulled her phone out, twirling it in her hand.

  “Come on,” Ava said. “Throw it. Join me in the light.”

  Mags tossed the phone in the air and caught it. Then she wound up and hurled it against the side of a building, where it shattered into pieces on the ground.

  They exited the alley. Ahead of them, a basset hound tied to a bike rack gave a raspy howl and Ava stopped and bent down. “Hey, buddy,” she said, scratching behind his ears. “Where’s your person? Why did they leave you out here in the cold?” She took off her mitten and let the basset sniff her hand. He raised his head and looked up at her with big, wet, droopy eyes, and she felt as though he were staring right into her soul. “I think we should take this guy home,” she said. “It’s freezing out here.”

  “Ava, we are not stealing a dog.”

  “It’s not stealing. Someone left him here.”

  “Someone is in that electronics store buying a new alarm clock. Plus, I mean, what are you going to do with him when you go back to New York?”

  Ava stood up and put her mitten back on. “If I go back to New York.”

  Mags gazed at Ava intently, considering her words. Then she bent down and petted the dog tentatively on the head. “I guess we could use a dog at our beach house in Whiskey Inlet,” she said.

  Ava peered in the window of the electronics store, looking for someone who might belong to the dog. She didn’t really think they were going to take the dog, but it was exciting to think that maybe they could. But instead of the basset hound’s potential owner, she was surprised to see her own face distorted by the glass. She assumed it was just a reflection or a trick of the light, but then she realized that her face was on a television screen in the window. Maybe it’s a rerun, she thought. LifeStyle trying to capitalize on all this free publicity.

  But then she saw Antonio’s face next to hers, and the world around her fell away.

  It wasn’t a rerun. It wasn’t the show at all.

  She could hear Mags calling her name behind her as she was pulled into the store by some invisible force, guiding her through the door and to the back where the rest of the televisions were on display. Every single one of them tuned in to an image of her face. Sitting in Antonio’s van.

  No, Ava heard her own voice say. It feels like nothing.

  She felt suspended in time, simultaneously living in this moment and a previous one. Or that everything that had happened since that conversation was just a dream, and she had never come to Toronto, never gotten away, was still sitting in the front seat of that van, talking to Antonio.

  Across the bottom of the screen, a line of words appeared. At first, it was as though she were reading them in a foreign language, until slowly her brain caught up and translated them.

  Young Reality Star Gets Caught in Sex Scandal with Producer

  Then the pieces all came to her, rushing into place with a resounding click. The dashcam, the one that Antonio had set up in the van for extra footage. It had been on when he picked her up from the clinic. He had been filming the worst experience of her life, the moment when everything broke apart, the moment he had promised he wouldn’t film.

  She could feel people’s eyes on her, whispering to each other behind their hands as they stared, their cell phones raised up to silently capture her transition from confusion to fear. Vomit rose in her throat, but she swallowed it down, blinking her eyes as they watered from the burn. Fuck them, she thought. She wasn’t afraid anymore. She was angry.

  Calmly, she walked over to the first television on the shelf. You want a cool video? she thought. Here’s something for you. With one hand, she reached up and tipped it forward, the TV flipping once before smashing on the ground, pieces of plastic and glass and metal firing off in all directions around her feet.

  “Ava,” she heard Mags call from across the store, although she could have been standing right next to her for all it mattered to Ava. She walked to the next television and toppled it to the floor too. This one’s for you, LifeStyle. She could hear footsteps behind her, people shouting, but no one stopped her as she moved down the line of televisions, bringing them down one by one to the floor. This one’s for Bob, this one’s for Tess. This one’s for David and Bryce. This one’s for all the girls who copied my haircut. This one’s for the guy at the bar. Thi
s one’s for the woman on the street.

  When she got to the last one at the end of the row, a huge 50-inch that was mounted to the wall, she paused. This one, this one’s for you, Antonio. She picked up a display DVD player and hurled it into the screen, which wavered and wobbled but didn’t break, her own face warping under the force before reassembling itself as the waves came to a stop. She picked the DVD player back up and threw it again, but the same thing happened, the television mocking her with its unbreakability, her face and Antonio’s face staring out at her resolutely as the clip kept playing.

  Then someone’s hands were on her, wrestling the DVD player away, and suddenly she was on the ground, someone’s weight pinning her there, and a security guard was holding her hands together behind her back.

  “Stand up,” the security guard said, her breath hot in Ava’s ear. When Ava didn’t move, the guard grabbed her by the arms and pulled her to her feet. “I said stand up.”

  Ava kept her head down, aware of all the phones turned on her. She knew the media frenzy that was about to come, the joy that the world was going to take in her breakdown, but she didn’t care. She was done with playing the part they wanted her to play, with letting everyone manipulate her, with watching passively as her life was reduced to a punchline on a late-night talk show. She was done with all of it. Antonio, David and Bryce, Bob and Tess—they had taken everything from her. She didn’t owe them anything anymore. She was free.

  But as they dragged her away, it wasn’t Antonio she was thinking of, or her fathers, or the network. It was Eden. Was this how she had felt that night on the pier? Had pushing Ava been her own last, desperate bid for freedom? She remembered the relief she saw on Eden’s face, distorted through the currents as she sunk deeper into the ocean. Ava had always assumed it was relief at being rid of her. But now, she knew. It was relief at being rid of a life that had spun completely out of control.

  “Hey.”

  Ava opened her eyes to find Mags standing in front of the 50-inch, with the DVD player in one hand, smiling. She raised the player in the air and then pounded it into the centre of the screen, over and over again, the corner of it making contact with Antonio’s eye until a small hole appeared. She continued to smash the television until the screen was a mangled wreck. When they finally took her down, she let out a breath of air, but she never broke eye contact with Ava, and the smile never left her face.

  * * *

  —

  The store manager was an Ava Hart fan.

  “I won’t call the cops,” he said, leaning back in his desk chair, his hands behind his head. “You can just pay for the televisions. And let me take a selfie.”

  “Of course she can do that,” Mags said when Ava didn’t respond, nudging her with her foot.

  “Oh. Of course, you want a selfie,” Ava said, only dimly aware of the manager’s gummy grin, his clammy hand on her shoulder as he moved in for the picture.

  Once they were driving away in a cab, Ava watched through the window as the city flew past. She felt sick inside. “Did you see it?” she asked Mags as the cab pulled up to a stoplight, her eyes still fixed out the window.

  “So that was Antonio?” Mags asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Outside the window, a woman in a black parka struggled with a basset hound barking at something on the other side of the street. Ava wondered if it was the same one she had become friends with earlier. The woman hauled the dog back and when her head came up she and Ava made eye contact. Then the woman looked quickly away. At least the dog doesn’t know, Ava thought. “I thought there were some parts of my life I could still keep to myself. I guess I was wrong.”

  Mags reached over and grabbed her hand. “There are always parts you can keep to yourself. They can never get all of you.”

  “You don’t really believe that,” Ava said. Mags didn’t respond. The light turned green, and as the cab pulled away, Ava watched the woman staring after them through the back window, her phone in her hand, pointed at Ava.

  After a few minutes, Mags told the driver to stop. “We’ll actually get out here,” she said.

  “Where are we going?” Ava asked, as she stepped out of the cab.

  “Come on!” Mags led her under the overpass, running across the street against the red, cars honking as they whizzed past. They kept running, but all Ava could see was darkness ahead of them, as though they were running right into an abyss. Suddenly, everything came into focus and she realized they had reached the waterfront. The abyss was Lake Ontario, stretching out in an inky blackness punctuated only by a few scattered lights from the islands. Like the pinpricks of stars in the night sky.

  Once they were on the boardwalk, Mags slowed. “I used to come here when Sam was in the hospital,” she said. “Sometimes I just needed to look at something really big. Like bigger than my life.”

  “It looks like the ocean,” Ava said. At the thought, her throat closed over, the taste of salt thick in the back of her mouth.

  “It pretty much is. Except it’s fresh water.” Mags climbed up onto the edge of the boardwalk. Ava’s heart rippled in her chest, a tiny tremor that sent needles of adrenaline through her veins. Then Mags threw her head back and screamed, long and loud, the sound echoing across the lake through the vast darkness. She turned to Ava. “Now you.”

  Tentatively, Ava climbed up next to her. Beneath her, she could see the black water swirling. But she found she was not afraid.

  She tipped her head back and screamed.

  Kyle Percival

  3 hrs

  OMG you guys won’t believe what just happened…I was out with some of my buddies in Parkdale and my buddy Cody got the shit kicked out of him by Mags Kovach lololol!

  4,687 456 Comments 234 Shares

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  Dwayne Niles Bahahahaha Cody what the fuck did you do

  Like • Reply • 3h

  Cody Markovitz Dude she’s fuckin crazy I had to get like six stitches in my fuckin face

  Like • Reply • 3h

  Dwayne Niles Lol

  Like • Reply • 3h

  Janay Cotter Holy shit

  Like • Reply • 3h

  Terrell McNeil Yo Cody, man how’s it feel now the whole internet knows u got beat up by a girl

  Like • Reply • 3h

  Fiona March Wut

  Like • Reply • 3h

  Nikki Vanburen My dude

  Like • Reply • 3h

  Alissa Jean This is wild! I hope you’re okay!

  Like • Reply • 3h

  Kellen Peyton I saw her and Ava Hart walking down Spadina like ten minutes ago

  Like • Reply • 2h

  Jade Leger You mean she’s not in jail?

  Like • Reply • 2h

  Kellen Peyton Famous people don’t go to jail, Jade, come on

  Like • Reply • 2h

  Chantay Keefer They have literally been all over Toronto in the past 24 hours. My friends saw them at Laundromat earlier

  Like • Reply • 2h

  Elisha Soriano My friend just saw them on Queen West and said they tried to steal her dog!!!!!!

  Like • Reply • 1h

  Align Above

  Daily Update • February 21, 2015

  NEWS

  Align Above’s Mags Kovach delivers “shocking” performance at Mercer Hall

  The Toronto Herald

  Rising Canadian music stars Align Above played their second of two sold-out shows in the city this week, but the band’s stellar musical performance was overshadowed by the onstage antics of Kovach, who…

  “It was like she didn’t even realize we were there”: Align Above strips it down – Toronto Today

  Mags Kovach of Align Above bares it all at Mercer Hall in Toronto – Google Entertainment

  Align Above‘s Kovach was “always hard to handle,” according to estranged sister – TMI Online

  “Disgusting” display at Align Above show a sign of the permissive (and promiscuous) times
–New Canadian

  Full Coverage

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  Life, Death, and Rock and Roll: The Tragic Story Behind Align Above‘s Nothingview

  Music Magazine

  The tour has been notable for the increasingly erratic behaviour of frontwoman Kovach, but the album is marked by something even darker—each track is anchored by a bassline that has been written by a dying man.

  Share   Flag as irrelevant

  Concert Review: Align Above

  The Times Ledger

  What stage of grief is “capitalizing on your husband’s death in order to make a name for yourself?” Because we think Mags Kovach might be stuck in that stage forever.

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  Mags

  Sunday, 8:30 a.m.

  After Sam died, there had been so many times when Mags had desperately wanted to believe in ghosts. Every strange coincidence, every misplaced object, every random sound in the night, she tried to convince herself was him, communicating from beyond the grave. She knew it wasn’t true—even if Sam were a ghost, he would never deal in cryptic signs. If Sam were a ghost, he would take over a radio signal, he would appear in her television screen, he would find a billboard to announce his presence. HI mags, IT’S SAM. I’M A GHOST NOW. BOO! He wouldn’t leave anything up to chance.

  This is why she was sure—as she sat by the edge of the frozen lake, a bruise blossoming along her shoulder where she had landed when the bouncer threw her out—that the light drizzle that had begun falling from the sky wasn’t a message from Sam. He would never have been so subtle. He would have made it pour.

  The sun was struggling to rise, a pale light pushing through the grey. Mags didn’t know how long they had stood by the lake screaming themselves into exhaustion, until they fell to the ground, unable to move. Eventually they had crawled to the lifeguard station and broken the lock, curling up against each other under a blanket on the hard floor. Next to her, Ava was tucked up in the fetal position, her eyes closed.