by Amy Berg
Ava pictured the Brown acceptance packet sitting on the polished mahogany table with the rest of the mail. She could see its brown corner barely visible. She knew what it would look like. Feel like. Because she’d gotten four other acceptance packets already.
Her life was right around the corner, and that corner was a good college. It had to be. She’d waited long enough for her life to start. She knew how lucky she was to have such a promising life, but there was always something hidden in the darkness of her history that whispered to her that it wasn’t luck. It was something else. And she would have to pay for it. She never knew what to do with this awful voice, so she did her best to ignore it.
Her dad’s car was there when she got home. He’d come home sick again. Her dad was sick a lot, but there was nothing wrong with him. He just had one of those sensitive immune systems, the doctors said. Her dad told Ava not to worry. A day in bed and he’d be at it the next day. Everything would work out, because he made things happen. He’d made this life happen. How could she not believe him?
There was mail for her but it wasn’t from Brown. It was a small box wrapped in brown paper. Her name was carefully printed in blocky black ink. The return address didn’t look familiar, and there was no name. Five faded stamps were lined up perfectly, as if given up with great care. She carefully tore the stamps from the package as she opened it. Inside crackly white tissue paper was a wooden nesting doll. A happy smiling old woman in a dress and apron, painted in formerly bright but now faded primary colors. Ava gently twisted it open, but there was nothing inside. The doll had that long-ago tang of old wood. She put the doll back together again and held it up to the light. Where the doll twisted apart, the paint was chipped. All over her shiny round body, paint was rubbed off, as if she’d been played with. Loved.
Ava crept upstairs with the package and the doll. She dumped her books on her desk and set the doll on her dresser, next to the willowy ballerina statue and other things that had been curated by her dad’s former girlfriend. Jaime would have said that the cheap wooden doll threw off the balance of the room, which is what she said about the plastic horse Ava had won at the fair before throwing it in the trash.
She stared at the doll for a long moment. She could see it on another shelf, among other heirlooms. It didn’t fit in Ava’s blue and green room, with its exotic silk duvet and hundred-dollar pillows. Ava had been appropriately enthusiastic when Jaime had revealed the design to her, but it wasn’t really Ava’s. The doll didn’t fit the room, but it fit Ava. She didn’t know why, or how. She reached for the packaging, smoothing out the stiff brown paper. She looked up the return address on her phone. It was in the old city, which had become an echoing old ghost when the businesses decided to abandon it and make something new.
Ava could drive her new car to the address, to find out who’d given this to her. Her hands tingled with excitement. She was going to do this. And she didn’t want to wait until tomorrow after school. It was still early. She’d blow off Prom Committee and look into her mystery.
Even from far away, I could tell how perfect she was. She had that aura about her that said she’d been chosen. She had everything she could ever want. I swallowed my hatred for her and forced myself to focus. I wanted more than anything to put a bullet through her brain. Or to wrap my hands around her neck and watch her privileged life leak away as I choked her. But she was the first. I had to wait.
Ava watched her home grow smaller as she drove across the vast bridge that connected the city to its predecessor. Leaving the bridge, the smoothly paved highway gave way to a rough, pitted road. There were no streetlights. No street signs. This was the old city, settled almost a century ago by hard-working, honest people who had built it into a thriving town big enough for the modern conveniences but still small enough for people to know their neighbors.
But the town grew just plentiful enough for the company to see value in it. They moved in and ripped the heart out of the city. They built the bridge, and the chosen ones moved away to the new city Ava lived in. The old city was a violent place now. The people who stayed, who tried to help, were destroyed. The others became savage in order to survive there. People fought for it, for a while. But there was no victory to be won. Just a bad place to be abandoned.
Ava drove down a main street pitted with potholes and lined by broken, abandoned storefronts. But as she crawled to a stop at a dented stop sign, Ava could see life in those storefronts. There were businesses, protected by iron grates, but they were open. Selling cut-rate clothing and electronics to shifty-eyed men and women. Ava was struck by how young everybody was. They’d been raised in this city. They knew nothing else. She felt sorry for them.
I followed her from the rooftops. Nobody looked at me anymore. They were used to me. They kept their eyes on the street, not getting involved. They couldn’t. They’d be hurt, or worse. They knew that by now. But they didn’t know how much I cared for them. They didn’t believe anybody could.
Ava turned off the main street into a residential area of dilapidated houses and rickety apartment buildings unhappily crowded together. A dog barked, and Ava glanced over to see a boy in a hoodie walking a fat little puppy. The boy was hunched over, hands in his pockets, eyes scanning the cracked sidewalk. He straightened up when Ava passed, his eyes on the shiny new car that she had been stupid enough to drive here. She checked her phone service. Luckily, she had a few bars. She wondered if there were even police in this apocalyptic place.
Her destination, a small clapboard house, was on the right. The paint was so faded and peeling that it was hard to tell what color the house had been. Ava parked and looked around for a long moment. The boy with the dog had gone. The street was quiet. She got out, making sure to lock the car, and walked up to the house. The windows were dark, the curtains semi-drawn. Mail was piled up on the porch. She kicked the pile with her foot, revealing fliers for swap meets. Wrestling matches. Raves. Strip clubs. Every activity in this town was one of desperation. Ava rang the cracked plastic doorbell, but it made no sound. So she knocked. Timidly, at first. Then harder.
The door pushed open. It was probably the only house in the old city that wasn’t locked up tight. The front room was dark and smelled musty and forgotten. Whatever life this house had had before had left it. A dingy, formerly green sofa sagged against the far wall. Before it, a scratched wooden coffee table sat on a stained, threadbare rug. And, on the mantel, a nesting doll.
Ava went in, footsteps making the brittle floorboards creak. She picked up the doll. It was a size smaller than the one she had been sent. A younger woman. Still smiling. Rosier cheeks. Blond hair under a white cap.
An image came to her: Three more dolls, lined up on a wooden shelf. Before she knew what she was doing, Ava turned down the short hallway toward the room at the end of the hall.
I watched her through the windows as she went into the room that had been hers as a child. She went to the shelf with the last two dolls. I had the final doll. I put my hand in my pocket and felt for it. Rolled it between my fingers. Wondered if I’d get to use it.
The dolls fit in this room. Ava had memories of being here. Living here. They hadn’t been able to afford toys when she was younger. She’d made worlds out of paper and her father’s pens. Houses and streets and people. She’d invented vacations for her lucky people. During the summer they went to a lake with cabins, canoes, and picnics. For the holidays, they went to a city that wasn’t unlike the city she lived in now. She’d heard a song about frosted windowpanes that brought to mind a Christmas where snow fell and store windows were decorated and cheerful packages were tied up with string. She would look out the window as the slanting rain fell from the mud-splashed sky and smile, because she believed in her fantasy Christmas.
Her parents fought then. She’d shut her door and make her fantasy world as they yelled at each other. She didn’t hear any words because she didn’t want to. But one night, her father had come in and told her that their luck had changed. They we
re leaving and going someplace wonderful. She would never have to see this place again.
She didn’t know what luck was, so he’d explained it to her. Luck was something that special people were given because they deserved it. He led her past her mother’s door, which was shut. She wanted to know why her mother wasn’t coming with them, but she never asked because luck and fortune sounded like the embodiment of everything she fantasized. Maybe Mom would come later.
But she never did. Later, her father told her that her mother didn’t want to be a part of their family anymore. Ava never asked about her.
She didn’t hear me come in, because I didn’t want her to. She sat on the floor, probably like she’d done as a kid, and I could tell by the way her shoulders slumped that she remembered that this had been her house. I wanted to take out the knife and slit her throat. But I’d learned lessons, too.
“Turn around.” My voice was hoarse. Gritty with anger.
She jumped to her feet with a lot more grace than I thought she had and whirled around, holding her cellphone like it was a weapon.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I told her. Her face was white. The edges that had been smoothed away after she’d left this house were back. She looked like she belonged here again.
“Did you send me here?” she asked.
“Yeah, I did. You need to know the truth.”
“The truth about what?”
She knew damned well what, so I just stared at her, cold-eyed.
“What happened? Why am I here?”
Oh, I’ll tell you what happened, rich girl. Your father ruined my life so that he could get ahead. He destroyed his own marriage, too, and then he took you away and gave you everything you ever wanted. He numbed you to the truth, but you know what happened. You know exactly.
I didn’t say any of that. I took out the plastic bag. Opened it. Carefully removed the newspaper clipping, which had started to brown because that had been awhile ago. I carried it everywhere with me because when I’d seen it, I’d found out who my father was.
She could tell that it meant something to me.
“Who are you?” Her voice was softer. She wasn’t afraid anymore.
So I handed her the piece of paper that had changed both of our lives.
Ava was nearly certain that the violent-looking girl wasn’t going to hurt her. She took the newspaper clipping and made a show of handling it carefully, which seemed to relax the girl. It was an old story, from twelve years ago. There had been an explosion at a warehouse that had finally, irrevocably, torn out the heart of the old town.
The company that had owned the warehouse, the last bastion of hope in the old city, went under. The lives of the people who depended upon the warehouse were destroyed. When Ava saw the old company’s logo, she recognized it. She’d seen it every day, on her father’s uniform. He’d worked there. He protected it. But he hadn’t protected it that night.
Amazingly enough, there had been only one fatality. A man named Nathan Chambers, who had saved eight peoples’ lives but had given his own.
Nathan Chambers had been survived by his ten-year-old daughter, Lucy. Ava looked up from the story into the eyes of Lucy Chambers.
Ava’s father was supposed to protect the building, and Lucy’s father had died. That’s why Ava had been brought here. To know the truth.
I could tell by the look of sympathy that flashed across her face that she thought she understood. But she didn’t know. I needed her to see the horror. To feel what I’d felt for the past twelve years.
“My father protected this city,” I said. “He was born here. It was a nice place then. But corruption came, and he fought against it. He had to keep that identity a secret because he was a threat to the corporation. They wanted to kill him, but they didn’t know who he was. So they lured him to the warehouse. All they needed was to make the security guard look the other way while they set the charges, before my father entered the building. And they paid well for it.”
Oh, yes. Now she saw.
Ava heard the words now. The fight between her parents. Her mother kept asking why, in increasingly rising tones. They didn’t need the money. Her father wouldn’t listen. They could leave this place now. Start over. But her mother wouldn’t leave. This was her home. She gave Ava’s father an ultimatum, so he took Ava and left.
“My mother didn’t want to come with us,” Ava said. “My dad said she refused to come.”
Lucy sighed. Impatient. “He took you in the middle of the night. He didn’t even tell her he was going. Your mother tried to find you, but she couldn’t. She stayed here because this was your home. She hoped you’d come back someday. She stayed here, and she died here.”
Ava sank to the floor as Lucy told her how the violence had gotten out of control when the criminals learned that the city’s protector was dead. They’d tried to steal her mother’s meager possessions. She’d fought back, and died for it.
“It was about a year later,” Lucy said.
A year after they’d moved. When her father had met Jaime, and Ava had gotten her brand-new bedroom set. The bile rose in her throat as she remembered her mother’s face, that kind, honest person who did the best she could. And her father, the man who had justified what he’d done. But he’d saved Ava, hadn’t he?
“He loves me,” Ava said. “He loved me so much that he gave up everything to take me away from this.”
Lucy laughed, and Ava froze. Those were the words her father had used, when she’d cried for her mother and her home. He told her how much he loved her, and how much better her life was now. Eventually she’d given in. Accepted it.
“I made myself forget,” she said.
“No kidding,” said Lucy. “How nice it must be, to have everything you want. I only want one thing. Revenge.”
A chill went down Ava’s spine. That’s why she was here. Lucy was going to take her away from her father. Lucy was going to kill her.
“I don’t care,” Ava said dully. “If you’re going to, just do it.”
“Oh, honey. I don’t want revenge against you. I wanted you to know what your daddy did. Next move is yours.”
Ava thought about her life, about what she was waiting for. About how she’d never see her mother again. About how her dad’s one action had destroyed so much.
“I’ll talk to him. To my dad,” she said. “I’ll get him to tell me the truth.”
“I already told you the truth,” Lucy said. “What good will that do?”
“Then what do you want from me?” Ava asked.
“I told you. The next move is yours. Don’t wait for me to tell you.”
Ava always did what her teachers told her to do. She did the extra credit. She had the right friends. Bought the right things. Laughed the right way. This was too different for her to contemplate.
“I’m going to talk to him,” she said.
Lucy glared at her, and then walked away without a word.
Ava took the other nesting dolls with her. She went home. Had some dinner. Waited for her dad to come home. When he did, he poured himself a glass of Scotch and sat down with a sigh. He smiled at her, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. She realized that it never did. He got his phone out and looked over his schedule. He was an executive with the corporation, and now she knew how he’d gotten that job. He wore a nice suit every day and was always tired. He never talked about it. They never talked about anything.
But things were different now. She put one of the nesting dolls on the polished counter in front of him. He glanced at it.
“What’s this?”
“Mom’s, I think,” Ava said. “From the old house.”
He got very still and turned his phone over, setting it down with a click.
“What were you doing there?” he asked. Then he coughed, a hacking wheeze that doubled him over. He’d been sick since they moved here. And now Ava knew why. He was being poisoned by what he’d done. By the sacrifice he’d talked himself into making for his daughter,
when it was just selfish. It had destroyed the old city. It had gotten Ava’s mother killed.
As he coughed, Ava thought about how happy Lucy must have been as a girl, until her father was taken from her. Identified as a hero. Mourned for the sacrifice that didn’t matter because the corporation got what it wanted. And Ava’s dad had helped them.
His eyes widened. She felt a weight in her hand and realized she’d picked up a knife. She looked at her distorted image in the shiny blade. She wanted to plunge it into his stomach. To release the poison that was inside him. Would that release hers, too? As she turned the knife over, things became clear. She’d seen her father talking to hard-looking men. She’d heard them discuss deals, both financial and violent. Her father had been rewarded with a seat at the table. Their money was tied up in all of this. Her money. For college. To start her life.
That’s why she always looked to the future, because, unconsciously, she was trying to escape what her father had done. And now she’d seen the sadness of the old city. The people who swam against the tide every day, who were denied better lives because rich men wanted to get richer.
Ava was only one person. One spoiled teenage girl. She couldn’t do much, but she could do this. She could rid the city of one cancer.
Her father stood, seeing the look set in her eyes. “Ava. What are you doing?”
“Mom died,” Ava said, her voice cracking against her will. “She died because you were greedy.”
“Your mother died because she was selfish,” her father said, using his tactic of reflecting his own weaknesses back onto innocent people. “I’ve given you everything. All you could want. You can go to any school you want to, because of me.”
“I don’t want to go,” she said.