Every Little Piece of Me

by Amy Jones

  “It seemed like the thing to do.” Ava motioned toward the couple, who were now getting into a cab, oblivious. “But I missed.” She contemplated the glass in her hand as if she might throw that too, but then she put it down. “They’re probably both cheating on each other anyway. Love doesn’t actually exist.” She pressed her hand down harder against her foot. “Love is just a word that people use to manipulate you. They pretend love is real so they can get what they want from you.”

  Mags shivered. “Jesus. Who hurt you?”

  “Everyone.” Ava removed her hand from her shin, where her gash had reopened, streaking her palm with blood. “It’s okay. I probably deserved it.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “No. I don’t know.” She poked listlessly at the gash. “I haven’t been very good to the people in my life. My parents, my sister…” She trailed off. “But they haven’t been very good to me either.”

  The air around them seemed to pick up a little, a breeze floating the fringe of the blanket over Mags’s thighs. “Do you want to talk about it?” Mags asked.

  Ava shook her head, snaking her hips forward on the parapet until she was balancing on the edge.

  “Don’t,” said Mags, her heart spinning circles in her chest.

  “You know, you won’t just be the woman whose husband died of cancer. You’ll be the famous singer.”

  Slowly, Mags began inching closer to her. “And you’ll be Ava.”

  “Ava isn’t real. Ava only exists on television.”

  “No, it’s television that isn’t real. This is real.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  One foot scraped down against the wall, and Mags heard Ava’s breath catch as gravity started to take her forward, her fingers scrabbling against the concrete. Mags saw the whole thing play out in front of her: Ava teetering over the edge, Mags watching in silent horror as Ava’s body slipped out of view, a hand shot out too late, a scream. Her broken body lying on the sidewalk below, splayed out at odd angles, her heart smashed to a pulp in her chest.

  But there they still were, the moment hanging by a thread in front of them, a split second when everything could change.

  Mags caught Ava’s arm with both hands and pulled back, sending them both tumbling across the balcony. Then Mags sat up, stunned by the violence of what she had done, by the brute force that had bubbled up from inside her. Ava had been a rag doll tossed into the toy box when playtime was over.

  Mags exhaled a long breath and climbed to her feet, her veins pulsing with adrenaline. “Ava?” She peered down into her face, but Ava’s eyes were closed, her breath coming in shallow bursts. “Shit.” She unwrapped the blanket from around her shoulders and spread it out over Ava’s limp body, then, with more effort than she’d expected, picked Ava up in her arms and carried her to the couch. She wondered briefly if she should call 911, but then Ava’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Your boobs are smaller than I thought they’d be,” she whispered.

  Mags put her hands on her hips. “A camera trick. You should know all about that.” Her gaze fell uneasily on the nearest video camera, but it remained dark, lifeless. She turned back to Ava. “You know, I’m so sick of it being about a guy. If you’re going to try to kill yourself, it should at least be over some kind of deep, existential dread, an inner war between dark and light or whatever. That shit is at least interesting.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind for next time,” Ava said.

  Mags picked up a phone from the coffee table between them. “Is this your phone?” she asked. Ava nodded. “If there is a next time, call me and I’ll remind you.”

  As the phone came to life, she expected to see a cute lock screen, a burst of notifications, at least a background photo. But there was nothing. Ava’s phone was almost factory-preset pristine. Even her contact list was nearly empty, with fewer than a dozen names listed, most with the words LifeStyle after them. Mags entered her own name and number and then opened Ava’s camera roll. There was only one photo in the folder: a much younger Ava and Val, along with another girl and two older men, standing on a rocky beach with the ocean behind them. They looked as though they had just gotten off a roller coaster—wind-blown, a bit apprehensive, perhaps slightly nauseous. But happy.

  “I knew it wasn’t really about a guy,” Mags said. But Ava had fallen asleep, one arm flung over her face, her chest rising and falling softly under the blanket.

  Mags turned and walked back down the hall. She had planned to slip back into her clothes and leave, stuttering back to her hotel in sky-high platform boots along unfamiliar New York streets. But the coolness of the room hit her as soon as she walked in, and she found herself drawn into the quiet and the stillness—the curtains gently moving in the breeze coming through the windows, shadows dancing across the walls, Val’s muffled breath. For this one night, she’d let herself sink into the stillness, wrap herself in that feather duvet and melt into this perfect, beautiful boy. She’d let herself think about someone else’s pain—Ava, sick inside because of another boy; who would someday find so many other things to be sick about, and yet still be able to go on.

  Tomorrow, she would curl up her edges again. Tomorrow, she would go back to steeling herself against all the tender, delicate, beautiful things that threatened to undo her.

  But tonight, she would stay.

  Favourite Dave

  @dav1ddave

  Align Above are killing it at the Davenport tonight. If this is what having your bassist die of cancer does for your band, then I’m recruiting at the chemo clinic.

  11:23 PM – 12 Nov 2014

  28 Retweets 113 Likes

  xAlign Abovex @samsgirl213 47 min

  Replying to @dav1ddave

  You sick jerk, Sam Cole was the heart of @alignabove and they will never be the same without him #RIP #wemissyousam #samsquad #fuckcancer

  Favourite Dave @dav1ddave 23 min

  Replying to @samsgirl213

  Mags Kovach sure doesn’t miss him, I just saw her leave with some Korean guy.

  Allison Jean @icepack78 21 min

  Replying to @dav1ddave @samsgirl213

  OMG you mean that Japanese guy???? I saw that too!!!!!!!! Was that Val Hart?????

  Favourite Dave @dav1ddave 17 min

  Replying to @icepack78 @samsgirl213

  THAT’S who that was. I thought he looked like a little dickless bitch now I know for sure. Guess that’s how she likes em tho

  xAlign Abovex @samsgirl213 14 min

  Replying to @dav1ddave @icepack78

  Your just jealous you can’t even find your own dick #loveyousam #samsquad

  Jessica Parker Loves Sam Cole @jessikittiy 14 min

  Replying to @samsgirl213 @dav1ddave @icepack78

  Her husband barely in the grave, Sam Cole deserved so much better than that skank!! #samsquad

  Taylor’s Ghost @tayser298 13 min

  Replying to @samsgirl213 @dav1ddave @icepack78

  Val Hart!! He’s not Japanese, he’s Filipino. I saw Ava Hart there too, she is a #fucking #goddess

  Allison Jean @icepack78 10 min

  Replying to @dav1ddave @tayser298

  OMG I love her!!!!!! I can’t believe I missed her!!!!!!!!!!!

  Favourite Dave @dav1ddave 8 min

  Replying to @icepack78 @tayser298

  I can’t believe you missed her either, she had her weird pointy tits out in everyone’s face.

  Taylor’s Ghost @tayser298 3 min

  Replying to @dav1ddave @icepack78

  Pig

  Show additional replies, including those that may contain offensive content SHOW

  Ava

  March 2009

  HIWTHI S01E01:

  The Hart of the Matter

  “There’s something we want to tell you guys,” David Hart said, draping his arm on the back of his husband Bryce’s chair.

  Ava took a sip of her water, glancing suspiciously at her dads over the glass. They were at her favourite restau
rant, Smalls, which served very tiny versions of regular food items. She had ordered her favourite dish, the Micro-roni and Cheese, which was served in twenty bite-sized portions on twenty ceramic spoons. She loved the precision of it all, the predetermined portions, the perfect containment. Twenty complete miniature universes of cheese and pasta. Plus, she never had to worry about making a mess.

  Val and Eden, her younger brother and sister, loved Smalls too, although Val always complained that there was no way his four little hamburgers added up to one normal-sized burger, and they always forgot to leave the onions off. Her dads, however, hated Smalls—David liked things to be big, loud, and messy, and Bryce just thought the whole idea was silly. But Bryce was now nibbling carefully around the edges of his Oreo-sized pizza on a stick, and David had already gulped down his first three shot glasses of Petite French Onion Soup, calling out “Santé!” before knocking each one back, thin threads of cheese clinging to his beard. What could it all mean? Ava had wondered. Now, as she saw the apprehension in Bryce’s eyes, the hopeful optimism in David’s, she knew. It was bad news.

  “It’s good news!” David said. “We’re moving!”

  All three kids groaned.

  “Aww, moving,” said Val. “What a pain in the ass.”

  “Yeah, a pain in the ass,” Eden echoed. “A major pain in the ass.”

  Ava said nothing. David’s face was a comma, not a period, and Bryce touched his wrist with his long, delicate fingers, waiting for the next clause. She knew they weren’t just talking about a move to another penthouse, or to another building, or even out of the Upper West Side—somewhere Ava would have to take a car to meet her friends for gelato after school, which was currently the most important thing in her twelve-year-old life. She picked up her fourth spoon of Micro-roni and began waving it through the air like a conductor’s stick, willing David to get on with it.

  “Here’s the best part,” David said, leaning back in his chair, placing his hand on his wide Midwestern belly, the fake joviality on his face enough to tell Ava that whatever he was going to say was not, in fact, going to be the best part at all. “We’re also starting a new business.”

  “What kind of business?” Ava asked.

  A dramatic pause. Then: “A bed and breakfast,” David said in a booming stage voice, puffing out his chest the way he did when he was about to put it on for them. This was Broadway David, song-and-dance David, the-show-must-go-on David. Ava hated that David. She much preferred Sunday-crossword-in-his-pajama-pants David, super-competitive-Mario Kart-racer David, re-enacting-Lion King-in-the-bathroom-with-decorative-soaps David. Dad David. “A bed and breakfast, can you believe it?” he continued. “It’s in a beautiful historic old home that used to belong to a wealthy shipbuilder. The previous owners recently passed away and it seemed like a fantastic opportunity for us.”

  “You’re quitting acting?” Ava asked skeptically. It seemed unthinkable. David had finished a successful run as Brick in a Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof a few months earlier, and Bryce was coming off several weeks of guest-hosting a late-night talk show whose host had been at rehab for the seven-millionth time. They had been on the cover of Celebrity magazine last year for three weeks in a row, for god’s sake—once with their family, five shiny, happy, multi-ethnic faces pressed together in front of the New York skyline, a beacon of hope and acceptance in a cold, cynical world. At least, that’s what the writer’s tagline had said, even though she had spent all of three minutes with Ava, Val, and Eden.

  The air between her dads fizzled with tension. “Not exactly,” Bryce said, folding his hands in his lap and gazing over her head, an old interviewing trick that made everyone around you think you were completely engaged with the interviewee when in fact you couldn’t even look them in the eye. Ava had helped Bryce practise it before he guest-hosted on The Cynthia Show, so she recognized all the signs: the cock of his eyebrow, thin lips pursed, his back straight as a pin in his chair. Neither of her dads could pull anything over on her. “It’s a bit of a long story.”

  “I’ve got time,” Ava said, putting down the spoon and crossing her arms over her chest. Val and Eden, taking a cue from her, did the same thing. Her dads surveyed the three of them around the table, then let their gaze settle back on Ava, knowing that where she went, her brother and sister would follow.

  “We didn’t exactly buy the house ourselves,” David said slowly. He glanced around the restaurant to see if anyone was paying attention, and then leaned in. “You kids know the LifeStyle Network, right?”

  “The one with all those shitty reality shows?” Val asked.

  “Valhalla!” Bryce said. “Watch your language.”

  “You let me say ‘ass,’” Val said, peeling the top bun off his remaining burger and making a face. “I knew there were onions on here.”

  Bryce turned his head sharply to his left to glare at David over the rim of his glasses—his how dare you stare, which was usually reserved for the kids. “I told you ‘ass’ was a gateway swear,” he said through clenched teeth. “Before you know it, he’s going to be punctuating his sentences with f-bombs.”

  “What’s an f-bomb?” Eden asked, concerned.

  “Nothing, sweetheart,” said David. Then to Val: “Yes, the one with all the…crappy reality shows.” He took a breath, and Ava felt like he was sucking the air directly from her lungs. “The executives at the studio have made the wise decision to stop making crappy reality shows and start making excellent reality shows. Including one about a fabulous New York couple who decide to give up their acting careers and open a bed and breakfast with the help of their three adorable children. It’s Jon and Kate Plus 8 meets The Simple Life meets Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. It’s a feel-good family show for the modern era!”

  From a bag hanging over the back of his chair he produced a thick stack of paper, placing it on the table in front of him with a flourish. On the front page was a picture of what might have been the world’s ugliest gingerbread house, pink and cream coloured, with a huge tree off to one side, a wooden swing hanging from a large branch. Across the top were letters so looping and cursive that Ava couldn’t even read them. At the bottom, in regular typed letters, it said Season One, Episode One.

  “It’s Home Is Where the Hart Is,” said David proudly, his face breaking open into a grin.

  No one said anything. Val and Eden, still with their arms crossed, sat motionless at the table. Ava uncrossed her arms, picked up a spoon of Micro-roni and shoved it into her mouth, allowing her teeth to scrape loudly against the ceramic as she slowly pulled it out again, staring at her parents.

  David smiled wider, circling his hands over the papers in front of him like a show model, then raised his eyebrows. “Home Is Where the Hart Is? Get it?” He clapped his hand across Val’s back. “Get it, son?”

  “I think they get it, David,” Bryce said.

  “I don’t,” said Eden, staring at Bryce, her eyes wide and confused. Ava reached out and squeezed her hand, felt the skin on her thumb where she had sucked it into a permanent clammy and wrinkled state, sucked through thumb gels and finger covers and bandages and palatal cages until the act was such a part of her it became invisible. “Papa, I don’t get it.”

  Val leaned back in his seat, puffing a lock of hair off his forehead. “A reality show? Seriously? They’re going to, what, like, film us 24/7?” He stuck his finger into a pool of ketchup congealing on his plate, then licked it off. “Even at school?”

  “That’s up to you all,” Bryce said, folding his hands in his lap again. His body motionless, only the tiny twitch of an eye betraying his air of calmness. “You can be involved as little or as much as you want.”

  “Well, within reason,” David said. “When you’re at home, they’re going to expect all access.”

  “All access? Like in the bathroom and stuff?”

  “Like I said, within reason.”

  Ava let go of Eden’s hand. She swallowed her Micro-roni, which she’d been ch
ewing all this time, in a way that she hoped was menacing. “So what’s the sweet potato?” she asked.

  “Oh, honey,” David said. “It’s nothing.” He reached over and patted the back of her hand.

  Ava cringed and snatched her hand away. “I said, ‘What’s the sweet potato?’”

  Her fathers hated giving bad news, almost as much as Ava hated sweet potatoes. Ever since she was little, it had been their code word for the thing they hated to tell her—usually hidden, as the sweet potato was, in something creamy or deep-fried, something delicious, although sometimes it was slipped in behind the other, less offensive vegetables. Her fathers had given away the news of the move and the show too easily. There had to be something more.

  “Well, it’s…” David tried to catch Bryce’s eye, but he was staring at his plate, brows knitted together, a deep gully of worry slashed across his forehead. “You know, saying it this way makes it sound like it is a sweet potato, when really it’s a beautiful vibrant radish, carved into a delicate rose—”

  “Oh my god, Dad, just say it!” said Ava.

  David leaned forward across the table, drawing them all in to him as if he were about to reveal the secret ingredient in his mother’s köttbullar. “The bed and breakfast,” he said, in a practised stage whisper, “is in Nova Scotia.”

  Crickets. From around the table, three questioning faces gazed at David and Bryce as if they had snakes coming out of their ears. Ava blinked slowly, feeling her eyelids scratching over sand-dry eyes. To her right, she could hear Val flicking his fingernail, making a scritch-scritch-scritch sound, and her arm eventually shot out to cover his hand with her own. David smiled even wider, making small, encouraging circles with his still-outstretched arms.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, David,” Bryce said. “They don’t know where Nova Scotia is.”

  David dropped his arms. “What is wrong with our school system…” he bellowed, his shoulders pulling back in preparation for an indignant speech. Ava rolled her eyes.