Every Little Piece of Me

by Amy Jones

  Ava flipped the picture back over and stared at it for a few minutes. “They seem nice,” she said, feeling the back of her throat close over. She pictured their weekends together, at the park, Antonio holding each of them by a plump mittened hand. They probably all slept in the same bed sometimes, made couch forts, watched silly movies, went grocery shopping together, Antonio running the cart down the aisle like a race car. They probably made pancakes on Sunday mornings, adding in random things from the cupboard or the fridge in different combinations to see what they tasted like. “They live in New York?”

  “Yeah.” He closed his wallet and shoved it back into his pocket. “You know, I’d never even been out of the state before this.”

  “Me either,” said Ava. “I love New York. I don’t understand why anyone would ever want to leave.”

  “I didn’t love it.” Antonio took a long drink of beer, and then wiped his mouth as he put the glass back down. “I just got stuck there.”

  Ava didn’t ask how he got stuck. She was pretty sure she already knew the answer. “I hate it here a lot,” she said. “But you know what? I think I hate everything right now.”

  “You’ll change, Ava,” Antonio said. “You’re young. You’ll change a million times before you become who you are. And even then, you might still change again.”

  Ava thought about this. “But how do I know if I’m becoming who I’m supposed to be or who everyone wants me to be?”

  Antonio finished the rest of his beer. “I don’t know, Ava,” he said. “Let me know when you figure it out.”

  Of course he didn’t know. No one did. Well, screw it, she thought. Ava finished her beer too, slamming the empty pint glass down on the table. “I’m sick of thinking about myself,” she said. “Let’s dance.”

  Antonio looked at her. “You sure you want to give up your dark corner?” he asked.

  Grabbing the brim of her hat, Ava pulled it down further over her eyes. “I’m like a totally different person, remember?” Maybe it was the beer talking, but she felt like a totally different person.

  As they moved toward the dance floor, the bouncy jig gave way to the strains of a ballad, and the backup singer stepped forward to the mic. Ava paused, unsure of what to do, but Antonio took her hand and put his other hand awkwardly on her waist. She couldn’t remember ever being held by someone who wasn’t part of her family, and she tensed up, then relaxed as the woman began to sing, her melancholic voice snaking its way under Ava’s skin as she leaned into Antonio’s chest.

  Next to them, a couple was kissing, both blonde and pale and glowing in the dim bar lights, the woman’s lips lightly tripping across the man’s lips, his cheek, his neck. Antonio’s hand pressed against Ava’s back, warm and gentle, an expanding wave of pleasure radiating out from under it. She felt weighted, solid, real, as though her body was finally taking up space in the world. For the first time in years, she was more than just an image on a screen, a character in a script, an extra in the story of someone else’s life. Up until that moment, how could she have known that she wasn’t a figment of someone’s imagination? How could she have known she was really there?

  That night as she lay in bed, Ava made herself come for the first time ever, her fingers furious under her sheets, her thoughts a hazy jumble of bodies and movement and heat and music—the sound of the singer’s voice, her hair a fiery halo around her head, the violin bow stroking across the strings, the blonde woman’s lips on her lover’s neck, Antonio’s hand on her back, her dad’s anger, her humiliation. Then finally a feeling so raw and feral that she bit her own lip as it ripped through her, the heat in her body and the taste of her blood in her mouth, tinny and brackish, her muscles stretching and contracting, her skin sparking, alive.

  I am here, she thought. I am here. I am here.

  TMI Online

  News – Sports – Celebs – Watch – Connect

  Feud Alert! Hart vs. Hart

  By Sadie Jackson

  January 23, 2012 8:57 am

  Sibling rivalry or just bad blood? If you are a regular viewer of the popular reality television program Home Is Where the Hart Is, you might have noticed someone was missing from star Eden Hart’s birthday special, which aired last week on LifeStyle. That someone is her sister, Ava Hart, who has been a regular on the show since it first aired in 2009.

  So why wasn’t Ava there to help her sister celebrate her 13th birthday? As an insider source at LifeStyle told TMI Online in an exclusive interview, the two appear to have had a falling out. “Ava has always been jealous of her younger sister’s fame,” the source reported. “She throws temper tantrums whenever Eden is around, and even tried to sabotage Eden’s birthday party by tipping over the giant chocolate fountain they had brought in for the party! There was chocolate everywhere!”

  According to the same source, dapper dad David Hart stepped in to save the day, finding an alternate location for the party (along with an alternate chocolate source, we hope!). Although a LifeStyle rep denies there is any conflict between the two, Eden and Ava didn’t appear together onscreen at all last season, and with this upcoming season focusing on Eden’s burgeoning modelling career, we can’t picture them reuniting any time soon.

  As always, TMI Online wants to know: Are you #TeamEden or #TeamAva?

  10 Comments

  PinkBoots 22 min ago

  #TeamEden

  Yabbo 37 min ago

  #TeamEden

  Delia Lee 38 min ago

  #TeamEden obvs

  SallyO 54 min ago

  Who would be anything but #TeamEden????

  Homer J. Simpson 1 hour ago

  #TeamEden

  Gill Purcell 1 hour ago

  Idk who Ava is but I hate Eden so #TeamAva I guess lol

  Mandabobanda 1 hour ago

  #TeamEden

  Peter Smyk 2 hours ago

  #TeamEden

  JuicyG 2 hours ago

  You suck TMI

  Voula 2 hours ago

  #TeamEden

  Mags

  January 2012

  “Fare Thee Well Love”

  “Hey. I was just wondering. Are you wearing that kilt the traditional way?”

  The voice was coming from behind the stage. Mags didn’t even glance up from the mic stand she was assembling. “One hundred and seventeen.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Mags turned around to find a man in his fifties in a ball cap and a navy windbreaker standing behind her, a pint of beer in his hand. “You are the one hundred and seventeenth person to think he’s the first one to ask me that question.”

  The man’s face fell, but only briefly before he rallied again. “Come on, honey, don’t be like that,” he said, winking over at a table of other ball-cap-and-navy-windbreaker-wearing men of varying paunchiness. Their hats all had the same gold lettering on them—Mags guessed either curling club or union, but she didn’t care enough to think about it further than that. “Maybe I’ll hang out back here and see if I can find out the old-fashioned way.”

  Mags clicked the final piece into place, then slammed the mic stand onto the ground. “If you don’t go back to your seat I’m going to shove this mic stand up your ass.”

  From across the room came a chorus of jeers and snorting laughter. Annoyance flickered on the man’s face, or maybe a hint of something darker. Then it was gone, replaced by a grin, gap-toothed and menacing. “Love me them feisty redheads,” she heard him say as he walked back over to his table.

  Later, as she stood onstage, surveying the crowd, Mags thought about how she hated the middle-aged men the most. The bros she could handle, with their short-sleeved plaid shirts and cargo shorts, their Canadian flag tattoos, a sea of baby faces and beer breath hopping up and down in front of the stage yell-singing along to “Home for a Rest” as they sloshed their drinks into the cleavages of their tank-topped, ombré-haired girlfriends. They were harmless, parodies of themselves, and would inevitably wind up getting caught pissing on the side of a Starbuck
s and thrown in the drunk tank or passing out in the back of a cab while their girlfriends made out with each other. And the old drunks, the ones with the wet eyes and the gin blossoms bursting on their noses, white spittle congealing in the corners of their mouths, so pickled and rotten they could barely even speak—they didn’t even register on her radar. If one of them tried to touch her, she was sure they would disintegrate into dust at first contact.

  No, it was the middle-aged men you had to watch out for. Unhappy with their jobs, left by their wives, with their thinning hair dyed and their belts pulled tight to try to hide their widening middles, their clothes a little too trendy and their laughs a little too forced. They drank too many rum and cokes and wanted you to think they were chill dudes, up for anything—while underneath they raged and simmered, their belief that the world owed them a bile brewing in their fat bellies. They came to the Pint and Parrel on Friday nights and waited for her after the Brigatines got offstage. Offered her shots of Liquid Cocaine, asked her if she wanted to come back to their place and smoke a little weed. Called her a cunt when she turned them down, their fun-guy veneer as thin and easily swept aside as a cobweb by a breath of air. Their inability to live up to their potential, to achieve what they felt they deserved in the world—it was not their fault, but somehow yours. Mags had seen it in their beady, weaselly little eyes. Pure hatred.

  Like this one now, dancing with a girl young enough to be his daughter, his sleazy hand sneaking under her shirt and up her back as she clung to him. He wasn’t quite old enough or pathetic enough to be one of the paunchy, lecherous fools crowding around Mags after her set, but the youth and beauty of the girl in his arms made him seem one of them just the same. The couple slowly disappeared into the throng of people crowding the dancefloor, swaying gently, oblivious to the shouts of the crowd around them, the beer glasses raised in salute, the flailing dancing.

  Watching the two of them, Mags somehow felt responsible—it was her voice that had brought their bodies together. She could barely make it through the rest of the song without choking. When it was over, she stepped back out of the spotlight, waiting for the band to fire up another singalong rendition of “Mary Mack,” one of the crowd favourites at the Pint and Parrel.

  “Do a high kick!” she heard one of the ball cap guys call from their table. The Brigatines’ fiddle player, a sixty-year-old Cape Bretoner named Juanita who had short, spiky, pink and purple dyed hair and towered over all of the men in the band, shot her a look of pity.

  “It gets easier, love,” she whispered. “Another forty years and they’ll stop even paying attention.”

  If I’m still doing this in another forty years, you might as well shoot me now, Mags thought.

  * * *

  “You shouldn’t even be playing with that shitty old-man band,” Sam had said to her earlier that day, as she was ironing her shirt in the kitchen while he ate dinner. “It’s making you bitter. Plus, you hate all that Celtic music crap.”

  “Right,” said Mags. “And what am I supposed to do, work at McDonald’s?”

  Their first EP, which they had released the previous fall, had done well, but not retire-to-the-French-Riviera well—not even pay-the-rent well. And for the past six months they had been working on new material for a full-length album—one that there had been little to no label interest in—and barely playing any live shows at all. Mags had started sitting in with the Brigatines right after Align Above got back from their last cross-Canada tour, as well as with a wedding band called Small Fry. Sam hated it. But then, Sam had rich parents. Mags took in the plate of toast in front of him, the mug of fair-trade coffee, the bowl of raspberries, and wondered if he even knew how much any of it cost. If he ever had to think about adding it all up in his head as he watched it getting rung through at the grocery store, calculating it down to the last penny. No, he never had to worry about what would happen if he couldn’t afford groceries or the rent for this shithole apartment they shared with Paul and Zac, because his parents would cover him. Mags didn’t have that option. She either paid her rent, or she was out on the street.

  Sam popped a raspberry into his mouth. “You’d be cute in a McDonald’s uniform,” he said. He grinned, blood red berry staining his teeth.

  “I would last two days at McDonald’s,” she said. “And you would get sick of the smell of French fries.” She had only ever been good at one thing—her string of failed employment from the past few years was testimony to that. Everything else in the world was crowded out by music. There was no room for anything else. So she sang “Barrett’s Privateers” on Friday nights at the Pint and Parrel for all those leering, middle-aged creeps, and “Walking on Sunshine” at the boat club on Saturday nights for all the polyester brides before they tossed their bouquets to their squad of drunken bridesmaids, and she counted herself lucky that she was still able to sing—even if it had to be on someone else’s terms.

  As she was finishing up the ironing, Paul came down the hall, his phone in his hand. “I just had a call from Danny at X-Wing. Their headliner for the harbour cleanup fundraiser thing tonight fell through and they want us to play it.”

  “Oh, sweet!” said Sam, grabbing another handful of raspberries. “They’ve sold out Alderney Landing for that. That’s, like, eight thousand people.”

  “Yeah, and Holster are co-headlining. They just signed with Barry Hill at Ignatius Records.”

  Mags took in a slow breath. “How much does it pay?”

  “It’s a charity gig, Mags,” Paul said, drawing up to her and squaring his thin shoulders as he tossed his phone from hand to hand. “It doesn’t pay. But think of the exposure.”

  Trying to contain her anger, Mags carefully peeled her shirt back from the ironing board. “I can’t do it. I have a Brigatines gig tonight.”

  Paul’s jaw hardened. “Shit,” he muttered. Mags waited. “I guess we know where your priorities are.”

  “Yeah, paying my rent. Unless our landlord has magically started taking exposure as payment, I’m sorry, but I can’t.” She could feel Sam trying to catch her eye, but she avoided his gaze. She knew what he was going to say, and she wasn’t going to give him the chance to say it.

  But Paul wasn’t going to be put off that easily. “You’re really going to do this? You’re really going to make us miss this?”

  Mags stuffed the ironing board in the cupboard and closed the door. “No, Paul. I’m not going to make you miss this. Please feel free to play without me. It’s what you want anyway, isn’t it?”

  “Mags!” Sam said. “Stop it.”

  Paul laughed. “Oh, now you think I want you out of the band?”

  “What, then? You’re getting weird and power-trippy with me about playing a last-minute gig for exposure?”

  “If I’m getting weird and power-trippy, it’s because I want what’s best for the band.” He leaned in close as he spoke, and Mags could see the sweat on his forehead, the little red marks his glasses left on the bridge of his nose. He spoke evenly, but there was a sharp edge to his voice. “And I want to work with people who also want what’s best for the band.”

  “If by ‘best for the band’ you mean ‘someone who does whatever you want,’ you should find another fucking lead singer,” she hissed. “I’m out.” She grabbed the rest of her Brigatines uniform off the table and stormed out of the kitchen.

  In the room she shared with Sam, she sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands, trying to slow her breathing. She had to calm down—the rest of the Brigatines would be there to pick her up in the van any minute. When she finally dropped her hands and opened her eyes, she saw Sam standing in the doorway.

  “Tell me you didn’t mean that.”

  “Of course I didn’t mean it.” she said. “But I still have to go play this gig.”

  “Is it just because of the rent? Because I could—”

  Her eyes darkened. “Don’t,” she said, her voice low.

  He threw up his hands. “Fine. I get it. But I have to
do something. What would change your mind about this?”

  “I don’t know, Sam.” She stood up and began fumbling with the button of her jeans. “For some big producer to fall out of the sky and give us a record deal?”

  He gave a weak smile. “That sounds like it would be painful for someone.”

  She pulled off her jeans and flung them across the room. “Good joke. You’re super funny.”

  “Come on.” He crossed the room and touched her cheek. “Talk to me.”

  Mags sighed. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she leaned her forehead against his, her rage gradually dissipating. She wasn’t angry at him. She wasn’t even really angry at Paul. Her anger was old, simmering, the same feeling that had been there for months—a slow boil of frustration and fear that bubbled up to the surface of her mind as self-doubt. Why don’t we have a record deal? Why was this other band more successful? What was the point of any of this?

  “The whole big-producer-falling-out-of-the-sky thing?” she said quietly. “You know it’s never going to happen, right?”

  “We’ve just got to keep going, Mags. Something is about to happen, I can feel it.” Sam pressed his forehead harder against hers, his eyes overlapping into one at the bridge of his nose.

  Mags stared into his one eye and wished she could feel the optimism he was feeling. It had been there, early on. But after so many bad shows in so many small towns, so many skeevy promoters and creepy fans and condescending music journalists and other asshole bands—what did it get them, in the end?

  “We’re building our fan base,” Sam said, as if he could read her thoughts. “I mean, we put out an EP, how many people can say that?”

  Getting exposure. Building a fan base. What did that even mean? She pulled away from Sam. “What we did before doesn’t matter. We have an album’s worth of material that no one wants. We’re right back where we started.” She lay her kilt on the bed and picked up the pin. “Did you know the last producer I sent our record to sent me back a note asking if we had ever listened to Arcade Fire? We’re an indie band from Canada and he thinks we’ve never heard of Arcade Fire?” She jabbed the pin through the kilt and directly into her thumb. “Ahhh! Fuck this stupid thing.” She stuck her finger in her mouth.