Every Little Piece of Me

by Amy Jones

  Afterward, they gave her cookies and a juice box, sat her in a chair facing the Home and Garden Network. There were two other women in the room, but neither of them were paying attention to her, lost in their own thoughts, their own impatience or anxiety or relief. She would have crossed a desert for a shot of vodka—something she hadn’t been able to stomach with her mourning sickness—but she supposed that wasn’t on the menu. “You guys must keep some alcohol around here somewhere,” she said, half-jokingly, to the volunteer who brought her the cookies and juice. The volunteer looked at her sadly, shaking her head, and Ava sipped her juice box through the tiny straw, feeling she had let the volunteer down in some fundamental way. The room was filled with sunshiny artwork, bright colours, positive quotations on posters, a cadre of women’s studies undergrads non-judgmentally distributing snacks, but make one little joke about wanting a drink and suddenly you were unworthy of it all.

  When it was time for her to leave, Ava put her regular clothes back on, bundling herself back up in her parka and her scarf. A different volunteer brought her out into the waiting area in a wheelchair.

  “Who’s taking you home?” the volunteer asked.

  “Uh, no one,” said Ava, pushing herself out of the chair. “I’ll take a cab. I’m okay.”

  The volunteer gently but firmly pushed Ava back down. “I’m sorry, we can’t let you do that,” she said. “We’re required to send you home with a responsible caretaker.”

  Ava laughed, maybe a bit too long for someone who was trying to convince the world that she was capable of taking care of herself. “That’s not going to happen,” she said. “Just let me go, I won’t tell anyone.”

  The volunteer picked up the phone at the reception desk. “I can call someone for you if you give me a number,” she said.

  “I don’t have anyone!” Ava stared at the volunteer, clenching her jaw. The volunteer stared back. Ava realized this was not something that she was going to be able to argue her way out of. Biting her lip, she sat back down in the wheelchair. “Okay, fine,” she said. The volunteer cradled the phone against her ear. “The number is…” The minute the volunteer turned her back, Ava jumped to her feet. Immediately, she felt the blood drain from her head and her vision start to blur. Still, she continued to stumble forward. The volunteer hung up the phone and ran toward her, but it was too late—by the time she reached her, Ava had already crumpled to the floor.

  When Ava opened her eyes again, the volunteer was standing over her, along with several other people who had been in the waiting room when she fainted, all dressed in the same open-backed hospital gowns. They all looked at each other anxiously as she struggled to sit up, and Ava knew they were watching her and seeing their own future—or, at least, their future if they didn’t have loving partners or friends or family or whatever, someone in their life who they could lean on, someone who made them feel a little less alone. She pulled her hood back up over her head, straightening her scarf, daring them all to say something. But they just shuffled back to their seats, clutching their gowns, adjusting their hospital bracelets. Ava hoped she had made them all feel better about themselves. She really hoped that her pathetic, lonely life had cheered them up some.

  A nurse came over and helped her back into the wheelchair, instructing her to put her head between her knees. She still felt dizzy, and she was pretty sure that if she moved she was going to throw up. The volunteer put her hand on Ava’s shoulder.

  “So?” she asked.

  “I guess there is someone you can call.”

  * * *

  —

  It took Antonio an hour to get to the clinic from Long Island, during which time Ava sat in the wheelchair, sweating in her parka, staring straight ahead. When he walked in, all the women in the room turned to look at him, to see for themselves the person she had been so reluctant to call. He wheeled Ava out in the wheelchair without saying a word.

  She hated having to call for him like she was a helpless child. But even though she told herself he was the only one she could call, she knew it wasn’t true. She could have called Val. She could have even called someone from the network. No, she had wanted him to know. She wanted him to face the consequences of his actions. Why should he be let off the hook? Why should he get to stay at home with his family while she was here, suffering, alone? He was the one who should have known better. He was the one who’d fucked up.

  He didn’t say anything as they left the clinic, as they crossed the parking lot, as they got in the van, as he backed out of his parking space and pulled out into the road.

  “There’s a subway stop a few blocks away,” Ava said, finally. “You can drop me there.”

  “You can’t take the subway,” Antonio said, his hands white on the steering wheel. “You heard what they said.”

  “They said I had to leave with someone. I left with someone.” She leaned forward as he rounded the corner. “Just drop me here.”

  “No,” Antonio said, pulling over to the side of the road and putting the van in park. He turned to face her. “When were you planning on telling me about this? Or were you going to keep it a secret forever?”

  “I don’t know,” Ava said. “I didn’t think a teenage pregnancy would be a good fit for the storyline of Season Two, you know?” She glanced around in an exaggerated way. “Where is Javier, anyway? I figured he’d be in the backseat with the camera rolling.”

  “Ava,” Antonio said. “Stop. Stop it.”

  “Oh, I see how it works,” said Ava. “It’s fine to air our dirty laundry all over the television screen. But when it’s yours, it’s off limits.”

  “Jesus Christ. How many times do I have to say it? This is my job. My job is to document the Hart family. And trust me, it’s the most fucked-up job in the world.”

  “Well, sorry we ruined your life.”

  Sighing, Antonio leaned against the steering wheel. “Are you okay? Does it hurt?”

  “No,” said Ava. “It feels like nothing.” She stared out the window, knowing that to see his face, the expression of benign concern there, would make her cry. And she had promised herself that she would never, ever let him see her cry again.

  “Ava,” Antonio said. He reached over and cupped her face, gently guiding her eyes toward his. “I miss you.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her, and she thought about all the times she had dreamed about this exact moment, how she craved his kiss like air, how she had convinced herself she needed it to live. Now, it sent knots folding up in her stomach.

  With their lips still touching, she asked, “Are you going to leave Molly?”

  He was silent for a long time, his breath warm on her mouth. “No,” he said finally.

  “Okay,” she said. “That’s it, then. That’s enough.” As she opened the car door, she paused, gazing down at her feet touching the sidewalk. “Goodbye, Antonio.”

  She got out of the van and walked along the snowy street toward the subway. She still felt woozy, but she knew this time she wasn’t going to pass out. She could feel Antonio’s eyes on her, but he didn’t follow her, and she willed herself not to look back. Don’t look back. Don’t look back.

  * * *

  For the next few days, she kept herself locked in her room, telling Val she had a migraine. As lonely as she was, she was good at being alone. She tried to read, listen to music, but mostly she just slept. She had no idea where her phone was, but she didn’t care—she didn’t want to know if Antonio had called, and she really didn’t want to know if he hadn’t. It was so much better to stay in her cocoon, marking the time by watching the sun crawling across her bedroom floor.

  It was Thursday night when curiosity finally overtook her, and she emerged from her room, bleary-eyed, to look for her phone. Walking out into the main room, she saw Val sitting on the couch in the dark, his face lit up by a video game on the television screen. Beside him was a girl in a crop top and a baseball cap who Ava didn’t recognize.

  “Hey,” Val said, his eyes fl
icking to her, then back to the game. “You look like shit.”

  “Thanks,” said Ava. “I’m actually feeling better.” She narrowed her eyes at the girl, who had her fingers in her mouth as she stared intensely at Ava. “Have we met?”

  “OMG,” the girl said, through a tangle of moist fingers. “You’re Ava.” She reached up and took off her baseball cap to reveal a head of short, platinum blonde hair. “I fucking love you.”

  Ava felt her body sag under an invisible weight. “Seriously?” she said, ignoring the girl and glaring hard at Val. “One of my doppelgangers in my own living room?”

  Val shrugged. “I don’t control the universe.”

  “You control who you let into our apartment!”

  “Christ, chill already.” Val jammed his index finger repeatedly against the controller. “It’s not like I slept with her. She just sold me some weed.”

  “I could give you some if you want,” the girl said eagerly, leaning forward like a puppy straining at its leash. “Maybe it could be, like, a part of your show or something?” Her eyes darted toward the row of cameras against the wall, and she began fluffing up her hair. “Like, are they recording right now?”

  Ava shook her head in disbelief. “Are you brain-dead? You’re a drug dealer.” Val and the girl both started giggling. Ava shook her head again and shuffled toward the kitchen.

  “Oh, hey,” Val called after her. “Your phone’s been blowing up like crazy. I think it only stopped because it died.”

  Ava turned around. “Is there something going on? Something with the show?”

  “Unless it happened in Grand Theft Auto, I’ve got nothing on the past twelve hours,” Val said over the din of gunfire exploding from the screen.

  In the kitchen, she found her parka on the floor where she had thrown it when she got home from the clinic. She rooted through the pockets until she found her phone. Val was right—dead. She found a cord and plugged it in, sitting and staring at it for what seemed like hours until it hummed back to life. Then, notification after notification popped up on the screen, one after another. Missed calls from Antonio. Missed texts from Bryce, and even one from David. Emails from the network. Her heart started to beat faster as she scrolled through everything, finally clicking on the oldest one, from that morning. An email, from a source she didn’t recognize. The subject line read Care to Comment?

  In the body of the email, a picture. Of Ava. Dressed in her parka and scarf. Entering the clinic.

  “No,” she said out loud, the word escaping before she had a chance to stop it. But that could be anyone, she thought. They don’t know it’s me. She went back to her inbox and read through the rest of the thread. The same email address, from less than an hour ago, with a link to an article.

  Did Ava Hart have an abortion?

  She scanned the article quickly. No mention of Antonio, no actual sources quoted, no additional info. There were several other pictures, but most of them were fuzzy, her face hidden. Maybe nothing will come of it, she thought. People don’t believe what they read. They know that tabloids are full of shit. Maybe this will all just go away.

  But she stared at the notifications on her phone—47 new text messages, 232 new emails, 22 missed phone calls—and she knew this wasn’t going to just go away. Everything she had tried to keep for herself was now out there for everyone to scavenge.

  At some point she must have thought this was what she wanted, for the world to pay attention to her. But there was nothing about this kind of attention she wanted anymore. Maybe she never had.

  “I was thinking, maybe you could, like, retweet this for me?” Ava looked up and saw the girl standing in the kitchen, holding her phone out. When Ava glanced at the screen, she saw a picture of the girl scrolling through her phone, standing near Ava as she scrolled through her own phone not moments before. “Val took it for me. I think it’s super cute, like, the two of us twinning on our phones.”

  “Get out,” Ava said. She picked up a pair of sequinned platform sneakers that obviously belonged to the girl and threw them at her, one at a time. The first one flew past her, out of the kitchen and across the living room, landing in the middle of the coffee table, sending weed flying everywhere. The second one hit her squarely in the head. Ava didn’t wait to see her reaction. She just ran to her room and slammed the door.

  Once she was in her room, she started to panic. Any minute now, Val would realize his phone was blowing up too and he’d confront her. And then it would be real.

  She picked up her phone and started scrolling through her contact list. Not Antonio. Not David. Not Bryce. Not Bob and Tess.

  There was no one. She had no one to call, nowhere to go.

  She scrolled past Mags Kovach’s name multiple times before she actually saw it. Someone who didn’t really know her, someone outside of all of this. She had vague memories of Mags talking her down off a ledge once before. Maybe she’d be able to do it again.

  A woman answered. “Mags’s phone,” she said.

  “Hi, uh, is Mags there?”

  “Mags can’t talk right now. Wait, hang on.” In the background, Ava could hear traffic. It sounded like they were standing on a street corner. “Hey!” the woman called to someone else. “Take her to 442 Ossington.” There was a pause. “No, I don’t know the best route. Last I checked, though, Toronto was on Google Maps.” The woman came back to Ava. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “No,” said Ava. “That’s fine. I’m fine, thanks.”

  “Mags, sweetie, text me when you get there, okay?”

  “Give me my phone, then,” Ava heard Mags mumble, somewhat incoherently. The line muffled, then went dead.

  Out in the living room, she could hear Val and the girl laughing over the pounding bass of the game’s soundtrack. She knew she could sneak past them and go down the service elevator and through the gated garden next door—her quick exit route that the paparazzi had yet to discover. But she had to do it now.

  Her next call was for a cab to take her to the airport.

  * * *

  It was almost four in the morning by the time the cab dropped Ava off at Mags’s place, a second-floor apartment above a cupcake shop somewhere in the depths of downtown Toronto. She stood in the street for a few minutes, gazing up at the dark windows, wondering what she was doing there. Would Mags even remember her? Ava shook off her doubts and opened the door. There was no going back now. Not that she even had anything to go back to.

  The outside door was open, so she climbed up the stairs to the second floor. At the end of a hallway lined with a few apartment doors, she could see one door propped open by a crumpled figure lying on the ground a few feet into the hallway. As she got closer, she realized it was Mags, naked, passed out on her side, and lying in a pool of her own vomit.

  “Shit,” Ava said under her breath. Mags moaned. Well, at least she wasn’t dead. Ava crouched down next to her, covering her own mouth and nose to block out the smell of the vomit, so heavy with alcohol that Ava could taste it. “Mags? Mags, are you okay?”

  Mags mumbled something unintelligible. Ava pushed Mags’s hair off her face, took in her closed eyelids, red and puffy from crying, her sallow skin, her colourless lips, the corners of her mouth flecked with dried vomit.

  She was too heavy for Ava to lift, so instead she dragged her by one arm into the apartment and shut the door behind them.

  TMI Online

  News – Sports – Celebs – Watch – Connect

  Exclusive: Did Ava Hart have an abortion?

  By Sadie Jackson

  February 19, 2015 7:47 pm

  TMI Online has obtained exclusive photos of a woman who appears to be reality television star Ava Hart entering a private abortion clinic in New York earlier this week. The woman, dressed in a hooded parka with a scarf pulled up over her face, arrived at the clinic by taxi, which, according to sources, originated from the apartment building in Tribeca where Hart currently resides with her brother, Val.

&
nbsp; TMI will continue to monitor this story as it develops.

  11 Comments

  Harryetta 45 min ago

  The real question is, who is the babydaddy

  guest 2 hours ago

  prob her brother lol they are trash

  lrosele 47 min ago

  Why do you keep reporting on these people TMI no one cares about them

  Jack Dawson 1 hour ago

  Slut

  ploiu_rhy 1 hour ago

  lol that doesn’t even look like her

  Kerrie Cass 1 hour ago

  garbage TV makes garbage people

  Dian Barnette 1 hour ago

  I knew you were low TMI but this is really low, give the woman some peace

  SallyO 2 hours ago

  The real question is WHAT HAPPENED TO EDEN HART the network is keeping her hidden because she had DANGEROUS INFORMATION about their top execs this is the only reason they could possibly be keeping her off the air FREE EDEN HART

  Chaya_lin 1 hour ago

  Shut up u freak

  JuicyG 2 hours ago

  You suck TMI

  Peter Smyk 2 hours ago

  I am Ava’s baby’s father

  Mags

  Friday, 6:34 p.m.

  Mags woke up in her bed, naked, a drool-soaked towel spread out across her pillow under her throbbing head, her body drenched with sweat. She blinked into the light of the morning—afternoon?—and tried to sit up, gingerly at first, then urgently, as her stomach started to heave. She barely made it to the edge of the bed before spewing the contents of her stomach into a garbage can that had somehow appeared there. Then she rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling and grabbing the sides of the bed in a failed attempt to stop the room from spinning. She tried to focus her eyes on the table next to the bed, where there was a full glass of water and a bottle of Advil that she didn’t remember putting there. She was fairly certain she didn’t even own a bottle of Advil.