I wake up in my new room every morning, hearing voices I only barely recognize out in the hallways and the living room, unpredictable music and swooshes of cars. Sometimes I wake up in Max’s bed. Sometimes he wakes up in mine.
I sleep so well with him.
My parents and Elliott are still close enough to visit anytime.
My dad is doing a major spring cleaning. Boxes of books to the curb, yellowed papers filling the recycle bin. I even think I spotted that neon bandana, and damn my stupid, sentimental self for even getting sad about that. I go to say goodbye and he ropes me into helping him clean.
“You know, I’m glad you’re going to Cal and sticking nearby and I can keep bothering you whenever I want,” he says.
I smile.
“I am so proud of you.”
“For what?” I say. “Taking the easiest road possible?”
“Vera, don’t even pretend you’ve ever taken the easy road,” he says, holding his foot ashtray over the garbage almost threateningly. “Yeah, you stuck around. You’re a goddamn rock, and don’t you forget it.”
“Thanks for noticing,” I say. “And yeah, you’re right. I always wished I was a bird—but I guess I’m a rock.”
“Takes one to know one.”
“I’ll take that ashtray.”
He hands it to me.
In the silence, I think of Anna, as I often do.
“What if I wanted to call Anna and just talk to her,” I say.
“I wouldn’t even know where to direct you, Ladybug. We don’t have contact. She’s a very sick person. Talking to her isn’t going to make you feel any better about what happened.”
I pretend I don’t care about his answer and pick up a pile of newspapers. Yes, my father is a clichéd eccentric drowning in newspapers.
“Recycle?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says without looking.
I start up the stairs but look down and realize the page on top is folded neatly to OBITUARIES. And I’m staring at a black-and-white photo of six-year-old Ava May Rivers—the picture that I’ve seen so many times getting spit out of copy machines and hung up on telephone poles that it’s become a kind of visual mythology. It doesn’t even choke me up.
“Wait, Dad,” I say, heading back down. “Don’t you want this?”
He comes over to me, squints over my shoulder, and ponders it for a second. He shakes his head. “I don’t,” he says simply.
Stunned, I go upstairs and put the newspapers in the recycling. There’s Ava’s face, on top of toilet paper rolls and snack boxes, and though I know it’s just a replica of a picture I’ve seen far too many times and it is so removed from the essence of the person it’s supposed to represent, I know I shouldn’t leave her there and walk away—but I do. Then I go downstairs and hug my father.
96
SNOW WHITE’S BEEN donated to a thrift store, and ever since I started my internship at a small press I’ve been rocking profesh-looking suit jackets and jeans. I cut all my hair off, pixie short, and Max can’t keep his hands off me. I catch my reflection in the mirror often, struck by how grown-up and changed I look. For a fraction of a second, unrecognizable.
Sometimes I wonder what Ava would have looked like now. How different from the forensic sketch and how different from Anna. I stop thoughts like that pretty quickly, the what-ifs, because now I know she’s dead. Grief trumps the wonder.
I stop by a diner and eat breakfast for late lunch after a day at the office. Alone. Well, not completely alone—I have a book to read. My window faces a parking lot and trees but the lights in here are so bright all I can see is myself, my stranger-for-a-second self. I check my email on my phone. There’s one from Ozzie. Huh.
SUBJECT: Something for you.
Hello Vera, here’s the address where Anna Joplin is staying. I’m not personally advising you to go see her. In fact, I think it’s a bad idea. But your mother convinced me to give you the address. So here it is. She’s in Santa Rosa.
I’m glad to hear you got into UC Berkeley and glad I could be of some help. You deserve it. Anyway, if you could let an old guy give you some advice: I know you’re a special person. I know your life has been eclipsed. Don’t worry. You’ve only just opened the door to the big fat world. There’s a lot of joy with your name on it. Go get ’em.
And then the address.
Mother. I’m fifty miles from Santa Rosa. I’m a freeway and a bridge away. For a second, I almost believe in angels.
97
HOLY SPIRIT HOME for Troubled Teens is out in wine country. It’s the end of the day and the sun’s blaring its last hoorah orange, blinding over the vineyards I pass. I’ve got my sunglasses on, hands tight on the wheel, heartbeat a hundred miles an hour. As I see the address of Holy Spirit, I pull to the end of the long driveway and park on the road. It’s a street with far-apart houses, so many trees, and long, thirsty lawns. It’s a far cry from Berkeley, where the Victorians with funky paint jobs neighbor farmers’ markets, liquor stores, and subway stations. For a second, I don’t know why, I think of Portland. I think of the other somewheres in the big fat world, and I know someday I’ll see them.
It looks like an ordinary blue house. I get out of the car and step up the driveway, double-checking the address on my phone. I was expecting something clinical, something halfway between a hospital and a prison. For a minute, the idea of fleeing back to my car seems like my best bet. What am I going to say to her? What if she is beyond-reach crazy and this is as hopeless as everyone seems to think? What possible answer could she give me that would ever make me feel better about the lies she told? But my finger is already pushing the intercom ATTENTION button. No turning back.
“Holy Spirit,” the voice says.
The box, plastic and dirty in its speaker holes, has a TALK button. I press it and speak. “I’m here to visit someone,” I say. “Av—Anna. Joplin.”
“Visiting hours ended at 6:00 p.m., I’m sorry.”
I check my phone. It’s 6:30. The disappointment is nearly paralyzing. I swallow. “This is her sister. I drove all the way from Berkeley,” I say. “Can I just see her for a minute?”
How easily that sweet word, “sister,” rolled off my tongue just now.
The silence is so long I figure the lady is done with me. I’m going to have to come back another time, or maybe never come back at all. This could be a sign that it wasn’t meant to be. But then I hear a beep.
“Come in,” the voice says cheerfully.
Who knows—maybe we’re getting special treatment because we’re quasi-famous. Or maybe they’re just bending the rules to be decent.
I walk inside. There’s a long coatrack on the wall with so many sweatshirts and coats on it, a rack of shoes beneath. I spot the beat-up glittery Converse right away and get a flutter. The sounds of girls’ voices laughing and popcorn in a microwave float into the foyer where I wait, reading inspirational posters in the hallway about the serenity to accept the things we can’t change and God dancing on the day you were born. A couple girls walk by, gabbing, bowls of popcorn balanced in their hands. They don’t seem like troubled teens to me. What makes someone troubled, anyway? Aren’t we all?
After a short eternity, Ava—Anna—walks around the corner. Her wild hair is up in a ponytail on top of her head with a little bow. She’s wearing a shirt I’ve never seen with a kitten in outer space on it. She stares at the carpet between us, hugging her arms self-consciously. Her name might be different, but it aches how similar she appears. I have to remind myself our noses are not the same. We share no DNA. My twin sister is dead and not living in a group home in Santa Rosa, as much as I wish that weren’t true.
“Oh, man,” she says.
“Hi.”
She still won’t meet my gaze. I wait for my anger to come and flood me. But it doesn’t. In fact, I fight the urge to touch her shoulder or even hug or
something. It takes willpower.
“Um . . . you want to go to the visiting room?” she asks.
“Sure.”
“Cool. Follow me.”
I follow her through the living room, where about five or six girls are squeezing onto couches and beanbags to watch a movie—MGM lion roaring—and then to the back of the house. The visiting room is a sunroom, glass-walled, scattered with tables and chairs and mismatched furniture. It’s awash with sunlight in the late afternoon. The backyard has a covered pool and a lawn with a volleyball net. It doesn’t seem bad here. There’s something alive and abuzz that makes the Rivers house back in Berkeley feel subdued. We sit at the table across from each other. We’re the only ones in the room. My hands quiver in my lap.
“I really don’t know what to say,” she says, still not looking at me, picking at her fingernails. I can tell she’s trying to keep herself together. “I never thought I would see you again.”
“I still can’t believe what you did.”
The words seem to explode and take up the whole room.
“Why did you do that?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says, dropping her eyes.
“How could you do that to us?” I ask, voice rising.
She looks up at me.
“Can you imagine, for one sec, okay, that you had been a piece of trash no one ever wanted?” Her eyes meet mine finally and I see miles and miles of pain. “Abused, raped, manipulated, locked away with no friend but TV. And one day you wake up in the hospital with a head that feels like a block of ice and everyone tells you you’re someone. And it seems familiar. Like déjà vu. You’re like, okay, so this is my reality. To top it off you’re surrounded by amazing people, with a house in a super sweet town where you’re all taken care of, and loved . . . and everyone everywhere thinks you’re a hero for surviving . . . which you did—survive—you survived your own horror story, you just had a different name—can you imagine, like, realizing you’re not that person, slowly, over days, but then, like . . . like, convincing yourself? Like, squashing down the knowing and saying, I am this person. Saying it enough that you believe it and forget about who you really are. Can you imagine the freaking miracle of ending up there? Of looking exactly like the lost girl? Would you say something? Would you? Or would you roll with it and maybe even start believing it was true?”
I can’t answer her question. I don’t know what I’d do. I never will. “You really thought you were Ava, is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes, at first, sort of.” Her dust-blue gaze is teary and afraid, and some tightness in me goes sweetly limp. “It was all so mixed up, the real parts and the not-real parts, it started blending together. I hope you saw in the news it was all true. I mean, not the Ava part. Which I realize is a really big part. But I mean, everything I told you about the attic—and Jonathan—” She has to close her eyes for a second. “Shhhh. Wait. Wait.”
Outside, a hummingbird lingers near the window, and then vanishes in a blink.
She opens her eyes back up again. “It’s so brain-exploding weird. Ava looks exactly like me. I mean, that computer-generated picture of what she would look like today. And I wasn’t pretending or acting when I was with you guys, you know? I fit in. I fit right in.”
“You did.”
“Sometimes I still try to think it out—like, I could be her.”
“But you’re not. You’re not her. Ava is dead.”
I put my hand over my face, tell myself to breathe, to calm down.
“I’m so sorry,” Anna says. “I’m so sorry that she’s gone.”
She takes a deep breath. Now we’re both trying not to cry.
“How screwed up am I?” she asks. “I’m super ashamed. I almost wish you weren’t here right now because I feel so bad it hurts, it hurts all over. It’s like, I can see this through your eyes—I must look so insane. But I am the same person I was when I lived with you—I’m just not Ava.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I wanted to tell you. I thought about it sometimes. But—but I started thinking, how bad is this, really? If I’m not Ava, but I look just like her—if Ava’s gone, and I’m here—I’m making everybody happy. You, me, the whole family, everybody.”
“When we found out Ava was dead, it was basically like I lost two people at once. One real, one fake.”
I grind my teeth. I push the soles of my feet into the floor. I will not cry. Anna breaks first, wiping her eyes before the tears can touch her face.
“I tried to tell you. I’m really sorry,” she says.
“It’s like, I knew Ava was dead,” I say, my voice disappearing into my throat as I fight emotion. “I knew that for years. I figured she was dead and something terrible had happened. And that’s awful. Life was so awful for so many years because of it. But then you came along and you made everything better—so much better—we were all so happy and so full of hope and that made everything so much worse.”
She nods, unable to say anything, and covers her eyes with her hand.
“What were you going to do if Ava wasn’t found?” I ask. “Just . . . pretend to be this dead girl your whole life?”
Anna wipes her red eyes. “All I know is I was never as happy as I was when I was Ava—when I was a Rivers.”
It’s like someone puts a fishhook through my heart and tugs, tugs, tugs. I can barely stand it. A part of me wishes she could have continued the lie forever, gotten old, spent dozens of holidays with the family—she’s right, who would it have hurt? I wish I didn’t know that my sister died in a freak accident involving an abandoned refrigerator and that this person in front of me isn’t her. I really wish that. I wish it so bad it blazes.
A short-haired lady with a lip ring comes in and says our time is up. Anna gets up and so do I. The woman stands in the doorway. I don’t want this conversation to end, but I’m never going to get the answer I really want. She isn’t my sister. Plain as DNA.
We walk out to the foyer and I remember something.
“I have something in the car,” I say to the lady. “Can she walk me out so I can give it to her?”
Anna turns to the woman standing with us. “I’m not going to run away, Leslie,” she says. “Where would I go?”
“Go ahead. I’ll watch from the doorway,” Leslie says.
Anna follows me out to the car.
“How are you?” she asks. “I mean, besides all this?”
It’s such a feeble question. How are you, besides the worst shit ever? But I say, “I’m actually doing pretty okay.”
Because I am. I’ve even been seeing a therapist to work through and process everything, move forward with my life. Everything’s looking up.
“I just moved in with Max,” I tell her.
She smiles. I can tell she’s genuinely happy for me and so relieved that I’ve shared a crumb of my life with her.
“That is so freaking cool,” she says.
“Yeah.”
I reach into the backseat of my car. The fur is soft against my hands. It seemed amazing, when I packed it up, that it wasn’t really made from animals. I left the wigs and all her clothes behind. I put them out on the curb in Berkeley for strangers to take. But the coat, I don’t know, I couldn’t throw it away.
“Here,” I say, handing it to her.
Anna looks down at the coat and her face falls. She hugs it and wipes her eyes. “Good times” is all she says.
We stand on the lawn, the short-haired lady in the doorway watching.
“It doesn’t seem so bad here,” I say.
“It’s okay,” she says. “They’re nice. I miss you guys so much, though.”
She buries her face in the fur coat.
“I got into school, too,” I tell her.
The gush of sharing with her is such relief. Anna was the best friend I’ve ever had.<
br />
“Which school?”
“UC Berkeley.”
“You’re amazing.”
“Thanks.”
Her pink-rimmed eyes brighten and I can’t help seeing traces of my sister in her even though I know it’s trickery.
“Well,” she says. “Congratulations. I hope you get everything you want.”
“I won’t.”
“You can do it, girl.”
Even breathing seems to hurt. “I hate myself for missing you.”
A breeze blows her explosive ponytail. She wipes her eyes. “We’re not sisters,” she says with exhausted acceptance. “We’re not twins.” She puts the coat on and admires the sleeves. “But what if, in another way, we are?”
The wind dries my eyes to the point of pain. I sniff and shrug. I want to reach out and hug her. More than that. I want her to get in the car with me and for us to be a unit again. Because I know exactly what she means. In fact, nothing has ever felt more real than her being my sister, and nothing, not even the truth, can erase that.
“Anna, you’re pushing it,” yells Leslie from the doorstep.
“I gotta go,” Anna says. “I can’t say enough sorries, Vera.”
I stand on the lawn, unable to move or say anything.
“Good luck,” she says.
We wave, sad-eyed, hair blowing, a funhouse mirror.
She turns to go. I watch her run up to the doorstep, and Leslie gently puts her arm around her. Everything gets blurry. The wind seems to have infected me, crawled inside my nostrils and my eyelids, taken over my throat and lungs, and the sting is everywhere.
“Anna,” I yell.
She turns around. So does Leslie.
“You have my number, right?” I go on.
Anna’s face falls. She covers her mouth and nods. Leslie pats her back.
“Don’t be a stranger,” I say.
She flashes me the peace sign—a two-fingered V—before turning back around again.
They go inside and close the door. I get in my car and drive south again. Freeway. Fast lane. My phone buzzes in the passenger seat. Berkeley gets closer, the Bay to my right a glimmer. How perfect this place would seem if it were new. What if a person can transform enough internally that a place can transform externally, can be reborn? Wouldn’t that be something?
The Second Life of Ava Rivers Page 26