Girl Sent Away

by Lynne Griffin

  “I gotta go,” she said. “James is delivering a sculpture this afternoon and I want to catch up with him before he leaves.”

  “We need to talk about your mother. Whether you want to or not.”

  Ava held her hand out, gripping the neck of her guitar with the other. “Please stop pushing me. I can’t listen to you right now.”

  “Then I’ll make an appointment for us with that doctor you like. I’ll go as often as you want. I’ll sit there for the rest of my life if that’s what it takes.” Toby let out all the breath he’d been holding since he started to speak. “And then there’s Mount Hope.”

  Ava’s eyes widened. “What? Did something happen when you were there?”

  “We can talk about all of that with your counselor. Okay?”

  Toby saw his daughter tremble. He wanted to pull her close to hold her, whether she rejected him or not.

  “Look, Dad, tell me now or forget it.”

  “The place was under investigation. Late yesterday, they shut it down. Pax and Justice have been arrested.”

  Ava looked at Toby like he’d completely lost his mind.

  “While Nan and I were there, we found out some things about your counselor. Honor’s an undercover cop. She was there on a mission to close the place.”

  Ava stared at the collection of pinecones scattered at her feet as though she weren’t really seeing them.

  “Did she really go there when she was my age? Was the part about her being a seed true?”

  “Her real name is Cass Logan. When she was sixteen, she spent almost a year at Mount Hope. Since she’s entered law enforcement, it’s the second wilderness camp she’s worked to shut down.”

  “I never saw her hit a kid. She took away points real easy and acted tough, but she never hurt anyone.”

  Toby paused. There was no perfect segue. “Mallory was there.”

  “At Mount Hope?”

  “When she was released from the hospital, her parents sent her back to finish the program. They said the events of the overnight proved she needed more help than they could give her.”

  “What kind of people are they, to make her go back?”

  “By the time Nan and I got there, everything was a mess. Kids were trying to leave. Reporters everywhere looking for interviews. Pax had been arrested. Mallory overheard us asking about Arthur. She said she knew where he was and could help us get him out.”

  “OP.”

  “We got the keys from Honor—Cass. And on the way over to get him, a girl asked Mallory if she was going home. Mallory said her parents weren’t coming. That if she wanted to get her son back, she had to cooperate. She was being transferred to Narrow Lake.

  “Nan offered to call her parents to explain how bad things were, to convince them to bring her home. Mallory said not to worry, she’d be all right. In the middle of it all, she was so calm and confident, I didn’t give it another thought. Arthur was really shaken, and Nan was preoccupied with getting him out of there. Cass told us to wait in the lobby until someone could take a look at Arthur and officially release him. All the commotion was making him more anxious. Nan was getting riled up by the minute. It was taking too long. After an hour, I decided we should head to town and have Arthur seen at the local hospital.”

  Ava didn’t move. She didn’t blink. The way she stood, waiting for him to continue, reminded Toby of the way she’d looked at Mount Hope. Shut off, closed down. He couldn’t finish.

  “Something bad happened. I can tell,” Ava said taking a step toward Toby.

  “It’s a lot to process. I think your counselor will really be able help us to make sense of all this craziness.”

  “Dad, tell me now or I’m leaving.”

  “We made it to the parking lot, one of us on either side of Arthur. That’s when I saw an ambulance stationed out front. None of us had heard it arrive. There’d been no siren. When the three of us came down the steps of the lodge, Cass ran up to us, urging Nan to get Arthur back inside. Paramedics wheeled a stretcher out of the clearing. Cass pulled me aside to tell me. After helping us get Arthur out of OP, Mallory walked into the woods, climbed the rock wall, and hanged herself by the ropes.”

  “No!” Ava’s guitar fell to the ground with a twang. Pine needles flew in all directions. “You’re lying. Mallory wouldn’t do that.”

  “Honey, you know better than anyone what Mallory did on that overnight. I’m so sorry, but she did.”

  Now Toby was up, moving toward her, determined to find a way to comfort his daughter.

  “Why don’t you ever know the right thing to do? Couldn’t you tell she needed you?”

  “Ava, come on. Everyone—even you—said what she did on the Ledges was a tactic to get out of Mount Hope. When I saw her, she seemed sensible. She knew where to find the keys and Arthur. Look, you’re my daughter and I love you, and still I missed things with you. There was no way I could’ve known Mallory was desperate enough to do that.”

  Ava pointed to her guitar. “Bring it to Biddie’s. I’m going to Herrick House to get the rest of my stuff. I’m moving out. For good.”

  “Please don’t. We can work this out.”

  Ava climbed down the slope, only as far as the trail.

  “At least let me drive you,” Toby shouted after her. “The walk home will take over an hour, and you’ll have things to carry. I won’t try to change your mind. But we still need to talk about your mother.”

  Ava spun around, anchoring a hand on her hip. “What else could you possibly have to say?”

  Once again Toby hesitated a moment too long. Ava stormed off. Leaving him alone in the woods.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Five minutes into the walk to Herrick House, Ava wished she had let her dad drive her. She could’ve hummed a song, run lyrics in her head, done whatever it took to block him out on the ride to get her stuff. Then she wouldn’t have been so jangled, making her way through the woods.

  Ava kept telling herself, this is Maine, there’s nothing to worry about, you’ve been through worse than this before. But after hearing about Mallory—the trail and the trees, the noises the woods made—everything reminded her of Mount Hope. Wearing canvas flats instead of hiking boots made it harder to dodge patches of mud left over from yesterday’s rain. Ava stumbled over stones on the path. With every snap of a branch, she could hear Justice’s voice: If you’re not throwing up by the end of this hike, I haven’t done my job.

  Ava started jogging. She was afraid to turn around. If she did, and Arthur was there, falling down on that trail, begging for water, crying for a break, shit all over his pants, then she would know she’d finally lost her mind. Even looking forward with her eyes wide open, Ava could see all kinds of horrors. Justice punching him in the head at the fire pit. Mallory bashing herself with a rock. Then Mallory again, climbing the rock wall, dropping down the braided rope—

  “Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels, the dizzy dancing way you feel.”

  Ava sang random lyrics to keep pictures of Mallory hanging herself out of her head. All she had to do to prove to herself she was in Maine—to erase any comparison to that horrible camp—was take the trail down toward the ocean. As if she could go closer to the water to feel safe and less scared.

  Ava didn’t mean to shriek when a chipmunk crossed her path. If he hadn’t startled her, forcing her to jump back a foot, slapping a hand on her chest so hard it stung, Ava might’ve thought the little thing was cute with his hunchback, his black and white twin stripes running down both sides. Ava hadn’t caught her runaway breath when she heard a noise behind her. Whipping around quick, it was only a pair of chickadees in a tree. She might’ve laughed, if she wasn’t already crying.

  The more she tried not to think about Mallory, the more she did. Ava couldn’t believe she was dead. How could anyone do that? Mount Hope was awful, everything about it bad. The counselors were evil—the ones who weren’t cops—but nobody knew how to work the program like Mallory did. It was only a matter of time before
someone let her out. Why wasn’t her baby enough to keep her from doing it?

  Hiking through the woods with no one belt-looping her, it was easy for Ava to say. It seemed like forever since someone hit her, spit at her, or touched her without permission. Sure, her dad ticked her off when he told her stuff, and made her mad when he didn’t. He’d only just gotten back to Maine and already they were fighting. She was pissed at him for telling her about Honor being Cass and about what Mallory had done. How could he not know how many terrible moving pictures and silent films she’d already stored in her head?

  Ava had given up hope of ever being able to control her mental slide show. And apparently her father wasn’t finished. She could tell by the look on his face there was more.

  Biddie, on the other hand, was nice enough, but she always wanted to talk about Ava’s mother. Digging up memories, pressing Ava to remember whether she wanted to or not.

  But as annoying as both of them were, between her dad and Biddie, Ava had her choice of houses to sleep in and all the food she could eat whenever she wanted to eat it. She could come and go as she pleased. Mallory couldn’t do that anymore.

  As Ava got closer to Herrick House, all she wanted to do was find James. Right then she felt bad for storming out on him. She pushed aside the twinges in her shins and the cramp in her side, hoping she could move fast enough to get to the studio before he did. Ava knew if she showed up ready to help James deliver the garden sculpture to Flye Point he’d act like nothing had happened. James was a forgive-and-forget kind of guy.

  When she came out of the canopy the woods made, the sun warmed her. It also put a spotlight on her dirty shoes and mud-splattered pants. Ava could only imagine how bad her hair looked, sweaty and stuck to her scalp. Maybe she had time for a quick shower before grabbing the rest of her things. The boathouse stood between her and Herrick House. The sun was so bright, Ava couldn’t tell if the lights were on or off inside. She hoped James wasn’t ready to go yet. Shading her eyes, Ava peered in the window. He wasn’t there.

  Rounding the boathouse, Ava moved toward the door. She’d stop inside to leave him a note, telling him not to go to Flye Point without her.

  The only light in the place came through small windows, casting shadows on half-finished projects. Ava pulled the chain that hung from the ceiling, lighting up the concrete sculpture James was set to deliver. Accented with the old lady’s smashed-up platters and plates, it stood over six feet and had the rudimentary shape of a woman. The replica was beautiful. Boaters would definitely smile seeing her parked on the shoreline. Before long Ava heard a squeak come from the back corner near the boat. She was out of there if a squirrel had found its way inside off the trail.

  All Ava could find were scraps of graph paper on James’s workbench. No pencils. The place was messier than he usually left it, and Ava was making it worse. The copper wind chimes that hung from a hook on the ceiling tinkled. The noise stopped her mid-rummage. With no open windows, the movement she made couldn’t account for them swaying.

  “Ava’s home,” a voice said.

  Before she turned around, Ava told herself it had to be her imagination. She’d been slowly losing it, and now her brain was finally blowing out in one giant short circuit. He couldn’t be there. What the hell would Arthur McEttrick be doing in her boathouse?

  He sat in the corner leaning up against the boat, exactly where Ava had the day before, when she’d had her most memorable flashback. Wearing regular jeans and a sweatshirt, his hair clean, no strings dripping down his forehead, Arthur looked almost normal. Except he was rocking side to side.

  Never in a billion years did she think her father would fly back here with Nan, and then invite her and her nephew to stay at their house. Couldn’t he just have bummed a ride?

  If Ava wasn’t so out of her mind seeing Arthur there, she might’ve tried to picture what the last few days were like for him, trapped in OP, not knowing when he’d be able to come out. She wondered if he knew about Mallory.

  “What are you doing here?” Suddenly she felt guilty for all the times she’d called him Fringe, for all the other nicknames she’d made up, from Buggy Carmichael all the way to every last kid at Mount Hope. Thinking about Bobby, Ava glanced at the wall. That’s when she noticed his bike no longer mounted there.

  When she thought her heart couldn’t take another jolt, Arthur stood up and started moving in slow motion toward her. He held the damaged bike by one handlebar, dragging it along with him.

  “Can you leave that there?” she asked. Her hands were stop signs in front of her.

  Arthur gripped the crooked seat, knocking things over as he moved through the boathouse. Pieces of wood, sheets of pressed aluminum, a collection of pipes, all different sizes, made a racket as they rolled to the floor. Ava wanted to protect James’s things, but getting closer to Arthur wasn’t something her feet seemed willing to do.

  “What if I need it?” he asked, turning to look behind him as if someone were going to steal the thing. When he stared back at Ava, his forehead was all lines and worry. He hung on to the bike even tighter. “To get away.”

  “You won’t. Need it, I mean. It doesn’t work anyway. See?”

  They both looked at the mangled bike. God only knows what Arthur saw.

  “Mount Hope is closed,” he said. “Justice is bad. He’s in jail.”

  “My dad told me.” Ava took a step toward the door, wanting to get away from him. Arthur was creeping her out. He moved closer to the door too, standing between her and Herrick House. Sad for him and scared for herself, Ava couldn’t move past him to get outside.

  “Mallory’s dead,” Arthur said. His tone was flat, his mouth turned down. All signs pointed to the fact that he could lose it any second.

  “I know.”

  Wow, that was brilliant. The only person she’d formed an alliance with was gone and Ava couldn’t think of anything to say. She wasn’t very good at keeping Arthur calm like Mallory could.

  “It’s a sin to kill yourself,” he said. “She shouldn’t have done it. Now she’ll have to live in hell.”

  “Mallory’s not going to hell, Arthur. It wasn’t her fault.” Ava reached for James’s phone.

  Why wasn’t he here by now? Ava didn’t care about her filthy clothes and messed-up hair, she just wanted him to pull his truck into the driveway and see the light on in the studio and the door open the way she’d left it. Ava would even give her dad a happy hello if he tracked her down in here.

  Then it hit her, Nan must be up at the house. She wouldn’t have left Arthur alone in Maine.

  Ava pressed her home number and put the phone to her ear. In the fastest move she’d ever seen Arthur execute, he lunged for her, knocking the receiver out of her hand, sending it sailing. “Don’t hurt yourself, Ava,” he said, trapping her in the corner with the bike.

  Ava’s back ached from being shoved against the workbench. “It’s just a phone,” she said, lowering her voice. “See?”

  “You shouldn’t hurt yourself. Even if they tell you to.”

  “I’m not going to hurt myself.”

  “Mallory did. She took a rock and —” Arthur took his open-palmed hand and hit the side of his head over and over again.

  “Arthur, don’t.” Ava put her hand on his head to stop him from beating himself. His hair was fine, like Poppy’s was a long time ago. In that instant, Ava didn’t know which emotion would win out, feeling bad for him or sick for herself.

  “I’m sorry I blamed you for throwing my workbook off the Ledges. I made a mistake.”

  “Saying sorry is good.” He closed his eyes and nodded.

  All she could picture was him rocking against the boulders on the Ledges while Mallory climbed down into that ravine.

  “I gotta go,” he said. “They say it’s not enough to be sorry.”

  Arthur headed toward the door, still pushing the busted bike. His bony body pressed against her as he moved. Ava tried to get out of his way, and when she did, she knocked
a couple tools off of James’s workbench. Arthur jumped as they clattered on the concrete floor; his knuckles went white gripping the handlebars. Ruled entirely by what went on inside his head, he looked behind him, then side to side. He started moving again, slamming into things left and right. His sour breath hung in the air around her, making Ava think Arthur was dying from the inside out.

  “Come on, leave the bike,” she said. “Let’s go up to the house. To find Nan. She’s there, right?”

  Acting all confident, Ava pretended she was Mallory, telling herself Arthur was just a lonely, screwed-up kid. She tried to push aside frightening thoughts that he was dangerous.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Ava. They say to go down there. Water heals.”

  Every time he said they, his eyes darted around the boathouse like he saw other people standing there. Jesus, Benno had said he did the best job ever of faking that he heard voices. There was nothing pretend about the way Arthur’s face contorted, or how often his eyes blinked, or how loudly he moaned. Ava wasn’t faking the beginnings of a panic attack either.

  It didn’t matter how shaky or dizzy she was, or how much her vision narrowed, Ava needed to get her act together. “You’re going to be fine,” she told Arthur. “I only met Nan once, but I like her a lot. I can’t believe she really can fly.”

  Arthur stopped at the mention of his aunt and her plane. With one hand, Ava took hold of his elbow, and with the other she peeled his fingers one by one off the handlebars of Bobby’s bike. Ava helped him walk through the open boathouse door to start across the lawn toward Herrick House. Two steps forward, one pause, she stopped long enough to leave James’s inspiration right there on the grass where he might see it. Sweat traveled down her neck as the ocean came into full view.

  They were on their way to the house when Nan came rushing toward them.

  “Arthur, you scared me,” she said. “I fell asleep on the couch, and when I went up to check on you, you were gone.”

  Nan pulled her nephew into a hug.

  “I’m going to ride the waves.” Arthur sounded like someone Ava had never met before, a little boy. “Don’t make me go back there. To Mount Hope.”