The Second Life of Ava Rivers

by Faith Gardner

“Your style’s cute,” she says, touching my dresses. “It’s different.” She drops her hand. “I can’t wait to get some real clothes.”

  The way she stares wistfully at my embarrassing pile is plain heartbreaking.

  “You will,” I say. “I’ll help you.”

  “That’d be nice.”

  It’s like I’m taming some strange animal by holding her attention. I have to keep this up. I don’t want to lose her.

  “I’ll take you shopping,” I say.

  She nods. “It’s more than clothes, though.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “I don’t know anymore.”

  She leans against the wall next to the closet. Her delicate wrists, her elbows stick out sharply—then the silver asterisks that dot her arms. Cigarette burns. They tell some wordless horror story. Or I wonder if she did it to herself. She’s in therapy and I’m sure Shelly must have noticed them and they must talk about them. But don’t be so obvious, Vera. Don’t gape, don’t suck in air. Don’t let that wave of fire spread all through you and singe your eyeballs. Tell that aimless wish for revenge to simmer down. Pretend not to notice. Look at her eyes fixed on yours.

  “What was I like?” she asks softly.

  Where to begin? At the beginning, when we were identical swaddled bundles we can’t remember anymore? In pre-K, when we refused to wear the same dresses or sit on the bus together? In grade school, after our faces changed, when hardly anyone believed we were sisters, let alone twins?

  The fights over space and shoes? The hushed, giggled talks on school nights after the lights were out? The time you saved me from a careening car on a street corner, gripping my hand until it hurt? Halloween night, when I sat on that lawn and let you go alone—when I let you march to your doom?

  Our history is infinite. I don’t know how to broach it.

  “You loved singing,” I say. “You had a lot of friends. Kind of a show-off . . . in a good way. Bold, big, always smiling and climbing trees.”

  Ava focuses on some invisible atom in the air.

  “You were everyone’s favorite,” I say. “I’d be jealous—but then, you were my favorite, too.” My throat aches. “You were my best friend.”

  I hate that I’m crying. I close my eyes and beg it to stop. It’s not the tears that bother me—it’s the stinging.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I haven’t let myself talk about this in a long time.”

  “It’s okay,” she says.

  I open my eyes. She’s covering her mouth and letting the tears dampen her face without wiping them away. Her voice gets hoarse with emotion, and it’s so endearing I want to scream. “I’m just so glad I’m here in this amazing house—and I have a family. And all these people like me and want to write stories about me. And everything’s . . . everything. And I have you.”

  How to describe it? A sunrise. A glorious hope, gold, covering everything.

  “Can we hug?” I ask. “Is that allowed?”

  She nods. There’s snot beneath her nose. I reach out my arms and hug her. She is bony, not cuddly. She doesn’t hug me back. Her arms are limp. But she puts her forehead on my shoulder, and that’s when I realize that in these twelve years, I became the taller one.

  We’re silent, besides the sniffling. I’ve wished, many times in life, I had a fast-forward button. Skip the awkward gangly adolescence, the pimples and frizz-disaster hair, the whispers in school halls, the pity stares. Get me through the pain—of missing-person hunts in nearby woods, my parents’ muffled fighting behind closed doors, or petty heartbreaks of boys who didn’t crush back or straight girls who plain ignored me. And Madeline, of course, whose name throbs in hate-shaped love when it comes to mind. Whiz past the boredom of classes, the dragging of senior year, the Shakespeare I had to wade through in theater, and how hot my cheeks burned onstage.

  But for the first time in I don’t know how long—ever?—I hold my breath and wish there was a pause button. A little click that could extend this wonderful moment into eternity. There isn’t one though, so I have to let go of Ava and stand back and wipe my face clean.

  “I have something to show you,” I tell her.

  Slitting open the top of a tiny taped-up box labeled JEWELRY with my fingernail, I open it and the two of us peer inside. I rifle through rhinestones, fake pearls, and plastic bracelets until I find what I’m looking for.

  “Look,” I say, palming the mood ring, the one that looks just like hers only cleaner, the band still silver.

  Ava touches the one on her pinky. “You have one, too.”

  I slip mine on my pinky and hold it up to hers, side by side—twins again. “We bought them together, remember?”

  “We bought them together,” she repeats.

  The knock on my door startles us. Mom barges in without waiting for a response. Her eyelinered eyes are wide and kidlike.

  “The reporters are gone,” Mom says. “Your dad came storming out in the middle of my speech, waving a guitar at them like a weapon.”

  “How very Dad,” I say.

  Ava snickers. I made Ava snicker!

  “Some of the cameramen got footage of him. It’s already getting aired on the local news.”

  “Tonight at eleven, crazy man in neon bandana threatens media with stringed instrument,” I say in a newscaster voice.

  “They called it a ‘breaking development.’” Mom puts an arm around Ava. “Anyway, the coast is clear.”

  “Can I have something to eat?” Ava asks.

  “Honey, you don’t need to ask. Just go to the kitchen and get yourself whatever you want. Unless you want to order something?”

  Mom escorts Ava downstairs. I take in the sights of all these sealed boxes in my room. My black lace curtains. My mirror with a lipsticked heart. My portable record player and splayed records on the ground that I was planning to leave behind. A ukulele I can hardly play, gathering dust in a corner. My pile of quotes. I try to imagine what this sum of stuff conveys to Ava at first glance, someone who is back from the dead, a blank-slate girl. The very question of who she is seems to have stirred an equal and opposite reactionary question in me. Who am I?

  33

  AVA GOES TO her first lineup. It’s what you’ve seen on TV, but like most of life, more boring, more waiting, and more paperwork. She doesn’t recognize any of the dudes and apologizes profusely. The police tell us to keep up hope, that the investigation’s only just begun.

  Ava and I drive up to Tilden Park afterward and go for a walk. Tilden’s enormous, lush, full of trees and rich-stinking soil, and no one will find us here. She said she wanted to “see some nature,” and this is about as naturey as it gets here. We walk a path around an emerald lake, the breeze hissing in the reeds, and we don’t say much for a long time. Every once in a while, Ava will stop for something—a duck, a dragonfly, an oak shimmying its leaves—and she’ll sigh, or say, “It’s so beautiful,” in a voice like it hurts good. A couple times she stops and closes her eyes and smiles in a blissful pause that I’m so lucky to witness. I see the possibility of her peace out here in the middle of the green.

  I think of Portland once more, a paper boat in a brook, and let it float away. I’ll defer enrollment. I’ll cancel my flight.

  Once we’ve looped the little lake once, Ava asks me if I’m okay. Which seems backward. But I look at her and answer.

  “Of course,” I say. “Are you?”

  “It’s so pretty here,” she says. “Like a commercial.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You seem sad though . . . hope it’s not my fault.”

  I smile at her. “No way.”

  “You should go to college like you were planning,” Ava says. “College is, like, a big thing.”

  “I know.”

  We stop and sit on a bench.

  “But . . . this is a much bigger thing,” I tell
her.

  A middle-aged white woman in a long hippie skirt leans against the railing of the lake about twenty feet away from us and looks back at us more than once. I try to ignore her, focusing on the birds, who don’t care who we are and never watch the news.

  “I’m feeling really mixed up, too,” Ava says. “Like . . . nothing in my head is making sense.”

  “It’ll take time.”

  “Yeah. Shelly said to focus on what comes next. I’m making a list of what I want to do with my life . . . but . . . I don’t know. Something about all this feels wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It just doesn’t make sense,” she says again. “I’m . . .”

  Ava’s getting upset again, breathing shallow. The anvil on my own chest gets heavier.

  “Hey,” I say. “It’s okay.”

  “Ava, everybody keeps calling me Ava,” she says. “It’s hard to get used to, it feels weird, all of this feels weird, and I think maybe—”

  Ava stops talking because we both realize the lady in the hippie skirt is approaching us with caution, standing closer now with a wide-eyed expression, like she knows she’s caught a glimpse of the rare North American Ava Rivers in the wild.

  “Excuse me for interrupting,” the woman says.

  Neither Ava nor I respond. We just exchange a worried look. A look like, Really? Out here in the goddamned urban wilderness where there is one person, and even she won’t leave us alone?

  “Hi,” the woman tries again, coming closer. “I—I’m sorry, I just— You’re Ava Rivers, right?”

  Ava nods once.

  “I just . . .” The woman inches her sandals closer. She’s got so many creases and lines on her face from a life of too much sun and/or emotion. Her voice shakes and she’s clearly nervous. “You are so brave.”

  “Thanks,” Ava says.

  “I mean—I’m a survivor,” the woman says. “I was raped by a friend of the family from the age of ten to fourteen. I never told anyone for years and years. I was so afraid and ashamed.”

  To me, a girl who’s never been a victim of such horror, it’s a marvel a woman can offer such a story to two strangers, and do so with dry eyes.

  Ava’s listening now, her sweatshirt-covered hand over her mouth.

  “I’m sorry to tell you all this, I . . . I just followed your story on the news and I couldn’t believe . . . I couldn’t believe what you went through. I can’t imagine what you lived through, Ava.”

  Ava, she says, like she knows her. It must be strange to be known so intimately by strangers. To have your darkest hours and years exposed for all to see. Sure, she hasn’t given interviews or anything, but everyone knows what being locked up in a man’s attic for years means.

  “It made me feel less alone,” the woman goes on. “I—I felt like, wow, what an inspiring person you are. You are the definition of a survivor. Your story really touched me and made me feel like . . . it made me feel hope. Not just for myself, but for everybody who goes through what we went through.”

  The woman’s emotion shines in her brown eyes, and a part of me feels protective of my sister, like, Okay, lady, I’m sorry that happened to you but keep your sob story to yourself and leave Ava alone. My whole body tenses up. I’m so afraid this will upset Ava.

  But Ava nods, shiny-eyed, and doesn’t seem bothered by the woman’s confession.

  “I’ll leave you two alone,” the woman says. “Didn’t mean to intrude. I’m sure you need your privacy. But bless you, you are an amazing, unbreakable spirit. I hope they find and punish whoever did this to you.”

  The woman does a little namaste bow and walks away, looking over her shoulder a couple times as if to make sure we’re really real.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell Ava.

  Ava cries into her sweatshirt hands quietly. She removes them. Her eyes are pink and wet and it’s true, they really do sparkle.

  “Wow” is all she says. “I can’t believe . . . I don’t know.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “Hearing that, it makes all this worth it.” She wipes her eyes with her sleeve. “Like, my story touches other people—I never thought about it that way. What if I’m here for a reason? What if all this is, like . . . like, I can help other people who’ve gone through hell the way I have?”

  “That would be amazing,” I say.

  It would be amazing if there were a reason for all this. A reason for her misfortune, a reason for her captivity and abuse, a reason for her return. I’m skeptical at first as we steep in the contemplative silence. But then I remember reasons are human inventions.

  As we walk back toward the parking lot, Ava smiles at her shoes. And I don’t know why or how, but whatever happened back there with that woman, it seems to have brightened Ava.

  34

  IT’S BEEN GLORIOUS, the homecoming, but where the hell is Elliott? There’s no way he hasn’t heard the news, and I can’t imagine any scenario where he wouldn’t immediately come to see Ava. We’re getting worried. I consider driving down to Los Banos to find him, but where would I even go? I have no address, no workplace, no full names of friends.

  Finally, Ozzie tells us Elliott got ahold of him—I guess Ozzie’s number is easy to find since he’s a PI, and a PI is what Elliott needs right now. My brother is stuck in Tijuana after losing his passport. Ozzie’s pulling some strings to get one expedited so he can come home. Elliott calls my phone and talks to Ava for the first time. I can’t hear what he’s saying, just his loud, crazy voice and Ava giggling as she paces the hall. Her giggling is infectious. Even though I have no idea what they’re laughing about, I catch myself joining her from a room away.

  Mom sends Ozzie a gift certificate for a steak dinner and a live rare orchid for his trouble.

  35

  THE VISITORS. JESUS basket-giving Christ, the visitors. Our kindergarten teacher. Every neighbor within a one-mile radius. Family friends who once hiked through hillsides with flashlights in searches for Ava, but who long ago dropped off the radar. Retired cops who worked on the case. Random church people from churches we never went to. The mayor of Berkeley and his partner. A lady running for Congress who has done favors for Mom. Schoolmates who never deigned to say hello to me in high school now stop by asking, “How are you doing?” and looking in my eyes like they care.

  And then there’s Max.

  I answer the door one morning and Max is standing there, hands pulling on his peacock-blue jacket pockets, hip jutted out to the side. He dyed his hair and it’s now an amazing red-brown Afro and he’s trying to grow some kind of goatee that’s not really working out for him. But he’s still got it going on. Those eyes and lashes are the kind you could get lost in for a while. You could probably get lost in those plump lips, too.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Yo,” he says. “How you doing, Vera?”

  “Living the dream. You?”

  “I’m kosher. Your pops said I could come by. I tried to text you, but . . .”

  “I literally have not turned on my phone in days, I’m sorry.”

  He doesn’t look at my eyes. He seems to be looking at my hair, which I blame on the fact that I cut my bangs myself last night.

  “Well . . . come inside,” I say after a moment.

  I let him inside and he stands in the doorway in awe of the house, seeming to drink in every detail with his gaze. “I couldn’t believe when I saw the news.”

  “Yeah, it’s a freaking fairy tale.”

  “Is she . . . here?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “Do they know anything? Like, have they caught the guy?” he asks in a low voice.

  “No. But there’s a manhunt going on. She’s working with a forensic artist again later today, and when they get a better picture then it’s going on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.”

  “Mental.”
<
br />   “Yeah.”

  “I wanted to bring something,” he says. “But I was like, what do I bring?”

  I gesture toward the corner of the room, where a mass of flowers in vases wither next to random stuffed animals, balloons, and gift baskets.

  “Rrright,” he says.

  “You know what would be nice?” I say. “Food. Like, bring her a healthy meal. We’re not going out that much because of the news crews.”

  “There was a van outside right now.”

  “They’re always outside.”

  “I was at CVS and I saw Ava on the cover of a tabloid rag,” he says.

  “It’s disgusting, actually. I hope it ends soon.”

  “I can bring a meal,” he says.

  He runs a hand along the piano and blows the dust off his finger. Taking a seat at the bench, his fingers run along the keys and he starts playing a perfect, moody jazz song that makes me want to melt.

  “What is that?” I ask.

  “I don’t know, just making it up. I haven’t played a real piano in forever.”

  Like I said, he’s a prodigy.

  “I’ve been cooking a lot for my mom,” he says, stopping his song and standing up again. “She’s . . . infirm right now. So yeah. I can, like, double up on something and skate it over.”

  “That’d be really sweet,” I say.

  When I utter the word “sweet,” we finally make eye contact. His are bright brown and quivering with something—fear, nerves, emotion, I don’t know. I’m about to tell him I’ll go get Ava, but he asks me, “You still going to school?”

  “Oh—not anymore,” I say. “I submitted a request to defer. I might have to reapply again.”

  He nods. “I did the same.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “My mom’s . . . infirm, like I said. So yeah, I got into NYU but I had to back out last month.”

  I had no idea. He didn’t mention this on our Indian Rock mini adventure. NYU. So fancy. Of course. This boy deserves Manhattan glitz.

  “Bummer,” I say. “I hope your mom’s okay.”