The Second Life of Ava Rivers

by Faith Gardner

  Some doors in the back open, a crew member directs people to their rows, and crowds of excited strangers take their seats before the lit but empty stage. Dad and I are still mannequins, staring forward, and I’m sure he’s just as uncomfortable as I am, avoiding eye contact with everyone. In fact, his knee is jiggling like he’s jonesing. This probably sucks a thousand times more for him because he’s peoplephobic—or just plain misanthropic, I don’t know anymore. Finally, ten minutes after shooting was supposed to begin according to the tween-looking PA who brought us water when we were seated, I lean into Dad and ask how he’s doing and he says, “Christ on a pair of water skis, I need a cigarette.” I nod to a set of doors to the right, past the half-pulled curtain and the tables filled with crappy food spreads, and he gives me a hard look for a second before getting up and making a beeline for the door. I follow him. We prop the door open outside with a nearby brick and head around the corner.

  We hover near the Dumpsters, facing another studio lined with trailers. He lights a cigarette and inhales it like it’s oxygen.

  “This place,” he says. “It’s a mecca of self-important assholes.”

  “Not a Flora Daly fan, I see.”

  “I mean, I want Ava to be happy, she is a strong, amazing human being to share her story with the world, and I know she’s had a decade-long love affair with television, but . . . I’m on Mars, here.”

  “Me too,” I tell him. “Can I have a drag?”

  He sighs, like he doesn’t want me to, but hands it to me anyway.

  “A hundred bucks says your mom ends up onstage tonight,” he says.

  “Psssh, watch, she’ll get her own show.”

  “I always knew she’d be a star.” Dad leans on the Dumpster. I notice his shoes for the first time today—scuzzy Converse giving him away beneath his fancy slacks and sports jacket. “Just didn’t think it’d be for this.”

  “Who—Mom, or Ava?”

  He pauses. “Both, actually.”

  Just then, we hear a thud. A guy with slicked hair, a weak teen ’stache, and a headset pops his head out.

  “Vera Rivers?” he asks.

  I put my hands behind my back and hide the cigarette, wondering if I’m in some kind of trouble.

  “Ava wants you onstage with her,” he says. “She doesn’t want to do it without you. Can you come back to makeup? We have five till airtime.”

  I swallow, heat from panic and embarrassment spreading over my cheeks. I want to scream “no” and run behind the Dumpster. Me? On TV? For a brief moment, I contemplate if death would be better than this. But Ava’s in there awaiting her debut. She needs me. There’s no way out of this except back through the door that says QUIET—TAPING IN PROGRESS.

  “You’re a good sister,” Dad says, squeezing my arm.

  I follow Teen ’Stache back through the doors, a long back hallway with scuffed cement floors, long black curtains, murmuring people with clipboards and headsets. I try to ask him what I’m supposed to do up there onstage, but he mutters indistinguishable words into his headset. When I get to makeup, a woman beats my face with a thick beige powder and when I say, my voice climbing, that I have no idea what I’m supposed to do, she says, “You’ll be great.” Then she sends me through another passageway where I go behind a stage and three women with headsets on hurry me onto the stage platform and into an empty chair next to Ava. My mother sits on the other side, unperturbed as a professional. But for me, it’s a nightmare realized—audience a stranger-sea, blinding lights, cameras on dollies gliding across the floor, and some voice from nowhere counting down. Ava turns to me, eyes twinkling, and squeezes my hand.

  “Thank you,” she whispers.

  “Of course,” I say.

  A deep silence fills the room as the announcer introduces Flora and she struts out, sporting a glittery jumpsuit that catches the lights like a disco ball. Then the audience unleashes a tsunami of applause. Flora does an intro into her mic as she sits next to us. She’s so dead serious, with the inflection of a news anchor, that I’m sure she means it, but it seems fake. Ava and Mom stare at her as if they’re watching a goddess incarnate. I paste a smile on my face and tell myself soon this will all be over.

  “This is,” Flora tells the audience, waiting a beat for extra drama, “the first interview ever to be done with Ava Rivers. Joining her we have her sister and her mother. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I—like the rest of America—have been following this story since you went missing at the age of six and am simply elated that it has such a happy ending. Welcome home. Ava, may I ask—what is it like being back after so long?”

  Ava is so poised and well-spoken. “It’s like—it’s like having your wildest, craziest dreams come true. Every day I wake up and expect to go back to where I was. But I’m here. I have my family. It’s unbelievable.”

  “And the question undoubtedly on everyone’s mind—where were you, exactly?” Flora asks, resting her elbow on her glittery pant leg, leaning forward to offer Ava the mic.

  My throat constricts. This seems so garish, so invasive, having this overdressed, overpowdered stranger asking the most intimate questions about our familial tragedy.

  But Ava nods and leans in to answer. “I was in a man’s attic. I still don’t know where, exactly.”

  Flora nods slowly.

  “She was kept indoors for years,” my mom explains. “Details are still getting worked out. The police have their best on the case and, undoubtedly, we will have answers soon.”

  “Over a decade in a man’s attic,” she says. “Your kidnapper. And no one can even say what region you were in.”

  “Not yet,” Ava says.

  “Have you tried hypnosis?” Flora asks.

  “No,” Ava says.

  “It is on the table,” Mom says.

  “But I don’t want to,” Ava says, with an ever-so-slight whine that makes me wonder if this is a conversation that has happened at least once between them before.

  “Why not?” Flora asks. “Wouldn’t you be willing to try anything to find your kidnapper?”

  After a moment, Ava replies. “Yes, but then there are some things I don’t want to remember.”

  “Ava, what about the other women who could be his victims?” Flora asks, in the softest, most concerned voice ever. Still, it raises my blood pressure. “Shouldn’t you be trying everything?”

  It isn’t until my voice leaps out of my throat that I realize I’ve been sitting here in complete silence. “You have no idea what she went through,” I blurt. I willfully still the shake in my voice, the sweat breaking out under my makeup. The cameras swivel their heads my way. “Or how hard she works, every day, to be good and strong in the face of the swarms of reporters and cops and all you story-hungry people with your prickly questions. Trying to adjust to this life that is both her old life and her new one at the same time. She’s doing her best and then some. She’s a hero.”

  “See, that’s why I wanted my sister on with me today,” Ava says, grinning at me.

  The audience laughs.

  “Your sister is right, though,” Flora says. “Ava, you are a hero. That’s why you’re such a star.”

  Ava’s joy now seems even bubblier than childhood joy. Look at the grins of the audience members as they feverishly applaud, Ava’s eyes shining as she raises her hands up and enjoys the sunshine of their standing ovation.

  My sister is better than alive.

  She is resurrected.

  48

  ON THE FLIGHT home, Ava puts in her earbuds and gets quiet and she watches her reflection in the dark window of the airplane with a shiny stare like she’s a beautiful stranger.

  I’m in awe of her strength, her cheerfulness through the trip home, and the pizza we eat together on the couch as she flips through the channels and chatters about shallow aspects of today’s filming—the lunch spread
, the smell of the face powder, the microphone they taped to her chest. She’s exuberant, and I am truly amazed at her unstoppable positivity, the way she keeps circling back to the hope that her story will help people.

  After the lights go out, and we’ve all retired to our bedrooms, I hear her crying two doors away. I get up and go to her door, knock until she stops.

  “Ava?”

  “I’m fine,” she says in a clearly not-fine voice.

  “Can I come in?”

  She opens the door, puffy red eyes, mascara rivering down her cheeks. “I’m sorry but please . . . just leave me alone, okay?”

  It’s more commanding than I’ve ever heard her, and though it hurts to be pushed, I’m proud of her for being firm.

  “I’m here if you need me,” I say.

  “You don’t even know me,” she whispers.

  I reach for her, but she flinches.

  “I just—I just—maybe this is all wrong,” she goes on. “I don’t deserve this. Why’d I go on TV? What was I thinking?”

  “It’s for the girls,” I say, pretending to be steady when I want to mirror her and turn into a puddle.

  “I don’t even understand anything, how I got here, what is going on,” she says. “Nothing is right, I’m not myself.”

  “Ava.”

  “I’m not.”

  Finally, she lets me hug her, but only for a second. Then she pulls away and wipes her eyes, black splotches on her sweatshirt sleeves.

  “You went on TV today,” I say. “Because once upon a time, you were a girl and you were locked up and the guy who did that to you is still out there and he needs to be found.”

  She makes a face, like she’s heard this a thousand times.

  “And think about the other girls out there, locked up, who you wanted to tell your story for. To give them hope.”

  “How I felt when I saw that Lifetime movie Girl in the Bunker,” she murmurs.

  Relief spreads. Her tears are gone. The daze has settled in. She yawns.

  “Sorry,” she says. “It was a crazy day.”

  “It was.”

  I retreat to my room and hear nothing but her blaring TV. In bed, I put my hand over my thumping heartbeat, reliving the conversation, thinking, She’s not unbreakable after all.

  49

  AVA’S OUT WITH Mom at an auction to raise money for some missing children’s org one night when Max comes over unexpectedly. I answer the door and see him there dressed all spiffy thrift-store couture with a dark chocolate bar in his hand.

  “Yo,” he says.

  “She’s out,” I tell him.

  “Actually, I’m—I was just swinging by to see how it’s crankin’.”

  “Well, I can give her the message.”

  “I mean, with you.”

  “Oh,” I say, taken aback. I look down at my pajamas and the paperback book in my hand. “I’m clearly having a very exciting evening.”

  “Have you seen the moon?” he asks, breezing over my self-deprecating comment as though he doesn’t even notice what I’m wearing. “You should really come out and look at it.”

  “Um, sure, okay,” I say.

  I grab my coat off the wall, put my book down, and go outside with him. We sit on my porch steps next to each other, me on my guard because . . . well, because two minutes ago I was on the weathered moors between Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights and now I’m sitting outside pondering the fat, shiny eyeball of the moon with Max Spangler. Alone. With him, I mean.

  “Here.” He hands me a chunk of chocolate, bites the bar, and makes ecstatic noises.

  “Thanks.”

  “So my mom’s infirm,” he says, as if picking up in the middle of a conversation. “But it’s not like she’s bona-fide sick, you know what I’m saying? She’s a sufferer of psychosomatic illness.”

  “Explain?”

  “It’s like, mind and body work in tandem, so she thinks she’s sick and then she convinces herself and it manifests in her body, so she actually is sick at this point. Her fake Lyme disease has totally crippled her for real.”

  He directs his monologue at the moon. I’m not sure if I’m a companion or a one-girl audience right now.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  He shrugs and munches his chocolate.

  “Why are you telling me this now?” I ask after a long pause.

  “You asked.”

  “Yeah, like, weeks ago. It seemed like you didn’t want to tell me about it.”

  “It’s wearing on me,” he goes on, as if he didn’t hear what I said. “Not to be all woe-is-me. I mean, the situation with you Riverses is way more intense. I just—” Finally, he looks at me so sincerely I almost want to laugh, because there’s chocolate on his mouth. “I thought you’d understand. Like, sometimes I want to jet. Kills me every time I think of NYU. If not college, I want to get to be a selfish deadbeat and go be a busker with a backpack and a Eurail pass or whatever. I have a friend who went to Peru on vacation and never came home, he dug it so much, he fell in love with some Peruvian goddess and works at a hostel. . . .”

  “You think I understand that staying and doing the right thing sucks,” I say. “Yeah, I do, and in one way, it does.”

  He nods. When he keeps on pointing his stare at me, it slows my blood in my veins so divinely. The chocolate on his lips looks delicious. I get a pang, letting myself think, not for the first time, that Max and I could be really sweet together. But then I dismiss my thoughts as schmaltzy moon-induced idiocy, or hormones. I could never let a boy or anything else in the mean blue world come between Ava and me. He was her friend first. It would be too confusing. The last thing she needs is confusing.

  “Remember when they tore up the football field?” Max asks.

  I breathe in, the memory a knife. “Oh, yes.”

  “I remember watching you stop and stare at it through the fence,” he says. “Utter blankness in that stare. Nobody home.”

  Max barely acknowledged me in high school, hallway passings, diverted gazes, and faraway, dreamy stares I was sure my sister’s ghost lived in. I’m so shocked to hear he saw me, the incredible invisible girl.

  “I was like, she’s got to be feeling universes,” he goes on. “I thought, imagine life being the twin of a kid who got snatched up and dot-dot-dot. Who everyone’s always pining after. I mean, worse than death.”

  The same blankness he speaks of clouds my expression now. It happens automatically, the way a snail might recoil into its shell. It hurt so bad, the sight of that upturned soil, the tractor arms slashing violently as everyone in school watched, eager, hoping for a body. Sometimes the hurt itself became so intense that it morphed into a kind of painkiller.

  “It was worse than knowing the worst,” I say. “Until she showed up alive. Then it was all worth it.”

  I think he detects my suffering, because he changes the subject and starts rambling about how he got a job going door-to-door and selling knives. They’re really swanky knives, he tells me, standing up and shoving the chocolate wrapper in his pocket. He should bring them by and show them to me sometime. “Sure,” I say. “Come show me your knives.” We say goodbye. I don’t mention the chocolate on his lips. As I close the door behind me, though, I find myself running my tongue over the same place on my upper lip, the ghost of the taste in my mouth.

  50

  TURNS OUT I couldn’t defer my enrollment in school. In a couple months it will be application season and I have no motivation to do it all over again. My parents tell me I can take a few semesters off, princess, be Sister of the Year, figure out “next steps.”

  October sneaks up on us; Halloween candy and cheap plastic-packaged costumes appear in drugstore aisles and pumpkins pop up on porches. Still no rain. The weather didn’t get the memo yet that fall’s here. Typical California. One Saturday morning at the buttcr
ack of dawn I get a call from my supervisor. He’s nearly hysterical. Cinderella’s got “food poisoning” again (aka her weekly hangover). We have a rich-girl birthday party in three hours. Where the hell is he going to find another Cinderella at this point? But then I get an idea, dingdingding. I ask him, did you know I have a twin sister? And an old Cinderella outfit?

  “Do I know you have a twin sister?” he jokes. “Have I ever seen the news? Are you telling me Ava Rivers is available for children’s parties?”

  “Don’t even,” I say. “Seriously. If it’s going to be all weird celebrity-styles, then forget I mentioned it. I don’t want anyone knowing who she is.”

  “Get me a Cinderella and I ask no questions and phone no paparazzi.”

  “You do, I’ll sue,” I half joke.

  I mean, we do have a lawyer now.

  I get up and throw my Snow White outfit on the bed and go rap on Ava’s door. When I relay the news, her dazed just-woke-up expression doesn’t change.

  “Do you really think I can do it?” she asks doubtfully.

  “Put on a blue dress and fool a bunch of four-year-olds? Um, yes. It’s really not hard.”

  Her puzzlement melts and she smiles. “So . . . I have a job?”

  “Congrats,” I tell her, tossing her the dress.

  It’s a little big on her. It needs safety pins. I pull her hair into a Disney-style topknot and we watch some YouTube videos of Cinderella songs. We practice singing for a half hour or so while I put on her makeup. Her voice is low and throaty and beautiful. We have to transpose the song down a few steps so she can hit the notes. But she has pitch. And, I realize as I powder her up close, flawless skin.

  “It’s all that never-leaving-the-attic,” she tells me. “Best sunscreen in the world.”

  I pull back from my cheek-powdering to look her in the eyes.

  “It’s a joke,” she says. “Ha ha.”

  “I can’t believe you’re cracking jokes about that.”

  “Why not?” she asks. “Shelly says humor is healing.”