Girl Sent Away Read online

  Toby ran to the door to meet them. Ava moved up the stone path, head down, staring at the ground, her focus either on walking a straight line or avoiding her father. Here we go again. His daughter delivered home by police; this time, her lovely face covered in scratches, twigs and leaves clinging to her clothes. When the police officer dropped his hand from her upper arm, Ava glanced over at him, but not at her father. No one moved until Ava broke from the trio. Skirting Toby, she took slow and careful steps upstairs to her room.

  The cop crossed both arms over his barrel chest and rocked back on his heels enough to get Toby’s attention. “Your daughter was standing on a railroad track, facing down a train. Wigged her friends out so bad, one of the kids called us.”

  Toby reached for the door in an effort to remain standing.

  “Does she have any history of psychiatric issues? Take drugs as far as you know?”

  “No. No.” As Toby said the word over and over, he prayed what he chanted was true.

  “It’s highly unusual for a group of underage kids who’ve been drinking and smoking pot to think it’s a good idea to call us. You get me? Whatever your kid was doing out there, Mister, you better take it seriously.”

  Admonition over, the cop turned on Toby. He headed back out to serve and protect. That was it? That was considered helpful?

  The acid resurfaced, roiling in the back of his throat as Toby took the stairs to Ava’s room. Sticking his head in, all he could see were piles of clothes obscuring the carpet. Her bed was a jumble of comforters and pillows. He was about to poke them to see if his slight daughter lay under the heap, when he saw her.

  “Where were you?” he asked. “I’ve been looking everywhere. You scared me half to death.”

  Ava leaned over the back of her couch, her head out the window. It didn’t look to Toby as if she were coming in or going out, more like the position he’d assumed when he was her age and used to sneak cigarettes out his bedroom window.

  When she turned toward the door, he saw her striking hair was a mass of sweaty tendrils. Even in the dim light, her face shone white, her cat’s eyes dilated and vacant.

  “You need to talk to me,” Toby said. “What’s going on? This isn’t you, Ava. This has to be about Thailand.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you I don’t remember. And I don’t want to talk to you. About anything. Now get out,” she shrieked, slapping one hand over her opposite arm.

  Goose bumps covered her arms and legs, her tank top and short shorts inadequate for meeting the cool night air. Her slowed reflexes sabotaged her deceit. Even with her hand covering the petals outlined in black, the imprint on her upper arm was unmistakable. A tattoo of one delicate blue poppy. A new, yet permanent reminder of her sister’s namesake flower.

  Toby backed away, closing the bedroom door, wishing he could lock Ava in there for the next five years, or at least until he could come up with a better idea.

  Plummeting grades and skipping school could be excused, explained away as adolescent rites of passage. But to Toby’s way of thinking, this girl, fragile and angry, was barely recognizable to him. It didn’t make sense to him that now, all these years later, out of the blue, Ava would be grieving her mother and sister. But that had to be it.

  Years ago he’d consulted a series of doctors and trauma experts, all of whom told him that while Ava acknowledged her mother and Poppy were gone and that she missed them, she had no memory of the actual events of their ill-fated vacation. According to those in the know, she’d adjusted to their circumstances remarkably well. Blocking things out was a trick of the mind, the doctors had said. Ava’s way of protecting herself.

  Toby wished his brain could play such games. It was insufferable to think about Lorraine and Poppy. Replaying their final moments as a family was pure torture. So when father and daughter returned home from Phuket, he took his cues from Ava. Toby lulled himself into believing the strange logic that closure could be found by keeping the tragedy in the past. Ava had shut it out for good reason. So he made a silent agreement with her not to talk about it—or them.

  Standing there now, Toby believed distant eyes, clammy palms, and shaky hands could only be symptoms of one thing. It was bad enough Ava drank, but now it looked like she’d gotten into much worse.

  No matter what was responsible for the change in his daughter, Toby knew he had to do something. Take drastic action before she really hurt herself.

  Downstairs he went to unearth the stack of brochures given to him by Tim Graham. Toby sat at his desk sifting through them while his desktop came to life. Then he Googled programs for teens. The search turned up pages and pages of simultaneously alarming yet strangely comforting information about troubled kids. Boot camps, boarding schools, residential treatment facilities. Site after site offered Toby and parents like him, quizzes and inventories aimed at estimating just how out-of-control their kids had become.

  Fill out this assessment, get a score, and one of our counselors will contact you immediately, they promised.

  Does your teen disregard rules? Come home late? Forget to call?

  Is your teen having problems in school? Poor grades? Skipping class?

  Does your teen hide things about his/her life from you?

  Does your teen hang around with teens you’ve never met?

  Do you feel like every conversation becomes an argument?

  Do you suspect your teen uses/abuses drugs and/or alcohol?

  Has your teen had run-ins with police?

  Are you worried your child is suicidal?

  Toby answered yes to every question. For a brief moment, he wondered how many boxes other parents of sixteen-year-olds might check about their kids. How many might his own parents have checked back when he was a teenager?

  Then, there it was on the screen. The photo he’d seen back at school, from the exact same program brochure he held in his lap.

  Mount Hope Wilderness Camp: A crisis intervention and treatment program for adolescents with substance abuse and emotional issues.

  The solution to Ava’s problems was within driving distance of their home and came recommended by a team of teachers who cared about his daughter. Toby’s next move was obvious.

  In took less than two hours to fill out the online forms and speak with the intake coordinator at Mount Hope. Hardly any time at all for Ava Sedgwick to be enrolled in the place that would change her life. Toby minimized the screen, feeling certain that someday she would thank him for what he’d just done.

  TWO

  The man with almond-shaped eyes wears thick-rimmed glasses and holds a camera to his face. Click, he points it at me, focusing and refocusing the long lens, turning, turning, turning. I’m running, but getting nowhere. He shouts at me, but I can’t understand. I stop suddenly, puzzled when his voice comes out sounding like a woman’s. Someone familiar. As soon as I stand still, he disappears. Yards and yards of blue poppies take his place. They keep coming and coming, a field of them rolling toward me. Flowing over me. I can’t breathe for all the flowers crammed in my mouth, stuffed in my ears, covering my eyes.

  “Ava wake up. I’ve picked out a school.”

  Heavy with sleep and slightly hungover, Ava curled to one side of her canopy bed dripping with ruffles, her eyes shut against the world. Pieces of the nightmare flew away from her as her father shook one shoulder. His voice was too loud and too close, his hand too firm on her arm.

  It couldn’t be time for their morning routine: him telling her to get going and Ava rolling on to her other side clutching the comforter to her chin. What was he doing in her room so early? What did he mean picked out a school? Once her eyes came unglued, Ava could tell by her father’s outline, courtesy of the hall light, that it was closer to midnight than morning. In an instant, two strangers, huge men, blocked the glow as they made their way into the room.

  Ava pulled her knees against her chest, clutching a pillow in front of her.

  “They’re taking you to a place,” her father sa
id, his voice shaky, his words not making sense. “It’s a wilderness program for kids who need time to figure things out. They can do a lot more for you than I can.”

  His wrinkled shirt untucked, he wore the same clothes he’d had on yesterday. His hair stuck up in a million directions. His eyes were squinty and wet. For a second he didn’t look anything like her dad. No tailored clothes fresh from the dry cleaner’s, no comb tracks through what was left of his hair. Where were his bribes to make Ava breakfast if she hurried? Where were the threats to make her walk to school if she refused to get up? Right now!

  Shaking her head, trying to breathe, Ava told herself this couldn’t be happening. What exactly was happening? It had to be just another one of her freak-outs, a bad dream she hadn’t met yet. But the headboard digging into her spine felt real. The bruises in the making as the bald guy took her arm and yanked her to the edge of her bed—all real.

  “Say goodbye,” the taller one said, moving Ava’s dad out of the way so he could stand in front of her bed too. Four legs the size of tree trunks kept Ava from making a run for it. “Time to leave, Mr. Sedgwick.”

  As her father bent down to switch on the bedside lamp, the scarf she left draped over it fluttered to the floor. The room filled with blinding light. Ava squeezed her eyes tight against what was happening. But she could hear him.

  “I can’t watch you all the time, honey. I’m afraid you’re going to hurt yourself. They promised to help us.”

  Ava’s eyes flew back open. “No, please. Is this because of what happened that night with the train? I didn’t do it on purpose. This is hurting me.” Ava shouted at her father, and then at the men. “Let go of me!” She tried to think up something to say to make her father change his mind about sending her away. Ava’s whole body came off the bed as she flailed and struggled against the man pinning her there. He didn’t break a sweat or loosen his grip. He pinched her harder. It didn’t take Ava long to realize she was no match for a guy three times her size.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  When her father didn’t answer, Ava screamed three words that came from the deepest place inside her. “I want Mom.” Her voice, louder and clearer than it had been in weeks, moved her father toward her. Their eyes met.

  “She would never do this to me.” Ava spewed the desperate words out. Instead of feeling bad enough to call things off, her father backed away.

  “Leave now, Mr. Sedgwick. You’re making this worse.”

  Ava thrust her arm out, her whole being pleading with him to take her hand. “Daddy, no! Please. I’m sorry. I’ll be good. I’ll do whatever you say.” Too late. He listened to them, not her. After her father disappeared into the hallway, Ava heard his bedroom door shut tight against her.

  “Bet your ass you’ll do whatever we say.” The tall one who gave all the orders picked a sweater and a pair of jeans from the pile of clothes on the rug and threw them at Ava. “Put these on.”

  The bald guy flashed a pair of handcuffs. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. It’s up to you.” His voice was deep, so low only Ava could hear the threat.

  She put the jeans on over her pajama bottoms, the sweater over her cami. No way was she changing in front of these goons. One of them shoved her from behind when she stopped to wipe the tears racing down her face. “Daddy, please!” Ava cried out, but only once. The handcuffs were back, dangling in front of her face.

  Through her sobs, Ava asked, “Can I take some of my things? My guitar?”

  The guy scanned the room. He wore a disgusted look as he took in the clothes tossed over the couch, the laptop on her desk, the flat-screen TV anchored to the wall. “Brat,” he muttered. Then when his eyes rested on the guitar lying in its open case he said, “Musician,” like everything about Ava suddenly made sense. “Won’t be time for that where you’re going.”

  The whole way down the stairs, Ava searched her brain for something, anything she could say or do that would stop them from pushing her toward the driveway, putting her in that car. It happened so fast. The guy in charge went around the other side to get in back with her. Ava rattled the door. She’d known it would be locked, but she had to try.

  Bald Guy in the driver’s seat looked at her in the rearview. “What, you think because we’re big, we’re stupid?” When he laughed, phlegm jiggled in his throat. She smelled stale cigarette smoke; the matted sheepskin seat covers reeked of it.

  Ava took the metal clip of her seat belt and started banging the window. A giant hand reached over, grabbed the buckle, and locked her in like a child. Tall Guy’s arm grazed her chest. She fought the urge to throw up, figuring if she did, she’d be left to sit in her own vomit for the time it took to get wherever they were taking her. All she wanted to do was go back to her room, to lie down on the cool tile of her bathroom floor.

  Ava screamed and screamed, though there was no way anyone could hear her. The street was dead and not one light filtered out through a single window. Except for her father’s. Toby Sedgwick was backlit by the lone bedroom light. His shadow watched his daughter go.

  “Where are you taking me? I didn’t do anything,” she said.

  “That’s not what he thinks.” The man sitting next to her used his hand to make an up-and-down motion like he was pulling the whistle on a train. “Look, sit back and shut it. All we gotta do is get you there. Few hours from now we’ll be out of your hair.”

  Hours?

  No matter how hard it was to talk to her father, she should’ve told him what happened two nights ago on those tracks.

  It wasn’t the first time memories came looking for her, but it was the scariest. After Ava ran away from school, all she could think to do was to get as far from Wellesley as possible. She took the train into Boston thinking that by the time she got there she’d know where to go, what bus she could take to get out of town. Or maybe she could hop the next one no matter where it was headed. The closer she got to South Station the more Ava knew she couldn’t leave her father. Not like this. One minute there and the next out of sight. It would kill him.

  But her body was worse off than her racing mind. The muscles of her arms and legs were rigid, every bit of her skin tingled, her head pounded. Ava was a jazzed-up mess. If she didn’t find some kind of release soon, she worried she’d end up screaming right there on Tremont Street in downtown Boston. The jangled way she felt made her finally understand the girls who cut. That’s when Ava saw the sign: Tattoos. No waiting.

  No need to look through the book of choices. She knew what she wanted before she opened the door. The blue poppy turned out beautiful. And it hurt. A pain so real and exacting, it erased everything else she felt. It gave Ava the jolt she needed, a newfound confidence to head home.

  By the time she got back to Wellesley Hills, she’d changed her mind yet again. Not ready to face her father, Ava slept on a bench inside the station. During the day, she wandered around town, dodging him, making plans to meet up with some kids. Her plan then was to down a drink and sneak back home. It was too cold to spend another night on a bench. Ava figured a single hard lemonade would give her the courage to face her father and the power to dull her nightmares, making her less afraid to close her eyes. Two more drinks offered Ava the promise of uninterrupted sleep.

  Her group of friends sat huddled together on the ground, passing around a bottle of Jack. With arms outstretched, Ava walked the rail like a balance beam. Without warning, the sky opened up sending rain down on her. She tipped her head back, drinking it in as the ground began to quiver beneath her feet. Part of her knew there was a train rounding the bend, but Ava never saw it coming. She didn’t hear the train’s thunderous approach. An air rush didn’t chill her. As the vibrations tingled up her legs, Ava started to disappear. The prickly sensation made it to right below her knees, and then like that, she blacked out.

  This freak-out came on quicker than most, and it didn’t last long enough for images to linger. Or maybe Ava didn’t remember anything because some kid she’d
just met snapped her out of it when he pushed her out of the way of the train, landing on top of her, thorny brush scraping their cheeks in the fall. Waves of rust, her hair mingled with his blood, weren’t enough to hide his look. The kid thought she was crazy.

  Ava feared he might be right.

  Her father thought she’d completely lost it too, otherwise he wouldn’t be doing this. Sending her away. Why didn’t she stop drinking when he asked her to? How hard would it have been to promise no more running away, no more sneaking out of the house at night? As much as Ava didn’t want to deal with whatever was breaking apart inside her, she should’ve told him something was wrong. Or gone to counseling when he begged her to. It couldn’t have been any worse than this.

  “Where are you taking me?” Ava asked the men again, modulating her voice, middle C for calm.

  Neither one of them spoke as they drove north of Wellesley. Let the school be in Maine, Ava thought, near our summer place above the Reach. She hadn’t been there in eight years, but she could live alone at Herrick House, or with her mom’s best friend Mrs. Purcell, at her house in Center Harbor. Ava would be able to handle being up there again, going to school there. She could. Visions of what she thought she could manage met reality when they got as far as the Newton town line and Tall Guy pulled out a blindfold.

  “Are you kidding me? Why can’t I know where I’m going?” Ava shifted in her seat, uncrossing her legs, crossing them again in the opposite direction.

  “New kids are a flight risk. Put it on. Don’t make me pull out the cuffs. And quit humming. It’s annoying.”

  Ava’s mind worked double-time trying to figure out where they were taking her; she wasn’t aware she’d been humming. They’d refused to let her take her guitar, but they couldn’t stop her from using music the way she did.

  For the rest of the trip, with the blindfold tied behind her head, Ava fantasized but didn’t speak up. She plotted but didn’t fight back. Her father was dumping her at some school—against her will—and Ava sat in that car, her back numb against the seat, convincing herself that the best thing she could do now was not make trouble. Her instincts told her things would turn out better that way. Alone in the dark, the blindfold tight against her skin, the truth was she was petrified.