Read Into the Great Wide World :: Chaos Ensues

It was only once Ava made her way back to her hotel room that she turned her phone back on. Honestly, she only did it in order to download the app that she had seen, who could say how long her parents’ card would continue to work? While she had her own bank account, she currently had no way to make any more money, so once that was out…

It would be fine, though, she told herself. She was good with animals.

When she got her phone on, though, all thoughts of the ad evaporated as her phone started buzzing out of control. Message after message from it seemed just about everyone she knew, a growing list of missed calls, her voicemail probably filling up.

Ava threw her phone onto the bed as if it were on fire, but still it kept buzzing, and at that point, she couldn’t think of anything else to do but ignore it.

After she had showered—using the hotel’s toiletries as it seemed those had fully slipped her mind beyond her full skincare routine—the buzzing had stopped, and her phone lay silent on the bed.

Ava’s heart raced as she stared at it; it felt like it had taken over her whole body, blocking off her throat, filling her stomach.

She couldn’t ignore it, though.

Her parents’ texts, she only barely read, deleted their voicemails as soon as she heard their voices; yelling and swearing, telling her she had ruined her life, that they would ruin it further if she didn’t come back. It was too much; she couldn’t handle it.

Nick had called once, but hadn’t left a message, so she only had two texts to go through.

everything good
worried call me

Maybe she would, she actually felt bad reading those two messages, imagining him worrying about her going missing suddenly. It wasn’t as if she had ever given him a chance to help her.

She couldn’t say why she hadn’t trusted him with her feelings before, not that she thought on it.

The rest were all from friends, more in line with Nick’s texts, though often much more pissed at her then he seemed. They were worried; they wanted to know where she was, why she had done this.

Because she had no better option, but she couldn’t say that.

In the end, she pulled back up Nick’s texts and hit the little phone symbol to call him.

“Ava?” He answered the phone on the first ring, spoke as soon as the phone was to his ear, she imagined, “Are you safe? Tell me you’re safe.”

“I’m safe.” Ava’s voice shook, and she only realized then just how scared she was, “I just… I can’t tell you where I am, I—I just don’t… I’m sorry…”

Her reticence to speak then was clear. He would tell her parents if she told him where she was. He would think it the right thing to do.

There was a long silence on the other end, and Ava shrank around herself, until Nick finally let out a sigh.

“Is everything okay?”

“No.”

Nothing had ever been okay.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t think so, no…”

She could almost hear his dejection on the other end of the line, another sigh, followed by a long silence.

“You know I love you, right?” His voice finally came softly, a genuine plea for confirmation.

In response, Ava simply broke down sobbing. Guilt and discomfort mixed with joy at the words. She wanted to be loved; she had always wanted to be loved, but somehow, being loved by him right now, she had an almost visceral reaction to it.

“I’m sorry,” Was all that she could get out through her tears. She wasn’t even certain if that was intelligible.

“I know.” He reassured her, though she could hear the tears he was holding back, “I’m sorry too.”

There was a long silence—save Ava’s continued weeping—before Nick spoke again.

“I should go, I have my own stuff to deal with, but please, call me if you need anything at all.”

Ava nodded, and then remembered she was on the phone, “I will.”

“Good.” Nick’s voice was soft and sincere.

They exchanged goodbyes, and then Nick hung up, leaving her to clear her tears alone.

It wasn’t until she dressed properly that she remembered the ad and the entire reason she had started up her phone again. Quickly, she pulled out her phone again, downloaded the app, and made herself an account.

She had for once actually expected more difficulty in the process, but in the end, all the app had needed was to confirm that she was who she said she was, and it wasn’t as if her background check truly took all that long. How much could they have to check?

By the end of the day, she was even able to claim an actual job. Her arrival had made her think perhaps this would all be quite hard, but no, that was probably simply an outlier. She could manage this.

“Slow down!” Ava cried out as the giant pile of fur that, apparently, was meant to constitute a dog pulled her along the sidewalk at a pace she couldn’t truly keep up with, “I told you to slow down!”

The dog did no such thing, simply racing around until it ran out of energy, which meant that the very same could then also be said of Ava herself. Relieved to be able to rest now that the dog—she knew its name had been written somewhere, but she couldn’t remember it in that moment—was tuckered out, she returned to the home where she was now staying to care for them, only to find the place a mess.

The cat—whose name also escaped her just then—trotted past as if it were an innocent little thing, but either it had been bouncing around on the walls or the place had been broken into and ransacked. Ava was given more towards assuming the former.

The best she could do was to lock the cat in the bathroom for now, going to try to start cleaning, only to find the dog staring sadly up at her as its bed seemed to have been used as the cat’s scratching post. It wasn’t fully destroyed, but that didn’t seem to matter to the dog. This was no state for its sleeping spot to be in.

Ava didn’t have any sewing skills—or for all she knew, access to any tools—so after standing around dejectedly for a moment, she dug around in the junk drawer she had found and used duct tape to close up all the tears. At home, she would have had her mom find someone to repair it—or would simply replace it—so she was quite proud of her work.

It took hours, though, for her to get everything cleaned up and fixed around the house—as much as she could as an amateur—and by the end, all she wanted was to collapse to sleep without even having dinner.

Yet no, she had to at least get the animals fed, and so she went to let the cat out of the bathroom where it had been meowing non-stop, and found the bathroom in the same state as the whole house had been earlier.

Ava dragged herself to feed the animals as instructed, and then dragged herself back to the bathroom to get that cleaned and put back together as well.

The job she had taken was for a full week, and those seven days were a constant cycle of running herself ragged trying to keep the house in order and then picking it back up when inevitably one of the animals got past her.
In the end, Ava was quite certain that the cat—whose name she had still not bothered to learn—was pure evil incarnate. How else was she meant to understand any of its actions? The dog, on the other hand, was simply too large for its own good and shed like it wasn’t truly a fan of its large coat. Yet it never seemed to even make a dent.

The older woman who had hired her didn’t seem particularly like the understanding type, and so, shortly before she was meant to be back, Ava snuck out of the house so that she wouldn’t have to actually be confronted by her.