Page 105 of The Final Cut

“Ellen Ripley.”

“Fucking yessss.”

The movie menu glows blue across the room. One of the previews starts without sound, a girl in a white nightgown walking down a hallway she should know better than to enter. The sight pulls too much from places I keep locked.

Isabel telling me grief was indulgent.

Isabel telling me dead girls should be buried properly, even in the mind.

Isabel watching while I cried and then having someone else punished for comforting me.

I learned quickly after that. Tears meant more laps, more kneeling, more time holding my arms out until my shoulders shook and my fingers went numb. Questions about Reva meant someone else suffered while I watched. A maid transferred. A driver beaten. A boy in the training room made to stand until his legs gave out because he had been kind to me the day before.

I was nine the last time I asked for my sister out loud.

I didn’t ask after that.

‘Nana’ vanished before I turned ten. Isabel remained. Isabel with her perfect hair, her deadly pearls, her red nails that would tap once against the table when I disappointed her.

She was la jefa.

The boss.

The chosen one does not get comfort. The chosen one gets watched. Shaped. Cut into something useful.

And I did become useful. I was her bargaining chip. I’m pretty sure she had arranged an alliance for me with another cartel.

Reva scrolls back to an older movie. “Dad liked this one.”

I look up before I mean to.

She keeps her eyes on the screen. “The original.”

“I remember.”

The words are small, and they make something in her face loosen.

For a while, we watch the silent preview. The girl reaches a door. The camera creeps closer. The music would be swelling if the sound were on.

Reva says, very quietly, “I’m going to kill Isabel.”

The cat purrs under my hand.

Reva does not look at me when she says it. She looks at the screen, at the wrong door opening again and again, as if that is safer than watching my face.

I wait a moment, then nudge her foot with mine.

She turns. Her eyes look too much like mine. It’s like looking in the mirror, only a slightly skewed one.

“Do you have a plan?” I ask.

Her throat moves. “Not yet.”

I stroke the cat once more, slowly, so my hand does not curl into a fist. My knees ache. My wrists pulse. Somewhere in this house, Deacon is bleeding because he came for me. Somewhere in the city, Isabel is learning she has lost control of one more girl than the one she had planned.

I look back at the television, where the girl on-screen opens the door. The room stays quiet for a long time.

“I’m going to help you kill her,” I finally say.