17. Delia
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DELIA
The couch is too soft.
I sit at the far end of it anyway, because my knees burn and standing is a pride I can no longer afford.
The shower and borrowed clothes helped. The bandages helped less, mostly because they make the damage look neat, as if the problem was the bleeding and not the hands that put me on the chapel floor in the first place.
Reva sits several feet away with a mug of coffee between both hands and the remote balanced on her thigh. She left space between us on purpose.
I noticed that.
The orange cat has no such manners. He climbs onto the cushion between us, tests my leg with one paw, then steps carefully into my lap as if I invited him. His weight hurts my knees. His purr starts almost immediately, though, and I let him stay. Something about him is healing.
Reva watches him settle.
“He’s kind of rude, sorry,” she says. She doesn’t sound sorry.
“So are you.”
Her mouth moves, a small almost-smile that disappears before it can become anything real. She turns toward the television, scrolling through horror movies. Masked men. Haunted houses. Blood-streaked girls looking over their shoulders.
“Do you still like scary movies?” she asks.
The question is ordinary enough to hurt.
Dad used to watch them with us on the couch, even as little as we were, one arm around the popcorn bowl, one hand ready to cover our eyes ten seconds too late.
Reva always screamed first, then accused me of screaming louder.
I always denied it because I was older by minutes and believed that meant something.
I pet the cat because looking at my hands is easier than looking at her.
“I grew out of liking things where girls scream and no one comes.”
Reva’s thumb stills on the remote. She doesn’t apologize, though. Which is better.
Instead she says quietly, “When I got old enough to figure it out, I learned that I liked horror movies because the ones I was drawn to were actually deeply feminist. The ones I dismissed—the ones I did not like—were misogynist and just the opposite. But the others? The final girl, the monstrous feminine, how so many provide a way to help the viewer process trauma…I like that.”
“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.
Reva presses Play.