Greta is buckling the strap around her upper arm.
“I’ll do this part, and Susan can do the injection,” she says calmly. Mybig sister. My rock. Giving her life for Bella. And I’ve spent the last five days thinking all kinds of things about her.
Greta sits back down. Her bag is hanging off the back of the chair and it slips to the floor now with a thud. She picks it up and puts it on her lap. She looks at me. Her eyes are trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what. Am I supposed to do it a certain way? Not do it? Fake do it? Is that even possible? Not with Venetia watching us. What is she trying to say? I stare back. Maybe she’s just saying goodbye.
Greta coughs, a heavy, chesty cough, covering her mouth, closing her eyes.
“Take the syringe now, Susan, and off you go.” There is glee in Venetia’s voice.
Greta opens her eyes again and nods at me. This can’t be happening. I meet her eyes. They bloom with tears. In all my life, even when our mother died, I’ve never seen Greta cry.
One last time, I try Venetia. “Please?”
“No. An eye for an eye.” In her arms, Bella whimpers.
I pick up the syringe.
102
Susan
Thursday
The syringe feels like nothing. It should feel cold or hot or heavy, something to signify the power it holds, but it doesn’t. It’s light and nothingy. My hand shakes as I inch the tip of the needle toward my sister’s vein. She closes her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and push the syringe, flooding her blood with poison.
To my horror, it’s instantaneous. She slips sideways on the chair, then down. Her prone figure on my kitchen floor. In seconds, it’s over. And all because of a text.
“It’s done,” I sob, turning to Venetia, willing myself to stay upright, to hold myself together. “Give me Bella.”
She smirks. “You know, I don’t think I will.”
She’s high on power, deranged. The most dangerous kind of anger, and it’s terrifying.
“Please.” I reach for Bella, but she jerks her out of the way. She still has the knife in her other hand. With her elbow, she pushes down the handle of the back door.
“I’ll keep her until I get bored.” She says it nonchalantly. Then her voice hardens. “Follow me and I’ll cut her.”
“Venetia, the police will come. I know where you live, who you are.”
“You think I’m going back there?”
And then she’s gone.
Frozen for a second, I stand in my kitchen. Bella or Greta? I shout at Greta’s prone body to wake up, to find my phone, to call the police, but even as I shout I’m already running out the back door, away from her. Toward Bella. Letting Greta down again, leaving her dying on the floor. But I know who she’d want me to choose.
I race around the side passage to the front of the house. No movement, no sound. Where has she gone? Then out on the street, an engine revs. Lights. A car screeching away from the curb.
Venetia. She has Bella, and she’s driving away.
Panicked, sick, not stopping to think, I start to run. She’s driving down Oakpark, weaving between parked cars, and I’m running, panting, crying, screaming Bella’s name. Blinded by tears, I keep running, following her tail lights. I have to get her. I have to get Bella. I need the police. Why isn’t anyone helping? Why can’t my neighbors see me running, screaming, past their houses? They’re not here, I remember now, as music from a distant speaker wafts up from the green. My neighbors are at the summer party and Venetia is heading for the main road, and Bella, oh my god, I have to do something. That’s when I hear it. A bang. A crunch of metal on metal. The tail lights have stopped moving. Did she crash into something? I keep running. My ankle goes from under me, pain rips through me. I’m limping, slower, but I can’t stop. Closer now, and hard to see in the falling dusk, but there’s another car. Blocking her way. The bang. Did she drive into the other car? Bella. Oh my god. I keep running.
103
Venetia
Thursday
