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Rachel is a flat tiny movie inside of Helena’s sniper scope, and Sarah is the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs, and this makes Helena the only real person in the world. Her finger is real, sweaty on the sniper scope. Her name is real, because Sarah keeps calling it. Her eyes are real, blinking, wiping Rachel out and remaking her again and again.
“Hello, sestra,” she says.
“Helena,” Sarah says, “what are you doing.”
“Come see,” Helena says, instead of answering. Behind her she can hear Sarah talking to Detective-Art-Bell, I got it, go home, just go home, Art, it’s fine. Footsteps leave. Sarah’s footsteps come closer.
“Rachel,” she says.
“Yes.” Helena prods her binoculars with her toe. “Look.”
Sarah holds the binoculars up to her eyes and looks. Helena watches her knuckles twist and tighten around the cones, and then she looks through the sniper scope so they’re watching the same movie. Rachel writhes all over Paul, mouth painted and open and glossyred. This movie is boring. Helena thinks she’ll like the ending, though.
Next to her, Sarah is very very quiet. “Paul is unfaithful,” Helena says.
“Yeah,” Sarah says. “I can see that.” She goes back to being quiet. She hasn’t put the binoculars down. The air is very strange when it’s this quiet. Helena waits for Sarah to tell her to stop and Sarah keeps on not telling her to stop.
“Sarah,” Helena says, and she stops. And she opens her mouth. And she closes it. And she says, slowly: “Can I kill her now.”
Sarah fingers twist and twist over the binoculars. She doesn’t put them down. That’s fine: Helena has never asked someone if she could kill one of the copies, before, and the delight of it is shivering through her chest. She can wait. She strokes the trigger with the tip of her finger and imagines the delight of it, how good it will be when Sarah tells her yes or no.
“Swan Man,” Sarah says, and she puts the binoculars down. “Art said you knew – that man, the one in the photograph.”
“I know him,” Helena says, confused by the change in subject. “He is hiding far away, but Maggie found him.”
Sarah looks through the binoculars again. Helena doesn’t know why – Rachel hasn’t suddenly become interesting. “But you could find him,” Sarah says.
“Yes.”
“They put Felix in jail,” Sarah says, and Helena can’t read her face behind the binoculars. “We can barter with Leekie for him but I have to have something, got it? And it has to be fast, before he—” She stops. Helena’s heart tells her the end of the sentence and then starts pounding, faster, faster.
“I can be fast,” she says. “I can find him for you, very fast. For your brother-sestra. I can do this.”
“We,” Sarah says absentmindedly, and she lowers the binoculars and looks at Helena. “If we do this, we do this together. You got it?”
“Yes,” Helena says, finger trembling nervous on the trigger. She’s never been nervous, but the other deaths have never mattered. Not like this one. Not the way it could matter, if Sarah let it, if Sarah let her.
“We can leave right after,” Helena says. “I have a bike. We can drive and find Swan Man right now, before anyone even knows.”
Sarah stares at her, eyes sad and spilling guilt all down her face and body, arms and hands. “Just this once,” she says.
“I know.”
“Just this one time,” Sarah says.
“Only once,” Helena says. “One last time. Because she wants to hurt you, and Kira, and all of the others, and Felix, and your family, and everyone you love. Just once. Then I will stop, for you.”
“For me,” Sarah says, like it’s a question.
“Yes,” Helena says, not like a question at all.
Sarah drops the binoculars down around her neck. “Why,” she says. “I shot you, Helena. I killed you, I – I thought I killed you, I—” Binoculars twining around her neck like a noose-rope. Helena wishes Sarah would let her take the shot now, and cry afterwards. Eventually Rachel is going to get bored with Paul and then she’ll move and then it will all be ruined, all of it, but even as her mind is thinking about that she is mostly thinking about Sarah crying. Which is the answer to Sarah’s question, if Sarah could crawl into Helena’s head and know it.
“You’re family,” Helena says, which she hopes is enough.
“Helena,” Sarah says, and in the breath after the a Helena can hear the place where Sarah will say I love you.
“Sarah,” she says.
“Pull the trigger,” Sarah says, and Helena sucks in a breath as disappointment and wonder and love and sadness all wrestle each other inside of her chest.
“Okay,” she says. She tilts her head to the side. “Do you want to see it.”
“No,” Sarah says, and she rubs her hands up and down her arms like she’s cold. “I’m gonna – I’ll meet you downstairs, yeah?”
No, Helena says. Stay. I’ll only do it if you stay. I’m only doing this because of you, you get to see it, you get to watch me try to do something beautiful for you.
“Downstairs,” she says, and leans in close to the sniper scope. Sarah’s footsteps vanish down the stairs, faster than when she came in. Helena imagines it: Sarah running down the stairs, shivering even though it’s not that cold (Helena pulls the trigger), strands of hair flying around her face, trying to think through the knot of guilt that’s suddenly replaced her heart. She might not know how to feel about it – does she feel bad, because (Helena pulls the trigger again) Rachel was a person? Does she feel bad because she didn’t want Helena to be this anymore? (Helena breaks the gun down and puts it in her bag, piece by piece) Does it feel good? Is she happy? Does she feel safe, now that Rachel is gone?
Sarah steps outside, into the open air outside of the building. (Helena drags the chair back and wipes the fingerprints from everything) Her breath plumes. She looks at Helena’s bike. She drags it back to two wheels again and she shivers and she looks left and right (Helena runs for the stairs) for police that aren’t going to come. She stomps her feet on the ground. She’s hungry—
—or at least Helena is guessing that she’s hungry, but maybe that’s just because Helena is always hungry—
—and it feels terrible to want a burger right now but she does. (Down down down the stairs) She runs a hand through her hair. She does it again. She twitches her fingers. Helena is taking a long time (out the door into the night
and Sarah isn’t standing by the motorbike at all, she’s leaning up against the wall of an alley nearby. The bike is still lying on its side. She hasn’t touched it.
“I did it,” Helena says. Sarah doesn’t say anything. She breathes out, and in, and then she reaches for Helena’s hands and squeezes them. There isn’t gunpowder on them, Helena could say, but she doesn’t know if that would make Sarah feel better. Maybe it would make her feel worse. She squeezes back.
Sarah laughs, once, hysterical and high. “Let’s go,” she says. “Fast.”
“We will find Swan Man,” Helena says. “And you will be safe.”
Sarah swallows, and considers, and says: “Thank you.” The words land heavy. Helena knows what they mean; Helena knows just what they mean.
“Of course,” she says. “Always. If you wanted it.”
“I don’t,” Sarah says, shaking her head. “Last time.”
“But if you wanted it,” Helena says. “I would.”
“Of course you would,” Sarah says, and she pulls her hood up over her head, and she goes to put Helena’s bike back on two wheels again.