My terrible life decision had allowed me the lay of the couch, as Maya took the armchair and Taylor the floor. The vantages were poetic, considering the armchair was the highest seat in the living room, where Maya spewed well meaning insults supposed to channel my brain back into moral pursuits. Meanwhile from the floor, Taylor was the devil on my shoulder encouraging my baser desires for revenge over four years of coming in second place.

As fun as it was for the conversation to carry over for hours, we all had quite a lot of work to do and eventually we transitioned into half hour blocks, alternating between working on our school assignments and more discussions. The pros and cons of having agreed with Gabe to stick to the deal again were near equal. Even if the cons pulled ahead, the fact of the matter was that we'd had the conversation again and agreed to proceed as though I'd never quit.

And when he hadn't believed me I pulled out the little contract we'd signed and stamped my thumbprint on it.

Whether Maya liked it or not, I was all in and I'd never felt more alive.

The angel on my shoulder sighed and paused from typing up her report. "How are we even friends? I shouldn't hang out with terrible people like y'all."

"You probably want to save our souls, that's why," Taylor responded without even glancing up.

"Maybe you're already lost," she murmured loud enough that we heard her crystal clear.

My fingers were a blur as I typed up some answers for a class. This semester was pretty easy, except for the design project, which had almost demotivated me. I had renewed energy now, though. Victory was not yet upon my lips but I could almost taste it. I was going to ace school, get my full time position and say goodbye to Gabriel Cabrera in the most spectacular fashion. A senior year to remember.

"There's nothing wrong with quitting twice," Maya continued, setting aside her laptop. This had become the universal sign that another lecture was coming and automatically Taylor and I also put ours to sleep. "In fact, in this particular case this is the right thing to do."

Taylor shrugged. "You know what they say, just because you can doesn't mean you should and all that."

I almost laughed but the way Maya's dark eyes blazed stopped me from doing that.

"Pretty sure this isn't the kind of situation that saying applies for." After one last sour glance at her, my roommate's attention fell back on me. "Think about it. You felt really bad after you said those shitty things to him and felt a lot better when you apologized, right? Imagine how terrible you'll feel after you succeed in breaking his heart."

My other friend snapped her fingers. "Ah hah! So you admit that Cata does stand a chance to succeed."

"Well, yeah. She's hot and Gabe's a man whore, he won't resist her for long." Maya said it like that was not the point at all, even though the words revealed brand new information for me. "In fact, this is where that saying applies. Just because Cata can break Gabe's heart, it doesn't mean she should. That kind of thing comes back around like a boomerang."

"You think I'm hot?" I asked, pointing at myself.

"Yes," Maya said while waving her hand. "And the sky is blue and the grass is green. Are you hearing what I'm saying?"

I'd spent the whole afternoon being a little shit and why stop now? So I replied with, "Wow, typically people say that Cora is the hot twin."

"You just need a little bit of makeup and some skimpy dresses to be on the same level." Taylor clapped her hands so hard the sound echoed in the living room. "This calls for a makeover!"

"No, this calls for Jesus!" Maya threw her hands up, which ended sliding down her face.

At that point I couldn't help laughing. Unfortunately there was a lesson I had to learn and that was the fact that invariably, every time I enjoyed myself something had to come along to knock me down another peg. My phone buzzed with such abandon that it trekked from the couch and all the way off of it. The clatter against the floor was in fact what alerted me to the incoming phone call.

My mirth died away with the certainty that it was mami. I wished our conversations could be just about us, that we could pretend the world was smaller and simpler. That she had no hardships with food shortages, blackouts and the crippling insecurity that made her fear for her life and papi's and Cora's even in the comfort of their own bedrooms. That I hadn't ran away from all that and left them behind. That I hadn't ran away from Carlos's memory.

All of these thoughts rushed through my mind at once, bathing me in dread as I picked up. "Bendición?"

For the first time in my life, mami didn't respond with her typical Dios me la bendiga, instead a wail greeted me.

"Mami?" I shouted, sitting ramrod stiff. Even as my eyes focused on nothing I felt both of my friends stop at attention. "Mami, háblame por favor."

What she managed to squeeze out in between sobs was something along the lines of your stupid sister. My world ceased spinning as the implications of that sunk in.

Had something happened to Cora?

Was she still alive?

Should I feel something? Wasn't there supposed to be some magical fucking bond between twin sisters that would let them know when the other one was in danger? And yet I felt no tingling sensation at the back of my neck and though my stomach had sunk, it was because of the state mami was in. And she could only get like this over something really bad.

Suddenly I heard papi screaming in the background, he was too far from the phone for me to make out the words but the anger was unmistakable. He hadn't even reacted like this when Carlos died, which made me hope that a sequel to that catastrophe couldn't be possible.

Or could it? Cora was papi's favorite, after all.

"Qué pasa?" I insisted, repeating it until mami finally heard me.

Her answer was, "No puedo creer lo que tu hermana ha hecho."

Some relief allowed me to fill my lungs with air again. The fact that she said ha hecho instead of straight up hizo had to mean Cora was alive to tell the story.

"Everything okay?" Maya mouthed in front of me and I shook my head and mouthed back that I didn't know.

After much coercing, mami finally passed the phone to Cora and I slumped back on the couch. The confirmation that I still had one sibling had me feeling like I'd ran a full marathon and had just made it back home.

"Oh thank God, what happened?" I asked her.

Her sigh travelled through WhatsApp and all the way to my alarm center. It was the same one she released when she'd done something terrible but found everyone's reactions to it to be overboard.

Which was exactly how Maya felt about me now. But I shook my head to focus back on my sister's drama.

"I'm okay, if that's what you were wondering."

I bit my lips to hold back from telling her exactly what I'd been wondering. Instead I said, "Tell me what the big deal is."

"I went to a rally," she said. Cool, calm, collected unlike mom's wails in the background.

Okay. It wasn't the first time Cora went to a political rally, especially considering who her boyfriend was. Something made this time special, though.

"Did you get arrested?" I ventured to ask, since she wasn't offering any answers.

"No." I could almost hear her eye roll. "Nothing so bad."

"Then?"

After a long pause, only interrupted by papi screaming at mami to pull herself together and to Cora to not make our mother suffer so much, Cora gave another sigh and fessed up. "An opposition group met ours and things got violent. I got tossed around a bit, I tossed around in turn, we got tear gassed and water cannoned and yeah, my picture's in the newspaper."

"What?" I screeched. "Which newspaper?"

The little shit was proud as she recited which one. I kept her on hold as I searched for the website of our hometown's biggest newspaper, which had my stupid sister's face plastered all over the front page. She appeared with her pro-government t-shirt and a tricolor bandana around her forehead. Her muscles flexed as she threw a live tear gas can with her bare hands like a fucking pro-baseballer.

There were many things that ran through my head. The first one was that I hated that t-shirt. But up next was that she looked like an Amazon warrior in battle, which was no wonder why the photographer had plastered her image on the front page.

The next thing was that that was my face, too. She'd gone out there and put my face in front of the entire country, so anyone that saw me could be confused into thinking that I supported the system that led to my brother's death. I was so livid that my whole body shook the more I observed the picture.

And then I zeroed in on one important detail. She'd thrown the can with her bare hands. The same girl who did her manipedi routine every week with more dedication than going to church.

"You burned your hands," I said, my voice shaking with the barely contained desire to curse her out.

"It's a small sacrifice for the cause."

"What cause?" Finally giving into the rage, I screamed my throat raw at her. "The cause that probably is making it impossible for you to find medicines to treat your burns? Because surely it can't be the same cause that killed our brother."

"Fuck you!" she screamed back at me. "You don't get to pin his death on me! I'm not the one who told him to march straight into it."

I couldn't help it. That cut so deep that a sob burst out of my throat and tears followed suit. My friends jumped to their feet, heading over to comfort me but I didn't want any of it. I excused myself and locked my bedroom door with me inside.

"Tines razón," I bit out as I slid down the floor and wrapped my arms around my knees. "But you don't get to throw that at my face when you're risking your life alongside the people who saw fit to snuff his."

"That's not true, I was with my friends and they're not murderers." Her voice shook. I didn't know if she was crying, but I wanted her to be. I wanted her to suffer just like I was—which would never happen because Cora didn't understand the concept of being wrong. She reinforced this by saying, "What I did isn't wrong. I believe in the revolution. I believe that this is the way to pull the country out of its misery. Your friends up there in North America aren't the ones who will help us, it'll be us in the streets."

"No," I whispered. "You're wrong but I don't care about what you've bought into. All I care is that I don't lose you, too."

This broke through her shell of pride and patriotism. I heard her shut the door of our bedroom, the knockoff Barbie sign that said beauty sleep on one side and beautiful day on the other clattered against the wood. Finally she broke down, gasping for air as she cried over the phone, with the same distress mami had started the call with.

"It hurts," she whispered and my heart broke for her.

"I can try to ship over some first aid things."

"Bring them over," she said, sniffling. "Come visit. Stay for a bit. I miss you."

I missed her too, but my heart twisted with the knowledge that it wasn't enough to make me return. My hope was to never have to, to never again see the bridge over the lake, the palms and mesquite trees that lined the streets, to never again be in a procession for our Virgin Mary, La Chinita. To never taste the sweets the old women made that they sold with hot coffee from coolers in the blasting sun of Maracaibo. To never see my friends from school and miss their weddings, the births of their children.

All of that was to remain a memory of a different lifetime, a mirage of a timeline that I lost after Carlos passed away.

This was where I had to stay, where I had to be if I wanted to have a chance at growing old. But at that moment, as we wept together and apart at the same time, I worried that maybe she would never. That I'd selfishly saved myself and condemned her and our parents to an uncertain future.

Maybe I could ease their burden from afar? If I tightened my belt, I could save up enough to send them a box of food and medical essentials every couple of months and when I got the full time position, I could start sending them money. I could at least do that much.

"I can't," I finally said, even as the words hurt me more than her earlier ones had. "But I won't leave you alone. Ever. I promise."

I'd make certain of that.

Cata has so much internal baggage and a lot of it is survivor's guilt. Many immigrants suffer from it, and that's why she needs some chill, happy people around her like her friends and Gabe.

Are you excited to see how he starts to influence her life?