Izabel
Regret? Never. I have come a long way since the last time I was here, in this place, in this nightmare, in this hell. I’m a different person. Sarai no longer exists except in Naeva’s memory; this girl, sitting here now on the dirt floor, hands bound in front of her, blood in her hair and in her mouth, she is a different kind of victim, the most dangerous kind; she’s the kind that’s shaped and molded by her torturers, not broken by them, into the stuff of nightmares. I left Mexico as Sarai, and came back as Izabel. And once I have what I came here to get, I will kill them all.
I hear footfalls in the hallway outside the door. Voices. The shuffling of clothing. But they don’t come into the room, and the sounds fade as they get farther away.
Naeva breathes a sigh of relief.
I breathe a sigh of disappointment.
I don’t know where the sound of water is coming from, but it’s a steady trickle; a leaky pipe, perhaps.
“I never thought I’d be here again,” Naeva says, sitting next to me. “Definitely not on purpose.”
I stare at the dim wedge of light underneath the door; her voice is sharp, distinct in my ear, but my thoughts eclipse it.
“I don’t regret it, though. And I’d do it a hundred times if I had to. For Leo.”
Breaking from my thoughts, I look over at her.
“You really love him.”
She nods, smiles faintly; I can tell whenever I look at her, whenever she talks about this man, that he’s the only thing in the world that makes her smiles real.
I think of Victor. I love him, and I always will. But I’m not smiling, so I look away from her, finding the light underneath the door less competitive.
I don’t know what time it is, but I’m going to say it’s 1:00 a.m. We’ve been locked in this room for more than an hour, and not one person has come to talk to us, or beat us, or even to check on us. Not that they really need to, seeing as how there are no windows, and the only way in or out is the door; I’m sure there are men guarding in the hallway somewhere. And in addition to our bound hands, there’s rope tied around our ankles. Pressing my hands into the dirt behind me, I try to adjust my position. I lean my head against the wall and fall asleep.
I must’ve slept an hour. Still, no one has entered the room. I need to pee.
“I don’t know how you can sleep through any of this?” Naeva says.
“Have to sometime.”
“I tried, but my mind won’t stop racing.”
“How are you going to find this Leo,” I say, “while you’re locked in here with me? How do you even know where he is, if he’s even still alive?”
“He’s alive.”
“How do you know?”
“The same way you know we’re in the right place.” She sighs thoughtfully. “And because I feel it. I feel him. I would know it if he was dead.”
“Then how do you plan to find him?” I repeat.
We had no opportunity to discuss these things when we left Arizona with Ray. Too many ears listening. Too many eyes watching.
She pauses and then answers, “I won’t have to find him—he’ll find me as soon as he knows I’m here.”
I can’t lie and say I’m not curious about how she plans to pull this off, but I’m too focused on my own plans to cater too much to hers right now. My plans that have been seriously altered because I brought her with me. Alone would’ve been so much easier. Now, I have her to worry about. I couldn’t live with myself if I just set her free into the belly of this beast and never looked back. No, she’s my responsibility. But more than that, she’s my friend.
“Is that really how you know?” she asks. “That you’re in the right place—can you just sense it? Can’t really see much in this tiny room, so it can’t be anything visual. Unless you saw something familiar on our way in. I didn’t see anything familiar. Or anyone. Oh, that’s right—you killed them all.” She laughs shortly under her breath.
I fake-smile a little in the darkness. Killed them all? No, not all of them…
“To be fair,” I say, “I had a lot of help the last time I was here. I didn’t pull it off myself.” I glance over. “But how I know we’re in one of the Ruiz compounds is that I secured a ride with a coyote who’d take me through the Ruiz territory. Here, all roads lead to the Ruiz compounds. And yeah, I can kinda feel it, too.”
“I wonder how many are left?” Naeva says.
“Compounds? All of them are always still there. But family members of Javier who run the compounds? That’s a good question.”
“Are you sure you don’t need me to help you?” she asks.
“No,” I answer right away. “We’re both here together, but once we leave this room, we’re on different paths.”
Naeva sits with her knees pressed together, her legs drawn beneath her, inches from me; I see her face just barely in the windowless room, and I wonder how I can see her at all with only the tiny light underneath the door. She looks so frail sitting there, like a little egg…like Huevito. I’ve been trying to tell myself since we left that I can’t stray from my plan to help her, that she’s strong enough to handle it on her own, but…who the hell am I kidding?
My hands bound, I raise myself from the wall and peer through the darkness at her. “Listen to me, Naeva,” I say with determination. “When—not if—we get separated, I want you to know that I won’t leave you here; no matter what my plans are, I’ll get you out of here. OK?”
Naeva smiles, and then nods. “I never thought you would leave me here anyway,” she says. “Not that I was counting on it, or taking advantage, but I just knew.” She scoots over to sit closer, our shoulders touching. “And I’ll do the same for you.”
Unfortunately, I knew that about her, too. And that’s what worries me the most. I don’t want her risking herself for me, but I know she will anyway. We may not have ever really known each other, we may have only spoken a few words to one another before she came to me the night we left, but because we were both slaves to the same people, our bond as sisters is as strong as a bond between two women who’ve known each other their whole lives.
No matter our individual plans, Naeva and I are in this together, so it’s probably better we start acting like it.
“Tell me about Leo,” I offer.
She raises her head from my shoulder; her eyes are radiant, eager, filled with…what I wish mine were filled with when I talk about Victor.
“What do you want to know?”
I glance around the dark, dank, room. “Everything,” I say. “What else do we have to do to pass the time?”
Naeva sits up fully next to me, using the wall to balance her. I adjust, making myself more comfortable for what I know will be a long story.
And it certainly turns out to be. Naeva talks throughout the night, hours and hours, through hunger and thirst, and my painful need to pee. But the story helps me forget all of that stuff, and my heart breaks for her and bursts for her and does things I didn’t know it could do for another person. And after her story is over as night becomes day, I finally understand her. And I understand myself. I understand why I’m so envious of her relationship with Leo Moreno: because theirs was a love built on trust, and because I hate myself for lying to Victor since I’ve known him.
“Our love was born of breath and bone,” she says longingly of Leo. “That’s what he told me once: ‘God breathed life back into my bones when I met you’, he’d said.” She looks away from me, perhaps trying to hide the tears glistening in the corners of her eyes.
“Your turn,” she says then, changing the subject. “Tell me how you met my brother.”
I start to pass on the chance—talking about how I met Victor is the last thing I want right now—until I hear voices and footsteps coming down the hallway, the first I’ve heard since before 1:00 a.m., and we turn immediately to watch the door.
“They’re going to come in this time,” I whisper, staring at the light underneath the door as it moves. I turn swiftly to look at Naeva. “Remember what I said—I won’t leave you.”
Naeva nods; she’s afraid this time, I can see it, although faint, in her eyes. Be strong, Huevito. Be strong.