Chapter 2

"So, Emily, are you and Jessica both aiming for the top spot tomorrow?" Mark, another writer, leaned over from his desk, a smirk on his face. "Sibling rivalry, huh?"

My stomach tightened.

Jessica.

Of course. She was here too.

She'd followed me to Visionary Films a few months after I started, a move that had surprised everyone. Jessica had always been about fashion, about being seen, not about the solitary grind of screenwriting.

Or so I thought.

The memory of her, small and fragile in the hospital incubator, flickered in my mind.

She was born silent, not crying like the other babies.

Mom fretted, convinced it was bad luck, some dark omen.

She'd found a street psychic, some woman with a stall near Venice Beach, who'd looked not at baby Jessica, but at me.

I was six then.

"Her star sign," the woman had declared, pointing a bejeweled finger at me, "it clashes with the baby's. She'll drain the little one's luck, her vitality. If they stay close, the younger one might not see thirty."

Thirty. Not twenty-five, like in some old tales. Thirty felt more modern, more LA.

My parents, always leaning towards the dramatic, latched onto it.

From then on, I was the problem. The bad influence.

They shipped me off to Grandma Rose's place in Arizona. A small, quiet town where the biggest excitement was the weekly farmers market.

Grandma Rose never believed that nonsense. She gave me love, stability. A real home.

I tried, when I was younger, to bridge the gap with Jessica during my rare, awkward visits back to LA.

I remember once, I brought her my favorite, slightly worn, plush rabbit.

Her room was a palace of new, expensive dolls, spilling off shelves.

She looked at my rabbit, then at me, a small, calculating smile on her face.

Then she deliberately knocked over a tower of blocks she'd been building and burst into tears.

Mom and Dad rushed in.

They saw Jessica crying, the toppled blocks. They saw me standing there, holding my rabbit.

Mom didn't even ask. Her hand flew out, and the slap echoed in the too-perfect room.

My ear rang. I tasted blood.

That was the moment I knew. Jessica and I... we were oil and water. Or maybe fire and gasoline.

Years later, after college, my parents suddenly wanted me back in LA.

"For family," Mom had said, her voice syrupy sweet over the phone. "We miss you. Jessica misses her big sister."

I, starved for any crumb of parental approval, had packed my bags.

Now, sitting at my desk, the past felt like a vise, squeezing the air from my lungs.

Jessica wasn't just my sister.

She was the architect of my downfall.

And I had no idea how she did it.

My computer was clean. No viruses, no spyware. I'd had it checked by experts after the first... incident.

My paper notes, my scribbled ideas – I guarded them like treasure.

Yet, she always knew.

Always one step ahead.

Or rather, one submission ahead.