Bird Box

two

It is nine months before the children are born. Malorie lives with her sister, Shannon, in a modest rental neither of them has decorated. They moved in three weeks ago, despite their friend’s concerns. Malorie and Shannon are both popular, intelligent women but in each other’s company they have a tendency to become unglued, as shown the very day they carried their boxes inside.

“I was thinking it makes more sense for me to have the bigger bedroom,” Shannon said, standing on the second-floor landing. “Seeing as I’ve got the bigger dresser.”

“Oh, come on,” Malorie responded, holding a milk crate of unread books. “That room has a better window.”

The sisters debated this for a long time, both wary of proving their friends and family right by erupting in an argument on their first afternoon. Eventually, Malorie agreed to a coin toss, which ended in Shannon’s favor, an event Malorie still believes was somehow fixed.

Now, today, Malorie is not thinking about the little things her sister does that drive her batty. She is not quietly cleaning up after Shannon, closing cabinet doors, following her trail of sweaters and socks through the halls. She is not huffing, passively, shaking her head as she runs the dishwasher or slides one of Shannon’s unpacked boxes from the center of the living room, where it’s in both of their way. Instead, she is standing before the mirror in the first-floor bathroom, where she is naked, as she studies her belly in the glass.

You’ve missed a period before, she tells herself. But this is hardly consolation, because she has been anxious for weeks now, knowing she should have been safer with Henry Martin.

Her black hair hangs to her shoulders. Her lips curl down in a curious frown. She places her hands on her flat belly and nods slowly. No matter how she explains herself, she feels pregnant.

“Malorie!” Shannon calls from the living room. “What are you doing in there?”

Malorie does not respond. She turns sideways and tilts her head. Her blue eyes look gray in the pale light of the bathroom. She plants a palm on the sink’s pink linoleum and arches her back. She is trying to make her belly skinnier, as if this might prove there could be no little life within it.

“Malorie!” Shannon calls again. “There’s another report on television! Something happened in Alaska.”

Malorie hears her sister, but what’s going on in the outside world doesn’t matter much to her right now.

In recent days, the Internet has blown up with a story people are calling “the Russia Report.” In it, a man who was riding in the passenger seat of a truck driving along a snowy highway outside St. Petersburg asked his friend, who was driving, to pull over and then attacked him, removing his lips with his fingernails. Then he took his own life in the snow, using a table saw from the truck bed. A grisly story, but one whose notoriety Malorie attributes to the seemingly senseless way the Internet has of making random occurrences famous. But then, a second story appeared. Similar circumstances. This time in Yakutsk, some five thousand miles east of St. Petersburg. There, a mother, by all accounts “stable,” buried her children alive in the family’s garden before taking her own life with the jagged edges of broken dishes. And a third story, in Omsk, Russia, nearly two thousand miles southeast of St. Petersburg, sprouted online and quickly became one of the most discussed topics on all social media sites. This time there was video footage. For as long as she could, Malorie had watched a man wielding an axe, his beard red with blood, trying to attack the unseen man who filmed him. Eventually, he succeeded. But Malorie didn’t see that part. She tried not to follow any more on the subject at all. But Shannon, always more dramatic, insisted on relaying the frightening news.

“Alaska,” Shannon repeats, through the bathroom door. “That’s America, Malorie!”

Shannon’s blond hair betrays their mother’s Finnish roots. Malorie looks more like her father: strong, deep-set eyes and the smooth fair skin of a northerner. Having been raised in the Upper Peninsula, both dreamed of living downstate, near Detroit, where they imagined there were parties, concerts, job opportunities, and men in abundance.

This last item hadn’t proved fruitful for Malorie until she met Henry Martin.

“Holy shit,” Shannon hollers. “There might have been something in Canada, too. This is serious stuff, Malorie. What are you doing in there?”

Malorie turns the faucet on and lets the cool water run over her fingers. She splashes some on her face. Looking up into the mirror, she thinks of her parents, still in the Upper Peninsula. They haven’t heard of Henry Martin. She hasn’t even spoken to him since their one night. Yet, here she is, probably tied to him forever.

Suddenly the bathroom door opens. Malorie reaches for a towel.

“Jeez, Shannon.”

“Did you hear me, Malorie? The story is everywhere. People are starting to say it’s related to seeing something. Isn’t that strange? I just heard CNN say it’s the one constant in all the incidents. That the victims saw something before attacking people and taking their own lives. Can you believe this? Can you?”

Malorie turns slowly to her sister. Her face carries no expression.

“Hey, are you all right, Malorie? You don’t look so good.”

Malorie starts crying. She bites her lower lip. She has grabbed the towel but has yet to cover herself. She is still standing before the mirror as if examining her naked belly. Shannon notices this.

“Oh shit,” Shannon says. “Are you worried that you’re—”

Malorie is already nodding. The sisters step to each other in the pink bathroom and Shannon holds Malorie, patting the back of her black hair, soothing her.

“Okay,” she says. “Let’s not freak out. Let’s go get a test. That’s what people do. Okay? Don’t worry. I’ll bet you more than half the people who get tests wind up not being pregnant.”

Malorie doesn’t respond. She only sighs deeply.

“Okay,” Shannon says. “Let’s go.”