With this, the room goes silent. Or as silent as can be. The phones ring. The machines in the copy room make their clicking hums. But the people are still. And when she looks up, she sees him—Peter Darrow, standing by his office with his hockey stick on his shoulders, his hands hanging on to the ends. Though it’s subtle, he’s smiling.
She turns back to Miller, now thinking of his grandmother and the peace on her face.
“You’re not the only one who got a picture of someone dying. I got one too. Only he was being killed. Stabbed. Over and over. By soldiers. And even though they could’ve seen me, I got the shot. I got a whole roll of shots, and you know what? There is nothing about this contest that was worth handing over the end of someone I loved’s life to be hung on a fucking wall. So maybe you’re right, and you are a better photographer, since you had no problem doing just that.”
CHAPTER 19
Nobody said she was fired, but through the chaotic hush of the bullpen, she understood it to be true. “Everyone, back to work,” one of the voices from upstairs yelled, and she casually sat and gathered her things. Faces turned toward her. People leaned in to each other. Theories whispered. The girls she was friendly with gave worried smiles. What she had done was not to be done. A transgression. A story they’d tell later. Though most everything, Olivia knew, would be explained as her losing it. Which was fine. Maybe she had lost it—some tie to who she’d been, a hook around her waist.
She pushes her way through a muggy heat to her car. Drives home with her knit purse beside her, stuffed with what few personal belongings she’d had at her desk: a couple of framed photos, her Parker’s pens, the green Trapper Keeper with her favorite photos. Though she knows she didn’t win the contest, she now understands she blew it. Right at the verge. With a connection, someone to help and possibly mentor her. Right then, she slipped. She’d found her voice at the one moment that demanded silence. But when she imagines not having said something, she knows it wasn’t an option. Not anymore. No more muddy coffee as a retort. No more itching, silent screams.
At a stoplight, she looks up at the gray sky and sees it—a massive flock of birds moving together as one. Expanding and contracting as they shift midflight, circling and diving and turning and twisting like fire. A dance. A dance in which not one bird is out of step.
Behind her, a car honks. Without thinking, she pulls over to the busy shoulder, parks in the red, and gets out. The air has sprung to a light drizzle, haphazard and pulling. She leans against the hood and feels the mist on her face as she looks up. A murmuration. This is what Hewar talked about with starlings, what Delan translated. We’re talking thousands of birds, and not one bird leading. All synchronized but without a leader. Because each one connects, really connects, to its neighbors, to the ones around them. And with that, thousands move as one.
A movement so great, created so small. It’s incredible. She feels it within her, a vibration of hope, and turns, wanting to share this moment with someone, but red brake lights line the road and people stare straight ahead, just trying to get through. Her eyes continue to search the street because it makes her sad, to be in this alone. But then she sees one other person on the corner. A teenager with his hand on a telephone booth and a backpack forgotten at his feet. He holds on to the booth as if for balance as he looks up. Maybe he feels her watching him, because after a moment, he turns toward her and nods. I see it too.
And she smiles and looks back at the sky.
Later, she will call Peter Darrow and ask if he’d be interested in publishing one of her photos, the one during the raid. She will tell him she wants the world to know what happened, even just on that one night, in that one small part of the world. And he will, and the photo will help her land the job he sets her up for at a competing paper. And after years as a photographer there, she will be driving on a cloudy day from an assignment, wanting to get home to her family, but will be fascinated by a sky that’s gone oddly dark and light at once. A confluence. Something underestimated that’s found its power. And she will remember this day with the birds in the sky, that sometimes you must stop and look up because magic exists whether you see it or not, and it’s so much better to get the glimpse. And so she will. She will be peering up when a cloudy hook lowers. Immediately, she will have her camera and snap photos but then will stop and simply watch with her Nikon at her side. A rare F2 tornado that touches down in Los Angeles. How did you get that shot? her editor will ask, and she won’t tell him that there were better shots she could’ve gotten but didn’t because she was too busy feeling the wind and the electricity in the air and that strange haunting alchemy from the sky.
And she will also think of this day in only a few months, when she’s in her room upstairs getting ready for work and through the window sees a string of birds in the sky. Just a handful. But in midair they meet another string and join together, taking a new shape, and she knows that at some point, someone else
