In Our Hollow Heart We Sing

CN: Includes themes of su*cide, grief, and loss

What the movies get wrong about high school is that it is, for the most part, incredibly boring. No lush gossip crews and bounding parties that rival a rave. Just classes and awkward texts, muted hang outs while you wait for the bus to take you home or to your after school job. Maybe there are other people who have the live fast die young life of the Disney channel but Marie had yet to find it. Not that she hadn’t looked, making sure her hair was cut in the new style, pants the right fit with a crop top that barely made the school dress code. She’d tried. But the classes remain monotonous and the teacher’s uninspiring, hers confusing and at times abrasive. It wasn’t their fault though, Marie just hated learning anything that didn’t affect her day to day life. Besides health class, which taught her everything she could possibly want to know about the ways her brain could fail her and render her melancholic-ly depressed or starkly insane, not much was applicable. Her mother cautioned that in the future these other things would be relevant but Marie didn’t much care for concerns of in college or when you’re grown up. Considering her brother hadn’t made it to either of those milestones, preferring instead to intentionally exit existence in front of a semi truck before his sixteenth birthday, Marie was not particularly concerned about making any long term plans.

Ever since her teachers found out about her brother they’ve been delicate, like they are afraid she is a glass beaker that will explode into tiny sharp fragments at the softest touch. I know you have had a tough summer they say instead of Sorry your brother offed himself in July, which she would find refreshingly honest instead of the tentative sighing and toeing around the subject. Her health teacher liked to ask her everyday, as she packed up for lunch, how she was hanging in there.

“I’m fine,” she says automatically, because any truthful response would get her escorted into a grippy sock vacation she didn’t have the time or energy for.

Michael and her weren’t officially twins, but they were close enough where people often forgot they weren’t. Eleven months between them made him a grade above her but still close in social circles, with friends overlapping and group hangouts frequent. Which is why she found him dying offensive. They were best friends, he could have at least offered to let her go with him.

*

The bird is in the tree by her house, the one right at the door that Michael and her used to climb on as kids. It was close enough to the red roof of their house that people kept telling their mom to get rid of it but she hadn’t gotten around to it. Marie tentatively approaches the creature, who preens a long blue feather.

It looks exotic, like it doesn’t belong in the cold New England weather. The bright colors seem as though it belongs in a temperate climate, one with coconut milk drinks and beaches. A living rainbow, red hat bleeding into green then blue. It makes a loud sound when it sees her, a harping that is chaotic and her mother would find awful. Michael would have loved it.

“Hello bird,” she says. Before she can fully think through what she is doing she lifts her arm up to the branches, beckoning to the creature. The afternoon sun filters through the green leaves, highlighting the bird in gold. Her fingers strain to touch it, shoulder pulling under her desire to caress it’s wings.

It lets out a giant squawk that shakes the foundation of her home, opens its wings and floats down to her, settling on her forearm like they are old friends that have just been reunited.

“I think I am going to keep you,” she whispers. It cocks an eye at her that looks almost devious, as though it's daring her to try.

*

The internet says the bird is a Scarlet Macaw. Native to Belize and other places in Central and South America. She reads that the sunny creature faces the dangers of illegal poaching and habitat destruction, a valuable pet that is smuggled over in a black market pet trade to the United States. Her (because it's hers now) Macaw perches on her lamp post, cleaning it’s wings, stopping only to peek around the room and glance at her.

“Did you know people where you come from say you’re a guardian,” she announces to the bird, who clucks in response.

“I thought it was cool,” she says to it fluffing its feathers unimpressed.

She knows that eventually her mom will come home and she will have to reveal the bird and that will likely begin a series of events that lead to the bird leaving but in the moment she enjoys the idea it’s hers. She suspects it's someone’s escaped pet but she doesn’t have much loyalty to a person who likely got an illegal bird from an illegal source. Not definitely, as the website did say there are some legal avenues to obtain a captive bred bird, but this one has a wild tint to it. She can almost see the vast rainforest, lush with green and rivers, reflecting in its eye. It has a wildness that reminds her of Michael, an uncontainable angst that causes a perpetual motion. Always moving, pacing from one thing to the next. The lamp, bed canopy, computer desk, forest, highway, truck grill, road.

“Michael would have really liked you,” she says and it unleashes another one of its horrendous whoops that thunders throughout the house.

*

The idea that the bird was Michael didn’t occur to her until the late evening, when she was reclining across her bedspread reading r/NoSleep. The bird continued to flap around her room, occasionally resting by her head, beady eyes inspecting her languid form. It loved the mardi gras beads Michael had gotten for her when he went to New Orleans with their uncle (the time she had gotten sick and couldn’t go with him), shaking them in abundant joy every chance it got.

The idea of reincarnation wasn’t foreign to her, she’d been aware some people believed that souls were born and born again but the idea that her own brother would be reintroduced to this world in another body didn’t occur to her until she read a spooky story about someone remembering all their past lives.

But it made sense, she reasoned. Michael was impulsive but would have eventually felt bad for abandoning her in the sudden and crushing way he did. In his new life, he would seek her out. An impeccable logic she muses as she regards the bird in a new light.

“Michael?” she whispers and the bird looks at her, bears into her so heavily she knows the answer heavy in her gut, a plucked string on her heart that sings the only comfort she’s felt in the last four months.

The front door slams. Her mother is home. She calls up to Marie and Michael returns the call with one of his own, a loud feral lament.

*

“We absolutely cannot keep a bird,” her mother paces, hands tight on her waist as the bird clucks on Marie’s desk, “it’s obviously someone’s pet and we need to report it since they are probably looking for it. I’ll call the animal control officer tomorrow.”

“You can’t do that!” Marie cries, jumping up in front of the bird like she can protect it from her mother’s actions.

“We cannot steal an exotic bird.”

“It was already stolen,” Marie screams, “from the rainforest. Whoever bought him doesn’t deserve him anyway, they stole his life.”

“We don’t know that Marie, we don’t know anything about this bird.”

“Please,” Marie whimpers, “please, you don’t understand. The bird is Michael.”

“What?” Her mother goes pale, face thin and fragile as her eyes widen against Marie.

“It’s Michael, he came back,” Marie realizes how stupid it sounds as she says it but she can’t stop, the panic at losing him again bubbling in her chest. Short quick breaths and constricting ribs as she considers the bird leaving.

“Honey he is not coming back,” and at this her mother begins to cry, hand over her mouth as it crumples like a sheet of paper about to be tossed in a fire.

Marie begins to cry too, an ugly cry, one that’s hot and exposed, more animal than any sobbing she’s ever done since a police officer came to their house and whispered the news in hot frightened breath. Her mother joins her on her bed, wraps her arms around Marie and they cry together, the first time either has allowed the other to see them crack. The bird is uncharacteristically quiet through this, keenly watching them weep into each other’s arms. A contented coo as they quiet and eventually fall asleep.

*

No one ever reported the Macaw missing. Maybe they were scared to admit they got it through less than lawful means, maybe they had so many they didn’t notice it missing, or the owner had died and the creature had managed to escape. Whatever the reason, Marie was granted ownership of the bird once a certain time had passed.

Her mother never fully believed it was Michael, but understood enough to know Marie needed the bird as much as the bird seemed to need Marie. Marie only cared that her mother let her keep it, outfitting her room with toys and seeds and putting everything in the closet to keep it safe from both its mess and its curiosity.

School still didn’t interest her, but she was obsessed with finding out anything about her bird which made Biology a more appealing subject than it previously had been. She began looking up preservation programs for the Scarlet Macaw, tentatively exploring colleges she could attend to help the wild ones. It was far from the life she and Michael had plotted together but it was something, it was a life she could look forward to.