Gloria knew she wasn’t allowed to make eye contact with the birds, not intentionally, anyway, but it was so hard to resist.

  The bloated baby cardinal, wreathed in its toilet-paper-and-crochet nest on the table in front of her, had just finished wolfing down its fourth serving of crickets this hour, and had stopped its constant begging just long enough to goggle back up at her. These moments of quiet recognition were rare in the songbird nursery, especially ones as long as these, and she hoped nobody would hold it against her for enjoying them for a few seconds more.

  She set her forceps down, back into its own individually-labeled tray, and gently deposited the bird’s nest box back into the incubator, where it sat nestled against five more, each packed with more birds jockeying for a premature round of seconds. She shut the incubator and scooted back to glance up at the clock.

  6:20. Well after the end of her scheduled shift. She glanced over at the next volunteer, fiddling with dishes in the far corner, waiting for Gloria to give her spot up, and she sighed. She couldn’t get away with prolonging it much more.

  She got up and found the manager for the night, a perpetually frazzled college girl who had to be less than half Gloria’s age. She found her out at the admit station, brow furrowed in concentration, trying to guide a needleful of fluid into a squirming finch’s leg.

  She waited patiently for the manager to finish up, then cleared her throat to announce her presence. It was a habit that had become second nature to her, advertising her presence before speaking. She had a tendency to startle people.

  “Excuse me, Gina. Just letting you know I’m heading out for the night.”

  Gina’s eyes flickered over Gloria for a half-second before flitting right back to the station, where three more birds peeped for her attention. “Got it, thanks for the help today, Julia. Have a good night!”

  Gloria didn’t flinch. It wasn’t the first time she’d been misnamed, and it wouldn’t be the last. “You too, honey.”

  She was still thinking about the cardinal as she rode the bus home, sandwiched between a young couple, talking animatedly past her. She wondered if a bird as small as that had the ability to remember faces, to associate them with some internal index of people. And if, were that to be the case, the bird would even be able to remember her into adulthood.

  She figured probably not. She felt a little silly for hoping.

  She’d put the matter out of her mind by the time she’d reached her apartment. A step down, space-wise, from the townhome she’d lived in before, but now that she was retired, some cost-cutting had been necessary, and she never could justify having a whole house to herself anyway. The one bedroom was more than enough space. Especially now.

  She found herself frozen at the entryway, foot poised in the air, halfway through the front door. Nothing in particular had startled her. The interior of her room was tidy and dark, the evening sun only barely peeking in around the curtains. Her coffee table was clean, her neat Goodwill landscapes arranged politely on the walls, frames freshly dusted. Nothing was out of place.

  Yet her heart seized with dread at the idea of stepping inside. Once she did, she’d be resigned to the cozy dark, the wordless nothing, until her next volunteer shift, five days from now. The week of isolation would begin, as it had begun every week for the past two years, the moment she stepped in and shut the door behind her. And it would begin again, over and over, until she had a heart attack or slipped in her shower or got hit by a bus.

  Most days she could handle the thought. Not today. She shut the door, turned on her heels, and left. She walked briskly down to the lobby, out the front door, and hustled, away, with no particular destination in mind.

  She found herself at the mall, for reasons she could only guess at. Maybe her instinct was that the bustle of people would make her feel less alone. She should’ve known better.

  She poked around in shops for a while, blankly inspecting cardigans and sniffing candles. She bought herself a pretzel. She wandered up to the third level and stood, a little transfixed, at the railing, looking down into the busy concourse 30 feet below.

  Teenagers and families and employees flowed around her, river water coursing past a stone, as she stared. Minutes passed.

  She thought of jumping. Not in any real way. She didn’t necessarily want to die. Dying would be scary, and it wasn’t the point of the fantasy. The image that interested her, were she to jump, would be the moment that everyone realized what she was doing. When the first person noticed the strange older woman clambering up onto the railing, when the crowds gathered around to watch her plummet. She’d turn into a nightly news story, maybe. A few dozen eyewitnesses would have a new anecdote. People would talk about her, sure, in morbid, voyeuristic tones, but they’d talk about her, make conjectures about her motive, jokes about her appearance, judgments about her actions.

  It’d be nice, to be the topic of conversation like that. The idea that strangers at home could be talking about her made her mental image of her dark apartment feel a fraction less impenetrable.

  So she clung to the image, reinforced it, knowing the mall would be closed soon and that she couldn’t escape home much longer. She focused on the image so intently, in fact, that she failed to really register the sounds of the first gunshots. It wasn’t until the screaming began that she shook herself out of her stupor.

  That same river of people that had been trickling past quickly became a torrent, a flood that battered Gloria back away from the railing, knocked her over. Her head cracked against the floor as she landed hard, accompanied by a starburst of agony as her migraine worsened. Her glasses, delicate little half-moons she'd kept in pristine condition for years, went skittering across the ground. Almost out of instinct, she crawled after them.

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  More gunshots, a scream, more screams, a curse. A boot belonging to some unseen stranger crashed down on Gloria's hand just as she retrieved her glasses. She yelped in pain and scooted back, retreating against the far wall as she fumbled her now-cracked spectacles onto her face.

  Just as suddenly as the crowd had arrived, it was gone. She was alone in the hallway now, shivering against the wall. Alone but for a distant figure, a willowy man in ill-fitting tactical gear, toting some sort of gun. Gloria didn't know firearms all that well, but she knew enough to be able to tell that it was an enthusiast's weapon. Long, jagged, decked out with odd attachments. The man raised the rifle to his shoulder and let out a stream of shots, clipping a man that had tried to make a run for it from inside a photo booth down the hall.

  Such a fancy looking gun, Gloria thought, but he couldn't afford to buy a vest that fits? As the man stalked closer she got a better sense of his build, could tell that his boots were too big, his Kevlar chest piece way too small. The gunman was a skinny little thing, and hadn't thought to bring a belt with him, so he was constantly reaching down to yank his pants up. Gloria was shocked to hear a giggle burble out from behind her lips.

  The man didn't take any notice. He peeked around into the Lids maybe twenty yards away from her, let loose another hail of bullets, discarded his clip, and yanked his pants back up. Gloria giggled again.

  She realized, absently, that she'd missed her chance to run. She'd been sitting there, dazed and dreamy, awash in the unreality of the situation, and had forgotten to actually escape. She wondered, detached, if maybe she was suicidal after all. If some deeper part of her knew this, and had made the call, if that part lacked the sheer force to get her to fling herself off a railing, but had been just persuasive enough to get her to freeze in place for a few seconds too long.

  The man- the boy, more likely, he really was scrawny- turned away from the store and continued down the hall, toward Gloria. He was just steps away, and she was the only person around, the obvious target.

  She decided against her instinct to close her eyes and wait. She decided she owed it to herself to look her assailant in the eyes. She figured she should focus on something to mourn, some experience to be sad to miss out on, or maybe some nice memory to hold onto in her last moment, something poignant. While she tried and failed to conjure one up, the boy approached, gun shouldered, and soon was just an arm's length away.

  The boy looked briefly in her direction. His bloodshot eyes scanned over her, once, then twice. He coughed, tugged his pants, and continued on his way.

  To Gloria's surprise, a wave of bitter rage welled in her, acidic and immediate.

  I'm not even worth HIS attention. She thought, aghast. This lowlife, this bottomfeeder, maniac asshole, the worst of the worst, even HE doesn't want to look me in the eyes.

  She barked another laugh. It echoed down the hall, a cartoon witch's cackle. The boy started, whipped around, gun drawn. He waved his weapon to one side, then the other, then, shaking from nerves, had the gall to ignore her again.

  Gloria found herself sprinting at him, flinging her hands at the boy before she registered what it is she was doing. She brought her fists down, hard as she could muster, rained blows on his neck, where a rectangle of pink flesh poked out of his Kevlar.

  The boy yelped and whipped around, loosed a frantic shot that missed Gloria entirely. The shot would've deafened her, if the dull roar of her blood and fury wasn't already all she could hear.

  She grabbed at the gun, yanked it. The boy let out another scream, a high-pitched, tremulous noise, more surprised than angry. He yanked back on the weapon, but Gloria had clamped down, was pulling with all of her might. She didn't know what she'd do with the gun when she got it. She didn't know if she'd turn it on him, or on herself, or if she'd throw it over the railing. She didn't know if the boy would attack her unarmed, or if he had some other weapon hidden that he'd finish her off with.

  All she knew was that she'd been briefly prepared to die. She'd lived a long life, a dull life, but a safe one, one that could've conceivably continued decades still into the future. She knew that she was a full person, with a rich inner existence, an intelligent and opinionated and educated woman who, yes, had never married, and no, had no real close friendships, and sure, had been so completely isolated that she'd decided to spend her 66th birthday alone at the mall, contemplating a public suicide. She'd briefly, for reasons that were already starting to baffle her, somehow accepted that even knowing all that, she had been about to let this gawky moron, this nothing man, this late night talk show punch line, erase all of that. That this loser who couldn't even pick out pants that fit had felt himself qualified to overwrite her past, terrorize her present, revoke her future.

  The idea that she'd been even momentarily resigned to that fate filled her with a disgust more overwhelming than any emotion she'd ever felt. It burned behind her eyes, waxed and waned in concert with the waves of pain from her growing migraine. She made a noise with the effort of it, a sharp, animalistic grunt.

  Then the boy's head, feet from hers, exploded.

  Gloria thought, numbly: Wait. Did I do that?

  No. She glanced down the hall and saw a security guard standing nearby, handgun held in front of him, shouting something indistinct into a shoulder-mounted radio.

  Huh. I didn't know mall cops even carried guns.

  Two more guards rounded the corner, weapons drawn, and hurried toward the body, then froze. Their eyes were fixed on the gun, which was now in Gloria's hands.

  Gloria realized, distantly, that she should probably put the gun on the ground, that the guards were doubtless about to order her to do that. She decided against dropping it, in case it went off, and glanced down to find somewhere to place it.

  The gun, she realized, wasn't in her hands at all. It was floating, unsupported, in midair.

  No, wait. What? That doesn't make any sense. I can feel the gun in my hands.

  Suspended above the gun were a few flat droplets of blood, stains on the air, rotating in sync with the slight sway of Gloria's torso.

  Gloria glanced up, looked to the glass of the store display across the hall from her. She felt silly checking, but she looked for her reflection.

  It wasn't there. Just a gun suspended in the air, held by nobody.