Nina’s chest started to heave, her lungs hyperventilating. Maura’s string had looked short, but what did that really mean? How much time did they actually have left? The initial question plaguing the world had at last been answered: The strings were real. But so many questions remained.
When Nina heard another woman enter the stall next to her, she tried to cover her mouth and quiet her sobbing. She knew that no one would blame her for succumbing to her emotions, but she felt embarrassed by her public display, as if the world were still normal and not radically altered.
Nina would have to tell Maura that night, so the truth came from someone who loved her, and not some talking head on the news.
She would have to take back everything she had said to Maura on the night that they had looked. All the claims that she had made—that she had genuinely believed—about the strings being fake.
“It can’t possibly mean anything,” Nina had said, trying to hold her voice steady. “It’s just a piece of string.”
“That’s not what everyone else thinks,” Maura whispered.
“And what does everyone else know? We don’t live in some crazy world where magical boxes predict the future,” Nina said. “We live in the real world. And these strings aren’t real.”
But nothing Nina had said could dispel the invisible tension that loomed between them ever since that moment, exerting pressure on them both, each night when they went to bed and each morning when they woke. They hadn’t had sex since the middle of March, and nearly all of their daily interactions were tinged with a quiet anxiety.
As if they had both known, all along, that something terrible was coming.
Once the other woman exited the bathroom, Nina stepped out from the stall and ran a paper towel under the tap. She wiped her face and the back of her neck with the damp compress, trying to regain the strength in her limbs and hopefully stop breathing so heavily, or else she might pass out.
After she told Maura the truth, Nina would have to tell her family, too.
She would have to call her parents, still living in the Boston suburbs where Nina and her sister had been born, close enough to spend any holidays together, far enough to indulge their daughters’ preference for independence. And she would surely need to tell Amie.
Nina’s younger sister had resolutely decided not to open her box, and every time they spoke of it, she remained adamant about the choice. But now that the strings were conclusively real, would Amie change her mind?
Nina threw away the paper towel and looked at herself in the mirror, the glass streaked with water stains. Nina rarely wore makeup, but her face appeared even more naked than usual. It looked pink and raw and vulnerable, stripped down to its core.
Whenever she stared in a mirror, Nina couldn’t help but notice the slight pinching of the skin near her eyes and the two subtle creases in her forehead. （“Maybe if you weren’t so serious all the time, you’d be wrinkle-free like me,” Maura had teased, playfully stroking her hand against the smooth, dark skin of her cheekbones.） Nina was only thirty, just one year older than Maura, but she was clearly starting to age. And she knew, now, that her long string meant she would one day look in the mirror and see a very old woman gazing back. Until today, Nina had simply assumed that Maura would still be standing next to her.
But the strings had destroyed that illusion in one horrifying instant, and Nina’s future suddenly felt just like her reflection in the mirror now. Sad, defenseless, and alone.
Ben
Ben found himself crossing the Times Square subway station for the first time since the strings had arrived.
Transferring from the 1 train to the Q, he passed through a dank passageway where the ceiling leaked even when it wasn’t raining and the walkway was perpetually lined with mustard-colored trash bins collecting the droplets. When he emerged, he was standing in the large underground intersection where the passengers from nearly ten different train lines emptied out simultaneously.
The busiest of all New York’s subway stops, the Times Square station had always been chaotic, the perpetual foot traffic fostering the ultimate soapbox for evangelicals, doomsayers, and anyone else with an opinion to shout. But now the usual chaos felt even more frenzied.
Two women in ankle-length skirts implored passersby: “Trust in God! He will save you!” Megaphones amplified their high-pitched voices to a booming volume that their petite frames could never accomplish. “He has a plan for you! Do not fear your string!”
The women of faith were competing with at least four other preachers that evening, but thanks to the bullhorns, they were winning. As Ben politely dodged their pamphlets and approached the entrance to his track, he could distinguish the words of one of their competitors: a middle-aged man in a stained button-down shirt with a less hopeful message to deliver. “The apocalypse is nigh! The strings are just the beginning! The end is coming!”