I let out a strangled yell. Angling my jacket like a snowplow, I charge into the field of glass like I’m storming the beaches of Normandy.
The canvas pushes all the big pieces out of the way. Tiny shards snag in my soles, but I pump my legs like pistons.
Nico curses behind me, but I’m too focused on running to glance back at him.
Glass scrapes and crunches as I push through it, forming a narrow channel with my jacket. I keep my eyes trained on the timer flashing red at the far end. Twenty feet. Fifteen. My calves are burning, and my legs keep churning, but I don’t slow down.
A shard punches through my sole. I shove the sensation into a box in my head and slam the lid. Pain is information.
I lean forward, pushing harder with each step. The jacket is doing its job, and I’m eating up ground. Ten more feet. I can do this.
The jacket snags. Momentum hurls my body forward. My boots weigh my hands down, and I can’t get them in front of me.
My face smashes into the glass.
For one blessed second, there’s nothing. But then the pain comes.
It explodes everywhere at once. My scream snags in my throat because it can’t move past the pain in my face, in my forearms, in my knees.
“Pain is information,” I force out through gritted teeth. I can picture Dad’s voice so clearly, it’s like he’s here with me, urging me on. “Pain isinformation.”
I’m reaching for my jacket when a massive shard drives into my kneecap. This time, my scream makes it out. I bend to find a chunk of green glass the size of my thumb jutting out of my knee. It’s part of a bottleneck. I can see the threaded part that would screw onto a cap, and it’s buried so deep that the edges disappear into my skin.
My hand flies toward it, but I know enough from Mom’s first-aid lectures that pulling it would make me bleed faster. I need to get across first.
I grab my jacket, but it doesn’t want to come. The canvas has snagged on something.
Glass crunches behind me. One glance over my shoulder reveals Nico walking through the path I already cleared. He’s not far behind.
Three big jumps could get me to the finish line, but landing that hard on glass, punching through my feet? I might not get back up in time to jump again.
Nico’s footsteps grind closer.
I hurl my boots across the finish line like Nico did, watching each one tumble end over end before they skid across the yellow paint. There’s no time for me to overthink it.
I run.
I make it two steps before my brain stops me. There’s too much pain to compartmentalize. It blows the lid off my compartment, and everything I’ve been suppressing comes pouring out.
Blood wells up, warm and slick, seeping between my toes. I force another step. The pain is not just information anymore, it’s everything, it’s the only thing. I try to take another step, but my foot won’t move. I’m still two jumps away.
Behind me, Nico makes this growling sound like he’s arguing with the pain itself.
I push what glass I can out of the way with the side of my toes, but my injured knee is making my entire leg stiff, and on my next step, my foot comes down on a long piece I missed. The glass slides straight up into my arch, slicing my flesh like butter. An amalgamation of everything I’ve rammed into the box in my head erupts from me in a sound that’s equal parts scream and sob.
I lean onto my other leg, throwing my arms out for balance, but it’s no use. The hallway is tipping. I windmill my arms?—
Arms slide under mine.
No.
I try to pull myself away before Nico can throw me, but he grunts as I squirm and his mouth presses against my ear.
“Stop fucking fighting me,” he growls, and he sounds so much like his normal self that my body stills. “Arms around me.”
I loop my arms around his neck, my fingers locking behind his head as he scoops one arm under my legs and bands the other across my back. He hauls me up against his chest, holding me so close I can feel his heart thumping through his shirt. The shards of glass that were trapped in the folds of my clothes come free and make tiny tinkling noises as they fall onto the floor. He supports my weight with his forearms, his hands still curled in the same way as after he came down from the pole. I look up athim, and his eyes are looking straight ahead, fixed on the finish line, but his grip on me is gentle despite the urgency.
He carries me across the glass field, each step sending vibrations through his body that I feel in my bones. His breathing comes in harsh pants, but he doesn’t slow down. My heart is pounding hard enough to numb my own pain.
