The room is full of their cruelty now, loud, stupid and delighted with itself. On the floor, the hand over his mouth keeps him from shouting, but his eyes stay on me the whole time.
In the middle of it, with Rose tapping frantically at the glass and my pulse hammering in my throat, the sweetness of the way he said my name only minutes ago becomes something sharp enough to hurt.
The jar slips from the brutes hand before I can stop it.
One second it is there, bright glass catching the late light with Rose safe inside it, the next, it is falling. I hear myself make a sound before it even hits the floor, some sharp, terrified noise torn straight out of my chest. Then the glass shatters.
The room seems to split with it.
Rose is gone in the same instant the jar breaks. Green, pink, fuzz, and all the tiny softness of her disappear into glittering shards and color crushed into the floorboards. For one impossible second my mind refuses to understand it. I just stare, frozen, until my body finally catches up and I throw myself toward the floor.
Someone grabs me before I get there.
My knees slam down first, then my hands. A rough shove sends me sprawling hard enough that my breath leaves me. The leader is laughing when I look up, not because anything is funny, but because he has found the exact spot where hurting me feels easiest.
Across the room, the boy loses whatever was left of his control.
He thrashes under the pile of bodies on top of him so violently that one of them nearly slides off. The hand over his mouth slips for a second as a furious, strangled sound tears out of him before they force it back down. Every muscle in him is working. His whole body bucks against them with a kind of desperation that makes it obvious he isn’t trying to save himself.
He’s trying to get to me.
“You like your little friend that much?” the leader says.
My throat is too tight to answer. Tears are coming now, hot and useless. They blur everything. They blur the broken glass on the floor. They blur the smear of what used to be Rose. They blur the smile on his face when he bends and picks through the shattered pieces like he is handling trash.
I try to wrench myself free. Another hand shoves me down harder.
“Stop,” I choke out, but my voice sounds small.
The leader crouches in front of me, close enough that I can smell the sweat and hallway dust on him. His eyes flick toward the boy on the floor, still fighting so hard it looks like he might tear himself apart trying to get loose.
That is when his smile changes.
“You don’t get pretty things,” he says, looking not at me, but at the boy pinned beneath the others.
Then he reaches down, lifting a jagged piece of the jar from the floor.
The second I see the glass in his hand, something cold rushes through me. I twist hard, but the boy behind me tightens his grip. My shoulder strains. My pulse goes white-hot. I can’t get away.
The shard drags across my left cheek in one quick, vicious line.
The pain is immediately blinding.
It isn’t a sting at first. It is heat. White, shocking heat that cuts through everything else in the room. My cry breaks halfway out of me. My hand flies up without thinking. When my fingers touch my face they come away wet.
Blood.
For one second all sound drops away.
Then it all comes back at once.
The boy is still fighting.
Still trying to get free.
Still making those strangled, furious sounds behind the hand clamped over his mouth while they haul him up by both arms and start dragging him backward. His whole body strains toward me even while they force him toward the door. He looks wild. Horrified in a way that feels older than either of us.
“Serves you right for all the stunts you pulled,” one of them spits at him as they drag him out.
