After a half second I, too, drop to the ground, but not to retrieve tulip petals—I’m searching for my bag. I scan the trampled grass and see that someone else has found it, and they’re digging around inside, pulling free a few petals—ones that likely fell off when the tulip was still inside. A second later they abandon the bag, but someone above steps on it, leaving a dirty shoe print. I push against their leg and manage to yank it free. But when I try to scramble back, thecrush of people tightens around me. Someone yells, a cry of pain or greed, it’s hard to tell, then another person slams into my shoulder—they’re fighting over the last remaining scraps, any remnant they can find in the damp grass. The wind stirs through the mob, becoming spirited and strange, as if a dark storm has settled over us. A boy—Randy Ashspring—has the last part of the tulip stem gripped between his teeth, and he’s trying to army-crawl out of the crowd but gets punched in the face, the stem ripped from his mouth. Someone curses beside me—a girl whose face is beet red, her eyes dripping with tears, looking terrified—and then there is weight on top of me, crushing me.
I feel the air tighten in my lungs, the struggle to draw in a breath—pain working its way down my chest.
I need to get out of here.
I try again to shimmy back, to work my way free, but I’m met with more bodies pressed together. Hands clawing at the ground, faces marred by rage and desperation. The feeling of claustrophobia starts setting in, becomingpanic.
I try to look up, toward the sky, toward fresh air, just as someone falls against me, knocking me flat against the ground.
My face presses to the wet grass. I choke on it.Breathe, breathe—I tell myself to draw in air, but it smells like damp soil and fear, and my lungs are tightening in my chest. The weight is too heavy.Not enough air.My head swirls, I lose track of the sky, up from down.
I make a sound, a desperate little cry, but no one hears me—and there is a hand on my arm. I try to shake it free, but it grips even tighter. I try to yell, but only air comes out, and then the hand is pulling me back, opening a space behind me. Whoever has ahold ofmy forearm is shoving people away, making room, and in one sudden movement I’m yanked free of the crowd.
I buckle over, coughing, hands on my knees, sucking in the clear morning air. A few tears drip from my eyes. But I don’t wipe them away. Because the pain in my chest is only starting to loosen, and I pull in a deep lungful of air.
But the relief doesn’t last.
“She’s right there!” someone shouts. I glance up to see Lulu Yen pointing a long finger at me.
Several faces snap my way, eyes feral and enraged like those of animals who haven’t fed in days. The crowd starts to slither apart, their heads lifted in my direction, hands pushing their bodies up.
I draw in a shaky breath….
As if I’ve found myself in some awful black-and-white horror film—zombies reborn, bloodthirsty and crazed—the crowd begins coming toward me.
I stagger a moment, still unbalanced, out of breath, but a hand folds through mine. Strong, warm.
For the first time, I turn, looking at the person beside me—the person who saved me….
Him.
The boy.
He doesn’t speak, but squeezes my palm, his eyes swaying from me to the crowd.
I suck in a quick, stunned gulp of air, and he pulls me away from the mob, away from the lawn, from Cutwater High. And we run.
The morning air whips past my face, cooling the sweat on my skin, my heart still a roar in my ears.
A half mile up the road we cut into the trees—to a path known only by locals, that winds through the woods along Rabbit Cross River. At last, when the sound of voices behind us fades—the crowd given up, probably gone back to the school to sweep up any last tulip fragments from the grass—the boy and I slow to a stop.
My lungs heave, adrenaline still thumping through my veins, and when I finally lift my eyes, it feels like shivering awake from a strange dream. The same boy I saw days ago in the school parking lot—whose sketch has been slowly coming to life in my notebook, who started to feel like a false memory, a shadow I conjured in my mind—is now standing in front of me.
I didn’t simply imagine him.
He is tall, with dark eyelashes and green,greeneyes—the same hue as the trees behind him—and skin that reminds me of the sky when it rains. Dusky and beautiful. The air gets caught in my throat, before I swallow it down. He is different up close, bewildering and…beautiful. Wild and civilized all at once, like a sunlit afternoon and the dark, impossible sky. Like he’s holding a thousand little secrets beneath his flesh.
He breathes deeply, shifts his weight, then looks up the path from where we’ve come. For a moment I think he’s going to speak, but then his eyes settle on me and his mouth falls still. I should tell him not to get any closer, but my voice feels like mud, and my eyes follow every tick of his movements as he lifts an arm… reaching out for me.
My heart scrapes against my windpipe.
He’s going to touch me,my mind yells.
No, no,no.
But his fingers only graze my hair,just barely, like the tiniest whisper, the smallest breath, and when I blink, I see that he’s holding a single tulip petal between his fingers. It was tangled in my hair, after being crushed by the crowd.
But this one escaped.
