His body was tangled up in itself in the wild grass; I couldn’t tell where one limb began and the other ended. None of them seemed to be in their right place. His elbows stuck up from the ground like two broken wings. He had been rammed, too.

Something cold and brittle wrapped itself around my chest, forcing me back out of the haze of smoke once I confirmed Zu wasn’t in either car. I waited until I cleared the heaviest of the smoke before falling to my knees and throwing up what little food I had in my stomach.

It was only when I looked up that I finally saw her, sitting on the road just beside Betty, her back slumped forward, her head bowed, but alive—alive and safe. My mind clung to those two words as I tried calling for her again. Zu looked up, panting. As I stumbled closer, the smoke revealed her in pieces: bloodshot eyes, a cut on her forehead, tears streaming down her dirt-stained cheeks.

My head throbbed in time with my heartbeat as I knelt down in front of her, and for several agonizing seconds, it was all that I could hear.

“O…kay?” I asked, my mouth feeling like mush.

Her teeth chattered as she nodded.

“What…happened?” I squeezed out.

Zu curled down on herself like she was trying to vanish from my sight. Her yellow gloves were beside her on the ground, and her bare hands were still up and facing forward, as if she had only touched the truck a second before.

I didn’t know what to say to get her to calm down—I didn’t even know how to calm myself down. This girl, this Yellow—she’d destroyed two vehicles and one life in a matter of seconds. And, by the looks of it, she’d done it with a single touch.

But even knowing that, she was still Zu, and those hands? They were the ones that had pulled me to safety.

I lifted her back into Betty with shaking arms. Zu was hot, well past the point of feeling feverish. Dropping her into the closest seat, I pressed my hands against her cheeks, but her eyes couldn’t focus on me. I was about to roll the door shut when she grabbed my wrist and pointed toward her gloves on the ground.

“Got ’em,” I said. I tossed them to her, and then turned to confront a heavier load.

Chubs was still passed out in the passenger seat, his body hanging out of the open door. The truck driver hadn’t been able to maneuver his long limbs farther than that, thank God—otherwise Chubs probably would have been in the grass with the driver. His limp sack of bones smacked against the door as I slammed it shut behind him.

I tripped over the tips of my tennis shoes as I made my way around the front of the van. With a cloud of bright spots bleaching out my sight, I pulled the driver’s door open the rest of the way. Liam was also still out cold, and no amount of shaking was able to stir him up into consciousness. Zu began to whimper, her cries muffled as she pressed her face against her knees.