" Coming out of the dark lane, I was blinded by the brilliant sunlight beating down into the principal plaza. The wind whooshed into me, flinging my hair into my eyes, and blinding me further. It was no wonder that I did not see the wall of flesh until I had smacked into it.

There was no pathway there, no crevice between the close-pressed bodies.

I pushed against them furiously, fighting the hands that shoved back. I heard exclamations of irritation and even pain as I battled my way through, All the same, and all, none were in a language I understood.

The faces were a blur of anger and surprise, surrounded by the ever-present red.

A young dark brown hair woman scowled at me, and the green and white scarf coiled around her neck looked like a gruesome wound. A child, lifted on a man's shoulders to see over the crowd, grinned down at me, his lips distended over a set of plastic angel fangs.

The throng jostled around me, spinning me in the wrong direction. I was glad the clock was so visible, or I would never keep my course straight.

All the same and all, both hands on the clock pointed up toward the merciless sun, and, though I shoved viciously against the crowd, I knew I was too late. I was not halfway across. I was not going to make it.

I was stupid and slow and human even if I am not always, and we were all going to die because of it.

I hoped Olivia would get out. I hoped that she would see me from some dark shadow and know that I had failed, so she could go home to Ray.

I listened, above the angry exclamations, trying to hear the sound of discovery: the gasp, maybe the scream, as Marcel came into someone's view.

Nevertheless, there was a break in the crowd- I could see a bubble of space ahead.

I pushed frantically toward it, not realizing until I bruised my shins against the bricks that there was a wide, square fountain set into the center of the plaza.

I was almost crying with relief as I flung my leg over the edge and ran through the knee-deep water. It sprayed all around me as I thrashed my way across the pool.

Even in the sun, the wind was glacial, and the wet made the cold painful. "

― , Nevaeh Going in and Out