Boundless (Unearthly) Read Online Free

claustrophobic the shower stalls in the bathrooms are, and we both suffer from annoyingly unruly hair.
    We could be friends, I realize. I could have made my first new friend at Stanford, just this easily. Maybe there’s something to this making-us-run thing.
    “So what’s your major?” she asks as we’re jogging along.
    “Undecided,” I answer.
    She beams. “Me too!”
    I’m liking her more and more. But then disaster strikes. As we come up on the next dorm, Amy stumbles and falls. Down to the pavement she goes, all flailing arms and legs. I do my best to make sure she doesn’t get trampled by the ever-growing stream of scrambling freshmen, then drop to the sidewalk next to her. It’s bad. I can tell just by looking at her white face and the way she’s clutching her ankle.
    “I stepped wrong.” She groans. “God, this is embarrassing.”
    “Can you stand up?” I ask.
    She tries, and her face gets even whiter. She sits back down heavily.
    “Okay, that’s a no,” I deduce. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”
    I mill around looking for someone who seems even a little bit helpful and miraculously spot Pierce at the edge of the crowd. Time to put his “dorm doctor” skills to good use. I run over to him and touch him on the arm to get his attention. He smiles when he sees me.
    “Having fun?” he yells.
    “I need your help,” I yell.
    “What?” he yells.
    I end up taking him by the hand and dragging him over to Amy and pointing at her ankle, which is starting to swell. He spends several minutes kneeling beside her, gently holding her ankle between his hands. Turns out that he’s premed.
    “It’s probably a sprain,” he concludes. “I’ll call someone to give you a ride back to Roble, and we’ll get it elevated and put some ice on it. Then you should go to Vaden—the student clinic—in the morning, get an X-ray. Just hang in there, all right?”
    He walks off to find somewhere quieter to use his phone. The band finishes its song and moves on, leading the crowd away from us in a rumble of feet. Finally I can hear myself think.
    Amy starts to cry.
    “I’m so sorry,” I say, sitting down next to her.
    “It doesn’t hurt that much,” she sniffles, wiping at her nose with the back of her sweatshirt. “I mean, it hurts—a lot, actually—but that’s not why I’m crying. I’m crying because I did something so totally stupid like wear flip-flops when they told us to put on shoes, and this is only the first week of school. I haven’t even started classes yet, and now I’m going to be hopping around on crutches, and everyone’s going to label me as that klutzy girl who hurt herself.”
    “Nobody will think less of you. Seriously,” I say. “I bet there are plenty of injuries happening tonight. It’s all pretty crazy.”
    She shakes her head, sending a tumble of wild blond curls over her shoulders. Her lip quivers. “This is not how I wanted to start things,” she chokes out, and buries her face in her hands.
    I glance around. The group has moved far enough away that we can only faintly hear them. Pierce is standing next to the building with his back to us, talking into his cell. It’s dark. No one’s around.
    I lay my hand gently on Amy’s ankle. She tenses, like even this light touch is hurting her, but doesn’t lift her head. Through my empathy I can feel the hurt in her, not only the way she’s mentally beating herself up over how she’s already ruined her reputation, but the physical part, too, the way the ligaments in her ankle are pulled away from the bone. It’s a bad injury, I know instantly. She could be on crutches all semester.
    I could help her, I think.
    I’ve healed people before. My mom after she was attacked by Samjeeza. Tucker after our post-prom car accident last year. But those times I had the full circle of glory around me, the whole shebang, light emanating from my hair, my body glowing like a lantern. I wonder if there’s a way to localize the