By the beginning of October, cross-country practice was excruciating. Smilla and my parents were asking more frequently if I was okay, and my lies were becoming less convincing. I made up some excuses for Coach Antee about pulled muscles and twisted ankles, and it was a huge relief when all he did was give me a lecture about following his guidance and have the trainer tape up my ankles.

I kept forcing myself to go to practice, though now I was consistently at the back of the pack. So I mostly found myself alone as I ran, trying to focus on my surroundings instead of the pain.

On one chilly afternoon, the aches were especially bad, and they kept growing. And there was something else, too, something new. My feet felt uneasy, foreign, as though the arches were twisting, the muscle memory of running fading from my body. My toes curled the wrong way; my heels flexed. I felt the shock of the ground each time one of my feet landed, and though I tried to control my stride and keep it tight, I found myself bouncing much more than I meant to between steps. My feet searched for the ground, but it was like walking on the moon, my skittering skips not quite in my control.

Before long, the pain began to rise from my toes, fizzing upward through my legs like bubbles through a soda straw. I stumbled forward, trying to shake it off, but it kept growing. It singed me from the depths of my tendons and bones, all the way out to my skin. It traveled through my ankles and calves, my knees and thighs, and as it overtook my waist, it felled me like an old tree. I remember falling, a slow, endless descent in some direction I couldn’t name, but I have no memory of hitting the ground.

***

I was moving through space in an unsettling way, twirling and fl ailing, my arms and legs reaching out for something solid but finding nothing. There was noise, somebody shouting my name, and a blur of branches and fallen leaves as I whipped my head around, trying to return to consciousness and orient myself. It grew hard to breathe, and I became dizzy, and then the sensation came back to me, that tearing pain through my lower legs, its tendrils constricting around my muscles. I tried to cry out, but no sound came. Faces appeared around me, and then there were hands holding my arms and legs, straightening me out.

Still dizzy, I finally brought the scene around me into focus. I was upright, and Coach Antee was standing in front of me, his hands on my shoulders. I had never seen him look worried like that, even when other kids on the team had been injured. A small crowd of my teammates gathered around us, and Coach called out for them to stand back and give me room. They did, all but Smilla, who pushed closer, coming up to one side of me and taking my left arm so that Coach could take my right. The two of them held me steady as I took one harrowing step after another through the woods and back out onto the field.

Jennie, ever the helper, sprinted over to us just as Coach and Smilla were settling me onto the bench by the soccer field. “I called her mom,” Jennie told Coach, setting down my backpack, which she must have retrieved from the locker room. “She said she’ll be here in ten.” The concern on Jennie’s face was unsettling, and I looked away.

“All right, everybody, back to the track. Do relays until I get there,” he said, and everyone but Smilla jogged away, casting a few glances over their shoulders at me.

The sharp pain in my legs had subsided to a low, persistent throbbing, and I felt shaky and weak all over. “Are you okay?” Smilla asked, even though we both knew I wasn’t. She sat next to me.

“What happened?”

“I-I don’t know.” It was still hard to get enough air into my lungs to push out words. “My legs started hurting, and”—I took a deep breath—“I just passed out, I guess.”

She swallowed, as if scared to say what was on her mind. “You know you weren’t . . . on the ground, right?”

“What?” I tried to make sense of what she was saying, to stitch it together with my own experience.

Her face looked pained, as if about to break the news that a loved one had died. “You were floating.”

“Floating.”

She nodded and reached one hand out in front of her, holding it three feet above the ground. “About this high.”