Free Breathe by Sarah Crossan

her.”
    “Come on, Quinn, she didn’t seem lost. She knows exactly what she’s doing. Anyway, what do you want to do? Stalk her?” Quinn continues to stare at the derelict buildings in the distance. Suddenly he stops chewing, lightly slaps himself across the side of the head, and stares at me. I stare back. He puckers his lips and bumps his facemask against mine, making a loud kissing sound with his lips. I feel my face getting warm and fiddle with the zipper on my jacket so he won’t notice.
    “What is it?” I say, pulling at the hair pinched by the straps of my facemask. It feels constrictive and uncomfortable; I adjust the rubber strap at the back of my head.
    “You’re right, we have to follow her. If we don’t, she’s all alone. She could die. There are drifters, and look at that sky—the weather is only going to get worse, and she isn’t ready for it. You know what we’ll be, if anything happens to her? Killers, that’s what.”
    “How will we be killers? When she needed our help, she asked for it. She doesn’t want our help anymore because she’s got people out here, Quinn. People way tougher than us, I’m guessing. We aren’t her friends. She told us to get lost.” As I say it, Quinn bites the insides of his mouth, hurt.
    “Don’t you want adventure, Bea? Here it is. A real adventure. Not some game we’ve invented like when we were little kids. Don’t you feel alive?”
    “I actually feel very alive. But if we try tracking that girl, I might not feel alive for long. This oxygen won’t last forever.” I rap my fingers against the tank.
    “We have plenty of air. We brought enough for two full days. And anyway, she as good as told us that where she’s going, there’ll be plenty of the stuff. So we’ll get a refuel.”
    “Oh, Quinn.” I want to cry. I want to tell him that none of this is fair; we’d planned a trip together, the two of us, and I hoped he’d discover me out here, not another girl. But if I refuse I’ll only have one choice, and that will be to trudge back to the pod on my own. And then what will he think of me?
    “I know you’re afraid,” he says. This makes me feel a little better. At least he’s thinking about my feelings. “We need weapons. Did you bring a weapon?” He jumps down from the wall.
    “Why would I bring a weapon?” I ask.
    “I have a knife I was planning to use for preparing food and stuff.” He pulls out a knife with a long, thick blade and passes it to me. The hilt of the knife is heavy and the blade is sharp. “You keep that,” he says, and hands me its sheath. “I have rope, too. Oh, and I have a hammer for the tent pegs.”
    “Exactly how mad do you think she’ll be that we followed her?” I tease.
    “The weapons are for the drifters,” he says without smiling, and bends down to tighten the laces on his boots. Then he tightens my laces, too. “Ready?” he asks, standing up.
    “Drifters?” We’ve all heard stories about the drifters, old pod prisoners and lunatics who managed to escape and set up rudimentary air systems to keep themselves alive. They lie in wait to terrorize tourists who venture too far from the pod. They live in the gray nooks and crannies of the city. But how can this be true? Even if the drifters managed to escape and found a way to breathe, they’d certainly starve to death. It has to be a rumor—a legend. “I’d be too scared to use this,” I admit, and hand back the knife, which Quinn slips through a loop in the band of his pants.
    “Wanna get going?” he asks. He starts to pack away lunch, puts on his one green glove, and wipes his forehead with it. “If we wait much longer she’ll be too far ahead and we’ll never find her.” So that’s it. I’m going to follow Quinn, who’s following Alina, and we are all going to march willingly into the pit of this forgotten city.

11
ALINA
    I didn’t want to take the old tarmacked roads and be visible from a distance. I would prefer to forge my own