Free Time Lost: Teenage Survivalist II by Julie L. Casey

hard, Sara would just leave me, but I still didn’t want her to go with Jason. I could provide for her; I knew I could. We didn’t need some punk coming in to try to prove to Sara that I couldn’t. After an excruciating mental battle with myself, during which Sara stared at me angrily, I shrugged and gave up.
    — Do whatever you want. I’m going to get us some fresh meat.
    I put emphasis on “fresh meat,” hoping that it would somehow impress her more than canned or dried food. When she answered, her voice was softer, gentler, as if she finally understood the anguish I was feeling.
    — Good. I’d like that. I promise it’ll be okay.
    With that, she put her hand on my cheek and kissed me tenderly and lightly on my lips. Then she smiled her beautiful, reassuring smile, although it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
    Sara cleaned herself up and gave me a quick peck on the cheek before leaving to meet up with Jason. She looked into my eyes, so deeply that I felt like I was swimming in her Caribbean blue eyes, and said softly,
    — Good luck. Be careful. I’ll see you back here this afternoon.
    Part of me wanted to follow her and Jason, staying well hidden like a spy or a CIA agent. But another part of me wanted desperately to show her that I could provide for her by bringing home some fresh food. I finally decided to do that, even though my heart was squeezing in my chest as I left the apartment with my gym bag. First, I stopped by Janice’s apartment and left Sara’s bag and most of the contents of mine, as Janice had told us we could do as long as we shared some of the food we found while we were out foraging. That put more pressure on me than ever to find food, but I couldn’t very well hunt with two large bags suspended from my shoulders and I didn’t dare trust the others enough to leave them in our apartment.
    It took me only half an hour to walk down to the river as the apartment building was fairly close to it. It was a pretty nice day and there were lots of people on the banks of the river already, foraging for food, many with fishing poles. Even though the electricity had been on for about a month, there still was not a lot of food to be had as manufacturers and grocery stores geared back into business. And even when they did, there was not a lot of food that had been grown commercially to be processed, since the shortage of gasoline kept large-scale farming to a minimum.
    I had brought with me a telescoping fishing pole that had belonged to Sara’s dad. I found a relatively empty spot on the river and dug around in the dirt for some worms. I wasn’t very good at fishing, since my dad had never had time to take me, but I had once gone with my Cub Scout troop when I was six or seven. Mom had come along with me and helped me put the worm on the hook. As I struggled with it now, I suddenly remembered how she had grimaced then smiled at me and forced the worm onto the hook. I decided that was a memory I needed to keep, so I tucked it away in the back of my mind.
    At first I was unsuccessful, but every time I thought about quitting, the image of Jason handing that bag of peas to Sara came into my mind and I renewed my determination to catch something. I think I had been there most of the day—Time was not something I cared to think about anymore, even though we now had clocks to mark it again—before I finally had some luck and was able to catch two small fish, which if I remembered correctly were called blue gill, and two larger fish, which could have been bass or trout or catfish, for all I knew. I gutted them, as I observed a fisherman down the way from me doing, stuck them in my bag, and headed for home as the sun was heading down in the west. I hurried, worried that Sara would be all alone in the apartment, or worse, that she’d be with Jason. I wanted to trust Sara, but I definitely did not trust him.
    When I got back to the building, I stopped by Janice’s apartment and picked up our stuff, leaving one