Just Breathe

We should have known it would be us. I guess that’s not totally fair, as some did, just not in the way it actually was. Not the big corporations dumping waste into the air, land and sea. Not the overuse of non recyclable plastic. Not even wasteful war. It was simply us, whichever way you twist it.

Oxygen. We breathe it in and breathe out something worse. Something contaminated. A poison that we make all on our own. No one had to teach it to us, we simply know how to take what is good, or acceptable, and replace it with something unusable, disgusting, damning. Our own breath.

“Our own breath?” My shock catches in my throat, as if I can stop the inevitable from occurring. As if I can stop my breath for good.

“The Carbon Dioxide in it,” my mother explains to me as she unpacks the oxygen tanks and masks that are meant to give us the air we need to survive. Every life on the planet reliant on another man-made miracle cure to the illness we created.

“Mom,” the fear is in my throat, hand-in-hand with the poison that seeps from me, “what happens when there’s no more oxygen to buy?”

Her eyes betray her fear, holding a darkness in them that her smile can’t mask, as she rubs my back saying, “Oh, don’t worry about that. I trust they will figure something out.”

CO2. Three digits that held the end of it all. Funny how the smallest packages can reap the worst damage. A butterfly stopped in its tracks. Pandora’s legendary box. The domino effect to the end of the world.

The feather that’s tucked into the braid of his bracelet tickles my arm. He asked me only a week ago when he found the feather hidden in one of my boxes of mismatched memories if I thought birds would ever fly again. I haven’t seen a bird in three months. I last saw one fly only days before the oxygen supply hit a critical level— almost five months ago. I told him, “maybe,” but as the touch of the feather feels farther and farther away, I know that either way, I won’t be here to see it.

A bead of sweat drips down the side of my face, speeding away from the too hot sun. He swears it’s gotten hotter these last few months. Personally, I’m not sure if the sun has gotten warmer or the Earth just decided to stop helping us. Her protective layers boiling from the same poison that burns our lungs. Or maybe it’s on purpose, a fever cleansing the Earth of her virus— us.

“The atmosphere seems to be trapping excess amounts of CO2 against the Earth. These numbers look to have skyrocketed over the past two weeks,” the newscaster pauses for a moment to regain a shaky breath through the oxygen tank that sits beside him. His raggedy breath splits from the sweet oxygen as he continues, “Though it is not confirmed, there is reason to believe the photosynthesis that once naturally circulated the carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere has stopped doing so. Whether the plants have found a new method for photosynthesis or if they are overloaded and unable to complete the cycle is now the answer scientists are looking for.”

His voice fades to the background as I take in the mess of leaves piled throughout our house. Every plant available is gone from any store, neighborhood or side of the road. If we aren’t careful, they are taken from our home to another’s. Stockpiled around us like armored protection.

But the plants are dying, too. A sickly brown color is fading across the leaves. The branches wilt unwillingly, pulling against the gravity that draws them down.

The plants won’t save us. I’m not sure I would save us, either.

The empty launch pads still sit, abandoned now, scattered around the empty land. I can see them from our spot on the top of the hill. Chunks of metal torn apart by stampeding mobs and hastened take-offs. The only memory of the ships that left us behind. The product of my mother’s hopeless trust in men who cared only for the money we could give them, even as the gold boiled beneath their feet, than granting us mercy from the breath that burns us from the inside out. Maybe gold will still be valuable when they get back.

“Take it, mom.” I force my oxygen mask at her to no avail. She is weak, but she pushes back against my hand. My lower lip shakes as I beg, “Please.”

She allows her heavy arm to fall onto my lap and I move as fast as my slowing body permits, placing the oxygen mask over her mouth and nose before attaching the strap around her head. I know it feels good, even if she doesn’t want me to know it. Doesn’t want to make me watch as she breathes while I choke.

Her shaky hand pulls the mask just off of her face as she says, “When our turn comes, we won’t have to ration oxygen like this, my girl.”

I can only clench my teeth, so tight I think they might shatter, and nod as I take her hand in mine. She lets her eyes close and I let my shoulders shake, only enough to let the frustration leave my body.

They cancelled our launch two days ago. Again. The new date is now in five weeks instead of two. An already impossible hope shattered. My mother won’t make it off this planet. She won’t make it to space, where it has become easier to filter air than it is here on the ground. She will die here, and I am sure I will follow soon after.

Even as my brain fogs up more and more, I can still remember the other boy, the first one, the one who held my hand on the swing set as we shared a bottle of warm Moet we stole from one of the empty mansions. The bubbles dripped down the side of his mouth as he laughed. His blood did that, too. But, as I stare into the blinding sun, I replace the memory of the blood with those sticky bubbles that tasted sweet on my lips when he kissed me. The same lips that smiled through each wheezing breath until his lungs gave in and his body gave up.

The cold sweat of my nightmare drips down my back as I lurch from the bed. The empty oxygen tank beside me scatters in a startling bang.

I saw her again. My mom has been gone for a month now, but she is still in my head every night. Every night her blood gurgles from her lips. Her skin turns blue. But no matter what I do, it never stops. My nightmares are a symphony of her dying breath.

The banging woke him up and, as my heart rate calms down, I feel his hand on my back. It happens like this almost every night. The steady circles he draws across my back bring me home to him. To him and to me.

He shifts, his hand never leaving my back, as he pulls open the nightstand drawer. It catches as he slides it shut and moves closer to me, wrapping me in his arms as his chin rests on my shoulder. His breath wheezes from his mouth, a sound I have grown to love. It reminds me that he is still here. He is still breathing.

He holds my hand in his and from his other one, he drops something slick and shiny into my palm. A necklace.

“It’s cheesy, I know,” his voice is rough as it slips from his mouth to my ear, “but, I figured it will probably outlast me.”

He turns the heart-shaped locket over and runs his hands over the words etched there: past the last breath. This— us— goes past our last breath.

“I don’t want to outlast you.” My voice is small in the dark of night, but he still hears me. He always hears me.

“We’ll both outlast each other,” his voice is light but deep. We know that this isn’t pretend and we both know what waits for us, even as he whispers, “deal?”

I almost feel guilty for being glad his departure was cancelled when mine was. I almost wish he could have gotten off on that flight only days before. I almost wish no one was left here who loved me, or who I loved back. Almost.

“Deal,” I whisper while my heart sinks in my chest.

I took to tying the locket around my wrist instead of my neck two weeks ago. It was becoming too hard to lift my arms that high to grasp it. The rounded edges of the heart are worn down, victims of my endless worrying. The words are even worse, worn down by either the salt of my tears or the poison of my breath as I cry into them. Past the last breath.

I hate him for leaving that part of the deal up to me. I hate him for leaving me first. And I miss him with every labored breath.

I buried him next to my mother. I left one space between them, for the grave I will dig for myself one day. All the graves here look too new, but there are no plants to grow over them. I can do nothing but hope that all of the animals who might have once dug them up are now long gone. Hope that my love can lie in peace six feet below me.

He helped me dig this last grave, the other boy. The one who came to us a few weeks before with blank eyes and worn soles to his shoes. The boy who was carrying a sister who never woke up and whose grave sits on the other side of my mother. The boy who never spoke before that day. I think it was my screams that woke him from his stupor. The gut wrenching that told me that there was no one left, that it was only me, forced into the air with breath I didn’t have to spare.

I don’t know why he held me close after that, but I never tried to stop him.

We haven’t seen another person in three weeks. The air is so shallow, the land too barren, the water stings as we force it down. We can’t do it for much longer. We can’t wait in the depths of hope for a lifeship to come bring us up and out of this world we drowned ourselves in.

Tomorrow, we will go to the hill that rises just beyond our window. And we won’t come back.

He asked why I wanted to sit on the top of this hill where the air is thinner and the sun scorches our heads, but I can still remember the smell of summer here. I can still see my mother grinning as ice cream coats our sticky hands and drips stains onto our shorts. The stains are still here. She’s not. I like that version to be the last memory of her that plays in my mind much more than the version who gagged on her own breath.

I wonder, now— as I feel my grip go slack against the locket in my hand, while the air turns to fire in my lungs and my head sits heavy on a shoulder that isn’t his— if the first boy meant it. If, even when the last two hearts on Earth stop beating, when our breath is done for good, his love will be there. Or, will it slip away as I do? In the shudder of a breath. The flutter of an eyelash. The middle of a