Brianna decided to go for a jog around the FAYZ wall. Running around Lake Taramonto would mean A) getting really dizzy, and B) it would be inevitable that she would run into Dekka. The Breeze did not want to run into Dekka on her jog to clear her mind.
She put her newest pair of sneakers on her feet, and prayed that these wouldn't melt too quickly as she laced them up. After yelling a quick goodbye to Jack and getting a grunt in response, Brianna figured that he was too engrossed in his newly found computers to yell anything back. She walked out of the house, and went up to the FAYZ wall (it was only a three or four mile walk, and at super speed it took her about 15 seconds.)
Breeze then started jogging at the speed of light, making sure she was always around two to three feet from the barrier, including running on the ocean. Running on water was an experiment that she had tried the other day on the lake. If Dash from The Incredibles can do it, I certainly can, she thought. It was a good thing that the Breeze had thought right, or someone would have had to save her from the bottom of Lake Taramonto.
Brianna was jogging (on land now), not really thinking about anything important, zoning out, when she tripped. There was some pain (bruises that would heal in the next few days), but not nearly enough for falling on the ground at super speed. It was then that Brianna looked down.
She had fallen on a person. A female person.
Breeze was up and apologizing in an instant. "Ohmygod! I'm so sorry! Are you okay?" This went on for a minute before Brianna noticed that the person wasn't talking back. She looked closer at the person she had knocked down.
The girl's long, curly, dirty blonde hair covered a lot of her face. Brianna could hardly make out the girl's tan skin, pink lips, and closed eyes.
Wait a millisecond. Closed eyes! I must have knocked her unconscious! Breeze thought. She started shaking her, yelling, "Wake up!" It didn't work.
Brianna moved the girl's hair out of her face and gasped.
Brianna knew this girl. This girl wasn't supposed to be in the FAYZ. This girl was supposed to have been on a field trip during the big poof. The chorus, band, and orchestra students had had a competition at Disney. All of Brianna's friends had gone on the field trip, except her. Brianna had been in chorus for one day and then switched out. She couldn't stand the teacher.
"Rachel?" Brianna whispered softly, "How are you here?" No response.
It was then that Brianna saw the front row of seats in the charter bus. And she knew.
Rachel must have been sitting in the front, next to her fifteen-year-old friend Zoe. The rest of Brianna and Rachel's friends had been sitting in the rows behind them. The FAYZ wall must have divided the charter bus, leaving Rachel, Zoe, and the bus driver inside the wall, and everyone else outside the wall.
Except that Zoe and the bus driver were over fifteen.
Brianna's tear ducts realized the truth before Brianna did, because tears were tumbling onto Rachel's body. Rachel probably wouldn't have been able to survive in the FAYZ, surrounded by people. If Rachel was all alone… she had no chance.
She probably died from shock, Brianna thought sadly. Rachel was very over dramatic: sobbing uncontrollably whenever a school play or musical she was in was over, she was a regular visitor to Nurse Temple's office- anything from cramps to paper cuts deserved band-aids and Advil. She might have seemed really annoying, but she was one of the nicest people Brianna had ever met. Breeze wondered many times a day how someone could stay that nice in an environment like Coates. The only reason Rachel had even gone to Coates was that she thought that boarding school sounded like a year-long sleep away camp. That, and she wanted to feel like Harry Potter.
Shakily, Brianna turned around and started to run back to the lake. She had to find Edilio. He had another body to bury.