It was a beautiful afternoon, the sky was cloudless, a pretty shade of blue. Birds were soaring above our heads, tweeting happily to each other. My six older cousins and I were in a theme park in Malaysia, and we were having a blast. Well, I guess I was having fun until my cousins dragged me along to go do bungee jumping with them. “This is going to be awesome!” one of my cousins, Jaina, exclaimed. The other five of them,  agreed, either with overenthusiastic head nods, or just staring at their phones and mumbling. My cousins were older than me by 10-15 years, so they don’t really talk to me much anymore. Instead, they spend lots of time on their phones. I inhaled sharply. I couldn’t even explain how nervous I was. The butterflies in my stomach turned into pigeons as we got closer to the bridge. As I thought about everything that was most likely going to happen over in my head, I hadn’t realized that we had arrived. “BUNGEE JUMPING” the sign read, “CAUTION”.

We walked on some more, looking for the cashier. Eventually, we came across a desk, with a friendly looking old man sitting behind it. He had a bald spot in the middle of his head and had thick rimmed glasses perched on top of his nose. “Hello there! And what may I assist you of today?” He asked kindly. “Hi, we made a reservation to go bungee jumping here yesterday, and we had it booked for today at 5.” Said Aanya. She was the oldest of the six, and was the most mature. “Oh, yes. I remember you. You girls are the only ones booked for today. No one else made a reservation for today, so I guess that you will get the area all to yourselves. Well, besides your instructor of course.” He said. I already didn’t have a good feeling about this, and us being the only people in there with a random person alone didn’t make it better.

“Hi there! I’m your instructor for today. My name is Tiffany. Follow me, the arena is right through this door.” She said. Tiffany was a skinny girl with a ton of makeup and strong smelling perfume that made my head hurt. She led us into a vast area, filled with different equipment. “Alright!” Tiffany said, “I think we’re just about ready to get started! So who wants to go first?” She asked. We all looked around at each other. Besides the excitement, I think that nobody wanted to jump very high after eating their lunch. “Um, Vina! How would you like to go first?!?” Jaina said pushing me to the front. “After all, you were the one who was SUPER excited about going bungee jumping anyways!!!!” I rolled my eyes at her. My cousin could be VERY annoying at times. “Fine.” I groaned. Jaina could be a pain sometimes. I slowly walked up to Tiffany, trying to stall as much time as I could. I felt sick to my stomach. I didn’t want to do this.

“Arms up sweetheart!” Tiffany instructed. I sighed, knowing that there was no turning back. She pulled some strange looking straps over my shoulders, and clipped a harness onto my waist. After she had clipped on strong and thick cord on my back, she told me I could start jumping whenever I was ready. But I’m never going to be ready. I just can’t do it. I thought to myself. “Oh just go already Vina.” Jaina said. “It’s not that hard. Nothing bad’s going to happen. Trust me, I’ve done this before.” I sighed. She’s right. I thought. I’m safe. Nothing’s going to happen. I took a deep breath, and jumped down. The trees were a blur around me and I couldn’t see straight.  When you go bungee jumping, they connect you to strong cords, which were extremely long.

You basically jump off a bridge high above a river or a lake. The cord was attached to large, strong pole on the bridge. When you jump off the bridge, the cord pulls you up into the air and makes you go super high. I felt the wind in my hair as I got pulled back up in the air, and then falling back down again. I was actually thinking that maybe this wasn’t so bad. I saw my cousins below me, who were filming me and smiling. “How are you doing?” my cousin, Sarah, who was the second oldest out of all of us, asked. “I’m doing fine!” I yelled to her smiling. “This is actually more fun than I tho-’’ I got cut off by the sound of the cord snap. All I remember was me screaming and hitting the water. Hard. And then everything went black.