High Dive Fright
By Mayako Barringer
Next!” shouted Mrs. Loveman. Her voice echoed in my head.
The person in front of me stepped forward onto the edge of the high dive. I turned my head to the left so that I could see Mrs. Loveman.
She was holding her hand up to show the person in front of me not to jump yet. The boy held still. I wondered if he was scared or not. I didn’t think so. Then, after a few seconds, Mrs. Loveman lowered her hand and the boy jumped!
It seemed like the SPLASH! I had heard had sounded immediately after he had jumped off. ‘See? It’s not that far. Not such a big deal,’ I tried to pep talk myself (although pep ‘think’ would be more accurate).
“Next!”
Okay. Forget not a big deal. What would I do? Nervously I stepped forward. My stomach felt funny. Most people would say that there were butterflies in my stomach. But it felt more like elephants. A whole herd of elephants….stampeding!
I tried not to look down but couldn’t resist. EEEK! It was sooo far down!
“GO!” I heard Mrs. Loveman shout.
Okay, okay. So I was hesitating. Because I was a little nervous. Jeez. Talk about ‘quick, quick, quick!’
I wasn’t sure. If I turned around and went back down the ladder, the boys would call me a wimp. But I didn’t really want to jump. ‘Just do it and get it over with,’ said a voice in my head. ‘But-but,’ the wimpy part seemed to stammer. ‘Do it!’ cried the other voice. I paused. Nobody seemed to move.
Finally, I drew in a deep breath. ‘I’ll do it,’ I decided. I closed my eyes, held my breath, and then I jumped!
I felt like I was falling 20 miles every second. That meant fast. Really, really fast. I started to regret jumping into the water. But there was no
stopping now. I was falling, and-
SPLASH!
My body seemed to slap the water as I fell in. Gasping and spluttering, I popped my head out of the water.
‘For some things, you should never try to give up,’ I thought as a smile formed on my face.