Bungee Jumping at Lake Compounce

“No…No!” I complained. “I am not going!” I stood at what it seemed to be the biggest bungee jump in the world.

“Come on, go ahead,” my mom taunted me with a smirk on her face. “Leah doesn’t want to go alone.”

My friend Leah stood there with excitement in her eyes ready to have the time of her life.

The fear spread though my body and made a knot in my stomach I couldn’t untie. I took a huge gulp and sighed.

“Fine,” I stated. “But if I die . . . ”

“Oh come on,” said Leah, grabbing my arm. We were only a couple of steps away from what I thought would be my death.

“Please put both hands up,” the bungee jumping instructor demanded. Leah and I both complied, and he put a royal blue vest over our scared but somewhat excited bodies with hooks and belts all over.

“Now, please follow me,” the instructor insisted. Like an old man walking I slowly turned around to wave to my mom as if it was the last wave I was ever going to make.

“Have fun sweetie, smile,” my mom shouted as she took out her camera.

After the picture, Leah and I both followed the instructor to the lift, which was soon slowly moving toward the sky—exactly where I thought I would be in a couple of minutes.

“Now listen up,” the instructor said. “When you get up to the top, there will be a small string on your vest that you have to pull and once you pull that, you will soar through the sky.

“Now who will pull the string?”

“Frankie will,” Leah replied with a giggle as she stared me down.

“What!?” I screeched, looking at her with a little crack in my voice.

“Now when you get to the top, I will count down to five and then you will pull the string,” the instructor said.

“But what if . . . ” I stammered, while the instructor had Leah and me lock arms and also put our feet on plastic orange bars connected to our vests.

The lift stopped halfway to the top of the cliff, and the instructor said, “Now the ropes will carry you two to the top and once there you know what to do.”

After the worker said his last words, he pushed a button that somehow put Leah and me on our stomachs in midair. As the lift started to go down we started to go up.

“We’re going to die!” I yelled, panicked. “We’re going to die!”

“Get a grip, we’re already off the ground and half way there,” Leah said with a groan.

Slowly letting my neck drop, I looked down and felt like I was a bird flying up. The adrenaline rushed through my veins. Finally, the ropes stopped pulling us up and we were at the gates to heaven.

“Well,” I sighed, “I never knew I was going to die in Lake Compounce.”

Leah groaned at my worrying as she drew her head down.

Suddenly, the instructor called out, “Okay, are you ready?” Not seeing him, I thought I was hearing voices. Leah again told me to get a grip, and the worker began the countdown:

“5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1.”

I pulled the string slowly and the ropes dropped. Leah and I screamed the loudest of anybody in the park. It sounded if we were little school girls in a horror movie. The feeling of weightlessness spread through my body with a tint of fear. It felt like I was on a giant swing as the ropes went back and forth. The speed was incredible, as if I was driving a race car or jumping off the Empire State Building with no parachute. The wind rustled through my hair, making it permanently straight up.

As I turned my head to see Leah’s reaction, her light brown hair flew everywhere just like mine. She had the look on her face as if she just hit someone and she was in total shock. Her mouth kept wide open with screams going out. Her arm tightly was still locked onto mine, and her expressions were wild.

I giggled to myself and started to enjoy the feeling of being able to be weightless and free. The sense of fear started to depart, but my heart remained at its high pace. As time went on, the speed finally decreased and we were slowing down. The lift came back up and the worker got us safely on.

“Well how was it?” the instructor asked, grinning.

Leah and I stood there shaking like little Chihuahuas. The excitement and adrenaline still pumped through are bodies like pumping air into a tire. We both uttered the same thought:

“Let’s go again!”

Frankie Ruiz is a ninth grader at Brewster High School. His interests are guitar and music, but his first love is art/drawing. One day he hopes to do something in photography, art, architecture or music.