“Thank God we are done with school for the year,” Amal, my best friend from school, said behind me.

“I know, right? It feels like we have been in school forever,” I said with a smile.

“What are you going to be doing tomorrow with your first day of freedom?”

“I’m going skydiving again tomorrow,” I said with a grin. I couldn’t wait until tomorrow because skydiving is my favorite thing to do in the world. The sudden thrill of free-falling for hundreds of feet and suddenly the jerk of your parachute catching you from certain death was the only thing that has been going through my mind for the last week.

“Man, I don’t know how you can do that,” Amal said, jolting me from my daydreaming.

“Yeah, there’s just something about skydiving that I love,” I said.

“Well then, see you later,” called Amal as he was running to his mom’s car.

Now see, Amal and I have been friends for as long as I can remember. I believe that we first became best buds in the second grade. And since then, we have never become separated. And his mom, Carrie, has been like the mother I never had ever since she found out that I didn’t have parents.

“Ok man, see you later,” I called back to him as he was getting into his car. Then I turned around and began to walk home.

Now my “home” is called “Merriweather’s Home for Children,” and it’s not that far of a walk from my school that I attend, “Lincoln High.” It only takes me about 20 minutes to walk from school to home. As I was entering the gate to the Home, as always, I stopped and stared at the size of the mansion that I call home. True, it’s not all mine, but it’s crazy big for an orphanage. I forget about the founding story of the orphanage, but it’s something about a rich gazillionaire deciding to be nice to orphaned kids or something. Honestly, I didn’t listen much to the founding story. So, this place has been my home for the last 15 years.

And when I say mansion, I mean mansion! This place has like 30 bedrooms and at least 3 pools that I know of. (I was still finding new rooms.) And the best part is that it is on a huge plot of land, so it’s kind of secluded, at least as much as a mansion can be. And the person who left this place to be used as an orphanage in his will said that only 30 orphaned kids may live there at a time. So, if you get into this orphanage, it’s like winning the lottery.

This is where the skydiving comes in. Every kid that lives here can have one hobby that is paid for by the Orphanage, and for mine, I chose skydiving. So, I got a top-of-the-line parachute to go with my hobby, and I try to go skydiving at least once a month when I have the time. The closest place for me to go skydiving is a nearby small airport that I would be going to tomorrow.

“I can’t wait until tomorrow,” I thought to myself as I was walking into the opening of the only home I have ever known. After grabbing a light snack of Oreos and milk from the kitchen, I went up into my room to crash for the night. Before I went to bed, I gathered all my items that I would need for tomorrow’s fun and put them by my door.

Just before bed, I looked around my room and stared at my ceiling. My room, as I said before, is huge, but for such a large room, I don’t have many things in there. I have a small dresser for my clothes and a desk to do homework on. But besides these furnishings, my room is mostly bare. As I fell asleep, I began to dream about skydiving. But this was different—instead of falling through the air towards the ground, I was falling in a black abyss with sparks of light in the distance of every color, from gold to a bright red, for what seemed like an eternity.

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Finally, I woke up in my bed drenched in sweat.

“Well, that was interesting,” I said to myself out loud. But inside, I was terrified because that dream felt too real, and I feared what it meant for today. I didn’t bother eating breakfast that morning because I probably would have thrown it up anyway. (That dream was really getting on my nerves for some reason.) I was too busy worrying that my dream would come true because I was going skydiving today. Then suddenly, I heard a honk from outside.

“Oh shoot,” I thought, “that’s my ride to the airport.”

I hurried out the front door, dragging my parachute behind me and throwing it into the waiting car. The people who run the orphanage always take kids wherever they want to, and today I needed a ride to the airport just outside of town.

“That was close,” I thought as the car began the 15-minute trip to the nearby airport. All thoughts about last night’s dream had been wiped away, and I began to feel my body start to tremble with anticipation for today’s skydiving.

The next thing that I knew, we were pulling into the small airport’s parking lot.

“Thanks for the ride,” I called to the lady who drove me today. (Honestly, I’m not good with names, so I can never remember.)

“No problem, sweetie, I’ll be here to pick you up at 11, ok?”

“That sounds good,” I said. And with that, she left, sealing me with a dark and foreboding fate. (Ok, I might have a problem with making things seem overly dramatic, but she was leaving a teenager all by himself to jump out of a plane!)

I then turned around and walked through the Double Doors of Doom. (Okay, I’m going to stop now.)

As I was entering through the doors, a worker called out, “Hey, are you with the skydiving group?”

“Yes, I am,” I said.

“Great, then you can join the others waiting out on the runway,” he told me, pointing in the direction of the door to the runway.

“Thanks,” I called back as I was walking out the door.

Once outside, I was starting to get excited and ready to go. While I was waiting for the rest of the group to show up, I took this chance to put on my parachute and check that everything was looking good. Because for those of you who don’t know, if you don’t pack your parachute correctly, it might not unfold, and that would not be good.

After I did a double-check on the parachute, I had one of the workers check to see if I strapped the parachute on me correctly. Just in case. Once I was all good and everyone had arrived, we all boarded the plane.

“For today’s flight, we will be going up to a height of 10,000 feet,” the pilot announced to us through the speakers. Not including me on the plane, there were 11 other people who were going skydiving with me today. And 3 of those people were first-timers, so they had to have workers jump with them. But because I was experienced with skydiving, I didn’t need to have a buddy because I had gotten my license to skydive by myself two summers ago.

“We have now reached our desired height, please wait until we are over our jump area,” announced the pilot.

“Okay,” I thought, “here we go.”

All of a sudden, the green go-ahead light went on above our heads, indicating that we could now jump.

“Go, go, go!” yelled one of the workers over the loud scream of the air forcing itself through the side of the plane that just opened.

Being at the back of the plane, I was the last in line to get off the plane. But I was soon up after all eleven others in front of me quickly jumped out of the plane.

“You the last one?” the worker asked me as I was walking to the side of the plane.

“Yes!” I shouted back to him. “I’m the last one!”

“Ok then, see you at the bottom,” he called back to me. But his voice was lost to me in the wind as I jumped off the plane.

“Yeah!” I screamed at the top of my lungs in exhilaration as I quickly was picked up by gravity and began to plummet to the ground. As I was falling, I was admiring the view. It was a perfect day. The sun was out, there were almost no clouds in the sky, and I could see for miles around.

As the ground rushed up to meet me, I looked at my altimeter on my right arm and saw that I needed to pull my parachute in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

“Now!” I thought as I yanked at the string that would release my parachute. But nothing was happening as I was pulling the string, and then I realized two things: the first is that my parachute was tangled, and I was going to die, and the second was that ketchup was technically a smoothie. Ok, maybe not that second one, but I knew that if I couldn’t get my parachute untangled, I would fall to my death.

But before I could do anything, I hit the ground and died.