This is a piece from my nonfiction creative writing course.

60 seconds

I grab onto the railing, it’s 90 degrees outside, but it’s somehow cold to the touch. I duck my head under the plane door and enter it knowing that I am not going to be coming down the way I am going up. I take my seat on a bench marked number 4. My mind flashes back to my hand scribbling my signature on a big document with lots of legal terms I don’t understand.

We take off and I look out the small window at Byron Bay. I stare at the beach I had just been on four hours ago. Little specks splatter across the sand, they’re probably tanning and drinking fresh smoothies. Maybe a few of them are pointing at this blue and yellow plane like I had been when I had just been one of those specks. In the next window there is a calming turquoise that fades into a deep blue. I stare at the horizon thinking about where it leads to, if it leads anywhere. The landscape really is beautiful, and I keep saying, “wow it’s so pretty,” “that’s beautiful,” “look at the water,” as a coping mechanism for the hot fear that is pounding through my chest and my head. The rickety plane turns around and we are now gliding over palm trees, evergreens, and the famous red lake that gets its hue from natural tea leaves. From here it looks painted, everything looks fake.

KP my instructor sits behind me and tightens the harness around my chest, shoulders, and electric-yellow-striped-children’s-extra-large-track-pants. I am now glued to him. Figuratively because he is in control of my life for the next eight minutes, and literally because the harness is so tight I can barely move.

One of the professionals pulls the door up and open with the ease one would use to open their sliding glass door on their deck. If the backyard deck was 14,000 ft. above sea-level.

Fear is still pumping through my head, but excitement now takes part of it’s place. KP yells what I am telling myself are words of encouragement, but they are barely audible through the roar of the plane engine. My friend Allison, the one who had signed me up for this is, sits to my right in bench number 2; fearless with a smile stretched from ear to ear. A girl I don’t know, opens her eyes and mouth simultaneously wide. She makes eye contact with me, the only person she can find before leaping, and I try to offer her reassurance and move my head up and down. Her and her instructor scoot over to the open plane door. Then she’s gone. I blink a couple of times to see the professional who had opened the door, now pulling some Tom Cruise stunt and hanging onto the airplane from the outside. The wind is pulling his body horizontally as he waves at the next person to jump. Allison scoots to the edge and disappears underneath the plane.

I am outside, the air is fresh, and the sun is making a glare on my plastic goggles. The cool air runs up my legs, the track pants flap in the wind and hit my calves. I tilt my head towards space and for a split second I think that I should have prayed. Instead I think, I am hanging my legs out of a plane right now.

I am free falling, I scream, and scream, and scream, but I cannot hear any voice. White dust shows up in my field of vision and I cannot comprehend what it is. I go straight through it and my face and arms feel as if someone sprayed me with one of those portable, rubber, fan misters tourists wear around their necks. The earth comes closer to me as if I had pulled my forefinger and thumb apart to zoom on an iphone camera.

A harsh jolt tells me that the 60 seconds of free falling are over and the parachute opens. I look down to see my tennis shoes dangling over the landscape. I am still screaming, why am I still screaming?

KP let’s me hold onto the parachute and I fly through the soft blue sky. I take a deep breath and breathe out the scenery. Euphoria washes over me like the waves washing into the toasty sand of Bryon Bay. Who knew 60 seconds could take decades off my life?