The two experienced skydivers made their way to the edge of the door and barely blinked before tossing themselves out into the air, tumbling into the sky with a whoop of exuberance.
I couldn’t share their enthusiasm. I was terrified.
Aiden and his instructor moved up to the door, and Aiden looked back at me.
“Here goes nothing!” he shouted. He leaned back against Mike, and a moment later, they both dropped out of the door and were gone.
“Your turn!” Greg said. He helped maneuver us both to the doorway, and I looked out into the open sky and ground below. We were so high up, I couldn’t even make sense of the scene in front of me.
“Cross your arms over your chest and lean back against me,” Greg instructed.
I did as he said. My heart was beating so fast, I wondered if I would go into cardiac arrest before the chute even opened.
“Ready?” he asked.
I swallowed hard and nodded. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready at all. This was insane.
“Yes!” I called back.
“Here we go!” Greg leaned forward, then back, and then forward again.
We tumbled into space.
The cold wind bit at my flesh as we fell. I tried to keep my mouth closed, but I was pretty sure a string of curse words were automatically flowing from it. The ground was impossibly far away but getting closer and closer by the second. Below us, I could see the forms of the other jumpers, including Aiden and Mike.
What if we crashed into them?
I felt Greg’s tap on my shoulder—the signal for me to spread out my arms. I did so, but it didn’t seem to slow us down at all. Greg pushed against me, angling us forward. I could see the fleeting image of Aiden and his instructor as we whizzed past them and through a cloud.
We were still falling. Tears were pulled from my eyes as the wind tore past my face. I tried to look at the meter on my wrist to see how far we had fallen, but I couldn’t see it clearly enough to read it. The air was freezing cold on my bare skin, and my stomach did flip-flops inside of me.
With a sudden jerk, my body pulled upward and into Greg. The straps around me tightened somewhat painfully, and our descent slowed as the chute opened.
We floated.
“What do you think?” Greg asked.
“Holy shit!” It was all I could manage to say.
Greg laughed.
“That’s the Everglades to your left,” he told me. “Key Largo is on the right. See it?”
“It’s beautiful!” I exclaimed.
“Let me loosen you up a little.” I felt Greg’s hands at my back. The harness released, causing me to gasp as I slipped forward slightly. The straps were more comfortable, but my heart remained lodged in my throat.
We floated into a cloud, and for a moment there was nothing but white and a slightly damp feeling on my skin. We dropped below it quickly, and I heard Greg’s voice again.
“How about a little spin?”
He pulled on the left side straps, and we spun in a counterclockwise direction. Then he pulled on the right, and we went clockwise. My stomach churned a bit.
“You try,” he said as his hand covered mine. I pulled the strap and we spun around again. “Go ahead and turn whichever direction you like.”
I did. I moved a little to the left and then a little to the right but kept the motion slow and steady so I wouldn’t lose breakfast. Far below, the green of the Everglades dominated the landscape. I could see the fields we had passed in the jeep and the tiny forms of field workers gathering vegetables. The blue water around the islands of the Keys sparkled in the sunlight.
I looked around some more, marveling in the beauty of the panoramic scene below me. I pulled at the strap again and looked out over the ocean, my mind spinning.