Aaron Cyrus January 4th,20XX

The driver that picked me up this time was much less talkative than the last one and didn’t recognize me through the mask and glaring red hat from the amusement park.

She dropped me off at the entrance to the sky diving spot and gave a quiet thank you when the payment confirmation lit up her phone. She looked a bit young to be working as a rented car driver, but she didn’t offer any explanations and I didn’t ask for one.

As nice as the city was, there was a distinct lack of a safety net for kids that didn’t have parents or a guardian to take financial responsibility for them. I donated to a lot of charities that claimed to work toward helping them. And Joyce did as well, but they couldn’t reach every child, and as much as they might have wanted to, couldn’t support everyone.

It was windy, but not so much that the place was closed.

The main reason I had chosen this spot, despite it having the worst safety ratings out of all of the other options on the internet, was because of their main advertising factor. They let you, skydive, alone, rather than making you attach yourself to an instructor. The other bonus was that they didn’t ask too many questions about your identity. They handled the safety release forms and payments virtually and they were all but locked away.

There was an online test I’d taken yesterday, and they would take me through a two-hour course on-site to make sure I understood what to do. They also had remote-controlled parachutes attached to the customers in case they panicked and forgot to open their chutes.

The instructor I got was again, a younger guy. He didn’t look to be much younger than I was, but the experienced way he explained everything and handled the equipment made me believe he’d been working here longer than was necessarily legal.

I took the pen that was offered and signed away my rights to sue if anything went wrong. The employee manning the desk seemed to have recognized me, but I couldn’t be sure since they didn’t say anything.

I paid extra for the tinted goggles and put on the mandatory dark blue jumpsuit, it was lined with fleece, but the outside was made of a waterproof plastic-cotton blend. I laced up the heavy boots and walked over to the group of people waiting for their turns on the small helicopters.

There weren’t many people at the site aside from myself and the employees, but it wasn’t empty either.

the first to catch my attention was a showboating girl and her cautious looking friend who clung to her arm and looked paler than the snow around us, an older man who I wouldn’t have typecast as the type to come to a place like this. A woman of similar age to the old man, who stood beside him. And a young boy, around the age of fifteen.

He constantly looked over in the direction of the older man I had noticed before and I gathered that they were probably related.

The kid looked nervous, and his hands trembled as he tightened the already suffocating buckles around his chest and neck. The older man barely spared him a second glance and aside from giving him a half-hearted thumbs up focused all his attention on the instructor’s final instructions.

The kid looked around for a few seconds before his eyes finally landed on me and somewhat lit up through the thick goggles he had pre-emptively put on. He went to talk to the old man and then ran back to me.

“Hey, mister! We need partners and my dad wants to go with his girlfriend. Would you mind pairing up with me?”

My heart stung at being called Mr. by someone relatively close in age to myself, and I could feel myself age a few years.

“Ah, yeah. That’s fine.”

I didn’t bother correcting him since I wasn’t planning on getting into an age argument with a fifteen-year-old but it still put me in a slightly bad mood.

He looked at me oddly as he registered my voice but said nothing and moved to stand beside me.

The two girls went up the helicopter first and I was made aware that they weren’t ‘just friends’ when the one that hadn’t stopped showing off her knowledge on skydiving kissed the other and assured her it would be okay.

I suddenly missed my girlfriend and wondered what I was doing at such a prime dating spot alone.

As if in response, a strong wind began to blow, and I felt myself float up a few centimetres off the ground and frantically forced myself back down. The kid grew antsier as our turn came up and inched closer and closer to me until he was practically on top of me.

We still had about ten minutes until our turn, so I started to make conversation in an attempt to calm him down.

“Hey what’s your name?”

He didn’t seem to have noticed that I was talking to him but quickly realized when he realized I was facing him.

“Ah, my name is Serafim. You can call me Raf though.”

It was a unique name, or at least more unique than mine but from how quickly he followed up with a nickname, it looked like he had been teased about it before.

“Ah, you can call me Cyrus. Is this your first time Sky diving??”

Thankfully he didn’t seem to notice that I only used my last name while introducing myself to him. The small helicopter came back down and the noise from its propellers made It difficult to hear anything he had to say in response.

Two high-pitched shrieks, one of joy and one of pure terror echoed through the flat plains and I saw Raf stumble as he stepped forward. His hands, much smaller than mine grabbed onto my forearm and held tight for dear life, despite us being on the ground.

“C-Cyrus huh? There’s this guy named Aaron Cyrus that’s pretty popular. My d-dad’s girlfriend is a big fan so my dad doesn’t really like him.”

Well, how lucky was I that I managed to meet so many people that knew my name in one day? My decision to choose skydiving over bungee jumping was further reinforced and I secured my goggles onto my face.

“Okay! Keep all limbs in the vehicle unless directed otherwise. Once you jump you need to count until 30 and then open your chute! Your parachute button is on your glove, to activate it you need to make a fist. Even if you cant, don’t panic and try to maintain the position you were taught earlier! We will open the chute from down here once you meet the designated height. Don’t play around and try to do any flips in the air, at the speed you’ll be falling you might not be able to flip back around. Any questions?”

It looked like Raf had many, the main being whether it was too late to back out, but he stayed silent and boarded the helicopter. The heavy metal doors closed ominously and plunged us into darkness. Raf let out a soft scream that was drowned out by the loud whirring of the blades atop the helicopter, but I could hear it since he was right beside me.

We flew in silence until we reached the designated height and were temporarily blinded as the doors swung open and we were able to see the dull blue and grey sky in front of us.

“Okay, which one of you wants to go first?”

I started to volunteer but was beaten by Raf who stepped forward with a trembling voice.

“I- I’ll go first and get it over with.”