Between Then & Now || Currently Editing for Wattys 2022

19.

"Hey!"

One of the members of the crowd shouts and waves a hand in the air. I stand up, giving up on my cover.

Meekly, I wave back and shout, "Hi." Well, kind of shout-my voice catches in my throat before it has the chance to even meet my lips. I swallow, the vision of the man jumping over the cliff still replaying in my mind, and I shout for real this time, "Hi."

There are some murmurs from the group, and suddenly the same member is jogging over to me, stopping once they meet the edge of the trees. They peer at me through the brush, and I do the same.

Finally, I ask, "Did he just- Did he just jump over that cliff?"

She raises one hand to shade her eyes, and, after a second of confusion, her head tilted, she begins to giggle. "Oh, yeah." I notice her sports bra is wet, the black Nike check clinging to her body along with her black athletic shorts. She takes a look over her shoulder as another member of the group jogs forward to join her. The group watches from behind the two.

"Hey," the other person waves, smiling as he wipes his face off from the water dripping down from his shaggy hair. There's the outline of facial hair just starting to grow on his face.

"Hi," I smile back, still utterly confused about whether the man is still alive or not. I lean to the right, looking at the group still looking over at me, and then back at the two people shading their eyes from the sun. "Is he... still alive?"

Suddenly, they're both laughing and for a reason I can't even name, my cheeks are heating up from embarrassment. There is definitely something I am missing here.

Catching his breath, the man with the shaggy, brown hair gives me a soft, understanding smile, and I realize that the man is definitely alive and what I just asked was incredibly stupid to these two individuals. "Yeah, yeah he is." The other woman laughs again, the sunlight glowing against her ebony skin. "We're just cliff jumping." Clearly, the look on my face says enough, and he continues. "Don't worry, there's water at the bottom. Totally safe."

Oh. Oh. At last, the breath I feel like I had been holding from the moment that man had flung himself over the edge of the cliff leaves my lungs. Behind the two people, the rest of the group seems to have lost interest in the random person in the woods who stumbled upon their adrenaline high, turning back to the cliff. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a man emerging over what must be a path slightly to the right of the cliff, wiping water out of his eyes, and shaking his afro out. After a moment, the group sees him and they cheer again, a few of the other individuals giving him a high five when he rejoins them.

When I look back to the two people who approached me, they're also looking over their shoulders at the man. The person with the shaggy hair gives a little hooting-shout, and the cliff-jumping man turns around, and shouts back at them, holding two thumbs up. As they turn back to me, they're both still smiling, and the first woman nods over her shoulder. "You're welcome to join us if you want."

My eyes flicker over to the cliff, then back at the two people, and then back to the cliff.

"Like I said, it's totally safe. This one's not too high but it was the closest thing to us." The man runs a hand through his shaggy hair. A bead of sweat drips down my back, the idea of cold water on my body running through my mind. "We can show you how, if you've never done it. It's a thrill, I promise." The woman smiles and nods her head, clearly in agreement.

My eyes trace the line of the cliff, and, when I look back at them, my feet are already moving, dry leaves and sticks crunching under my feet. Completely clueless, Thelma trods behind me, and, when I get to the other side of the brush, in the clearing, the man and woman look at me, huge grins on their faces, and then turn around towards the group. Both of them cheer, and the group turns around, a woman standing a little further back in preparation for her jump.