Weight In Gold (Brendon Urie)

The Lake

We all get out of the car and walk up to the lake. The three of us stand side by side and look out to the water for what I assume is nearing 2 minutes when Ryan says, "I'm sorry, but what the hell are we doing at a lake?" I nervously spit out the first thing that pops into my mind. "Swimming?" I say and shrug. "You want to go swimming?" Ryan asks looking dumbfounded. I try to play it off as confident. "Yeah, I mean why not." I look across the lake and notice an old rope tied to a tree. There's even a sign that says to put a life jacket on children under 10 when swimming, so I know it's safe.

"Eh, what the hell," Brendon declares as he starts to pull off his shirt. Ryan looks stubborn about getting in, but I know that if we want any shot at him getting in with us we'll have to do it first. I reach down and grasp the hem of my shirt and pull it off. Then I take off my shoes and socks and put them by the shirt. I start to take off my pants before I remember that my underwear isn't exactly what I would call modest, but by the time I realize this it's too late. Brendon's wearing red boxer briefs that honestly just look like shorts, so I feel a little more naked then what makes sense. Obviously Ryan's gay, so I don't have to worry about him, but I definitely think I catch Brendon staring at me a few times.

Brendon and I wade into the water and gesture towards ryan to join us. It takes a few minutes, but eventually he gets undressed and swims up next to us. It's may in Chicago, so the water isn't what I would call warm, but the rush of adrenaline from being out and active this late makes the cold more bearable. All of us swim towards the rope on the other side of the lake and talk about what we're going to do after we're done swimming. The most popular suggestion is get food.

When we reach the rope swing, Brendon is the first one to climb out of the water. "I'll test it out," he yells back to us. He grabs the rope on his way up the muddy slope that he's going to jump off of. When he's climbed a moderate distance up the slope, he grasps the rope and tugs on it to make sure it won't snap, and then pushes off the ground amd swings through the air. Once he reaches the peak of his self-induced pendulum, he let's go and gives a yell of exhilaration on his way down. A few seconds later, his head pops up from the water and he shouts "Hell yeah!" at the top of his lungs. Ryan and I laugh, and Ryan is the next person to climb out of the water.

Ryan doesn't swing quite as far as Brendon, but he still swings pretty far.  When he comes up from the water, both him and Brendon swim back to me. "Your turn," Brendon says. I nervously smile at them and slowly swim towards the land. Heights aren't my favorite thing in the world. When I get to the muddy bank, I grap the rope which is still swinging a bit from Ryan's jump and hold it tightly. It feels like sandpaper. I slowly drag it up to a place on the slope which I feel is high enough, and then I look down and realize that if I swing from here, all I'll do is hit the bottom of the lake because of how shallow it still is. So I take the rope up a few more steps, and then hear Brendon taunt me. "Careful ash, that's pretty high for a girl." I know he only said this to piss me off, and I try not to let it get to me, but it does. So I look at him, jokingly show him my middle finger, and climb up high. Really high. I climb higher than both Brendon and Ryan, and when I look down I realize what an awful mistake I've made, but now it's too late to turn back.

I feel the pit in my stomach increase with every second I don't jump, so I take a deep breath, hold on tight to the rope, amd push off with my back foot hard. As I swing out to the water, I'm to in shock that I actually jumped to remember that I'm supposed to let go, so I don't remember that letting go is an important thing to do until I'm at the peak of my swing. I panic and release the rope in a strange way, and before I know it my body is hurtling backwards. I do an entire back flip before a hit the water.

I feel my body start to sink much deeper than I thought it would, so I start frantically pushing myself towards the surface of the water. It takes much longer than I would have liked before I feel the cold wind on my face and I can finally breathe again. When I come up, I turn to face Brendon and Ryan who are both cheering and shouting for me. I guess that flip looked more intentional then I thought. I swim over to them and keep up the confident act. "Yeah, I guess that was a pretty good jump. For a girl," I say with a shrug. Brendon laughs and put's his hands up in surrender before remembering that hands are a key part of swimming and quickly puts them back down. Ryan and I laugh, and the three of us begin to swim back to the car.

When we get to the other side of the lake, we realize that we don't have any towels and putting clothes on over we underwear would be miserable, so we all stay in our undergarments when we get in the car to try and dry off a little.

The three of us are about to drive to a fast food chain when we pass a mansion that seems to be throwing some kind of high class fancy party. It seems odd that this event is going on at 5 am, but I guess rich people do crazy things. I assume that Brendon will just pass the house and keep driving, but instead he parks a few houses away from it and takes his keys out of the ignition. Before Ryan or I can ask any questions he says, "Wanna do something spontaneous?"