Chapter 3
I grab another red cup off the table, and the blonde guy smirks at me. As I gulp down the intoxicating liquid, the pain in my chest starts to simmer down. My head scrambles the terrifying thoughts, and I feel calmer but also more jumpy at the same time. I have sweat lining my forehead. Realizing that I still haven't met any new friends, I begin to look around. Everyone seemed to have already formed their clique, except the guys at the end of the pier who seem to be inviting. I decide to walk in their direction, and as I approach them, I notice other people both joining them and leaving. They seem like genuinely friendly people, the kind of people who'd talk to anyone, including me. Noticing that they seem to be playing some kind of drinking game, I walk up and introduce myself.
"Can I play, too?" I manage to say in my 'cool' voice.
"Why not," a guy with a brown beard says, already too drunk to take notice of me. "It's Circle of Death. You play?"
"'Doubt it. She's a newbie here" says another, seeming to be a little more tolerant to the alcohol, but he can still tell that I haven't been to one of these before.
"Of course I do" I murmur, trying my hardest to fit in. I really don't know what Circle of Death is, or any drinking game for that matter, but I won't let them know that. I follow their lead and pretend to know what I'm doing. The drunker of the two guys flips over the first card. It's a 5. All the boys at the table take turns passing around the red solo cup and drink. The guy to his left picks up the next card, a 2.
"2 is you," he rhymes in a drunken slur of words, "Hmm, I choose her," as he points in my direction.
"Me?" I ask.
"You, Blondie. Drink up"
I grab the beer in the center and gulp down a sip of the bitter drink. The longer I try to play, the more I have to drink. I get this feeling in my subconscious, a whispering in the back of my mind telling me to stop, but the alcohol screams over the voice and I push away the thought of doing so. Suddenly feeling bold, I speak up.
"Let's change the rules a bit. Loser has to moon the bartender," I challenge. Everyone looks at the bartender standing over the large counter while he's shaking a drink.
There's a man sitting at the head of the table, "I like the way you think, but how about something more age appropriate?" he counters. "We're not in high school anymore, sweetie." I look around the table and watch the carefree expression on everyone's face slowly turned into a look of suspicion."Loser has to jump off the pier." The pier's at least a 100 meters above the water, and we're on the very end of it. Sounds man enough to the guys here, so they all seem to agree with the chorus of "Yeahhhh!"s going around the table. All of the college guys seem to be smirking. We jump right back into the game. The turns go around and around. In the beginning, I could feel myself getting drunker and drunker as each person had another turn, but now it's all a blur. My head sweats and I have a splitting headache beginning on the left side of my brain. It feels as if one blood vessel would pop, all the pressure would be gone, but I can't seem to make it burst.
I try to ignore the blood flow increasing to my head, I feel the tension grow at the table as we near the end of the game, and I can't keep my mind off of the thought of losing this dare. There's no possible way I could conciously jump off this pier. I know I have no real control over winning or losing, but I keep pressing my luck with each round. Choosing at random, depending on fate, I pick up a card for my turn.
"Looks like you're the lucky one," one of the more attractive in the group said. I broke the circle. I lost. "You know what you have to do."
Sam, the man who had the bright idea for this horrifying dare, lets out a chuckle with an edge to it that could cut steel. I watch him as he moves my way and grabs my arm. Everything seems as if I'm dreaming, like I could blink my eyes and wake up from this nightmare. How did I let myself sink in this far? There are other ways to escape my past. I've lived with fear for so long, so why did I think that getting myself this drunk could get me over my fears?
Sam, seemingly as drunk as I am, leads me over to a bench for me to hop up onto the railing. I struggle balancing on the narrow piece of wood and feel like I'll fall back any second. I feel tears welling up to the surface. My heart-rate quickens and I look around me with dread in hopes of seeing someone brave enough to help me. No one steps up to the plate.
I look down at the deep, black hole of an ocean below me. Bad idea. You know how people sometimes stare out into the ocean and they say how beautifully terrifying it is? They're wrong. It's only terrifying.
I feel my feet slip off of the wooden railing. I'm falling. Pushed.
I try to gasp for air as I'm plunging into the ocean but the air around me has me trapped inside of an oxygen-less chamber and I smack the ocean.
