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• Rhiannon Peterson, Grade 10
• Poetry
• 2013

Emily grabbed my hand as we jumped from the cliff into the ocean. It was an amazing feeling, falling through the sky into the deep blue water. As we surfaced we both look at each other and smiled, the adrenaline was still pumping through our veins and we both felt invincible.
Emily and I are best friends and have been ever since meeting on the first day of kindy. We do everything together; I don’t think we have ever had more than two weeks apart. We swam into shore together we pulled our self-up on to the sand. Laying down looking up into the blue sky which was slowly turning orange, we are both puffing from the swim back it was at least 70 metres non-stop swim against the water’s current. We lay and listen to the birds, the ocean and our breathing.
We get up and decide to have one last jump before we head home. Emily and I start making our way to the stairs to get to the top of the cliff, it takes as 10 minutes to get to the top of the cliff, we look down 40 metres watching the wave crash against the cliff face. I take Emily’s hand and we step back then run and jump off the cliff. We land in the water with a giant splash, I surface taking in a deep breath. Emily surfaces also but her face is full of pain.
“ Em! What has happened?” I ask
she doesn’t answer, I grab her arm holding her afloat.
“Argh!” she screams “let go!”
I let go and the water around us turns red. She has been cut or bitten. It’s almost dark and I’m scared, why did we do this stupid craze?
“You’ll be alright Em, we just need to swim back and I’ll get help.”
“ Okay, but please don’t leave me”
While slowly making our way back I think of what our parents will say when they see Emily’s cut, especially because she got it from cliff jumping, we have been told that if we ever go cliff jumping we’ll be in trouble, but there’s no time to think about the trouble we’ll be in soon. I pull Emily up onto shore , her arm and hand is bleeding, I run to our bags and take my phone out and call mum.
“ Hello mum, please come and pick Em and I up from the beach, Emily is hurt”
“Samantha! What has happened? Explain yourself!”
“ There’s no time just come and get us”
I hang up and run back to Emily, mum arrives within 10 minutes.

we drive to the doctor surgery where Emily gets 11 stitches in her arm and hand, and bits of rock fragments pulled out. We dropped Emily back home and explain what happened. When mum finally got to our house I was expecting to be yelled at for not listening to her but instead she said
“I’m so proud of you”