Jessica's Dare

This is a story I wrote for the fun of it.




I screamed under the water and tried to swim up. Feeling the pressure, I knew that I was swimming down instead of up. My closest friend reached out towards me and tried her hardest to swim as well. She can’t swim. She had lied. We tried to grab each other, but the water made everything a blur and slippery. My lungs were hot and my legs were starting to lose strength. The river was pushing us goodness knows where. Suddenly she just disappeared. Her hand lost its grip and I went on down the river.


I felt like just letting out all my breath and sucking the water in. It really was just too painful to hold it in any longer. The water grew lighter, and the river wasn’t pushing me that much now. I burst to the surface and gasped so fast that I took two breaths in three seconds.


Gosh, it’s possible to breathe like you’ve never before. I looked around looking for Jessica. She wasn’t near the shore or anywhere near me. The river was just waist high, but I still couldn’t see Jessica. I considered shouting but, thinking she might be upstream, I didn’t.


I slowly started to walk to the edge of the river, and shivered. I now realized that the water was icy cold and there was a slight breeze. Dumb-ass. Why did she even ask me to come here? I should not have agreed. Why did she dare me? Man, I’d really like a hot drink. The wind grew. Or it seemed to. I had been walking on the shore-line for maybe five minutes. I saw something red in the water. That cold chill went down my spine.


Thinking it was Jessica, but not wanting to see her, I turned and walked towards the shore. I came back about an hour later with the police. Another hour and both our parents were there. Jessica’s mother came over the minute they saw me and asked what had happened. In front of my parents I told them.


Jess’ mother cried, making everyone uncomfortable. Soon after, they left with Jessica’s body, and I just kind of stood there staring at them. As the ambulance drove off, a whole load of people with cameras rushed over. Suddenly, I was surrounded with people who asked me what happened and how I felt and all that. It seemed stupid. The reporters were asking things like how do I feel being alive while my friend was dead, how many have gone down the river before and came home.


Out of nowhere, I saw a huge monster coming out of one of the reporters and others changing, and my mum and dad paying someone, and I figured that they had paid for this to happen. A camera became a bazooka and the cameraman placed a tape on the ground and it turned into a head of a man. He dropped it into the bazooka. The cameraman pulled a string that appeared and the bazooka exploded. I swear the ground was shaking.


The bazooka somehow kept on exploding. I closed my eyes to make it go away. When I finally opened my eyes, I discovered it was just my door. My mother was knocking. It was seven. I was late.


“I’M AWAKE!!” I yelled out to stopped her banging. I was late for the funeral.
The word fun is in the word funeral. It was six days after Jessica’s death and the funeral was today at ten. It took an hour to get to Jessica’s place, and if I didn’t get ready in an hour we’ll be really late. So I had a bath, changed into a shirt Jess had given me, black, and a pair of jeans, also black and shoes that we both used. It was stupid and lame, but I wanted to do that. We took a cab there.


I was not in a good mood. For goodness sake my friend just died. And the taxi driver didn’t help. I was dizzy and hot, and I couldn’t really see. Ever tried sweating and going into a taxi? Most people have. But have you ever sweated because of the taxi? The cab driver had rolled down all the windows and was smoking. He’s not supposed to smoke his taxi. It’s illegal


I’m allergic to cigarette smoke. And when my dad asked him to stop, he merely said; “It’s my time to smoke.” What in the world. When we arrived, my dad refused to pay the taxi driver $10.80 like the meter showed. Instead, my dad paid $5.80.


I suppose the taxi driver made noise. He seemed the type who isn’t bothered with people. I don’t really know.

My mum and I went first, as my dad didn’t want me to see what he did with the driver.

I had been here for the past five days, sleeping only about a hour every night, to watch over the body. In the day, people came to visit. Last night was the first night in five days I had gotten any real sleep. Jess’ mother came over and hugged me.

Goodness knows why. I think after this we won’t see each other again. Her eyes were a teeny bit red. The guys who will be bringing Jess to the crematorium will come around noon.


The seats were already in place, and a man was asking everyone to “Sit, as the goodbye is about to start.” “Is that how you’re supposed to say it?” I asked my mum. “Don’t know,” she answered vaguely.


The man started to talk about how the dead ones leave us to go to a better place. And he said that we, the people who are alive, have to be happy that we are alive. “I thought you said that she’s going to a better place?” I called. The man looked at me. “Yes, she is.” “Then why do we have to be happy? I mean shouldn’t we be depressed that we are still in this dratted world? We are instead depressed that people die.” The man just turned and continued with his speech.


I grinned, imagining that Jess would say; “If the guy had any brains, he would say that we should be happy for having our families.” The man was blushing, and talking with a face determined to not look in my direction.


The guy droned on and on about life and all that. To make it worse, he had a really flat voice. I fell asleep. Of course, my mum shook me to wake me up. I fell out of the chair shouting “I’m awake!” Everyone stared at me. I ran off and hid behind a wall, laughing.


A sudden happiness filled me. I know now how people could say a simple line can make you laugh or cry. “I’m awake” is not much of a line, but it really cheered me up.


The wake had gone on for five long days, and the funeral lasted for two hours, then there was the burning of the body, which lasted two or three hours. But in the end, she came out in just a tiny box.


She had dared me to jump into a river that I didn’t want to go, because I wanted to go to a theme park. But she had dared me, and we did go on about it if one dared the other and the other didn’t do the dare. And we’d go on for a long while after it was over. So the minute one of us said “I dare you” there’s no getting out of it.
She had dared me, so I went in.


The river, which many have gone into before, had pushed us. The police had said that Jess’ leg had caught between some stones and she couldn’t free herself. The red in the river I had seen was obviously Jess’ jacket.


I remember she had once told me, after my five year boyfriend had broken up with me; that “Everyone always asks what the greatest challenge in life is. To me, it’s finding someone who knows all flaws, differences and mistakes you make, and still loves you with everything he or she has. Real love stories never have happy endings.” She paused. “Because,” she paused again. and then grinned. “Real love stories never have endings.”


She said such things that would make me smile at the sheer idiocy or fun of it. The entire point of the story; is that she is gone. She will be forgotten once people who knew her died. I didn’t want her to just be forgotten because I didn’t want to listen to my instinct to not jump. You ever have that feeling that something bad was going to happen just before it did? That’s what I felt. And she died


Because I was scared to say “no” to a dare.


We loved each other. I know this is all so lame and all that. But she’s dead. She was my best friend and she always had those sayings and stuff, but honestly, she was someone to tease, a punching bag, the dearest person I’ll probably ever know, the idiot who always made me laugh just to see my smile, and my butter-fingers partner.


I don’t know if I’ve ever been ‘there’ for her, but she always was ‘there’ for me. And she is dead. I miss her very much.