The Rapids

“I can’t wait to go tubing in the river today!” I said to my friend, Julia. 

“I know! I’m super excited!” She said back to me. 

I hated waiting so long in the car, but we finally got to the place after a long 3 hour drive. 

I loved going tubing because I got to feel the water on my arms and legs. I have loved being in the water since I was 2. 

I learned to swim when I was one and a half years old. We went down to the river with our tubes and our wet bags for food,water, and phones. 

When we got in it felt nice and cool on our feet. We plopped into our tubes and started to flow nicely down the river.

The water was clear too, and only about 3 feet deep. 

Sometimes you would bump your butt on a rock or the river would suddenly start to go really fast down the river. Suddenly I felt the river going really fast. 

Like, way too fast. I held onto the handles on the tubes and held on. By this point it was going at least 50 miles per hour. 

I heard my mom scream and then I heard a loud crash and pop. I looked towards the front of my tube and I saw a big tree on the edge of the water.

I crashed into the tree and landed on the leaves of the forest, then, silence. I woke up about two hours later with a big bump on my head. 

I think I was knocked out when I fell on the ground. I looked around for the water bag, and I finally found it in a pile of leaves. 

I tried to call 911 but nothing worked. There was no signal or wifi. I looked around then got up and started walking. 

I couldn’t walk up the river so I had to walk into the forest. The forest was very dark and full of some weird mist-like thing. 

The forest was gross and full of mud and leaves. After about an hour of walking, I started to get hungry. 

I looked into my water bag and found 4 oranges, 3 bags of flamin hot cheetos, two bottles of water, and 6 string cheese’s. I sat down and ate a  bag of flamin hot cheetos. 

After I ate it I felt like I needed some water because of all that spice.

I didn’t drink water because I didn’t want to waste all of it. Walking in the forest was super boring and scary when you're alone. 

There was one thing that I wanted to figure out though before my mom crashed she yelled something. It sounded very weird. 

After a very long time of walking through the forest, I finally made out what she screamed when she was about to crash. This is what she said:

“Run! Never stop! I love you Emily! Never fo-” 

That was all of what she said that I heard before the loud crash and pop.  After I remembered all of what she said, I ran. 

After about thirty more minutes I got tired. 

I sat down and had an orange. 

All that running made me so tired I had to drink some water. I drank about half the water and then ran again. 

Seven minutes later, I was running and I tripped over a rock. I passed out and had a terrible dream. 

It was about the river and it scared me a lot. 

When I woke up I was still in the forest and there was a person in front of me. Once my eyes adjusted to the light I realized it was Julia! I gave her a big hug and told her about the things I did. 

I told Julia that I thought that she wasn’t alive after all of those crazy things that happened in the water.

I asked her if she had any signal or any wifi on her phone. She said no. Obviously. 

“How long were you standing above me watching me?” I asked Julia

“About fifteen minutes.” She replied to me. I thought she would have said like one hour or something like that. 

We continued to walk through the forest when we came across a rusling in a bush. 

We also heard hissing so I knew it had to be a snake in that bush. When the snake popped out of the bush I got super scared. I had ophidiophobia. 

A fear of snakes. I looked around for a sharp stick that I could jab the snake's body with. I found one laying on the ground beside me and I threw it. 

I had a really bad aim. I aimed for the snake's body but instead it stabbed the snake right in the throat. 

“Well I guess well have that for dinner.” Julia said. We both shared a laugh. 

It was getting late, so we found a spot to camp out for dinner. 

We made a fire out of two sticks and then cooked the snake.

I had eaten snake before and I thought that it tasted pretty good. 

It kind of tasted like steak. I knew that Julia had not tried it before but I think she would like it. 

We ate dinner then found some pines which we used for beds. We didn’t have blankets but I was fine without one. 

The next morning we woke up and had two oranges for breakfast and shared a bag of flamin hot cheetos. 

We walked for two hours then got thirsty and hungry so we had an orange and some water. We didn't have a lot of food left, so we decided to go hunting.

I sharpened a stick for me, then sharpened a stick for Julia. 

I sharpened the stick by using a sharp rock I found by the edge of the river.

Going hunting was fun but kind of boring to wait for an animal to come. A deer passed and we hit it right in the eye. I felt really tired after that and took a nap. 

“Wake up Emily.” It is time for school. 

“Huh? But I was just in a forest with Julia hunting.”  I said to my mom

“It was probably just a dream.” She said

“But it all felt so real."

"Was it?"