She opened her bright eyes and, through the dark tinted goggles, watched the tips of her short, black hair twist and dance through the wind. The man in the red and blue jumpsuit gestured wildly to spin over from the small, paper bag plane. The rickety thing looked about to fall apart, but it had brought her up there. The girl smiled and waved to the man as the plane grew smaller and smaller in the great expanse of bright blue. The closed her eyes and let the wind ripple the loose fabric of her suit. She could feel the huge, cloudless sky breath around her and the earth below her grew and grew, it’s gaping mouth ready to swallow her up. She thought she had lived before this, she thought she knew what it was to get caught up in the moment. But that was a lie. She thought she had lived when she dyed her hair black and cut it short, her mother scowled and the girl cheered a small victory. Then when she came home after that road trip to Mexico with her friends and came back with a lip piercing her father had yelled at her for for almost a full hour, she had scoffed and muttered but she chalked it up on her side of the board. When she finally got that tattoo of a rose on her shoulder she had always wanted her mother fainted and she wasn’t allowed out for a month. That one actually made her kind of sad. But it was all nothing compared to this. Breathing air that filled her lungs and heart at the same time. Falling, falling, falling, what other story started like this? She struggled to remember until she realized it was Alice in Wonderland. She had always hated that story. She turned over in the air and watched the ground for a few seconds, it was coming too close, there wouldn’t be enough time to pull her chute. The girl closed her eyes once more, but there was no longer a smile on her face. She had finally lived.