I've been having trouble sleeping. I kept remembering something. And I have a swollen tooth as well.
When I was about 12, I lived in a rural community. I took the bus to school each day, a half hour there, and hour and a half coming home. I got used to sleeping on busses.
Near the summer, we went on a schooltrip in the scoolbusses to a place called Sunwapta Falls, just east of Jasper.
It wasn't just my classes from my school, we stopped at another town and we packed into 3 or 4 schoolbusses with kids from another school. This kid from the other school was put beside me, he was very talkative, but I was very tired. I normal got tired just before noon. I fell asleep on the bus during the trip.
Once we were there we went with our guides and watched the falls and went to a bridge and stuff. Our group of maybe 10 got back to the busses about a half hour before some of the older kids who went for a longer walk, so the adult we were with told us we could look around the forest around the parking lot, but of course stay back from the fences.
I was walking with this kid who I didn't know who had been sitting with me, but I didn't really know him at all, I don't know his name. there was a fence and a huge noisy waterfall. On the other side of the fence was a rock ledge about 5 feet out from the fence.the fence was rolled up at the bottom where people had snuck under to sit on the ledge.
The other boy crawled under the fence and stood there looking. He turned back to me and told me to come on, it was fun. He was dancing to himself, really excited on the ledge. I crawled under and on my belly to the edge. I couldn't tell flat or straight up. The sound was roaring and the water spray made it impossible to focus properly. I couldn't even sit up. I felt I would fall and I crawled back, backwards, because I felt like I was falling even on the rock, I was dizzy.
I remember him dancing, like actually standing on one leg and kicking it about. I said something about being scared and he should come back to the fence, but he wouldn't.
I told him I would go back to the bus. I walked over the bump with the treee and a few feet more, then realized I should get him.
The tree with the bump in the path totally obscured the view, when I went over the hill I couldn't see him. I called to him and figured he was hiding in the bush across the path, but it seemed odd, I didn't feel that I had been on the other side of the bump long enough for him to crawl under the fence, cross the path, and hide, but the roaring was freaking me out. The possibility that he had fallen didn't occur to me, I was afraid of the waterfall.
I went back, and there was no one really about the bus so I went and sat back down on the bus and fell asleep, waiting for the the other groups to come back.
I was woken up by a woman I din't know well asking me about my friend. I was confused. She said "you friend -----, that you were sitting beside on the trip, she was acting like I knew him and I was confused, I told her I didn't really know him, I had just met him a couple hours ago, and I didn't know his name, she kept saying his name and I was confused "Where is----?"
I don't know that person, I just met them today. We aren't really friends, and I don't know them.
"The boy you were walking with down the path, Where is he?"
So I told her he was down the way by the fence and that I was scared and tired so I came back. I wanted to go back to sleep, I was wishing she would leave me alone. She made me show her where we had been, and I took her there and showed her the place and explained that I couldn't stand up, and I was scared so I had crawled back and went back to the bus. She asked more questions and I was confused, but I told her that I had stopped walking back, and looked over the hill to call him to come to the bus, but he wasn't there, and I pointed out to her that he must've hid in the bushes, but I really didn't think I had been gone long enough for him to move that far.
She took me back to the bus, and we all had to stay there a while.
I fell asleep again. When I got home my asked me about my friend, and I said he wasn't my friend mom, I didn't know him, he was from the other school.
She didn't say anything about his fate, no other teacher said anything else to me,
no one ever told me that he had died that day.
