“Cannonball!” my brother Hayden screamed, as he jumped off of the boat with the arm holes of his life jacket around his legs, like a diaper into the Chesapeake Bay. I thought he was going to hurt himself because of how he put it on but he didn’t. The day had just begun, but so far I knew that this would be the best boating trip we would ever go on. It was the Fourth of July and my family went boating with our good friends Jason, Christy, Emme, and Grady.
We we left early in the morning and took their 32 foot long boat from their house, in East-port, across the Chesapeake to a cove where we like to play. It’s our favorite cove because there’s a rope swing above the water and a dock with a slide. The adults were all in a big circle drinking beer. We thought they looked silly because they had their life jackets on the same way Hayden had his. While Emme and I played on the rope swing. I thought I was going to fall off the rope swing because the last time we had gone on it I fell off when it was too shallow and hurt my leg.
“Kids, get on the boat we’re about to go tubing,” , my mom yelled. We all quickly swam and got on the boat. We were almost ready to leave, and Emme asked, “Dad, can Kate and I ride the raft there?” So, her dad put the raft in the water still connected to the boat. I jumped onto the raft and the raft started to drift away. Emme jumped off the boat and started swimming out to the raft. While she was getting up her leg floated underneath the raft and a school of jellyfish stung her.
“Help, help!”, she screamed. I thought something horrible happened like she was bitten by a shark, so I asked.
“What’s wrong?” I asked having no idea what had happened.
“I got stung by a jellyfish!” she screamed in terror. I pulled her up onto the raft and saw her leg covered in big, puffy, red splotches. I was disgusted. I didn’t know what to so I yelled…
“Christy, Christy!” I yelled, “Help!” “Pull us in!” I screamed as if Emme was dying. Christy didn’t know what happened, until she saw Emme laying down in the raft crying. Christy started yelling too because she thought Emme’s leg had been bitten off by a shark. There weren’t any people around so the yelling seemed really loud. (Even though we were in the Chesapeake Bay the scene could’ve been described as a shark attack) Christy finally pulled us up to the boat. When we told her what happened, she was relieved Emme hadn’t gotten her leg bitten off and she went to the cooler to get beer for me to pour on her leg and a credit card to scrape off the tentacles and jelly.
Once I cleaned Emme off, we made a promise not to go back in the water for the rest of the day. I thought the rest of the trip was ruined. But not going in the water didn’t stop our fun. We sat in the bottom half of the boat where there are beds and a T.V. to watch the fireworks. The fireworks were beautiful, even though we watched them through the port hole by the bunk beds. It wasn’t the day I had planned, but we had a great day and we still got to enjoy the breathtaking Fourth of July fireworks over the Chesapeake!