CW-Short Shorts

So, the last thing we worked on in creative writing was short stories. Really short ones. Less than 500 words.
The project started out even shorter than that - 7 sentences following these guidelines from the forking paths book.

1. A sentence that starts right in the middle of the action-what just happened.
2. 2 sentences describing the setting.
3. a sentence where you (the narrator) reacts to the event.
4. A sentence where an antagonist reacts t the event in an opposite manner.
5. You reply to the other person.
6. There's a change from the first sentence.

That's what we started with.
Then for our assignment, we lengthened it, though not more than 500 words.
There were 2 things I wanted to write about. One took place at the camp I volunteered at this summer. We went swimming in this beautiful river, and there's this water grass patch that's full of big round tadpoles. Except there's no antagonist in that story.
So I settled on this one. I have no idea what made me remember this...
Heheh. Ellen's an antagonist.


We rose higher and higher, all of us captive to the harnesses that gripped us. The landscape stretched out beneath us, a patchwork of roads, houses, scattered trees, and rollercoasters. Actually, I didn’t have a problem with rollercoasters. They were fine. And they were fun. But this, this was different. This wasn’t a rollercoaster. This thing lifted you two miles into the air, and then sent you plummeting earthward again. Out of all the rides at Great America, the Drop Zone was the only one that scared me. I’d been on it many times before, and I knew it scared me stiff. Literally. Yet here I was again, strapped in by the straightjacket harness. By now, I was resigned to my fate. I grit my teeth waiting for the moment.
Actually, the view was beautiful. I just couldn’t appreciate it because you never knew when the bottom would drop out from under you.
Beside me, my friend Ellen was completely relaxed, looking forwards to the impending plunge. In fact, she was listening with rapt attention. She wanted to listen to me as we fell. I’d told her only a minute before, when we were on secure ground, that I was incapable of screaming as I fell. She wanted to hear it.
Suddenly, the hook detached and our group dropped out of the sky, plunging earthward. My stomach remained stuck up in the clouds. The people around me shrieked in delight. I opened my mouth and attempted to let out a yell, but it choked out in my throat and turned into a little squeak, which quickly blew away.
Ellen laughed loudly, and continued to do so even as the ride skidded to a halt.