The Floor is Lava 8 min read

Author’s note:

These aren’t as exciting as some, but I guarantee they are 100% genuine, true to my recollection. It’s something I feel I can’t share with anyone I know in person, so if you’ve read this, please leave a comment. It’s my motivation to keep journaling them down.

When I was in my first year of middle school, my sister had invited 3 of her volleyball teamates over, my sister is 3 years older than me, and her friends similar age. Her friends were all beautiful, but unfortunately I was really quite awkward and shy at that time. I’d never been to the gym yet, had fairly low self-esteem and no idea about women. I wish I had a time-machine to go back and redo this night, but anyway I hid in my room most of the night playing Call of Duty, only emerging when my mum yelled out that the pizza had arrived. I grabbed a full plate before scurrying back upstairs, but not before I saw that her friends had already switched into their slumber-party outfits for the night.

Names have been changed for anonymity obviously. Harper was wearing a long, oversized cream sweater that kept slipping off one shoulder, the sleeves bunched up at her elbows, paired with matching soft long pants. Isla had on a similar look, but a button-up pajama set in pink. Paige wore short, loose PJ pants and a simple tank top.

I had finished my plate and went back down for seconds. The noise from the living room was louder now, laughing, shrieking, constant giggles. I headed downstairs and found my sister, Harper, and Isla standing barefoot on one of the couches. Paige stood on the carpet watching them.

“Jump!” Paige yelled encouragingly.

“It’s too far!” my sister and her friends complained.

It looked like Paige had rearranged the living-room furniture so they had to jump between the two couches.

“Come on, clock’s ticking!” she laughed, impatient.

My sister was lining up her jump when she spotted me coming around the corner.

“John, come here,” she ordered.

I walked over sheepishly, unsure what she wanted but happy to do anything that remotely involved those three friends of hers.

“Turn around,” she barked.

‘Ok…’ No sooner had I complied than she launched herself onto my back, arms locking around my shoulders, legs wrapping around my waist in a piggyback. She pointed at the opposite couch.

“Over there!”

She was thin and athletic, a few years older than me, slightly taller and maybe a touch heavier. We had grown up constantly play-fighting, wrestling, and competing, so this kind of roughhousing wasn’t unusual. I staggered forward the three or four feet, then spun so she could climb off onto the couch. She hadn’t even fully landed before the complaints started behind us.

“That’s not fair, he’d get burnt too, he’s touching the ground!”

“Cheater! Your brother can’t just save you!”

It clicked. They were playing the ‘floor is lava’. For anyone who doesn’t know, it’s the game where you pretend the floor is molten lava. Anything not touching the carpet like couches, coffee tables, chairs is safe. You treat the room like an obstacle course and if you touch the ground then you’re out.

“He can carry you too,” my sister protested.

“Ugh…” I stammered, caught in the crossfire. I would have loved to, but I also needed to hide that desire. “I don’t know…” Looking at the other two gorgeous girls still stranded on the couch, my anxiety took over again. They were way out of my league. No way they’d let me carry them.

“Besides, he’s moving,” they pointed out.

“Can’t be moving,” Paige ruled.

There was a short silence. Then my sister pointed at the carpet between the two couches.

“Lay down, John.”

I feigned hesitation just long enough for her to raise her eyebrows in a clear do it now look. I dropped onto my stomach in the gap.

“Get ready,” she said, and immediately jumped, landing square on my back.

“Oof” The air left me in a muffled grunt. I kept still, hoping if I stayed quiet they would forget I was a person and just keep using me. I felt her toes flex against my spine before she pushed off and leapfrogged onto the far couch.

“He’s a rock. Not moving,” she announced to Paige, smug that she’d bent the rules in her favour.

“But we’d slip off his shirt too easily,” Harper protested.

I remember the small shock at that comment. No consideration at all for the person they were about to land on with their full body weight, only the risk of losing their made-up game. Made me happy though, they were considering it!

“Just balance,” my sister shrugged.

From where I lay I could see they still weren’t convinced.

“Can he spread his arms out?” Paige asked.

My sister snapped her fingers in my direction. I stretched both arms out until my fingertips were only a few inches from the edges of the couches. The girls burst into fresh laughter at how quickly I obeyed.

My sister demonstrated first. She lowered the ball of her foot onto the back of my right hand, toes still arched, and slowly transferred her full weight onto them. My knuckles cracked under the pressure, a small sharp sound no one heard over the raucous laughter. My face burned with embarrassment and shame. She stepped onto my forearm, then planted a foot firmly between my shoulder blades and continued across my other arm.

“Ta-da,” she pronounced from the far couch.

Harper was next. She moved toward me more reluctantly. My heart was racing so hard it felt like it was in my throat. With my head turned I watched her lower her foot onto my hand the way someone tests the temperature of a pool. The moment her warm, soft toes touched my skin it was like a jolt of electricity. I had to consciously stop myself from smiling, forcing my face into the expression of someone who was only doing this because his sister made him, someone a little scared of moving. Her entire foot settled onto the back of my hand. I could see the hem of her cream pants resting just above her heel. She treated my arms and back like a tightrope, placing one foot carefully in front of the other, arms slightly out for balance. She was cautious the whole way, but it was clearly about not falling into the lava, not about any real concern for the person she was walking on.

The second Harper’s foot left my left hand, Isla was already starting. She had watched both of them cross and didn’t waste time. Her foot landed on my right hand almost the same moment Harper stepped off. She moved quicker, more confident, the same light athletic weight as Harper. Without the voices or the different pajamas I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart by feel alone, just pairs of warm bare feet and the soft drag of pajama fabric crossing my back one after another.

The obstacle course continued into the next room. I could hear the noise carry on, laughing, shrieking, the thump of feet. I desperately hoped they would loop back through and keep using me as their personal bridge. My mind raced with possibilities. What if they added a freeze rule and got stuck on me? What if they had to link arms? But after five minutes, then ten, it didn’t seem like they were coming back.

I wished Paige in her short pants and white pedicure had stood on me too. After fifteen minutes I finally got up for more pizza and realised that they had headed down to her room watch a movie. I felt like an idiot for waiting so long. They never came back.

I stayed up most of the night replaying every second of it in my head, the way they’d just used me and then went upstairs like it was nothing. By the time morning came I was exhausted, having only had a short sleep.

When I finally went downstairs for breakfast they were all already sitting at the table in the same casual clothes they’d slept in, hair messy, still half-asleep but talking quietly among themselves. I walked in, tried to act normal, and said good morning with a small smile.

Paige looked up, held my gaze for half a second, then is if she suddenly remembered, snapped her fingers a few times in the exact same sharp, dismissive way my sister had the night before. The other three immediately burst into laughter, the kind that was clearly about me. My mum glanced between us, confused.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

They just shook their heads, still giggling, and said it was an inside joke. They never told.