Full Tilt Read Free

on?”
    I laughed, but I had a hard time tearing my eyes away from the emergency exit sign. Quinn, on the other hand, never even looked. Like everything else in his life, he crashed forward, caution the first casualty.
    It took only a few minutes to reach the ride. Quinn, of course, grabbed the front car, smiling back at me. “Next stop, Willoughby,” he said, quoting the old Twilight Zone episode. “Room for one more.”
    Russ and Maggie took the seat behind him. I stood there, frozen.
    “C’mon, Blake,” Russ said. “One last thrill before the ivy.”
    Ivy, I recalled, is what they generally put on a grave.
    “Very funny,” I said a moment before I realized that he really meant Columbia University, which is an Ivy League school. Duh. I took my place next to Quinn, my feet uncomfortably crossed in front of me. I pulled down the lap bar, double-checked it, then triple-checked it. Quinn snickered at the expression that must have filled my face.
    “Are we having fun yet?”
    “Just shut up, okay?”
    The little train jerked forward and began to ratchet up a steep climb toward the first drop. “You gotta live for this, bro,” Quinn said. “Live for it, like I do.”
    The Kamikaze dragged us heavenward and reached the peak of its first drop. We lingered for a moment at the peak, then hurled into a suicide plunge. My stomach tried to escape though my eyeballs. My brain became a pancake pressed to the dome of my skull. Quinnwhooped and wailed, loving the feeling. You gotta live for it, he had said, but right now I just wanted to live through it.
    The safety bar offered no safety at all, and all at once I was back there again.. ..
    Seven years old, spinning out of control. My first ride . . .
    No! I told myself. No, I would not go there. I wouldn’t think about it. I pushed the memory down so deep, not even the Kamikaze could shake it loose.
    The roller coaster bottomed out and turned sharply to the left, spinning into a double corkscrew. Quinn’s hands were in the air as he screamed with the thrill of the ride. I gripped the safety bar, gritting my rattling teeth.
    The Kamikaze doubled back, and the force of the turn cut into my side as we shot toward an insane loop. My head was pressed forward by g-forces. The earth and sky switched places, and back again. Then, as we came out of the loop, I caught sight of a wooden support strut tearing away from the weblike scaffolding of the Kamikaze. The thick pole plunged like a felled tree.
    “No!” I screamed. “No!”
    It wasn’t my imagination. It was real! Crossbeams fell away next to me. The rattle of the ride intensified. When I turned my head, I caught sight of the damaged part of the ride, but we were speeding away from it, hitting a trough and rising again. Then the ride took a wide U-turn and headed back toward the damaged section.
    Another support beam broke away. Big heavy white timbers tumbled down, bouncing off the track, takingmore of the ride with it. Others saw the danger now.
    “Do you see that?” yelled Quinn. “Do you see it!” The screams of fear were the same as the screams of joy. I tugged at my lap bar, but what did I think I could do? Jump?
    The damage was right in front of us now. The last falling crossbeam pulled away all the support beneath the track, leaving us to face a rickety trestle. Just the track and nothing beneath. For a moment I thought we’d make it across, but the left rail fell away and then the right, leaving a twenty-foot gap and a hundred-foot fall.
    I could do nothing but scream as the Kamikaze left the track, the rumbling and rattling giving way to a deadly silence as smooth as wet ice, then a vertical drop, spiraling at the full force of gravity. My face was an open wail. The wind, the light of the park, the whole world disappeared into my screaming mouth as the bottom dropped out of the world, turning into a black misty pit.
    Darkness.
    More darkness ...
    And then the lights of the Kamikaze station blazed around me as