Full Tilt Read Free Page B

way Cassandra was looking at me and the way I looked back. Russ smirked knowingly. Maggie’s mood took a turn toward sour. “Why are we wasting our time here? Let’s ride something,” she said.
    Quinn was getting angrier with each ball he threw and each dollar he lost. “These stupid games are all rigged.” He stepped away, and I took his place.
    A life-altering experience.
    I shook off the strange feeling that I would have recognized as a premonition if I had had any sense whatsoever. Then I took aim and hurled the ball at the little pyramid of bottles, hitting them squarely in the center. Those bottles flew like they were hit by a freight train, not a baseball. Looking back, I think those bottles would still have fallen even if I had hurled the ball at the moon.
    Quinn jolted in disgust. “Oh, man!”
    “We have a winner,” said Cassandra. She reached above her to a menagerie of stuffed animals and pulled one down. She didn’t give me a choice— she decided which one I got. The roller coaster rumbled again, and the air filled with the screams of its riders.
    “Enjoy,” she said as she handed me my prize.
    It was a bear, but this bear was one sorry specimen. Its head was lopsided, its bright red eyes were too small and too far apart, making it appear both angry and congenitally stupid at the same time. Its fur was an uneasy shade of greenish brown, like what you get when you mix all of your paints together.
    “That bear is as inbred as they come,” said Russ.
    The bear wore a bright yellow jersey bearing the number 7. School bus yellow, I thought, but I shook the thought away. On the jersey was a large pocket in the center of the bear’s chest. The edge of something stuck out of the pocket.
    I reached in and pulled it out. It was a white card about the size of an index card. On it was a strange symbol in bright red:

     
    “What’s that supposed to be?” Quinn asked.
    I flipped the card over to see what was written on the back.
    An invitation to ride
10 Hawking Road
Midnight to Dawn
     
    “I don’t get it.” I looked at the bear as if it could give me an explanation, but all it gave me was a beady, red-eyed stare.
    “Hey, Cassandra—” I turned to ask her what it was all about, but she was gone. Instead, the booth was now manned by some bearded, bald guy who looked like he’d rather be on a Harley than behind a counter.
    “Three balls for a buck,” he said. “Wanna play?”
    “Wait a second. Where’s Cassandra?”
    “Cassandra who?”
    I scanned the crowd around us, but there was no sign of her. Somewhere up above, the roller coaster plunged and the ground shook like an aftershock.

3
Ten and Two
     
    Last month, on my sixteenth birthday, I bought a car with the money I had made working summer jobs for four years. Mom couldn’t contribute, but that was okay, I never expected her to.
    It’s a Volvo. Beat up, rusty, and barely breathing, but a Volvo, nonetheless. Still the safest car on the road. Air bags, head-restraint system, front- and rear-end crumple zones, and a crush-resistant passenger compartment. No crash-test dummies lost their lives testing this one.
    With my license only one month old, I drove us home from the amusement park with both hands on the wheel, positioned at ten and two, like we learned in driver’s ed.
    “What a rip!” Quinn complained. “What theme park closes at ten at night?” He fiddled with his nose ring, pulling loose a booger that had rotated out on the shiny silver ring like an asteroid. He wiped it on the dashboard, and I smacked him.
    In the back Russ and Maggie examined the strange invitation to the phantom amusement park. “I think I’veheard of this place,” Maggie said. “If I’m right, it’s supposed to be pretty good.”
    “I’ve heard of it too,” Russ said.
    I thought of the way Cassandra just disappeared. It was pretty creepy. “There’s nothing down Hawking Road,” I informed them. “Just the old quarry.”
    “Dude, it’s a theme