Free Full Tilt by Neal Shusterman

the same time.
    I wanted you here tonight, she had said. You more than anyone.
    It stunned me to think I was singled out. Me, who never looked for attention the way Quinn did. Did she know I would never have come here if my brother hadn’t stolen the invitation and come here first? Or was luring my brother here all part of her plan? If Cassandra was the soul of this place, that meant the amusement park was alive, and it wanted me—specifically wanted me.
    I closed my eyes and took a few moments to try to defragment my brain. Then I opened my eyes again, and looked down to the platter in front of me, wondering exactly what the blue plate special might be. I hoped it wasn’t the broiled head of anyone I knew. A puff of steam escaped as I pulled away the dome, revealing that the plate was, indeed, blue. But there was nothing on it. Nothing but two words written across the plate:

     
    I had no idea what that meant until I realized that the D was printed backward. I rotated the plate around.

     
    The glowing ride symbol on my hand went dark, as if it had been scanned by the blue plate special, and then the booth suddenly spun like one of those haunted-house bookshelves that leads to a tunnel. The booth was revolving into the wall like . . .
    Like a turnstile!
    The entire booth turned 180 degrees, closing out the restaurant and leaving me sitting on the other side of the wall.

7
Big Blue Mother
     
    I was in a warehouse, and I was alone. That was what struck me instantly—being alone. Through everything, I’d been surrounded by others: wild riders on the carousel, frenzied drivers on the streets of Chicago. But the revolving tavern booth deposited me in a lonely warehouse graveyard of battered cars and piles of rusted automotive parts, the waste products of my last ride.
    The warehouse was huge, at least fifty feet high, with great stone pillars holding up the ceiling and long windows made of hundreds of smaller panes of glass. I could see nothing through those panes, only the sky, casting a cage of shadows on the ground. Yet beyond the windows the sky was changing. The shades of orange spoiled to amber and a sickly yellow, like the skin around an old bruise. If the booth was a turnstile, then I was already on the approach to a new ride, but I didn’t yet know what it was.
    There was a sound now. It was the swish-swish-swish of something slicing back and forth like a pendulum. As I moved around a pile of junk I saw its shadow, huge andominous, as it rose and fell. Only now did I hear the screams each time it fell. Finally it came into view, a thing strangely out of place within this warehouse.
    It was the swinging boat—the one we had seen when we first entered the park. It was in the form of a three-masted schooner, and it hung from a single axle supported on both sides. It swung forward and back, forward and back, with a rhythm that was both hypnotic and nauseating. This was what the ride looked like from the outside. But from the inside, what would it be? I didn’t have to wait long to find out. The warehouse had sprung a leak. As I leaned against a pillar water ran over my hand. I looked down to see myself standing in a puddle that kept growing deeper, because the water wasn’t just dribbling down the pillar now, it was pouring. Beyond the windows of the huge warehouse an ocean was rising.
    I wanted to keep it out. I wanted to keep everything out: the fact that Cassandra had set her sights on me; that I’d lost Maggie and Russ; that my brother kept spiraling deeper into the rides....
    The windows began to explode inward with the force of the ocean, spilling into the warehouse. A white-water wave rolled behind me, and in front of me was the swinging boat. All my hope rested in the sanctuary of that vessel.
    The water that just a moment ago was at my ankles now rose past my knees, and I could hear the wave roaring behind me. The wave hit me, washing me off my feet. I reached up and managed to hook my arm aroundone of