Full Tilt

Full Tilt

By Neal Shusterman

This is about a guy named Blake and his brother, Quinn.. Blake is an over-cautious teen. His younger brother, Quinn is the opposite. Blake was in a bus accident when he was very young and was the only survivor. Although he has no memory of how he managed to survive the event, it has drastically shaped his personality.

One day Blake, Quinn, and their two friends Maggie and her boyfriend, Russ go to an amusement park together, called Darian Lake. They are clueless when they arrive as to how this event will change them forever. At the park, they ride on various rides. One of the rides was different from all of the others. It was the Kamikaze. It was a roller coaster, brand new to the park. As Blake got in line for the ride, his friends were right beside him. They were all excited to go on the new ride, but Blake was terrified. It reminded him of the time he was seven and his school bus got into a accident and went screaming over guardrails, almost to his death. He did not want to ride this new ride, however his friends pushed him to do it. Once on the ride, he was safely harnessed in and the ride took off, screaming down steep hills and loops. Everything was fine, until the structure started to shake and beams started to give way! There was now a twenty foot gap in the track! Blake thought it'd be the end of him and his friends, when he saw it. The coaster dove straight down into the gap, about to hit asphalt. Then the next thing Blake knew, the ride had ended. He waited in his seat, wondering what had happened. The ride had been built to give way like that. The coaster had still been on the track, when it fell through the big gap. He turned to the track and saw the beams that had fallen rising back again. It was all a stunt and everyone else had known about it except him! Blake went through the rest of the day shaken by it, until he met a girl at a game booth. He thought she was so beautiful and flirted with her for a little while. Her name was Cassandra. Then he won a prize from her booth, a stuffed bear. Inside the bear's pocket, was an invite to another amusement park. He showed his friends, then looked back for the girl who'd given him the bear. She was gone and a new person was standing in her place, in control of the game. The new person didn't know what Blake was talking about, when he asked the man about the girl who'd been there. It freaked Blake out a little bit, that she could just disappear like that.

Later that night when Blake and his brother, Quinn got home, they were greeted by an unexpected guest. It was their mom's newest boyfriend. He stood beside their mom. Him and Blake's mom wanted to announce something together. Quinn and Blake didn't trust this guy and were most appalled to find out that the announcement was their mom and her boyfriend, Russ's engagement. Quinn and Blake talked about it a little later, but only got themselves into an argument over it.

It was later that night, when Blake heard there was something wrong with Quin. He was taken to hospital in a coma! Blake was afraid, so he got all his friends Maggie and Russ together to talk. Blake told them he'd come up with an explanation for Quinn's coma. He said that his invite to the park was missing and Quinn had stolen it and gone there somehow! Of course, his friends thought he was nuts, but he insisted on going to the park to investigate. So they drove to the amusement park. The park should have been closed at such a late hour, but it was open and running when they got there. Blake wanted into the park, but the guard would not let him in without an invitation. When Blake insisted his little brother was in the park, the guard heard someone talk over his headset and let him in, while explaining the rules of the park. The rules were: you must only ride seven rides and you must ride them all by six-o'clock. Once inside the park with his friends alongside, Blake saw someone that looked kind of familiar. It was Cassandra! She owned the place! He went to talk to her, but she'd gotten on a ride. So Blake and his friends got on the ride too. The ride was a Carousel. Once the ride started, everyone had hopped onto an animal. This Carousel wasn't just horses or anything, no it was all different animals. As the Carousel went faster and faster, it was getting harder to hold on. Then Blake noticed the animals start to move their legs and become alive! Soon he was riding a real lion in a stampede! He saw one boy fall off of his animal and get trampled, so he knew it was real. Eventually Blake fell off his lion. He made it out of the herd though. Maggie and Russ were riding a giant bird and they'd ridden the bird out as well. All of them were now in a giant field. They walked around confused, until they hit their next ride, the bumper cars. With almost no hesitation, they jumped into the little cars. The cars immediately started turning from bumper cars into real cars. Maggie and Russ were in one car and Blake was in another. As soon as they were driving, other cars started to bang into them. Some cars were bigger then others. In fact, there were all different cars driving around. They were all trying to bump each other and kill each other. The kids all seemed to love it. It was like they didn't know the danger in it all. It was all just a ride to them. Kids started crashing their cars and dying all around Blake. All of the sudden, Cassandra showed up in a car beside Blake. Her car was huge and she was a merciless driver, who ran over anyone in her path! She tried to kill Blake with her car, but Blake was a good driver and got away from her. In the meantime though, he had no clue where Maggie and her boyfriend had gone to. He didn't even know if they had survived to this point. Blake drove the car away from the other cars to a restaurant. There he asked where the next ride was, but the person he talked to would not tell him. Then he saw Cassandra sitting in one of the booths there. She had tried to kill him, but he wanted to know where his brother was, so he went up to her. He questioned her for a long time and got no straight answer. She would only say that his brother was indeed there in the park and that every ride had a way out. After that he set off to the next ride. The next ride he saw was a swinging boat ride. Blake had already endured two rides. He needed to go through five more to get out of the park, so he jumped onto the ride. Once on the ride, the ride turned into a real boat on real water. There was even a whale in the water. It was a giant Blue whale! The whale was trying to sink the boat! Suddenly Blake saw his brother on the boat as well. He ran to him. He told him that there was a way through every ride.