The kid in the Gusher World T-shirt unclipped the two-way radio from his belt, pushed a button, and barked, “This is Matt. Looks like we got a Code Orange up here on Doom. Activate the usual response team.”

Corey looked at him questioningly.

“Code Orange,” the kid repeated. “Means a freak-out. Happens all the time. Better than a Code Red, though.”

Code Red? Corey wondered. But Katelyn was still frozen in a sitting position at the top of the slide. Her whole body was trembling. She ran her tongue lightly over her lips and appeared to be trying to say something, but the words wouldn’t come.

Corey pushed past the kid with the radio and reached her side.

“It’s okay,” he said. He grabbed her gently by the shoulders and pulled her back from the slide’s edge. He could feel her breath coming in quick, shallow gasps.

“Can you stand up?” he asked.

Katelyn looked like she didn’t recognize him. Her eyes were dull and unfocused. It reminded him of a video he had just watched of a window washer who was paralyzed with fear while ascending the three-hundred-foot pitched glass roof of an aquarium somewhere in the Midwest.

A rescue team had been dispatched to bring back the frightened window washer. But when a local TV reporter attempted to interview the man once he was back on the ground, he was still in shock and hardly able to breathe, let alone speak.

Corey lifted one of Katelyn’s arms and the Gusher World kid lifted the other. Slowly they got her to her feet. Her legs were shaking.

“Somebody will be up in a while to help her down,” the kid said.

But Corey waved him off and said, “I got this.”

The sooner he got Katelyn back on the ground, he thought, the better off she’d be. She still hadn’t said a word, and her legs were unsteady as they shuffled their way to the stairs, Katelyn leaning heavily on his shoulder.

The long walk down seemed to take forever. They drew puzzled stares from the dozens of ride-goers on their way up. Katelyn seemed in a trance, eyes staring straight ahead the whole time.

“Oh my gosh! Did you see her face?” one girl whispered loudly to her friends.

“She looks like she’s seen a ghost! Must have been one ugly ghost, too!” another said as they giggled and bounded up the stairs.

Suddenly Corey felt sorry for Katelyn, which quickly brought on another feeling: confusion. The girl had been a major pain to him for weeks. She had made him look bad at every turn. Not only that, but she’d made no secret of the fact that she basically hated his guts and hoped he would go away.

So why was he feeling sorry for her now?

Why was he helping her to make this trek? Why was he shooting dirty looks at the mean girls making fun of her as they passed? Corey wasn’t sure. Was this what his mom had meant when she talked about having “conflicted feelings” for someone? You felt bad for them, but you wanted to kill them at the same time?

Maybe.

All Corey knew was that he’d never even seen Katelyn look nervous before, let alone scared. And seeing her so panic-stricken bothered him. It was almost as if she was a completely different kid now from the tough, sarcastic girl he had known a half hour ago.

And he didn’t like this Katelyn 3.0 version at all.

Finally, some twenty minutes later, they reached the bottom level of stairs. As they emerged, squinting into the bright sunshine, Corey spotted another teen in a Gusher World T-shirt.

“Okay, they just came down,” the kid said into his radio. “Cancel the Code Orange.”

“Hey, can I ask you a question?” Corey said. “What’s a Code Red?”

The kid frowned and shook his head. “You don’t want to know,” he said. “Let’s just say they’re doing a lot of screaming up there if it’s a Code Red. Sometimes we practically have to peel ’em off the wall. And take ’em down on a stretcher.”

Bet that’s a fun time, Corey thought.

He glanced at Katelyn and was relieved to see that she had finally stopped trembling. The color in her face was starting to return, too. But she still hadn’t said a word.

As they walked down the hill, they saw the rest of the Orioles running toward them. Quickly, Katelyn snatched her hand off Corey’s shoulder.

“What was going on up there?” Gabe asked. “We were watching you guys the whole time.”

“Yeah, looked like somebody couldn’t handle it,” Sammy said gleefully to Katelyn. “Like somebody got really, really scared.”

Everyone stared at Katelyn, who looked down and said nothing.

“No, she wasn’t scared,” Corey heard himself blurt. “She just has a stomachache, that’s all.” He turned to her. “A really bad stomachache, right?”

Katelyn nodded, eyes still glued to the ground.

“Didn’t look like a stomachache from down here,” Mickey said. “Looked like a case of chicken-itis.”

“And how come she’s not talking?” Justin said suspiciously. “When she was dragging me into the ocean to be shark bait, she didn’t shut up.”

“Let me ask you something,” Corey said, jabbing him in his scrawny chest. “Last time you had a stomachache, did you feel like talking?”

No one said anything as Corey gazed fiercely at the group.

“Okay,” he said finally. “If you’ll excuse us, we’re going to find Katelyn’s mom. She needs to go back to the hotel and lie down. Meet you back here in a few.”

The knot of Orioles silently parted as Corey and Katelyn pushed through and continued down the hill. Corey shook his head and chuckled to himself. He had talked about Katelyn having a stomachache with such conviction that even he was starting to believe it. How crazy was that?

Oh, well, he thought, it was like his mom had always said: sometimes you have to tell a little white lie to spare someone’s feelings.

A few minutes later, they spotted Katelyn’s mother sitting at a table with Coach and a few of the other parents at an outdoor café, all of them sipping iced teas.

Katelyn started to run to them. Just before she reached the table, she turned and looked back at Corey. Then she appeared to mouth something.

With all the noise around him, the rock music blaring from the speakers and the water gushing and the sounds of hundreds of people splashing and laughing, Corey couldn’t quite make out what she said.

But it almost sounded like: “Thanks.”