Then, with a jolt, the train hit the bottom of the big dip. As it climbed the next hill, we smashed back onto the floor of the car. The safety bar slammed against my skull.
Ellie screamed and punched me. She still didn’t know who I was.
We kept climbing. Ahead of us, gold fireworks torched the sky. Their strands seemed to urge us to plunge toward them.
I was dizzy, and for an instant I thought I was in a race. I thought that I’d run my heart and lungs out and couldn’t go any farther. I stared at the fireworks. They were saying, Why struggle? You’ll never make it anyway. Give up. Relax…
But I couldn’t give up, not till the finish line flashed below me. I was a runner, not a quitter.
I hoisted Ellie up as far as I could. I was able to bring the safety bar down under her chin. It was the best I could do. If Ellie didn’t choke to death, she’d have great horror stories for her grandchildren.
We reached the peak and crashed down. I gripped the sides of the car and pressed my weight against the safety bar. I couldn’t be sure I’d secured it.
“Joe!?” shrieked Ellie, scrunched up beside me. “Where are we? What are you doing?”
The train plunged to the next valley. She screamed.
“Think of it as tough love,” I yelled.
I’d been on this coaster a million times. I figured we had seven, eight, more dips ahead of us. The good thing was, none of them was like the big dip.
The bad thing was my head was ringing, and I was getting confused about what was up and what was down. My hands were ice blocks. The wind seared into my skin. I felt like I was going to pass out.
The fireworks were now white-hot and blinding. They filled the fairgrounds with light.
Skip was yelling. He hadn’t given up. When the train slid up beside the platform, he would be waiting.
One last dip and the train slowed to a glide, smooth as a swan on a lake. In a second it would stop.
I was battered and sick. My mind wandered in and out of racetrack hallucinations. And now I’d have to take on Skip again.
I squeezed my eyelids shut to make the dizziness go away.
The train stopped. A hand closed over mine.
Fists clenched, I pulled away from it and forced myself to stand. “I’ll kill you,” I told Skip.
I tried to swing a punch. Instead, I swayed.
Nothing happened. No one punched back.
I blinked hard against the blinding white lights. There was a face in front of mine, but it wasn’t Skip’s.
“I’d prefer not to be killed, if you don’t mind,” said Baseball Cap.
Amy had been right. Bad guys popped up like Hydra heads.
I swung my fist back. I’d hammer Baseball Cap, all right. I’d hammer them all. Bring ’em on.
Baseball Cap raised a hand to ward me off. With his other hand he calmly tossed a coin up and down.
I couldn’t hit him because now there were two Baseball Caps, two coins going up and down. I was hallucinating again.
I stared hard at Baseball Cap, willing him to come into focus. I thought of how he’d shadowed me to VanDusen. How he’d grabbed my wrist at the Horror House.
People talk about puzzle pieces falling into place. In this case, it was more like a piece being taken away. I’d assumed Baseball Cap was a thief and a kidnapper. I saw now that I’d been wrong.
I lowered my fist. Baseball Cap reached out, took hold of my elbow and steadied me.
“Thanks, officer,” I said.
Baseball Cap, known better as Vancouver Police Detective Mike Gagel, had already called a couple of ambulances. They waited, red lights flashing, behind the searchlights the police had targeted on the roller coaster.
I saw a smaller flashing red light in the distance. It was the police car that was taking Skip to the station.
Before switching on the searchlights, the cops had crept up on Skip and pounced. That’s why Skip had been yelling, Detective Gagel explained.
As I thought, Amy had told the police everything. At least, everything she knew.
“Lucky for you, we got a warrant to search your house,” the detective told me. “That’s how we found out about your meeting tonight. Skip’s instructions were still on the answering machine.”
I remembered grabbing the phone just as the machine clicked on. Thank god for Ellie dumping her Owl magazines on top of the phone.
Thank god for Ellie being safe. I heaved a huge ragged sigh. As far as I was concerned, she could chant about alligator purses 24/7 if she wanted to.
I couldn’t speak for a moment. Detective Gagel tossed a coin up and down, pretending not to notice that I was teary-eyed. He was lean but maybe not so mean, I decided.
“I don’t want to go to the hospital,” my sister wailed. Pulling away from an ambulance attendant, she ran up and threw her arms around me. She was half scared, half excited. “What’s going on, Joe? How come we were on the roller coaster? I wanted to go to Skip’s party. Skip said I could.”
Then Ellie rocked her head in her hands and moaned. “I dunno why I have such a headache, Joe. And my stomach feels queasy. Maybe it was something I ate.”
“Maybe it was something you drank,” I said. I grinned at the ambulance attendant, who was looking warily at my sister. I guessed he didn’t spend too much time around female eight-year-olds. Yakkety-yakkety-yak.
“You need to go to the hospital,” I told Ellie. Remembering how mean I’d been earlier, I lifted her and gave her a hug that made her squeal. Then, gently, I unfastened her arms from around me. “We both need a trip to the hospital. I’ll join you soon. First I gotta talk to the nice detective.”
Ellie wrinkled up her nose at Detective Gagel. “Mister, your breath would clobber an army.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The detective flipped his coin some more. “So I forget my Tic Tacs occasionally. We all have bad days.”
I would have grinned, but that would have made my skull ache even worse.