Chapter 11

I was once on a wooden roller coaster. My dad took us to Coney Island two years ago and convinced us that our trip to the famed Brooklyn amusement park would not be complete without a ride on the Cyclone. Personally, I had no desire to step foot on the splintering contraption, but I also didn’t want to spend an hour alone on the boardwalk as my family waited in line to ride this “historical landmark.”

I reluctantly boarded the coaster car with my brother, plopping down on a red plastic bench protected by a lap bar that, while fitting snuggly across Vince’s thick thighs, landed a good six inches above my own. I tried to complain to the ride technician, but apparently the safety device was supposed to be that inadequate, because she launched the ride without bothering to respond.

After that, all I really remember is screaming uncontrollably until my throat burned, and then soaring—at around sixty miles per hour—down a hill so steep I lifted from the seat, my butt elevated in the air like a magic trick, while my freakish brother waved his arms above his head. My white knuckles clutching the bar were the only things keeping me from plummeting to my death.

Now as I sat in Alonzo’s hunter green sedan, flying up a mountain road, my hands clenching the gray door handle, I was struck with a very similar sensation.

It seemed that Utuado was not just “in the mountains,” it was at the tippy top of the mountains. Lush green hills filled the entire drive until we finally passed the “town.” A small concrete square hosted a band playing what I assumed was salsa. A yellow church flanked one end, while the other three sides were filled with ailing shops and restaurants, a Payless shoe store and a Chinese takeout (which I found oddly comforting). Then we turned up a narrow two-way road, wide enough to fit one car, and stared down the edge of a cliff (honestly, it felt as high as the Empire State Building) with absolutely no guardrail to stop our fall. And the road didn’t only go up, it curved back and forth creating a path similar to that of the orange cones in a driving test—a constant tight zigzag. And as we “zigged” we couldn’t see if there was another car “zagging” from around the other side.

Of course, none of this seemed to faze our dear cousin Alonzo. He rocketed up that mountain like a NASCAR driver taking a practice spin. Since I barely knew the man and he was more than twice my age, I felt too uncomfortable to scream as freely as I wanted, but I did let an occasional “Watch out!” slip through my lips when we flew too close to the edge. Alonzo, who I’m pretty sure didn’t understand a word I was shrieking, found my entire reaction to the trip absolutely hysterical. And my brother laughed right along with him. With no way to communicate, Vince and Alonzo seemed to have already become the best of friends.

I, on the other hand, was silently cursing my father for setting me up with a lunatic escort and secretly imagining how awful my parents would feel if I plunged to my death while on a trip they forced me to take. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on a happy place—my life back in Spring Mills, Madison and Emily, my dog Tootsie—but my stomach was shifting so much that I couldn’t relax.

Finally, the world slowed. I felt the car straighten out, our speed decrease and the engine roar to a stop. I inhaled deeply and unclenched my eyelids.We were parked in front of a light blue cement house with a pitched roof. It was one story and had an open-air porch jutting from the side. Surrounding it were dozens of tropical trees with dangling green bananas nestled above beds of bright pink and orange flowers—and a flock of wild chickens. Alonzo muttered something in Spanish before I opened the car door. The ground felt strong and solid under my feet, calming my uneasy equilibrium. The smell of damp earth washed over me. But before I could stop to register my surroundings, the cobalt blue front door swung open and out ran a heavy-set older woman and a gray-haired man who, from where I stood, looked nearly identical to my late grandfather. They were headed straight for us.