Full Tilt

“Only two?” said Maggie.

“Hey, you and me are a team,” said Russ.

Maggie darted me a glance, but I looked away.

“I drive,” Maggie said.

Russ guffawed, like it was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. “Not in this universe. I’ll have you know I am the bumper car king.”

“I’m still driving.”

Russ grabbed her around the waist in his boyfriendly way. “Never mess with a guy and his wheels.”

My ears flushed as I watched them. Maybe I was still mad at Russ from before. Maybe it was something new. Or maybe it was something that had always been there, filed neatly away. Well, it was time to do some refiling.

“I’ll let you drive, Maggie. You can come with me,” I said.

Russ was so surprised that he loosened his grip, and she eased out of it. He looked at me—not angry, but confused. “Why would she ride with you?” he asked.

“Because I’m not you,” I told him. “Because I don’t always have to drive.”

He looked at me a moment more, considering it. “All right, I get your point.” He smiled at Maggie. “I’ve been purged of the creep factor by Captain Courageous here.” Then he took her hand gently. “You can drive.”

She sort of accepted his sort-of apology, and all was well among the three of us again. Yet somehow this was not the resolution I had hoped for. I turned my attention to the bumper cars still waiting for us. I took the blue one, Russ and Maggie took the green. The car was so cramped, I had to bring my knees up at weird angles, and it was worse for Russ and Maggie, who had to sit toboggan style in a seat meant for much smaller people.

I looked out at another bumper car slipping in and out of existence, its rider screaming with some thrill we’d yet to experience.

“What do you think they see?” I asked, mainly to myself, but Maggie answered.

“I’ll bet it’s not stop signs.”

There was a spark in her eye that reminded me of the spinning lights I saw in my brother’s eyes when he lay unconscious. It gave me the vein chills, if you know what I mean.

This place is going to get her, I thought. Maybe not on this ride, but on the next or the one after that. I shook the thought away by flooring the accelerator.

The little wheels of the car spun, and I fishtailed. The pole rising from the rear of the car wiggled, extending upward. The electrical contact at its tip touched nothing but empty air.

As I accelerated the world began to change.

The sky was the first thing I noticed, how it went from angry red to tomato orange, like it was on fire. I looked at my watch in fear. Was this the light of sunrise? But the skies here had no bearing on time in the real world. According to my watch, it was only three in the morning.

The car began to change around me. At first I thought I was shrinking; but no—it was the steering wheel growing larger, it was the cramped leg space extending as well. The windshield and the dashboard spread out—everything was stretching like rubber. And in an instant I knew I was no longer in a bumper car. I was driving something much, much bigger. Something old. Vintage, you might call it. See, I know my old cars. I had a collection of models on the shelves of my room. Pierce Arrows. Ford Hi-Boys. Sleek old cars with long silver grills: Beautiful machines, from the 1920s and ’30s, when automobiles were both monstrous and sexy at the same time. But the vehicle I was driving now, well, it was a little more boxy than the other cars riding around me.

It was a Volvo.

I was in a 1931 Volvo, speeding down narrow cobblestone streets lined by brown-bricked buildings and old-fashioned billboards. In the blazing night sky above, a sliver of a moon hung on its side like a half-closed eyelid, and the bricks around me echoed a distant sound that I first took to be thunder. Then I realized it wasn’t thunder at all. It was machine-gun fire. Now I knew what city this was supposed to be. This was Chicago, in the bad ol’ days. This bumper car ride was a demolition derby in the middle of a gangster war.

“Clutch!” I heard Russ scream.

I looked over to see him and Maggie take out a fire hydrant as they turned down a side street. The hydrant became a geyser, and they disappeared down the street, part of their bumper trailing behind them. There were no road rules here, no order. Every car was a weapon.

Wham!

As if my thoughts weren’t scrambled enough, I was rear-ended by a curly-haired twelve-year-old with teeth too long for his face and a crooked sneer. You know how your mom told you if you kept making an ugly face, it’d stay that way? Well, this kid’s face did.

“You snooze, you bruise,” he said, and took off down another street.

My neck hurt from the collision. I wanted more than anything to go after him and to nail his apple green Willys Coupe, all shiny and new. In that moment I had enough road rage to flatten a hundred sneering snots in their lousy little cars.

Lose yourself in it, an inner voice told me. Floor that accelerator and ram someone. Anyone. Do it for all the times that someone hurt you and you couldn’t do a thing about it. Make someone pay. Sometimes it’s like people leave their brain in the trunk before they get behind the wheel of a car, and that’s exactly what was happening here. That’s what this ride was all about.

I could listen to that voice, I knew I could. That would be the easy thing to do. Whether that voice was in my head or was put in my head, it didn’t really matter, did it? The temptation was so overpowering. It was as irresistible as a summertime thirst, and I felt I’d do anything to quench it. Then I thought about Quinn, and that kept me from giving myself over to the ride. I was certain that he had already given himself over to the rides, which meant that I couldn’t. I was the rational, sensible one. The balanced one. So I floored the accelerator, not at someone’s bumper, but in search of Quinn. I was determined to find him, shake some sense into him, and drag him back home. I had one hand on the wheel. It wasn’t my normal ten-and-two position, but right then I didn’t care.

I will not be caught up in this, I told myself. I will drive, but I won’t ride.

I turned the wheel sharply to avoid being nailed by some other demolition derby driver bent on turning my car into scrap metal. I was a good driver. I was a safe driver. So what if this wasn’t exactly a course in driver’s ed? I’d make it through, and I wouldn’t let myself be hit again.

Find your way to another ride. Cassandra’s words echoed in my mind. Survive this and then find the next ride. Yes, find the next ride. . . . But first find Quinn.

I came to a major intersection, and that’s where I finally saw him. Quinn was driving a blue Ford Hi-Boy, a freaky-looking thing with a grimace of a grill, as rude as he was. He whooped like a cowboy in a rodeo, his wheels screeching as he took off down another street, never even seeing me.

“Quinn!” But he was already gone.

I didn’t see the car that hit me until it was too late. These old cars didn’t have crumple zones—they didn’t even have seat belts. I was broadsided from the right, but my backend took most of the blow; a single, sickening crunch, and my shoulder hit the side window. My car spun out, and when I came to a halt, I was facing the other car, which lay beached over a bus stop bench. The rider was a girl, about a year younger than me—probably not even old enough to drive.

“I’ll get you, you stinking lousy . . .” She was practically frothing at the mouth, all the anger of her life funneled into this moment. Her forehead bled from the crash, but she didn’t care about that. She tried to maneuver her car off the bench, but she couldn’t.

“Oh, man, you’re dust,” she yelled. “I swear I’ll get you!”

Road rage consumed her like a fungus, and yet this girl was enjoying it. This was an amusement park, all right. I suppose everything, even anger, can be worked into amusement. Knowing that helped me resist the urge to let it happen to me. Had Maggie and Russ given in to the rage? Had they joined the rampage of crashing cars? I didn’t even know if I’d be able to find them again.

Closer than the distant screeches of tires, I heard the sound of an idling car. It was a deep, low rumble, more like a growl. Down the street was a tomato orange car with whitewall tires and dark windows. It was different from the other cars: longer, sleeker, and its sheen was the same fiery color of the sky. The angry girl in the beached car took one look at it and bailed, forgetting me and running for her life.

As the orange car slowly rolled forward, picking up speed, it was as if its tires barely touched the road. Weightless. Graceful. The car continued to accelerate to where my Volvo straddled the curb. The driver’s side window rolled down, and a gray nozzle poked out.

I hurled my car into gear and floored the accelerator. My car seemed about to stall, but the gear grabbed and I lurched forward. Not fast enough. The orange car glided past, and through the window, I saw the bulging, circular cartridge of one of those old-fashioned gangster machine guns. Rat-a-tat-tat—that’s just what it sounded like, just like it did in those old movies. I ducked as the blasts ripped up the side of my car and shattered my windows. I was just low enough to avoid getting hit.

This place isn’t real, I told myself. These bullets can’t be real.

And again, I wondered what would happen to me if I died on the ride.

The wreck I saw in the street ahead gave me my answer. It was the apple-green wreck of the obnoxious kid’s car—the one who had nailed me when I first entered the ride. His car was upside down and burning. I didn’t see him inside, but there was a billboard on the brick wall above the wreck. It was a Coca-Cola ad featuring the painted face of a kid holding a glass bottle of pop. It was the same kid who had been driving the car, and although his mouth smiled in the poster, his eyes stared out fixed in eternal horror above a caption that read: COKE! THE PAUSE THAT REFRESHES! If eyes could scream, the sound would have been bloodcurdling.

As I looked at the many billboards and advertisements plastered around the narrow maze of streets, every face on them had that same fixed expression. This was all that was left of the riders who hadn’t survived the bumper cars.

The orange car had circled around and was coming back toward me, gliding in that weightless way. Time seemed to slow down, and I knew that if I didn’t move soon, I’d wind up staring out of a toothpaste ad or something, with my own locked-jaw grin and shrieking eyes. I tried to open the door and jump out of the car, but the handle broke off in my hand, and when I turned to see what options I had, I realized it was too late. The orange car was already gliding past. I was about to hurl myself to the floorboards again, but all at once I was hit by a searing blast of déjà vu, as deadly as gunfire. For an instant I was not there. For an instant I was somewhere else.

Seven years old. The smell of bubble gum in the air. Landscape flying past a window . . . then a sports car, shiny tomato orange. The face in the car is a blur of shadows. But the eyes—they’re in clear focus. Eyes as blue as glacier ice or a gas flame. I see them for an instant, through a school bus window. Then the orange car speeds up. It pulls in front of us, cutting us off. The bus driver spins the wheel, losing control and—