Page 16 of The Brave and the Reckless

“I got the same info folder you did, Ez.” Sinan rolled his eyes at me. “I’m talking about Annie Lou.”

“Oh, yeah.” I shrugged as if I hadn’t even considered that answer– let him feel ridiculous for the lecture he’d undoubtedly prepared. “Renee decided I’d be a great fit for the role. I’m surprised this place doesn’t do understudies.”

“I love you, but you can’t even ride. How do you expect to pull off the stunt? You’ll end up getting hurt.”

“I’ll learn.”

“Esra— thanks, Paul.” Sanny maneuvered us past a conductor, through the turnstile and into one of the carriages. “Here, sit on this side. You’ll get the better view.”

I took my seat and stowed my empty popcorn bucket away between my feet. “Look, I’m grateful you got me ajob here, but you have to actually let me do the rest from here on out. I can look after myself.”

“Can you?”

“Yes.” I rolled my eyes at him. Sanny was five years older than me, which meant Mom and Dad had always roped him into their overbearing ideas of keeping me safe. He’d eased up a lot when he’d gone off to college here in Tennessee, but a certain protectiveness had been ingrained in him so young, I wasn’t sure he’d ever let it go. Still, I’d try to get him there. I wasn’t going to spend my whole summer appeasing his worries. “I’ll come to you if I need help. Promise. Just let me do the thing.”

“Mom and Dad are going to kill me.” He took his hearing aids off and pocketed them deep in his jeans before folding the safety bar down across our laps.

A whistle blared through the air, Paul waved a paddle above his head, steam blew from the front of the train, and then we tore off. The roller coaster seized around the corner and rattled up the mountain. I got a panorama of Bravetown and blue skies for all of two seconds before we plunged into the belly of the mesa formation. An explosion sent a ravine of rocks our way and the train zipped around another turn right before they hit us. We went back up, past bears and coyotes, and tore down at breakneck speed.

The wind whipped tears from my eyes as I screamed and laughed at the same time.

My brain rattled around my skull, my lungs pumping hard to make up for the screaming.

The train eventually slowed down, and the station came back in sight. Right before we rolled in, the barrels next tothe tracks sprang open. A group of life-sized dolls, dressed like outlaws, jumped forward, screaming– and I screamed back. Somewhere a flash went off.

It took me a moment to compute that I’d just been photographed during a jump scare. The same moment it took for the train to stop in the station and the bars to spring open.

“That. Was. Brilliant,” I gasped as we exited the building.

“I love the mountain pass,” Sanny laughed as he repositioned his hearing aids. “Definitely in my top three rides here.”

“Can we ride again? Wait, no, what are the other two?”

“Journey Downstream and Bootlegger’s Barrels.”

I waved my priority pass through the air. “How much time do you have?”

He checked his watch. “I have like an hour before I have to get in costume.”

“Good thing we can skip the queues.”

“Good thing, huh?”

I nodded. “And then I need to get one of those horseshoe pretzels.”

Sinan jogged up to the photo kiosk and got our picture, complete with a little paper frame with cacti and tumbleweeds on it. While I was screaming my ass off, hair all windswept, he was cheesing directly into the camera. He also brought back a plastic yellow star pin, which readBRAVEwhere it usually would have saidSHERIFF. I fixed that to the lanyard of my popcorn bucket.

Journey Downstream turned out to be a little boat ride. For a few minutes we disappeared from the park and drifted through nature’s wilderness. Much to the delightof the three kids on the boat behind us, Sanny knew all the animal animatronics by heart and rattled off wildlife facts like their personal tour guide. If the giddy little giggles hadn’t been infectious already, Sanny’s terrible bear puns would have done me in. I bear-ly made it off the boat dry because I laughed so hard I almost slipped off the dock.

Bootlegger’s Barrels was a spinning-teacup kind of carousel– which always turned competitive between us. Losers got dizzy. We turned the center console as fast as we could, knuckles turning white. Maybe, just maybe, I should have had a more substantial breakfast than sugary popcorn. Before I even got dizzy, my stomach twisted. I let go of the wheel and grabbed the seat instead, squeezing my eyes shut.

Sinan laughed and bellowed out a lyrically incorrect version of “We Are the Champions” until the carousel stopped.

With my tummy still spinning, I was suddenly also very aware of the dull throbbing in my right hip that I’d managed to ignore through sugar and adrenaline.

Linking his arm through mine to keep me upright, Sanny sighed. “You know, you don’t have to wait until you need help before you come talk to me, right?”

“Huh?” I doubted he meant my hip. He was only supporting my weight because he thought I was dizzy.

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