their sides all the way around. When they finished that circle and
leveled out once more, they would immediately enter a series of six
hills, all low but packed close together, so the train would move like
an inchworm on drugs, pulling itself up-down-up-down-up-down-up-down
toward the last set of swinging doors, which would admit them to the
cavernous boarding and disembarkation chamber where they had begun.
The train began to tilt.
They entered the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn.
The train was on its side.
Tod tried to remain rigid, but he sagged a little against Jeremy, who
was on the inside of the car when it curved to the right. The old
rocket jockey was whooping like an air-raid siren, doing his best to
hype himself and get the most out of the ride, now that the worst was
behind them.
An-tic-i-paa-aa-tion.
Jeremy estimated they were a third of the way around the circle.
halfway around… two-thirds….
The track leveled out. The train stopped fighting gravity.
With a suddenness that almost took Jeremy’s breath away, the train hit
the first of the six hills and shot upward.
He let go of the lap bar with his right hand, the one farthest from Tod.
The train swooped down.
He made a fist of his right hand.
And almost as soon as the train dropped, it swooped upward again toward
the crown of the second hill.
Jeremy swung his fist in a roundhouse blow, trusting instinct to find
Tod’s face.
The train dropped.
His fist hit home, smashing Tod hard in the face, and he felt the boy’s
nose split.
The train shot upward again, with Tod screaming, though no one would
hear anything special about it among the screams of all the other
passengers.
Just for a split second, Tod would probably think he’d smacked into the
overhang where, in legend, a boy had been decapitated. He would let go
of the lap bar in panic. At least that was what Jeremy hoped, so as
soon as he hit the old rocket jockey, when the train started to drop
down the third hill, Jeremy let go of the lap bar, too, and threw
himself against his best friend, grabbing him, lifting and shoving, hard
as he could. He felt Tod trying to get a fistful of his hair, but he
shook his head furiously and shoved harder, took a kick on the hid the
train shot up the fourth hill Tod went over the edge, out into the
darkness, away from the car, as if he had dropped into deep space.
Jeremy started to topple with him, grabbed frantically for the lap bar
in the seamless blackness, found it, held on down, the train swooped
down the fourth hill Jeremy thought he heard one last scream from Tod
and then a solid thunk! as he hit the tunnel wall and bounced back onto
the tracks in the wake of the train, although it might have been
imagination up, the train shot up the fifth hill with a rollicking
motion that made Jeremy want to whoop his cookies Tod was either dead
back there in the darkness or stunned, halfconscious, trying to get to
his feet down the fifth hill, and Jeremy was whipped back and forth,
almost lost his grip on the bar, then was soaring again, up the sixth
and final hill and if he wasn’t dead back there, Tod was maybe just
beginning to realize that another train was coming down, down the sixth
hill and onto the last straightaway.
As soon as he knew he was on stable ground, Jeremy scrambled back across
the restraint bar and wriggled under it, first his left leg, then his
right leg.
The last set of doors was rushing toward them in the dark. Beyond would
be light, the main cavern, and attendants who would see that he had been
daredevil riding, He squirmed frantically to pass his hips through the
gap between the back of the seat and the lap bar. Not too difficult,
really. It was easier to slip under the bar than it had been to get out
from beneath its protective grip.
They hit the swinging doors-wham!-and coasted at a steadily declining