Cyclone - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Doreen Cronin is the author of many bestselling and New York Times bestselling picture books, including Click, Clack, Quack to School!; Click, Clack, Surprise!; Click, Clack, Ho, Ho, Ho; Click, Clack, Peep; Click, Clack, Boo!; Dooby Dooby Moo; Thump, Quack, Moo: A Whacky Adventure; Bounce; Wiggle; Duck for President; Giggle, Giggle, Quack; Bloom; and the Caldecott Honor Book Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type as well as The Chicken Squad series and Cyclone. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Visit her at DoreenCronin.com.

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Cyclone

DAY 1

The last word I understood completely from my cousin Riley’s mouth was the F-bomb. Riley dropped the F-bomb thirty-seven times while we rode the Cyclone roller coaster in Coney Island, Brooklyn. The Cyclone is very, very old.1 It is made out of wood. It sways. That’s right. SWAYS—as in back and forth—just in case plummeting down a six-story drop at high speed wasn’t enough for you. I’m making it sound like this didn’t worry me—oh, it did. Just not enough to keep me off it. I had waited a long time to be tall enough (fifty-four inches!) to get on that roller coaster. So I was determined, despite being a little afraid, to take my finally four-and-a-half-foot twelve-year-old self on the oldest wooden roller coaster in the world.

The truth is, I was more than a little afraid of going on the Cyclone. As much as I desperately wanted to ride it—it’s famous, after all—I very desperately did not want to ride it alone. My parents wouldn’t go. Heights make my dad turn green, and Mom is not a roller-coaster kind of person. Aunt Maureen—Aunt Mo for short—was out of the question. She gets dizzy on the merry-go-round, so that left my cousin Riley, and she is not a big fan of roller coasters either. But she was going on that thing with me—because I was determined. The Cyclone was the reason I bugged my dad to bring us to Brooklyn during our yearly trip to Long Island to visit my cousin and aunt. I had even prewritten most of my summer essay on it!2 The assignment was almost done, too. I just needed the part where I actually rode the roller coaster. I was now absolutely, positively ready for the Cyclone! At least I thought I was until I was standing in its shadow looking up at it. It looks much smaller on the Internet.

“It’s all yours.” My dad slapped two Cyclone tickets into my hand with a shake of his head, and I slapped one of them right into Riley’s. Riley barely acknowledged me, staring as the roller-coaster cars climbed slowly up to the top of the first drop. Click-click-click-click. Riley was already having some serious doubts and insisted that we watch it a few more times. Metal gates and high fencing surrounded its base, making it seem like a dangerous, caged animal. Riley was sure gaping at it like it was. I wished the people riding it weren’t screaming so loud; that wasn’t helping either.

“Mom,” Riley finally said, “you should go with Nora. You said you loved roller coasters!”

“Twenty years ago,” Aunt Maureen clarified, taking a step backward, away from the ride. “Not now.”

“We’ll meet you back here in half an hour,” said my mother. “For the record, I think you’re both crazy.” At that, she and my dad and aunt turned and headed toward Nathan’s Famous, leaving us gazing up at the monster ride. It took up an entire block. It even had its own address: 1000 Surf Avenue, Brooklyn.

“Let’s get a hot dog too!” said Riley, apropos of nothing, pulling me in the direction our parents had just gone. “I love hot dogs!”

“You do not love hot dogs.” I swung her back toward the roller coaster. “You tolerate hot dogs.” It was true. She felt the same way about hot dogs as I do about scrambled eggs—I’ll eat them as a last resort, but that’s it.

“But these are famous hot dogs!” she practically sang. It was a desperate—and lame—argument, and she knew it.

“Trust me on this, Riley,” I said. “The time to eat a hot dog is not right before you get on a roller coaster.” The clicking stopped, and we looked up again.

Riley pointed to the four flags whipping around in the wind at the top of the roller coaster—right above where the roller-coaster cars somehow seemed suspended for a second. “What does it say there?”

“I can’t see from here,” I flat-out lied. LAST WARNING. REMAIN SEATED. Riley gasped as a train of coaster cars was suddenly let loose and roared toward the ground. The screams picked up a notch, too.

“How high up is that?” Riley asked.

“I’m not sure.” Second lie.3 The coaster shot around a tight curve at the bottom of the drop and headed up again.

“Oh my God, how fast is that thing going?”

“Pretty fast.” Vague lie.4

Riley jabbed a finger at me. “I am in charge of the seat belt. We are going to pull it so tight that it cuts off our circulation. Do you hear me?”

“As tight as you want.” Lie of omission.5

“This is going to be the scariest three minutes of my life!”

“It will be over in less than two!” At last, a truth.6

“It better be,” she said. We took a few steps toward the Cyclone line, but then she stopped short. “You know what? I’m really hot. Let’s go swimming first.” She grabbed my arm again and tried to pull me toward the beach. “We’ll go swimming and then we can dry off on the roller coaster.”

“No.” I pulled her back toward the line, a little too hard. “We only have about twenty-five minutes left before Dad comes back. And you know he’ll say, ‘It’s time to go, I don’t want to sit in traffic, we have to leave,’ ” I said in my best dad voice, “and then I’m pretty sure he’ll never come back to Brooklyn again and then I’ll never get a chance to go on the Cyclone. Today is the day.” Dad had very little car patience. He had already threatened to turn back around this morning when it took twenty minutes to find a parking spot. The spot we finally found was so far away he wasn’t even sure if we were still in Brooklyn.

“Come on, Riley!” I was begging now. I was not above begging. “It will be awesome!”

Riley eyed the cars bolting around a curve in the track. “It’s not going to be awesome when I throw up all over you!”

“Listen to me. Remember how you didn’t want to boogie board when we went to Bethany Beach two summers ago because the waves were too big?”

“Yeah.” Her eyes went wide. The coaster was barreling down a plunge.

“Well, you loved it, right?” I stepped into her line of vision so she had to look at me.

“Yeah, but this is different.”

“No, it isn’t.”

The key to keeping Riley calm was to keep her talking. If she was talking, she was good.

“What if I really do throw up?” Riley asked. She was now twirling a handful of her hair into a long rope. A thick, black, kinked-up-because-her-hair-is-so-curly rope. It actually looked like something I might be able to hold on to. Not a good thought, for either of us.

“You won’t. And stop torturing your hair,” I said. “Besides, even if you do, it won’t gross me out, I promise!” I vomited once after a long run. My heart was racing and it was crazy hot out,...