Full Tilt by Neal Shusterman Read Free Book Online

Although she stood in the midst of the moving masses, their footsteps avoided her, as if she were in a protective bubble. As if space itself were warped around her. She was more than just an agent of this place, passing out invitations. Even from this distance, I could feel a sense of . . . of propriety about her. This place is hers, I realized. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did.
    She held my gaze for an instant, then turned, sauntering through the parting crowd toward the carousel, as if daring me to follow.
    I took the dare.
    “Blake. Don’t!”
    I felt Maggie’s hand on my shoulder, but I pulled away, making my way as fast as I could to the carousel. I hit the turnstile. It snagged me painfully at the waist, not giving way. I pushed at it again until I realized why it held me back. I looked at my hand. The red symbol was glowing white-hot; I could feel its heat on my skin. I ran my hand across the scanner, and the glow faded to a smoldering crimson. The turnstile let me through. Ahead of me the carousel had already begun to move.
    “Cassandra!”
    I jumped on the ride, grabbing a pole as the carousel animals slowly began to rise and fall. She was standing on the far side of the platform, still scrutinizing me. I caught a glimpse of her smile and then lost sight of her among the riders and the herd of brightly painted animals. Andwhat strange animals they were. The carousel had every nature of beast painted in loud, unexpected colors. There was a purple and yellow wolverine baring its teeth and a green and yellow ram, its wooden head down and ready to charge. I saw what looked like an anteater, blue and gold, looking absurd as it rose and fell with the rhythm of the ride. And yet, as strange as these animals appeared, they were also somehow familiar.
    At the core of the ride was an array of mirrors. I felt if I could focus on any one of those mirrors long enough, I’d see Cassandra staring out at me. The carousel picked up speed, and when I came around near the turnstile again, Russ and Maggie leaped on.
    “Let’s just grab Blake and get off,” Russ told Maggie.
    But I wasn’t looking at Russ. I was looking at the purple and gray tiger behind him, at how its wooden eyes appeared to track his movements. The creature right in front of me was a menacing lion painted bright blue. Was it my imagination, or was its snarling mouth an inch wider than it had been a moment ago? The ride picked up more speed. The tempo of the carnival music accelerated, rising to the highest octaves. I could feel centrifugal force pushing me outward and—what was that I saw? Were the legs of these painted animals actually beginning to move?
    All at once the wooden floorboards began to buckle and give, revealing a rocky terrain rushing beneath us.
    “Grab on to something!” I shouted. “It’s coming apart!” As the floorboards fell away I leaped onto the animal closest to me, the blue lion. Maggie took thegreen and yellow ram, and Russ found himself an oversized gray and blue peacock. I gripped the pole, but the pole disappeared between my fingers. The last of the floorboards disintegrated. My blue lion opened his mouth, releasing a thunderous roar that resonated up my legs and into my chest. And finally I realized where I’d seen all these creatures before.
    They were all college mascots.
    Now the last thread that held the world together unraveled, and I plunged through its shredded fragments into a wholly different place. The ride had come undone—it had unfolded —into an endless rocky plain beneath a red sky and an eclipsed sun. I was riding through this unearthly landscape, clinging to the mane of a blue lion, surrounded by hundreds of other beasts. Some creatures had riders. Others didn’t. But every single one of them was a mascot. I knew them from sports and from TV, but mostly I knew them from the endless applications I had filled out to dozens of universities far from home.
    It was all I could do to stay on the lion,