Once Upon a Time...

Part Eight

9- Matthew

            “No. Absolutely not,” Amelia said with a surprisingly great amount of force coming from such a small person.

            “Come on,” I was practically begging.

            “I would prefer to keep all of my limbs intact, thank you.”

            “That’s ridiculous. How could you even get hurt on this ride?” I asked, trying not to laugh.

            “Well, you could get trapped in the heated chamber or the freezing one. Or the car could malfunction—”

            “Okay, that’s not going to happen. Do you know how often they run safety-checks on these things?”

            She hesitated for a minute. “I guess so…”

            “Then let’s go,” I said and I dragged her into the waiting line.

            We were talking about Test Track, obviously, and Amelia was absolutely refusing to ride it. Even after I convinced her to get in the line she was still trying to come up with excuses so she could get out of it.

            “Hey, Matthew?”

            “Hmm?”

            “I’m really thirsty. Maybe we could go get a soda or something?”

            I just stared at her whenever she said something like that. “Nice try.” And then she would groan.

            Amelia was ready to have a panic attack by the time we were sitting in the car, ready for the ride to start.

            “Why did I agree to this?” she mumbled.

            “You didn’t,” I whispered back.

            Eventually the ride had to start, and she wouldn’t let go of my hand through the entire thing.

            “You’re not going to make me do that again, are you?” she asked when the car pulled back up into the station.

            “I don’t know, it was pretty fun…”

            I didn’t make her ride it again, though. After all of the thrill rides were ridden at least once (We went on Soarin’ about four times because Amelia said it made her feel like she actually was in California) we started for the World Showcase.

            “I’ve never done this either,” she said while we crossed the bridge from Future World into Mexico.

            “You’re kidding. I’m starting to believe that you don’t really live here.”

            “I told you, I—”

            “—Don’t have time. Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.”

            She made a point to buy one souvenir from each country, like a miniature phone booth from the United Kingdom, a bottle of wine from Italy (I had to buy the bottle of wine), and a puppet from China. This made her walk on air for the rest of the day, probably because it was the closest to visiting the world as she’d ever gotten. Once we had finished watching the Canadian video, it was about six o’clock and we had to run to the car so neither of us would get caught.