Daydream Believer

lix. magic fun land and roller coasters

lix. magic fun land and roller coasters

"I don't want to go on that one," Noah said. He was pointing to the tallest, fastest roller coaster in the park: the Golden Tiger. Honestly, I was a little scared of it too, but I didn't want to look like a wimp in front of Aaron. I guess I could go on it...right? I wasn't a scaredy cat.

"Come on, Noah," Aaron said. "It's not that scary."

"Yes it is!" Noah whined.

"We'll go on it without you then," Aaron said.

"Okay," Noah said. "I'll go on the water ride."

"Fine!" Aaron shouted. "You're probably too short to ride anyways!" Noah ran off to the water ride. "Let's go," he said to me.

Aaron and I got in line for the Golden Tiger. I looked up at the roller coaster. There was a double loop and a near-vertical drop. What if I fell off at the top? I spotted a poster with facts that really didn't make me feel any better. 65 miles per hour? That would be so scary.

Aaron must have seen the look on my face because he said, "You're not going to chicken out, are you?"

"No," I said, but I was still nervous.

Aaron dug around in his pockets. "Noah stole our park passes!" he shouted. He groaned. "Now we have to wait in line longer."

It was nearly an hour before we actually got on the Golden Tiger. Aaron tried to talk me through it. "It's not that scary," he said. "I went on it last year and it was easy. Honestly, the Iron Beast is way scarier, and you went on that."

"The Iron Beast didn't have a vertical drop," I said.

"Yeah, but it was really rickety and it had a corkscrew."

"Whatever," I said as Aaron and I got into the front seat of the roller coaster. I saw the gigantic hill in front of me and I could only hope the seatbelt would hold me in. We started going up the hill, and I noticed my heart was racing. It was too late to chicken out now though. I looked down and saw all of the tiny people wandering around Magic Fun Land. Then the car started to lurch downwards.

The rest of the ride was a mixture of twists, turns, drops, and me screaming my head off. The weird thing about roller coasters is that you never realize that you had fun until after the ride's over. The first we did after we got off the ride was go get Aaron's backpack.

But when we went to look for it, it was gone.

Aaron looked in all of the little cubbies, but he couldn't find it. "McKenna, have you seen my bag?" I shook my head. Aaron started crying. "My parents are going to kill me!" he screamed. "I had my new phone in there!"

"It's okay Aaron," I said. Luckily, there was a security officer next to the ride. "My friend's backpack is missing," I told her.

"That's unfortunate," she said. "What did it look like?"

"It was blue and white," I said.

"Now that I think of it, I did see someone walk out of this ride with a blue and white backpack," she said. "He was heading for the water ride."

"Okay. Thank you!" Aaron dried his tears and we both headed to the water ride. Noah was standing right outside of it.

"Where were you?" he asked. "I was waiting for forever."

"We were on the Golden Tiger," I said. "Have you seen Aaron's backpack?"

Noah nodded. "I saw somebody drop it off at the Lost and Found and I picked it up because I knew it was Aaron's. Seriously, who carries around that many gummy worms?"

"I do!" Aaron shouted. Noah gave Aaron his backpack back, and then we all decided to go on the water ride together.

We learned an important lesson that day: never leave anything in the cubbies at Magic Fun Land.