Full Tilt Read Online Free Page B

forms of life. Half-eaten sandwiches growing thick green fur filled the bookshelves.
    No surprise that my room looked nothing like my brother’s. I opened my door to a clean floor, a neat desk, and a host of evenly spaced travel posters lining the walls. Russia, England, and Greece hung over my desk. Above my headboard was Italy, with the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and on my closet door was France, with the Eiffel Tower and the Arc De Triomphe looking like a hundred-foot keyhole into all the places I’d never been. An oversized poster of Hawaii was strategically placed asa backdrop for some World War II model planes I’d hung from the ceiling in a mock dogfight.
    The posters had been free because they knew me at the travel agency down at the mall. When I was younger, I hung out there, and they would pretend to book me on trips to faraway places. Then they’d give me the posters, along with whatever other promotional stuff was lying around in their office. That was how I got the two carved heads from Easter Island that now served as bookends and an authentic imitation totem pole from Alaska that stood in the corner.
    My desk was empty except for a desk organizer holding paper clips, pens, and sharpened pencils. Quinn called it “anal” the way I kept everything, as if being neat were some weird complex. As if there were something wrong with having all my pencils sharpened and my books in alphabetical order and my clothes hung up by color. So what? I used to do that with my crayons, too.
    I sat at my desk and opened the envelope Carl had given me. Like he said, it contained a list of names and phone numbers of people I didn’t know in New York, but there were other things in it as well. Like a subway map I couldn’t figure out no matter which way I held it. Like a brochure from Columbia University’s sports department that featured the school mascot, a menacing blue lion, stalking forward as if trying to intimidate me out of trying out for their swim team.
    And then there were the airplane tickets.
    American Airlines. 6:45 A.M . departure. September 4. One was round-trip, for my mom. She got to stay for twodays. The other ticket was mine and was one-way. The flight landed at an airport called LaGuardia. I’d never flown—never had the need to—but now here was a ticket, with a date only one month away.
    Ever have the real world hit you like a steel pole to the head? Until now all I had from the university was an acceptance letter and a dozen forms to fill out. But here, spread out before me, was solid reality on a collision course with me. Wham! Sixteen years old and living at a college in New York City? What was I, crazy? Was I totally out of my mind? My head was spinning, and whenever that happened, it always called back that memory of my first ride.
    Screaming. Spinning out of control. Gripping tightly on to the seat. So dizzy . . .
    Too tired to resist, I let the memory come. I was seven. There are so many details I still remember, like the smell of cherry-flavored bubble gum in the air and the cold feel of the seat and the screams of my friends, each voice a different pitch, like a terrified choir, all out of tune. And yet so much is also gone. Not so much forgotten as exiled from my brain. Maybe that’s because the ride didn’t take place at a carnival or an amusement park. It took place on an icy December morning. On a school bus.
    Mom never talked about it, and so neither did I. I always figured the memory of that ride was best left buried. Problem is, rides like that have a way of coming back, and then you’re stuck riding them again. And again. And again.
    I brought my hands to my temples, pressing until the spinning feeling went away. Then I took the subway map, the list of names, and the brochure, and dropped them in the trash. I made sure the brochure was facedown, so I wouldn’t have to see the eyes of that blue lion. As for the plane tickets, I shoved them as far and as deep in my desk as I could,