Ride of Your Life
By Shevi Arnold
Blurb:
Seventeen-year-old Tracy Miller met the love of her life . . . thirty years after her own death.
Tracy was working at the House of Horrors at the Amazing Lands Theme Park when the fire broke out. Instead of running, she lost her life trying to save eleven-year-old Mack. Now thirty years have passed, and suddenly everything changes with the arrival of two new ghosts: a little girl named Ashley and a cute, seventeen-year-old boy named Josh. Josh would do anything for Tracy, but can he help her let go of the past?
Ride of Your Life is a bittersweet, romantic, YA ghost story that was inspired by a true event, the Great Adventure Haunted Castle fire, which killed eight teenagers in 1984, exactly thirty years ago this May 11th. It is a fantasy novel about undying love, and it won third-place in Smart Writer's Write It Now (W.I.N.) contest in the YA category, which was judged by Alex Flinn, the author of Beastly and Cloaked.
Hang on. Love can be as terrifying as a roller coaster, but it can also be the Ride of Your Life.
Additional information about the Six Flags Great Adventure Haunted Castle fire- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haunted_Castle_(Six_Flags_Great_Adventure)
Excerpt:
They started with the arcade. The virtual reality games were most popular with the living, but they required wearing goggles, which meant ghosts couldn't enjoy them without going into a living person. Still, Josh and Tracy could play almost all the other games. She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a handful of quarters.
"How did you get those?" Josh shouted over the loud music.
"I knew I had them, so they were there." Tracy put a quarter into a pinball machine. The ghost version of the machine woke up with lights, dings and electronic music. The score returned to zero, and a silver ball slid down the chute, ready to be launched. She moved to the side and offered the game to Josh.
He reached out to grab the plunger, but he didn't bring his hand down. Instead it remained open, palm down, a few inches above the plunger. Tracy could tell he was having doubts, and doubts weren't good. Everything in the ghost world depended on what you believed. If he didn't believe he could play the game, it wouldn't work.
"Don't worry," she said. "It's real. You're real. You just have to believe it, and everything you think is supposed to happen will happen."
But Josh's hand still hovered above the plunger. Tracy slowly brought her hand on top of his and gently pressed it down. She curled his fingers around the plunger, pulled back, and released. The ball went flying. Josh reached for the buttons on the sides of the game, setting the ghost flippers in motion. He was playing, just as he would have been when he was alive.
"Thanks," he said. "I don't know why I thought this would be hard."
"You're welcome," she shouted above the noise. "The principle is the same for most of the games here, but it's easier to play the less popular games. Less interference."
"Were you always able to do this?"
"I don't know." Tracy almost laughed. "They only put the arcade in a few years ago. I played this machine right after they installed it. Mack would tell you that's one of the perks of being a ghost here. When things are under construction, you get dibs."
They played a dozen different games in the arcade, sometimes together and sometimes taking turns. Then Tracy checked someone's watch and realized they only had a little over an hour left to see the rest of Cyber City before the park closed.
She took Josh to the spaceship-styled restaurant and then the Space Bar. A live band was playing new-age music there. Josh asked about karaoke, and Tracy explained that it ended every night at eight o'clock. Luckily, they had missed it. They skipped the virtual reality rides and the roller coaster, but rode the other rides. They rode the Silver Wheel with a woman and her daughter, and Josh jokingly tried to make a bet with Tracy on whether they would make out. Finally they entered the 3D multi-media theater just in time for the last showing of the night.
The movie was about a spaceship crashing on a strange planet where a new danger suddenly appeared every few seconds. It wasn't much of a plot, but it utilized the 3D and other effects well. Bubbles, sparkling confetti, and a mist of water fell on the audience from above, while lights flashed on the sides of the theater, and dry ice created fog below. Lasers occasionally flashed overhead. The audience smiled, gasped, and jumped out of their seats. Josh and Tracy stood in the aisle and watched the movie, but the picture-designed for 3D glasses-showed two images at once.
"Can't we make ghost copies of the glasses?" Josh asked.
"We can," Tracy explained. "But it's kind of the opposite of walking through a glass door."
"In what way?"
"You can easily walk through a glass door, because you can imagine nothing is there. But when you look through the lenses of these glasses, you can't see that they're 3D ones. They just look like clear plastic."
"So . . . when you make a ghost copy, it only has clear plastic instead of the kind needed for 3D?"
"Exactly."
Josh looked around. "But we can see the movie if we get inside someone who's watching it, right?"
"Yup."
He ran his fingers through his hair. "Let's do it."
"What?" Tracy almost laughed. "No, you don't want to do that."
"I do."
"It's hard."
"Then show me how."
"I don't know . . ."
"Please?"
She looked around and tried to find a suitable couple, one that matched them in height. A tall, middle-aged man and a slightly short woman sat almost at the exact center of the room. Tracy pointed at them. "First we have to get over there, and that means going through some legs. You up to it?"
"Can you walk me through it?" He laughed. "Sorry, bad pun."
"At least you found it funny." She paused to think. "There are two ways we can do this: Mack's way or mine."
"I'm probably going to regret asking this, but what's Mack's way?"
"Mack accepts that he's a ghost. He tells himself that ghosts can walk through stuff, so it's not a problem for him."
"And your way?"
"My way is to tell myself that everything around me isn't real."
Josh tilted his head. "Isn't
?""No, it's not." This was hard to explain, but she had to try. "It's real for living people, but not for us. We can sort of fade it out. What I do is choose to fade out some things while holding onto some other things. In this case, I would fade out the people who are sitting in the seats over here, but I wouldn't fade out the theater, the floor, my body, or the people I'm trying to get to."
"Oh." Josh paused. "I think I might have done that already by accident."
"What? When?"
"When I went out with Mack. He left me for . . . a few minutes. Everything stopped seeming real. Then it all kind of blurred."
"That's it, but you have to hold onto the reality of something. Body, theater, floor, and the couple in the middle. Think you can do it?"
Josh nodded. "Let's do this."
Tracy went first. She told herself the people sitting in the seats that blocked their path weren't real. They faded away, and she walked up to the couple in the middle. She turned to see how Josh was doing. He looked at her. Then he walked straight without taking his eyes off her and stopped at her side.
"You know," he said, "there's a third way of doing this."
"There is?"
"I let everything else slip away and just focused on you."
Tracy half smiled, but turned away to avoid showing it. "Okay, that was the easy part. Now we have to go inside these people, and we have to match all their movements, particularly their eyes. It's . . . kind of creepy, really. Makes my skin crawl. Anyway, it's like a dance. The living person is your partner, and you have to follow your partner. Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Sure, I'm ready to dance with you anytime."
She rolled her eyes. "How about with this guy over here?"
"Yes, I'm ready."
"'Cause if you're not-"
"I'm ready."
"Okay . . ."
She stepped into the women's feet. The woman was wearing sneakers with short socks. The woman's feet must have been hot, but it was smarter to wear sneakers to the park than sandals, because of all the walking and standing in line. That was why Tracy always wore sneakers when she was working there: white ones to get to work, black ones while she was working indoors. She couldn't wear white sneakers in the House of Horrors because they would have glowed in the blue light, and she couldn't wear her black sneakers in the sun because they would get too hot. The woman didn't compromise comfort for fashion. Tracy liked that.
She sat down in the woman's lap. She brought her hand down to the woman's hand. Thin fingers, and a wedding ring. Tracy took a deep breath, as if she were about to go underwater, and slid into the woman's body and head. She flowed with the woman's movements, keeping her eyes always in sync with the woman's eyes. This dance of ghost body and living body felt so weird. Tracy couldn't wait until it was over, but in the meanwhile she would try her best to enjoy watching the movie through 3D glasses, as it was meant to be seen.
She couldn't see Josh, because the woman was staring straight at the screen. Then Tracy felt someone graze the woman's hand. The woman glanced at her hand and then turned to look at the man. Tracy could see Josh floating inside him, only slightly above the surface. Josh's curly dark hair sat on the man's bald head. Tracy was impressed. Josh was a pretty good ghost dancer for someone who had never done this before.
The woman turned her hand over, and the man wrapped his fingers around hers. Then he leaned in close. The woman leaned in, too, and the man and woman kissed.
Tracy felt her heart race. Or was it the woman's? No, it was definitely hers. The kiss lasted a long time. Laser beams shot across the room. The man and woman pulled apart, but Tracy's heart continued to race.
When the movie finished, Tracy and Josh walked slowly back to the room in the first-aid office. Josh no longer paid attention to where the people were walking, and didn't flinch when someone ran through him. He just stared at Tracy and smiled.
Top Ten Favorite fictional characters:
My favorite fictional characters come from a variety of places. Some are from the books I loved when I was a teenager. Some of from TV shows or movies I've loved and still love. And some are from my own imagination, characters I dreamed up because I wanted them to exist so badly that I had to write them myself. I enjoy spending time with all of these characters, and I enjoy carrying them around in my head. I love writing stories for all of them in my head, even the ones I didn't create myself. And I love seeing the world through their eyes. They remind me that there's magic and wonder and love and heroism to be found in the most surprising of places.
1. Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice is honest, curious, and daring. She doesn't see the point of books without pictures or dialogue, and she's not afraid to tell you that right there on the page. She dares to sit down at tea parties with Mad Hatters and March Hares. Her adventures in Wonderland become your adventures in Wonderland, and it's a strange and wonderful place to be, a place on infinitely strange possibilities. Someday I'd like to write a modern American version of Alice in Wonderland, and I hope to capture that same sense of nonsense and wonder.
2. Doctor Who
I don't remember how old I was when I first saw Doctor Who, although I'm sure it was in reruns and I must have been younger than ten. Tom Baker was my first Doctor, and I loved him because he was funny, nonsensical and yet strangely wise, and a safety net in a dangerous universe. It felt like you could wrap yourself up in that long knitted scarf of his, and it would keep you safe and warm against Daleks and whatever other evil lurked out there. Of course, I probably would have forgotten that feeling if they hadn't revived it and updated it for the twenty-first century. Now my favorite Doctor is David Tennant, but I still have a soft spot for the Doctor of my childhood. One of the wonderful things about the Doctor is that he could be anyone and anywhere--and he could take you with him to any time and place, even to the stars.
3. Frodo Baggins
I discovered The Lord of the Rings in the library of a high school in Israel, where I had off during English classes because they didn't have a teacher for the English-speaking girls. I borrowed the first book and read it through. Then the second. And finally the third. It took a while, but I was fully absorbed in the story within the first few pages. Frodo Baggins is a true hero, a little guy who takes on a huge responsibility and must face obstacles much bigger than him. Who doesn't love an underdog? And Frodo Baggins is probably the greatest literary underdog ever.
4. Shmendrik the Magician
Shmendrik the Magician is the main character of my favorite book when I was sixteen: The Last Unicorn. He's funny, he tries really hard to do the right thing, and he doesn't always succeed. While I wouldn't want to be him, I do love the character.
5. Jessie the Cowgirl from Toy Story
Jessie is joy and fun and love personified. No one has ever been happier than Jessie is when she meets Sheriff Woody and screams, "It's you! It's you, it's you, it's you! It's really you!" And when she remembers how she lost Emily, the song "When She Loved Me" just breaks your heart. It makes you want to pick up that little toy cowgirl and give her a hug. Jessie doesn't do anything by half. She goes all in, and I love that about her.
6. River Tam
River Tam from Firefly is beautiful, strong, unpredictable, and dangerous. Joss Whedon--who created Buffy, The Avengers, Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along, and Firefly--knows how to create kick-ass heroines, and of all of them, none are more kick-ass than River Tam. Also, she can kill you with her brain.
7. Amy Pond
Doctor Who always travels with a companion, and Amy Pond was the ultimate companion. Like many of us who watch the show, she started as a little girl, and when the Doctor came back for her, she was all grown up. But she never forgot the Doctor she called "Raggedy Man." In fact, he was able to return only because she remembered . In the end, she leaves the Doctor to join her husband, Rory Williams, in another time. Oh, and after she retires as a companion, she becomes a children's book writer.
8. Amy Farrah Fowler
I love all the characters from The Big Bang Theory, but my heart really goes out to Amy. She's in love with someone who might never love her back, and yet she never gives up hope. She gets excited over tiaras and princess dresses, and she can be pretty devious when she wants to be.
9. Toren the Teller
I created Toren in my head when I was about sixteen years old, because I felt there was a kind of magic in stories, and I wanted to read a story about a girl like me who understood how to use that magic. Toren stayed with me for decades. Her story ran in my mind like a movie or a TV show, one I enjoyed watching over and over. When I finally decided to start writing novels, hers was the first story that demanded to be told. I love her because her story is my story. It's the story of every person who has ever experienced the magic that stories hold.
10. Gilbert Garfinkle from Why My Love Life Sucks
I've long felt that geeks are the true heroes of our world, and I've long felt surprised that this isn't reflected in fantasy and science fiction. After all, we're talking about the exact people who read these genres. Shouldn't we geeks be represented in the books we love? I define a geek as a person who loves something to the point that others might consider it socially unacceptable. But that's what passion is, and I believe it takes passion to change the world. Gilbert Garfinkle is exactly that kind of teenage geek. He dreams of creating something that will someday fix the world, and he has the knowledge and skills to do it. Unfortunately, he never counted on a certain cute vampire girl getting in his way, and that's where some goes terribly, hilariously wrong on the way to the future.
In general, I like characters who are larger than life and not afraid or ashamed to be fully who they are. I like characters that make me laugh and think and feel. And I like characters that persevere against great odds, because they give me hope. That's not the only reason why I read or watch TV or movies, but it's a pretty good one.
About the Author:
Shevi Arnold grew up in Philadelphia, and her family had a season pass to Great Adventure in the early 1980s. She was nineteen-years-old and studying overseas when a fellow college student asked her if she had heard about the Great Adventure Haunted Castle fire. Eight teenagers had lost their lives. Like many, Shevi was shocked by the news. In her mind, she wanted to give that tragedy a happy ending. Ride of Your Life is the result.
Shevi loves writing, illustrating, and making people laugh-and she's been doing all three since 1987 when she started working as an editorial cartoonist for a newsweekly. She's also worked as a comics magazine editor, as an arts-and-entertainment writer specializing in comedy and children's entertainment, and as a consumer columnist. Nowadays, though, she enjoys writing (and sometimes illustrating) humorous fiction, fantasy, and science fiction for children, teens, and geeks of all ages. Her other books include Toren the Teller's Tale, Dan Quixote: Boy of Nuevo Jersey, and Why My Love Life Sucks (The Legend of Gilbert the Fixer, book one). She is currently working on Why It Still Mega Bites, the second book in the Gilbert the Fixer series.
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