• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Sixteen-year-old Blake and his younger brother, Quinn, are exact opposites. Blake is the responsible member of the family. He constantly has to keep an eye on the fearless Quinn, whose thrill-seeking sometimes goes too far. But the stakes get higher when Blake has to chase Quinn into a bizarre phantom carnival that traps its customers forever. In order to escape, Blake must survive seven deadly rides by dawn, each of which represents a deep, personal fear—from a carousel of stampeding animals to a hall of mirrors that changes people into their deformed reflections. Blake ultimately has to face up to a horrible secret from his own past to save himself and his brother—that is, if the carnival doesn’t claim their souls first. "A surreal, scary fantasy, packed with suspenseful psychological drama. Readers will savor the page-turning thrills in this wonderfully eerie story." —Booklist "An unusual quest adventure." —School Library Journal "A roller-coaster ride of a book." —KLIATT i ii ALSO BY NEAL SHUSTERMAN Novels The Dark Side of Nowhere Dissidents Downsiders The Eyes of Kid Midas The Schwa Was Here The Shadow Club The Shadow Club Rising Speeding Bullet Unwind What Daddy Did The Skinjacker Trilogy Everlost Everwild The Dark Fusion Series Dreadlocks Red Rider’s Hood Duckling Ugly Story Collections Darkness Creeping Kid Heroes MindQuakes MindStorms VISIT THE AUTHOR AT storyman.com and MySpace.com/NealShusterman iii iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A roller coaster is only as good as its support, and this one would not have been possible without an infrastructure of exceptional people. Thanks to Danny Greenberg and Ginee Seo for believing in Full Tilt from the very beginning. Thanks to my assistant Sharon McKeag for work beyond the call of duty. Thanks to my parents for always being there with love and wisdom. And thanks to Patricia, Maureen, Michelle, Jean, and all the fictionaires, who have crossed the line from friends to family. An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2003 by Neal Shusterman All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1- 866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. Also available in a hardcover edition. Book design by Daniel Roode The text for this book is set in Aldine. This Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers paperback edition November 2009 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Shusterman, Neal. Full Tilt/Shusterman, Neal.—1st ed. p. cm. Summary: When sixteen-year-old Blake goes to a mysterious, by-invitation-only carnival he somehow knows that it could save his comatose brother, but soon learns that much more is at stake if he fails to meet the challenge presented there by the beautiful Cassandra. ISBN 978-0-689-80374-1(hc) [1.Carnivals—Fiction. 2. Brothers—Fiction. 3. Self-perception—Fiction. 4. Near-death experiences—Fiction. 5. Horror stories.] 1. Title. PZ7.S55987Fu 2003 [Fic]—dc21 2002013867 ISBN 978-1-4169-9748-1 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-4391-1525-1 (eBook) v For Brendan, Jarrod, Joelle, and Erin, who always remind me how much fun the ride is! vi Contents Acknowledgments Chapter 1: "I Go Places Sometimes" Chapter 2: An Invitation to Ride Chapter 3: Ten and Two Chapter 4: True Void Chapter 5: Carousel Chapter 6: Road Rage Chapter 7: Big Blue Mother Chapter 8: Our Lady of Perpetual Reflection Chapter 9: Zero Tolerance Chapter 10: Depraved Heart Chapter 11: The Wheel of Ra Chapter 12: No Guts, No Glory Chapter 13: The Works Chapter 14: Brain-Jam Chapter 15: Tilt Chapter 16: Reality Falling Everlost excerpt Unwind excerpt Unwholly excerpt 1 1 "I Go Places Sometimes" It began the night we died on the Kamikaze. I should have known the night was jinxed when Quinn lost his hat on the Raptor. I wasn’t sure where on the roller coaster he lost it because I didn’t ride with him; my friends, Russ and Maggie, did. I had volunteered to wait in line for Icewater Rapids. "What a nice guy," Maggie had said, giving me a peck on the cheek. Well, nice guy or not, I had my own reasons. The loss of Quinn’s hat was the first trauma of the evening, but not the first of Quinn’s life. Whole galaxies of traumas revolved around my brother. I knew he wouldn’t part with his hat easily; it was one of his prized possessions—a black baseball cap with a very distinctive design on its face. Not the insignia of a sports team or a designer logo—that wouldn’t do for Quinn. No, his hat featured a rude cartoon of a hand with its middle finger up. He loved that hat because he could flip everyone off on a continual basis. He was still grumbling about his loss as he, Maggie, 2 and Russ joined me in the line for Icewater Rapids. "There should be catch-nets beneath the ride," Quinn complained. "They’re gonna pay. Russ should have caught it—he was behind me!" As if the whole world were to blame. "Ignore him and maybe he’ll go away," Russ said, waving his beefy arm dismissively. Russ is what you might call a disenfranchised jock. He muscles up regularly, lifting weights, but never lasts more than a month in any of the sports he’s tried, because he loses interest too quickly. Maybe that’s because so many of the other guys on teams just try to impress the girls, while Russ had no need: He and Maggie had been dating since the beginning of recorded time, with no end in sight. As for Maggie, she couldn’t have cared less about Quinn’s ravings. She checked herself out in a tall mirror—one of several distractions placed in the long line to break up the monotony. "Tell me the truth, do I look fat to you?" she asked me. "You’re kidding, right?" "No, seriously." Russ just laughed. "Maggie, it’s a fun-house mirror. Of course you look fat. That’s the point." She sighed. "I know that, but fun-house mirrors never usually make me look this fat." "Scootch down a bit," Russ said, "and you’ll be fat in all the right places." She poked him in the stomach for that one. Warped mirrors aside, Maggie was slim and nice looking. Smart, 3 too. But to hear her talk, you’d think she was dumb and ugly, always comparing herself to the other girls in school. "Congratulations," I told her, glancing once more at the mirror. "I always said you’ve got a distorted view of yourself. Now you really do." She threw me a twisted grin, and Russ, thinking the grin was meant for him, clamped his muscular arm around Maggie’s waist. I sometimes wondered if Maggie got bruises from the way Russ held her—like, if he let go, she might get away. You’re probably wondering how I fit into this little high school equation. Well, I suppose if the others are variables, I’m the constant. Constantly studying, constantly busy, constantly shuttling from swim team to debate team to home with the regularity of a celestial clock. "That’s what I like about you," Russ once told me. "You’ve got a level head—and I don’t mean just the haircut." As far as the equation went, I’d be out of it soon, on account of the way I tested out of high school. Not that I’m a genius or anything. I’m just a mix of a little bit of brains, a whole lot of studying, and a knack for multiple-choice tests. Blend that with a single parent earning minimum wage, and you get a scholarship to New York’s Columbia University at sixteen. I was scheduled to leave next month, right after summer vacation, skipping my senior year of high school entirely. "Columbia?" Russ had said. "Wow, I didn’t even know you spoke Spanish!" 4 Maggie had told me he was kidding, but we both knew he wasn’t. Let’s face it, if my bulb was halogen, Russ had an energy saver. But that’s okay. He had other things going for him. Like his easygoing personality. Like Maggie. Me, I was between girlfriends. So when we took our little road trip to Six Flags, instead of a date, I ended up with Quinn. I turned around, noticing that Quinn had stopped grumbling about his hat. That’s because he was gone. "Forget about him," Russ said. "He’ll turn up eventually, and even if he doesn’t, no great loss." I shook my head. "If he gets into trouble, we’ll all get ejected from the park." Which happened once before, when Quinn took an M-80 and blew up an animatronic mime. "You know that’s what he wants," Maggie said, "to make us all look for him." "He’s a waste of life," said Russ, and it annoyed me.

Load more

  261

Copy Link