Thrill Ride Read online

  Tommy shook his head. “It doesn’t go in reverse.”

  I jogged back over to Joe and the girl. “There’s no way to lower them down,” I told him.

  “Then we’ll have to go up there and get them,” he said. “The little kid is so scared, he’s squirming all over the place. I don’t think she can hold him for much longer.”

  “But how will we get him down?” I asked. “We can’t climb with the little boy in our arms.”

  “We need rope,” Joe said.

  I turned to Tommy. He was on his walkie-talkie, summoning security. But I didn’t think we had time to wait for them to arrive.

  “There’s a hose in the emergency fire panel,” the girl said. “Could you use that?”

  I checked out the panel. It was a short metal cabinet bolted to the edge of the platform where we stood. Through the glass door, I could see a fire extinguisher and a flattened fire hose all wound up. Somewhere below the cabinet there must be a pipe to send water through the hose in case of a fire on the Ferris wheel.

  “That will have to do,” I said. “Let’s just hope it’s long enough.”

  Joe pulled his T-shirt down over his elbow and smashed the glass front of the cabinet to get to the hose inside. As he unrolled it from its spool, I turned to the girl.

  “Good idea,” I told her.

  She blushed and smiled up at me.

  I turned away fast. I hate when girls look at me like that. It turns my brain to mush—and I needed my brain right now. I had a Ferris wheel to climb.

  The hose reached its full length. It was still attached to the spool.

  “We need it to be loose,” Joe said.

  I grabbed the hose, wrapped the end around the metal spool, and pulled it taut. Luckily the metal was sharp on the edges. With a sudden yank, I was able to snap the hose free.

  “Let’s go,” Joe said. He slung the hose over his shoulder and ran to the edge of the platform.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked, following him.

  “I think we both need to get up there,” Joe called over his shoulder. He jumped up and grabbed one of the bars of the Ferris wheel, then pulled his legs up over it.

  “One of us to hold the cart steady, the other to tie the rope around the boy?” I guessed.

  “That’s right.” Joe climbed to the outside ring of the Ferris wheel. All the carts were attached to this ring by giant metal bolts. The ring itself was built like a huge curved ladder, with steel slats running horizontally between the verticals. Joe began to climb it quickly.

  I kept up with him. It was easy to climb at the beginning, just like playing on the monkey bars back in elementary school. But when the wheel started to curve, we had to hang from the slats, holding our weight with our arms and legs wrapped around the bars. It was much slower going that way.

  “We need to get on the outside of the wheel,” I told Joe. “So we can just crawl up the bars.”

  “Catch the hose,” he replied. He let go of the bar with one hand and tossed the hose down to me. I managed to grab it as it fell through the air. I slipped it over my arm and took hold of the bar again.

  Meanwhile Joe had pulled himself through two of the horizontal slats. He worked his way to the outside of the wheel, then reached down for the hose.

  As soon as the weight of it was off my shoulder, I pulled myself up through the bars too. We hurried up the curve of the wheel on the outside.

  The cart with the woman and her kid was almost at the top of the curve. As we got closer, I could see her frightened face. The little boy was still screaming and crying, squirming around in fear.

  His mother held him with one arm and clung to the back of the cart with the other. I could see that she was getting tired.

  “Please help,” she called as soon as she spotted us. “I can’t hold on for much longer!”

  We put on a burst of speed and reached her cart. Joe tried to grab the safety bar to pull it back in, but it was swinging out from the cart. “It’s too far away,” he grunted.

  “It won’t close anyway,” the woman said. “The lock is busted.”

  “Frank,” Joe called. “I’ll hold the cart steady. You get the rope around this boy.”

  I nodded, inching my way toward the cart as Joe tied one end of the hose around the rim of the metal Ferris wheel. He wrapped a loop or two around his own arm to help him stay balanced. Then he sat on the edge of the wheel and reached out for the cart. He grabbed the back of it with both hands and hung on.

  I raced up to the cart. Standing on one of the metal slats, I leaned over the top of the cart and pulled the loose end of the hose toward me. I had to get the kid tied up fast. Joe wouldn’t be able to hold us all still for long. I knew my brother and I could hold on if we needed to, and I figured the woman could, too.

  But the little boy was so terrified that his eyes were squeezed shut and he thrashed around in fear. If he started to fall, he wouldn’t be strong enough to grab onto something and hold himself up.

  “It’s okay, buddy,” I told him. “We’re gonna get you down.” I slipped the free end of the rope around his waist and pulled it snugly around him. Then I wrapped it again so that another loop went between his legs. I tied it tightly around him so that the whole combination would work as a sort of seat for him to sit in.

  The kid was so surprised to see me up there that he had stopped screaming for a second. His teary eyes met mine.

  I grinned at him. “Don’t worry,” I said. “My brother and I are gonna lower you down the side now.”

  The kid’s face paled. Uh-oh, I thought. Is he going to start crying again?

  “We do this all the time,” I told him, trying to make the whole thing sound like an adventure. “It’ll be fun. It’s just like mountain climbing.”

  The kid’s chin trembled.

  “Now you have to be brave while I lift you out over the side,” I said. “You can be brave, can’t you?”

  The little boy blinked at me. Then he nodded.

  “Okay. You be brave, don’t worry, and you’ll be down on the ground in no time.” I reached in. He wrapped his arms around my neck and I lifted him out of his mother’s embrace. She looked scared, but she reached out and grabbed onto the back of my shirt.

  “In case you start to wobble,” she explained. “I can try to hold you until you get your balance back.”

  I nodded. “Thanks.” I hoped I wouldn’t need the help. But it wasn’t easy standing on the rim of the wheel like this. The wind whipped against my face.

  “Is the rope tied tight?” I asked Joe.

  “Yup,” he said.

  “Then here we go.” I slowly turned toward the outside. I eased myself down into a sort of sitting position, with my back against the cart. Joe held the cart still, and the woman hung onto my shirt until I was braced against the wooden cart.

  “Now you have to let go of me,” I told the kid. “I’m going to swing you outside of the wheel.”

  He closed his eyes and let go.

  I eased the hose down through my hands, slowly lowering the little boy down along the side of the Ferris wheel. I moved only an inch at a time—any more than that and he would’ve dropped too fast and gotten scared.

  I looked up at Joe. He still had the hose looped around his arm.

  I was out of rope. The little boy dangled ten feet above the ground. “I need some slack,” I called to Joe.

  He untangled his arm from the two loops of hose. I lowered the little boy down another foot.

  His mother bit her lip. “What do we do now?”

  I had no idea.

  But down on the ground I spotted three security guards rushing around. “Help is here,” I told the woman. “Security will know what to do.”

  I had a good view from up here. I saw one of the guards run over to a maintenance shed and pull out a ladder. He dragged it over to the Ferris wheel and they set it up under the little boy.

  A guard climbed up and quickly untied the kid, handing him down to one of the othe
rs. Then he gave me a thumbs-up.

  I relaxed my muscles. So did Joe. The kid was small, but it had still been a strain to hold him on the rope this whole time.

  “Thank you,” the woman breathed. “Thank you so much.”

  “We’re going to climb back down,” I told her.

  “Will you be able to hold on if they move the Ferris wheel? The only way to get your cart to the bottom is to turn the ride on and send you up and over the top.”

  She nodded. “I’ll be fine. It’s just when I had to hold Devon that I couldn’t hold on to the cart. Now it’s no problem—I have both hands free.”

  “We’ll see you at the bottom, then,” Joe told her. He untied the hose, pulled it up, and slung it back over his shoulder.

  We climbed back down the rim of the Ferris wheel.

  At the bottom the little boy—Devon—ran up and gave me a high five.

  Tommy turned the Ferris wheel on and moved it slowly around until Devon’s mom reached the platform. The security guards helped her out, and Devon rushed into her arms.

  Tommy went to check out the broken safety bar while one of the guards let the other riders off, and another guard put a RIDE CLOSED sign on the fence surrounding the Ferris wheel.

  “That’s two rides with mysterious problems,” Joe murmured. “Do you think this was an incident of sabotage?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just glad we were here to help before anything too bad happened.”

  “We have to get to the bottom of this,” Joe said.

  “You’re right. We need to get back to the investigation.” I led the way toward the exit from the Ferris wheel. “Let’s go talk to Uncle Bernie’s son.”

  “Hey, can you help me?” I called to the cute girl at the concession cart. “I’m looking for Little Bernie Flaherty.”

  “Little Bernie?” Jonesy growled from his post at the end of the cart. He was busy pushing it past the fifty-foot-tall slide. “What do you want with him?”

  “We just want to talk to him,” Frank replied. “We’re doing a paper on family businesses, and we hear he’s going to inherit this place.”

  Jonesy laughed, but he didn’t seem amused. “He’ll inherit a broken-down dump. One more accident like that Ferris wheel thing—or the roller coaster last week—and they’ll shut this death trap down.”

  “It’s summer,” the cute girl pointed out. “Why are you doing a paper?”

  “Um … for extra credit,” Frank said.

  “Oh.” She didn’t seem so interested in talking to us now that Frank had made us seem like total nerds. What did I tell you? He’s clueless around girls. “Little Bernie is in the ticket booth,” she said.

  Jonesy pushed the cart away from us, and I watched her disappear after him.

  Frank headed over to the ticket booth. We’d already bought our admission tickets, but we waited on line anyway. No sense in getting everyone else in the line upset. When we got to the front, I had to stop and take another look.

  No way was the guy in the ticket booth Little Bernie. Uncle Bernie had said his son was twelve years old. But this dude was gigantic! He had to weigh at least three hundred pounds and he was so tall that his head almost brushed the ceiling of the booth.

  “She sent us to the wrong guy,” I whispered to Frank as we approached.

  “I don’t think so,” Frank murmured. He grinned at the ticket seller. “Are you Bernard Flaherty the Fourth?”

  The guy grunted. “Who wants to know?”

  “I’m Joe Hardy and this is my brother, Frank,” I said. “Uncle Bernie said we could talk to his son about the accident last week.”

  “Is that you?” Frank asked.

  “Yeah. I’m Little Bernie.”

  I had to look down at my feet to keep from laughing. Little Bernie was the biggest person we’d seen all day!

  “How old are you?” Frank asked.

  “I’m almost thirteen,” Little Bernie said. He rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me, I know—I’m big for my age.”

  “You sure are,” I said. “When I was twelve I was totally puny.”

  “So my dad told you to hang out with me?” Little Bernie asked. “Cool!”

  He grabbed the shade that was hung above him and pulled it down over the window. On the outside, the word CLOSED was written in fading paint. Little Bernie stepped out the side door of the ticket booth.

  “Let’s go,” he said cheerfully.

  I glanced back at the people waiting in line. “What about your customers?” I asked.

  Little Bernie shrugged. “They’ll wait.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair,” Frank said.

  “Oh, all right,” Little Bernie grumbled. “I’ll send someone over to cover for me.” He stuck his head back inside the booth and picked up a phone.

  While he called for backup, I pulled Frank aside. “I can’t believe he’s only a kid,” I said.

  “Some people grow faster than others,” Frank pointed out. “But it seems like he’s inherited his lack of charm from his father.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I wonder what else runs in the family.”

  Little Bernie came back out and let the door slam closed behind him. “Someone will be here soon,” he said. “You guys want some cotton candy?”

  “Sure.” I followed Little Bernie back into the amusement park. I felt bad for the line of people waiting to buy tickets, but what else could we do about it?

  “Aren’t you too young to be working here?” Frank asked.

  “Yeah. That’s why I don’t get paid,” Little Bernie said. “I don’t really work at the park… officially.”

  “But you were selling tickets,” I pointed out.

  “Duh,” he said. “My dad makes me work in different jobs all over the stupid park. He says I’ll learn the ropes that way.”

  “You mean you’ll learn the amusement park business?” Frank said. “So you’ll know how to run the place someday?”

  SUSPECT PROFILE

  Name: Bernard Flaherty IV

  Hometown: Holyoke, Massachusetts

  Physical description: Age 12, 6’, 304 lbs. Frizzy red hair, pale skin.

  Occupation: Seventh grade student, works at Uncle Bernie’s Fun Park

  Background: Child of divorce. Mom left.

  Suspicious behavior: Doesn’t care about his family’s amusement park.

  Suspected of: Sabotaging the Doom Rider roller coaster.

  Possible motives: Resents his father.

  “Yeah.” Little Bernie stopped at another one of the wooden concession carts. This wasn’t the one with Jonesy and the cute girl. A gruff older woman manned this cart.

  “Three cotton candies,” Little Bernie told her.

  She handed them over with a sour look on her face.

  Frank reached for his wallet.

  “No way,” Little Bernie told him. “You’re with me. And mine are free because I practically own this dump.” He sneered at the woman. “Now get back to work,” he said in a fake stern voice. Then he laughed at his own “joke.” The sour-faced woman turned away, annoyed.

  Little Bernie might not look twelve years old, but he sure acted like it.

  “Thanks for the cotton candy,” Frank said. “It must be cool to get all this stuff for free.”

  “I guess.” Little Bernie grabbed a handful of cotton candy and shoved it in his mouth. “I get to go on all the rides, too. As many times as I want.”

  “That’s awesome,” I said truthfully.

  “I know,” Little Bernie replied.

  “So you spend lots of time here?” Frank asked. “Even during the school year?”

  “Every day after school,” Little Bernie said. “We have to close the park for three months in the winter because it gets too cold. But otherwise me and my dad are always here. It’s like we live here.”

  I stuck some cotton candy in my mouth and waited until it melted away. I couldn’t tell if Little Bernie was bragging or complaining about his life at the park.
r />   “Where’s your mom?” I asked.

  “She left,” he said. “She used to work here too, but she got sick of it. She wanted my dad to let someone else run it.”

  “And he wouldn’t?” Frank asked.

  “Are you kidding?” Little Bernie scoffed. “This place is the only thing my dad cares about. That’s why they got divorced. She said he loved the park more than her.”

  “Do you live with your dad?” I thought I knew the answer to that one already. Uncle Bernie didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d let his son grow up away from the family amusement park.

  “Yeah. I see my mom on weekends.” Little Bernie downed the rest of his cotton candy. “Dad wants to make sure I know how to run the fun park. He didn’t want Mom moving me to some other state or anything.”

  Now I knew he was complaining.

  “That must be tough,” I said.

  Little Bernie blushed. “No way,” he replied. “I have the perfect life. Most of the kids at school only get to go to an amusement park like once a year. If they’re lucky! But I get to be here all the time!”

  “I bet you know every nook and cranny of the park,” Frank said admiringly.

  “Definitely,” Little Bernie bragged. “I know some stuff even my dad doesn’t know.”

  “Like what?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  Little Bernie lowered his voice as if he were telling us some big secret. “Well, most of the rides have, like, basements below them.”

  I thought about the “basement” we’d found underneath the Doom Rider. I nodded.

  “The basements are connected by all these little tunnels!” Little Bernie added excitedly. “They used to be for maintenance, I guess, but no one has used them in years. You can get all over the park without ever going above ground.”

  Frank raised his eyebrows. I knew what he was thinking: Tunnels like that could be very useful if you were trying to sabotage the amusement park rides without getting caught. Still, I doubted that Uncle Bernie was really in the dark about those tunnels. Little Bernie might think his dad didn’t know about them, but I had gotten the sense that Uncle Bernie knew the park like the back of his hand.

  Little Bernie seemed to be waiting for an answer. “Wow,” I said. “That’s really cool. Can you show us?”