5/15/2023 0 Comments Fumy tech cyclon vt“It’s all yours.” My dad slapped two Cyclone tickets into my hand with a shake of his head, and I slapped one of them right into Riley’s. I was now absolutely, positively ready for the Cyclone! At least I thought I was until I was standing in its shadow looking up at it. I just needed the part where I actually rode the roller coaster. I had even prewritten most of my summer essay on it! 2 The assignment was almost done, too. The Cyclone was the reason I bugged my dad to bring us to Brooklyn during our yearly trip to Long Island to visit my cousin and aunt. But she was going on that thing with me-because I was determined. She gets dizzy on the merry-go-round, so that left my cousin Riley, and she is not a big fan of roller coasters either. Aunt Maureen-Aunt Mo for short-was out of the question. Heights make my dad turn green, and Mom is not a roller-coaster kind of person. As much as I desperately wanted to ride it-it’s famous, after all-I very desperately did not want to ride it alone. The truth is, I was more than a little afraid of going on the Cyclone. So I was determined, despite being a little afraid, to take my finally four-and-a-half-foot twelve-year-old self on the oldest wooden roller coaster in the world. I had waited a long time to be tall enough (fifty-four inches!) to get on that roller coaster. I’m making it sound like this didn’t worry me-oh, it did. SWAYS-as in back and forth-just in case plummeting down a six-story drop at high speed wasn’t enough for you. Riley dropped the F-bomb thirty-seven times while we rode the Cyclone roller coaster in Coney Island, Brooklyn. The last word I understood completely from my cousin Riley’s mouth was the F-bomb. But what Nora doesn’t realize is that the guilt will only get worse as that percentage rises. Nora, guilt eating her up on the inside worse than a Coney Island hotdog, thinks she knows how to help. The cousin who used to be loud and funny and unafraid now can’t talk, let alone go to the bathroom by herself. Then, as Riley comes out of her coma, she’s not really Riley at all. Nora had begged and dragged Riley onto the ride, and no matter what the doctors say, that she had a heart condition, that it could have happened at any time, Nora knows it was her fault. But right after they disembark, Nora’s cousin Riley falls to the ground…and doesn’t get up. Riding the Cyclone, the world famous Coney Island rollercoaster, was supposed to be the highlight of Nora’s summer. Nora’s whole world plummets faster than the Cyclone roller coaster when her cousin Riley falls into a coma that Nora thinks is her fault in this warm, big-hearted debut middle grade novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author, Doreen Cronin.
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