“Jack’s party! Oh God, umm… Amanda? Yeah. You left too fast for me to get your number.” Amanda?

“I don’t, umm…”

“That was it! There’s this missing girl who looks exactly like you – I couldn’t figure out who she looked like for the longest time. But anyway, think we could hang out sometime, maybe finish what we started at the party?” he asked with a smirk. We were pretty far away from Maine by now. How would he know about Grace? And if he thought her name was Amanda, and she’d recognized him… what was going on?

“I, umm, we have to go,” she said quickly, shoving me forward as the line moved. We got past the gates and they started strapping us in – and we were laying down.

“Mitta?” I asked, hoping for some explanation.

“Just… forget it,” she said. I didn’t want to forget it; I wanted to know what was going on. Who was she? Who was he?

The ride started before I could think anymore about it, and we began to creep up a spiral, faces toward the ground. The harness was a lot more secure; we were almost completely covered in a little pod, only our head and limbs outside it. At the very least, I knew I wouldn’t fall out of this one.

I saw the track plunge down ahead of us as we levelled out, and I closed my eyes again – it really did help. The drop in my stomach when I saw the fall coming was worse than any feeling I’d had on the last one. We plunged – but just barely. Then we were curving around a bend and good Lord we were upside down. Before I could even register what was happening we’d slowed down around another bend, going down, and again we rolled.

It started to feel okay. I couldn’t fall out, and really – this ride had worked perfectly hundreds of thousands of times, right? So the chances of anything breaking this specific time were miniscule. And it felt like I was flying.

I opened my eyes, and I really was flying – we were going around a curve and I could see the whole park out in front of me. It was almost like magic.

Then a drop sped us back up, and we twisted around and up and down and upside down and my stomach was suddenly very unhappy with all the cotton candy I’d just eaten. I could feel myself getting nauseous as we approached the end and I just prayed that I could hold it in until we were off.

“So what’d you think?” Mitta asked, smiling over at me. I was frantically trying to get out of my seat, and as soon as I got it unlatched I ran. There was a trash can in sight – if I could just get that far- “Marg! Wait up!” called Mitta, running after me.

She caught up just as I grabbed the edge of the trash can and bent over. Almost instinctively it seemed, she grabbed my hair and pulled it back from my face. And I threw up in the trash can in the middle of New York with about 20 different strangers staring at me.

Once I felt okay again, I wiped off my mouth and stood up, trying to pretend I had some sort of dignity left. “Sorry,” I said.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I’ve got a little experience seeing people barf, though it’s usually alcohol-induced.” I laughed a little, relieved that she wasn’t freaked out or anything. “I guess that one didn’t make you like roller coasters yet, though, huh?”

Pointing back at the ride behind us, other riders’ screams audible as the car went around a bend, I said, “That? Was amazing.” And we laughed.