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Though he’d had no intention of participating in this activity, he’d studied the design of the dune buggies, lest conversation required him to appear familiar with the configuration.
“Okay,” Charlotte called. “We have gifts for all riders, but the first team to find the Kane Foods’ swag chest will receive two round-trip tickets to St. Bart’s.” There was an enthusiastic, champagne-fueled swell of applause. “On your mark. Get set. Go!”
The choppy sound of engines firing up drowned out the contestants’ chatter and, one by one, the vehicles peeled out of the starting gate.
Arlie and Mason shot off, sand spraying from behind their knobby tires like a particulate rainbow.
Samuel followed suit, ghosting a safe distance behind them as they disappeared over a hill and into the endless beige sea.
Arlie glanced back and, seeing him there, stepped hard enough on the gas to make Mason grip the foam-covered black frame.
Samuel felt an unfamiliar sense of acceleration, gooseflesh crawling across his skin as he matched their speed. Wind whipped his hair into a wild frenzy, the white and green ocean beyond providing an auditory backdrop to the ripping motor in this frenzied pursuit.
Chasing them up a steep embankment, he paused in pure wonder as, cresting it, they caught air, the thinnest slice of azure sky appearing between their tires and the sand.
A part of him he didn’t entirely like delighted in the fact that Mason hadn’t yet relinquished his grip on the frame. He and his brother were afraid, but for entirely different reasons.
Samuel lost them as they disappeared below the horizon.
He stomped on his gas pedal and his vehicle lurched forward as the steering wheel tugged hard to the left. Too late, he realized that he hadn’t hit the jump at the same spot. His front guards hit a sand bar, his wheels locking up as his body and the back of the buggy continued their momentum. The strange gravitational shift seemed to unfold in slow motion.
And a sudden memory overtook him. Not yet five years old, he’d allowed Mason to talk him into concealing himself in a tractor tire during a game of hide-and-seek. He’d only just become comfortable when Mason and a group of his friends had decided that rolling the tire down the steep hill toward Lake Hetherington would be great fun.
Samuel’s recollection of the event returned to him with sickening accuracy as the horizon inverted, sky becoming ground, ground becoming sky. He tumbled end over end, the seat belt biting into his neck and torso, grit between his teeth, his breath knocked entirely away.
The last thing he heard before a black-velvet blanket fell over the world was the high, clear sound of Arlie’s scream.
