Getting mauled by stuffed teddy bears? You’re probably wondering how bad that could be. I wasn’t too worried about it at first, either. In fact, it sounded kind of fun. Like having a pillow fight. Only the pillows would be bear shaped. And alive.
A giant white polar bear holding a stuffed heart leaped over a counter and sent me sprawling to the floor. I would have shouted for Ridge, but the bear shoved the stuffed heart under the visor of my helmet, muffling my voice while punching me in the stomach over and over again. It was very annoying to be punched by a stuffed animal, but it didn’t really hurt. I kicked upward and sent the polar bear crashing into another incoming Super-Fun-Happy Bear.
Ridge had fallen beside the horse race game, swarmed by stuffed bears. He was screaming and thrashing in an attempt to shake his opponents. I ripped the plush heart from under my helmet’s visor and thought about transforming Ridge into a shark. But doing so would cause me to be practically immobile. Instead, I ran over and slammed into Ridge, peeling away three stuffed animals before I saw a tiny pink bear leap from a shelf and grab Ridge’s nose.
The enemy was probably only three inches tall, but it shoved a paw up one of Ridge’s nostrils and clamped down. He howled, slapping his own face and sending the pink monster flying.
Ridge recovered, and together we raced down the walkway of carnival games. My eyes peered out of the helmet, searching for the man with the green cotton candy.
A grizzly bear came leaping out of a game tent. In its furry paws it clenched a heavy hammer, presumably stolen from the Whac-A-Mole game. I turned just in time to see it bring the weapon down with a crack right on top of my head.
The blow should have knocked me unconscious. But, wait—my helmet! It would seem that not everything about my consequences was bad.
The attack had knocked my helmet sideways so the eyeholes lined up with my ear. I stumbled, spinning it around until I could see straight again. The grizzly with the sledgehammer was on the ground and I delivered a hard kick before it could swing its weapon for my shins.
“There goes the cotton candy man!” Ridge cried, pointing off into the heart of the amusement park. “He’s getting on a roller coaster!”
“Then so are we!” I shouted, breaking past a row of Super-Fun-Happy Bears and sprinting in the direction the genie had pointed.
There was a long line to get on the ride, but the cotton candy man wasn’t going to wait, so neither would we. He shoved and elbowed his way past the impatient people, creating a perfect pathway for us to follow. His bright pin-striped suit made him easy to spot in the crowd, and he held three premade cones of cotton candy above his head as he pushed his way through.
“We have to catch him before he gets on that roller coaster!” A few people tried to converge on us, probably thinking we were just some punk kids trying to cut in line. I considered using my air shark, but instead settled on ramming a guy with my helmet.
At last, Ridge and I reached the boarding platform, only to see the cotton candy man seated on the front row, pulling the security bar over his flat-topped boater hat. He turned to look at me and Ridge, cotton candy in hand, his bright pink mustache twitching when he saw how close we were.
There was something odd about him. Besides the pink mustache; that was obvious. But it felt as though the flamboyant facial hair was only there to draw my attention away from something even more unusual. Perhaps it was the look in his eyes, which seemed hollow and artificial. Or his movements, slightly mechanical and unnatural.
Whatever it was, the cotton candy vendor didn’t let me stare at him for long. “Go!” he shouted. To my great surprise, the roller-coaster operator obeyed the man’s command, inching the car on its way with our target as a single passenger.
“Come on!” I shouted to Ridge, pushing past the eager people on the platform.
Maybe it was because we’d had some practice with jumping onto the train in Wyoming, but Ridge and I successfully managed to leap onto the back row of the cart just as the chain began pulling it up the steep track.
We reached for the padded security bar, yanking it down as the ride edged upward. The cotton candy vendor swiveled his head around like an owl, grunting in frustration when he saw that we had managed to get into the cart.
“If we’re lucky,” Ridge said, “maybe some of his cotton candy will blow off and land in our mouths.” He stuck out his tongue to be prepared.
“That’s how you end up eating bugs,” I pointed out, causing the genie to promptly close his mouth.
“Wait a minute,” Ridge said. “Couldn’t we just have waited for him at the platform? Roller coasters go in a circle.”
Huh. Why didn’t we think of that before we climbed aboard? Too late now.
“We’ve got to stop him before the ride ends, or he might disappear again,” I said.
Just then, the roller coaster reached the top of the incline. We stalled at the summit, long enough to take a deep breath of anticipation. Then we were plunging down the track, Ridge screaming by my side.
Upside down, around, sideways . . . the roller coaster was speeding us in every possible direction. I felt my mismatched eyes water and my stomach twist, but instead of enjoying the ride, my gaze was focused on the man in the front row.
“We have to get him!” I shouted, reaching down to try to lift the security bar. I didn’t have a good plan. Maybe I could climb across the seats and take the vendor by surprise.
Ridge was aware enough to grab my hand. “Are you crazy?” he shrieked. “At least make a wish before you go climbing to your death!”
The ride wasn’t going to last much longer. If I was going to wish something, I needed to do it then and accept the consequence. I couldn’t risk letting the man get away when the ride came to a halt.
But what if it came to a halt in the middle of the track?
“I wish this roller coaster would stop!” I shouted, gripping the bar as we made a sudden twist.
“Good idea,” Ridge said. “Trap him on the tracks!”
“What’s my consequence?” I asked, wondering why he was delaying at such a crucial time as this.
“If you want this roller coaster to stop,” Ridge said, “then every time someone says the name of a state, you must jump as high as you can.”
“Jump forward or backward?” I asked. The last thing I wanted was to be standing at the edge of a cliff when someone said “Alaska,” causing me to leap to my doom.
“Jump straight up,” Ridge said.
It wasn’t a perfect deal. The consequence could still be fatal if, say, I was standing under a helicopter and someone yelled “Illinois!”
“It’ll only last for a year,” he said.
“Bazang!” I answered, already dreading next year’s U.S. geography classes in school.
Instantly, the roller coaster came to a grinding halt. It was exactly what I’d wished for, but my timing could not have been worse.
The roller coaster had stopped upside down.
Ridge and I dangled against the security bars, frozen in the middle of a loop-the-loop. Luckily, our cart was fused tightly to the track, so we just hung upside down. Like bats.
“Okay,” Ridge said. “Now what?”
I had imagined things would turn out a little more right side up. In a perfect scenario, I would crawl across the seats, take a cone of cotton candy, and eat it. But the Universe never let things happen very easily.
In the front of the cart, the vendor in the pin-striped suit was wriggling out from under his safety bar, the cones of cotton candy smashed unappetizingly under one arm. I found it a little odd that his straw hat hadn’t fallen from his head.
“What’s he doing?” Ridge asked. “He’s going to fall!”
“Hey!” I shouted to the stranger. “We just want some cotton candy! Is that too much to ask?”
Apparently, it was too much to ask. The man gripped all three cones in one hand while grabbing the security bar with his other. He slipped out of his chair, now dangling by one ar
m at a frightening height.
“I am a guardian of the Ancient Consequence. You may only receive the key if you prove yourself.”
“It’s just cotton candy, man!” I shouted.
“But what price will you pay to eat it?” He stared at me and Ridge for one brief second. Then he let go of the security bar and plummeted toward the ground.
“I can’t look!” Ridge screamed, covering his eyes. But I looked. And you can imagine how surprised I was when I saw that the man with the pink mustache did not die.
There was a landing pad waiting for him below. A soft cushion comprised of countless stuffed animals. He fell into the mass of pillowy bears and they carefully passed him along, surfing the man over their furry heads and depositing him on his feet beside the bumper cars ride.
“He’s part of the Ancient Consequence?” I repeated what the cotton candy vendor had said. “Do you think he’s working with Roosevelt’s head?”
“I don’t know,” Ridge said, his hands still over his eyes. “We’ll never know. And now he’s dead and we’ll never get our cotton candy.”
“Relax,” I said. “He didn’t die.”
Ridge peeked out from under his fingers. “How did he get down?”
I pointed. “The same way we’re getting down.” I said it with my best action-hero voice to inspire Ridge.
The mass of stuffed animals below had turned into a frenzied mosh pit. They were pawing and stepping on each other, soft hands reaching up for us like zombies in some sort of pillow apocalypse.
“What?” Ridge shrieked. “We are not jumping into a pile of angry bears! It’s way too far down.”
“The cotton candy man survived,” I pointed out. “The bears are soft. They’ll break our fall.”
“And then they’ll break our bones!” said Ridge.
I took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to let a few wild teddy bears stop me from getting that candy. “I’m going now,” I said, pushing up on the security bar, which seemed to have released as though the ride had ended. “You can come willingly, or wait for the tether to pull you along.”
Was I afraid? Definitely.
Did I scream? Probably.
But Ridge screamed louder.
Chapter 25
The two of us plummeted from the upside-down roller coaster, flapping our arms like useless wings. Then, umph! We landed in a soft pile of stuffed bears, instantly smothered by cuteness.
“Muumuu!” I tried to shout, but a flannel bear managed to slide its paw under the visor of my helmet and right into my mouth. I twisted and thrashed, spitting out the fuzzy hand and screaming again. “MUUMUU!”
This time, I felt the consequence pull me to the ground before I saw Ridge turn into a shark. My stomach hit the pavement, and I was now the very bottom of the Super-Fun-Happy-Bear doggy pile.
Then the stuffing started flying.
Shark Ridge erupted from the pile, his rows of razor teeth shredding through the stuffed bears. Darting through the air as though it were water, he batted the bears away with his powerful tail.
In a moment, the way was clear, but I couldn’t stand up to make my getaway while Ridge was still a shark. “Muumuu!” I called, and he was a boy again. His mouth was full of polyester fluff.
We staggered to our feet, the bears chasing us again. There were angry looks on their cute furry faces.
Ridge kept spitting out stuffing as we ran. “We have to get out of here!” he said, as if I didn’t agree. “This is unbearable!”
Really? That was the word he wanted to use?
With a wake of plush animals, we arrived at the bumper cars ride where I had seen the cotton candy man disappear.
Standing guard at the gate to the arena was a tie-dyed bear, about waist high. It put up its paws in a boxing stance and I kicked it as hard as I could.
Apparently, “as hard as I could” wasn’t hard enough. The tie-dyed bear wrapped around my leg and held fast. I stepped back, but couldn’t shake it. At least it was out of the way.
Ridge and I ducked inside. Running with a stuffed bear clinging to your leg was harder than I’d have imagined. We spotted the pin-striped suit and flat-top hat seated in one of the tiny vehicles, racing around in a tight circle.
The moment he saw us, he turned his car around and sped toward us on a collision course. I tried to back up, but stumbled into an empty car. Then, before I could step out of the way, the crazy cotton candy vendor struck.
My leg was pinned between the two cars. I expected to hear the sound of my shin snapping, accompanied by a crushing pain. But fortunately, I had a giant stuffed bear still wrapped around my leg.
My shin was saved, but the Super-Fun-Happy Bear wasn’t so lucky. The stitching between its ears split and its head exploded in a puff of synthetic stuffing.
The cotton candy man reversed, his pink mustache twitching in a menacing way. Ridge and I had only one choice. Get into the empty car.
It was barely big enough for two boys our size. I shook off the remains of the tie-dyed bear and we managed to slip into the padded seats before the man rammed us again. We bounced backward, spiraling across the arena and colliding with another empty car.
The Super-Fun-Happy Bears must have been doing a decent job of holding back the tourists, because we had the arena to ourselves. A few of the stuffed animals had decided to join us. They raced forward, laden with tools and scraps that they must have pilfered from other places in the park.
I stepped on the pedal, spinning the wheel and reversing around the approaching pests. But they didn’t seem interested in us this time. They surrounded the cotton candy man’s car like a multicolored pit crew. I craned my head to see what they were doing, hoping the little creatures had turned against him.
In a moment they were done. The Super-Fun-Happy Bears backed away from the car in an almost ceremonial fashion, allowing me and Ridge to see their handiwork.
The man’s bumper car was now a shredding machine! The stupid bears had installed blades and spikes of scrap metal all around the small vehicle.
“We can’t let that thing hit us!” Ridge said. “We’ll get ripped to bits.”
The vendor came racing toward us. I swerved at the last second and his armored bumper car tore into an empty vehicle behind us. I spun us around, but he reversed with intense speed, swinging sideways and slamming into our car.
The jagged metal that the teddy bears had installed sunk into our side bumper. One sharp blade pierced through the thin wall of our car, stopping just inches away from my hip.
Ridge screamed and I jerked the wheel, trying to spin away from the man. But in the collision, his deadly spikes had locked our cars side by side. We were stuck to him, getting dragged across the arena as he zoomed in a wide victory lap.
To make things worse, the Super-Fun-Happy Bears were climbing into the other empty cars, strapping on seat belts, and closing in on us, their adorable little faces twisted with road rage.
“We’re doomed!” cried Ridge, throwing his hands up in the air.
I glanced over at the vendor. He grinned at me in a way that made me feel like it was a challenge. Beside him, lying on the seat, were the three paper cones, each wrapped with the green cotton candy.
“Take the wheel!” I shouted to Ridge. Our wheel was pretty much useless because we were anchored to the enemy car. But it seemed like the right thing to say. I reached out, my hand groping for one of the cotton candy cones in the next car.
“It’s too far!” I said. “I can’t reach it.” My fingers stretched, but the man with the pink mustache swatted my hand away as he drove. I leaned farther, but the teddy bears started slamming into us, and I was afraid that a well-timed bump would throw me out of the car, only to be driven over by one of them.
“I need to get closer,” I said to Ridge.
“You want to get closer?” he answered. “I want to get farther away!”
I gritted my teeth and reached out as far as I could, but the cotton candy was still five inches away.
“I wish I could reach that cotton candy!” I shouted.
“Here’s the deal,” said Ridge, uselessly wiggling the steering wheel of our bumper car. “If you want to reach that cotton candy, then your tongue will turn green.”
“How green?” I asked. There were at least a dozen shades of green. It might not be so bad if my tongue were just tinted a light lime.
“Really green,” he said. “Like the color of grass at the park.”
“How long will I stay that way?” I was still reaching for the cotton candy, hoping that I would be able to grab one naturally and not end up needing the wish.
“Umm . . . forever,” said Ridge. “Sorry.”
Green tongue forever? I glanced down at the hourglass on my outstretched arm. The white sands were nearly spent. “I . . . Bazang!”
I don’t know exactly how it happened. Maybe my arm got longer. Maybe the cars got closer together. Whatever happened, the Universe fulfilled my wish and my fingers instantly closed around the nearest cone of cotton candy.
I gave a shout of success and flopped back into the seat beside Ridge, holding the airy treat aloft. Really, by this time, the cotton candy looked pretty nasty, all matted and barely holding on to the cone. But it was what we had come for, so in my mind it looked like victory.
I ripped off a bit and pushed it under the helmet to my lips, inhaling a bit of the sugary fluff. It melted instantly in my mouth. Eating candy like this would turn anyone’s tongue green. But now mine had the unique privilege of staying that way.
The vendor slammed on the brakes and both our cars came grinding to a halt. The arena was quiet now. All the Super-Fun-Happy Bears that had been trying to ram us were unbuckling their seat belts and stepping out of their bumper cars. Something outside the arena seemed to be drawing their attention. They scampered off, uninterested in me and Ridge.
The man in the pin-striped suit looked over at me. “You walk a dangerous road, youngster.” He picked up the two remaining cones of cotton candy and stepped out of his souped-up bumper car.