Full Tilt

These chapters explore Blake’s overly cautious personality. Blake’s car, which he chose and paid for himself, is “the safest car on the road” (21). He obeys every driving rule he learned in driver’s ed; this is set in contrast to Quinn, who complains “about how [Blake comes] to a complete […] stop at every stop sign” (22). The brothers’ bedrooms also symbolize the difference in their personalities. Quinn’s room is described as looking like “the debris field of a tornado,” whereas Blake’s sports “a clean floor, a neat desk, and […] evenly spaced travel posters” (27). The personality differences between Blake and Quinn will play a pivotal role in the central conflict and resolution of the novel.

These chapters also touch on the depth of Blake’s trauma. Blake’s aversion to risk-taking threatens to derail his college plans, which angers Quinn. Quinn tells Blake, “when you actually get the chance to have a life, you’re too scared to take it” (33). This comes after a nightmare in which Blake relives the bus crash, drawing a direct line between the effects of the crash and Blake’s inability to take risks. The travel posters on Blake’s walls illustrate this, as well. He longs to visit the places in those posters, but his fear prevents him from achieving his dreams. As Quinn states, “you paste your room full of places you’ll never go” (33). In the first chapters, Quinn is reckless and self-centered; here, though, readers explore with more nuance the merits of his lifestyle—and the cons of Blake’s caution. Finding a middle ground, which seems impossible early in the novel, later becomes a tool for survival.

Blake’s mom and her fiancé, Carl, further complicate Blake’s life. He experiences trauma beyond the bus crash: His mom’s previous boyfriends “drank too much […] and when it came time to give something back, they bailed” (24). While Carl doesn’t display the same characteristics, Blake is still cautious. Blake’s father’s desertion of his family and his mother’s history of cycling through several boyfriends makes stability even more attractive to Blake: “Mom is sort of like a blue whale […] Mom filters losers through her baleen as if they were krill” (23). This quote also foreshadows one of the carnival’s seven rides, in which a blue whale (who symbolizes his mother) threatens Blake’s safety aboard a ship at sea.

The supernatural elements of the story become more prominent. While Blake’s mother and the paramedics assume that Quinn has overdosed on drugs, the teddy bear and the missing invitation clue Blake into the truth. When he looks into Quinn’s eyes, he sees “spinning carnival lights, and […] hear[s] the faint echoes of calliope music and screams” (36). In the context of Blake’s journey, this represents a call to adventure. Blake can choose to remain in a normal world—in which Quinn is in a medical coma—or pursue the possibility that Quinn’s soul has left his body. Blake accepts the call when he enlists Maggie and Russ to join him. This is the first time Blake shows personal growth. Choosing to pursue a paranormal explanation for Quinn’s situation, which Blake calls “unwanted intuition” (37), is a step away from the logic that guides his life.

Blake’s sudden unease as he approaches the quarry saves him and his friends from hitting a tree and careening over the edge of the quarry—a similar fate that befell his school bus. The quarry is “a fog-filled rift, glowing with colored lights […] punctuated by the ghostly echoes of screaming riders” (40). Other young people appear without explanation, all of them approaching the carnival. When he arrives at the carnival gates without an invitation, Blake gets another lifeline: A mysterious person instructs the cashier to let Blake and his friends into the park. The cashier receives this order through an earphone, the cord to which “went directly into [the cashier’s] head” (42). Ideas of destiny and the supernatural converge.

The same cashier explains the rules of the park: “You can’t leave the park until you ride all seven [rides], and you’ve got to do it by dawn” (43). These rules remain constant throughout most of the narrative, and the cashier explains them just before Blake and his friends make the next step in their journey. Though the context of the rules is not yet clear, Blake chooses to cross the threshold from the real world into this strange one: Blake “led us under the arch, crossing the threshold into the park with no name” (44).