In two miles, take exit 19 for Valley Park Drive South.

Siri chirped from my sister's phone.

Charlotte, turn that off. I know where I'm going.

You sure about that? I mean, it has been a couple of decades, Mark.

Please. Like, I could ever forget where Adventure Valley is. Come on, we spent every summer of... There it is! I swerved briefly into the oncoming lane, as Charlotte thrust her arm in front of my face and pointed excitedly out the window. There's Adventure Valley! Oh my god, what ride is that? That coaster, it was called Steel Something, right? No, no, wait.

That's Mayhem Mountain, isn't it?

I gently pushed my sister's arm out of my face and back over to her seat.

I couldn't fault her for her excitement while I was trying so hard to control my own giddiness.

It felt like we were kids again, yelling and bouncing in the back seat of my parents' car as the first shining rails and wooden planks of the park's roller coasters came into view above the treetop.

That's the steel viper, I told her.

Mayhem Mountains on the other end of the park, and that wooden coaster over there, that one's Excalibur.

Oh yeah, I remember those.

I was always too much of a wist to ride the viper, but I rode the shit out of the Excalibur. Well, Charlotte, you're an adult now. I think it's time to take on the Viper. As long as the contractors have tested it and given it the okay, I'm in. That was really the question, wasn't it? We didn't know which rides had been inspected and cleared and which ones hadn't.

I sent up a silent prayer that Mayhem Mountain was counted among the rides that had.

I'd left Brandon's several voicemails asking about it since he was the one in charge of everything.

But with how fast things had been moving since we'd bought the park,

I couldn't fault him for being a busy man.

If you'd told 12-year-old me that my crazy, hyper, wild-eyed friend, Brandon Decker

would end up graduating cum laude from Northwestern business school,

I would have laughed in your face.

Brandon?

No way.

...