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turned to see me there for the first time. “Quinn doesn’t do drugs.”
    But he does other things, I thought. Things that can get into his bloodstream as quickly as drugs. Things that are just as addictive. He does acceleration instead of speed.
    But I didn’t tell them that, and they just looked at me, not believing me. Not even Mom. She ran off to check his drawers for whatever stash he might have.
    The paramedics lifted Quinn onto a gurney, and asthey did, something fell off the couch: a stuffed bear with a lopsided head wearing a yellow shirt with a pocket. I picked up the bear. The pocket was empty. The invitation was gone.
    There was a logical, sensible explanation for that—there had to be—but I wasn’t feeling sensible at that moment. I hurried over to Quinn. His eyes were half open as if he were dead, but he was still breathing. It was as if Quinn weren’t really there. His body was, but Quinn himself was gone.
    I go places sometimes.
    “Where did you go, Quinn?” I said aloud. “Where did you go?” And as I peered into his eyes I got something of an answer.
    Because reflected from the shine of his wide pupils I could see lights—spinning carnival lights, and I could swear I heard the faint echoes of calliope music and screams.
    The paramedics shouldered me out of the way and rolled Quinn out the door.

4
True Void
     
    I’m not the kind of guy to make huge leaps into the impossible. I don’t believe in aliens, I have no faith in psychics, and tales of the Loch Ness monster leave me cold. So I can’t begin to explain what made me believe that Quinn had stolen my invitation and taken some sort of spiritual road trip to God-knows-where. Call it unwanted intuition, but whatever it was, I simply knew.
    “It’s not that we don’t believe you, Blake,” Maggie said. “It’s just that you need to see this from our side.”
    By twenty past two I was in the Volvo with Russ and Maggie, because I knew I couldn’t face this trip alone. I had driven to their houses and woken them up with long blasts of my horn—woken up half the neighborhood, I imagine—and practically dragged them out of bed.
    “You wanted to go,” I’d told them. “Now you’ve got your chance.”
    I slammed my brakes at a stop sign. Russ and Maggie jolted forward from the backseat, their seat belts digging into their shoulders.
    “Thanks. That woke me up,” said Russ.
    “This is crazy,” Maggie said. “I mean, you’ve put two and two together and come up with pi.”
    I floored the accelerator and pulled through the intersection. “You didn’t see Quinn’s eyes. I’m telling you, he wasn’t there. Maybe his body was, but he wasn’t. Don’t ask me how to explain it, but somehow he’s at that freaking amusement park.”
    “You mean like an out-of-body experience?” Maggie asked.
    “I don’t know! I just know he’s there.” I screeched to a halt at the next stop sign, then hurled forward again.
    “I think I just had an out-of-body experience,” Russ said.
    “But . . . if he went there in his head,” Maggie asked, “how are we supposed to get there in a Volvo?”
    “All I know is that we had an invitation to an address on Hawking Road. It’s the only clue we have, so I’m following it.”
    I turned onto the deserted stretch of Hawking Road. It wound through a forest, leading nowhere anyone would ever want to go.
    Maggie put her hand on my shoulder. Russ was too tired to even notice. “Listen,” she said, “we’ll get there, and you’ll see it’s just a carnival. Then we can all drive to the hospital and wait to find out what’s up with Quinn.” She spoke to me like someone talking to a leaper on a ledge. Well, maybe she was right. The best thing that could happen to me was to prove that I was a deranged idiot. It was better than the alternative.
    We passed a sign that said SPEED LIMIT 45. Fromhabit, I looked down at the speedometer. The pin wavered at 45. That wouldn’t do. I extended my foot and