Slide

1.

Do you know about The Swirl? Well, just in case you're not from around here, I'll tell you. It's a waterslide. The best waterslide. I would know. I've been on The Gannet at the park near my house. It's OK because the water at the bottom is warm and the lineup is short. I've been on The Nimrod which according to my cousin Ellie means you have to be stupid to go on it. But you don't. It has this part that's enclosed and dark, but it's not scary at all. And I've been on The Jitterbug. But that's a baby slide.

I haven't been on The Swirl yet. The Swirl is at this huge water park called Hydrozone. It's across town and it takes about an hour to get there, so we don't go often. Last summer, we went only once. My cousin Ellie was with us.

That time, I didn't get to go on The Swirl.

"Do you wanna go on The Swirl right now?" Ellie asked me as soon as we entered the park.

"Heck yeah! Let's go," I told her.

To go on The Swirl, you walk to the other side of the park, away from the wave pool and the splash pad and the lazy river. There's nothing there except The Swirl. It takes up a lot of room.

Ellie and I waited in line. Every few seconds we'd move ahead a few steps. There are these little speakers along the lineup that play music, but the music is so quiet that you can only hear it when you're directly under one of them.

"Is this that OutKast song?" Ellie asked me.

"Who knows? Hard to tell. Maybe they could make the volume a little louder instead of putting a thousand of these quiet speakers everywhere?"

It must have taken us eight or nine songs to get through that lineup. A lot of people in line were shivering because they were wet. Chump move: we hadn't gotten wet at all before waiting in line.

You wanna hear another chump move? Going down the slide the slow way. I had read all about waterslides because I wanted to make sure I could go as fast as possible. The slow way is to sit there, on your butt, and go down the slide. It takes forever. People behind you must hate it. And it's so boring. Jitterbug stuff. Instead, you've got to slide down on your back. Cross your ankles so that only one ankle touches the slide instead of two. Fold your arms over your stomach. Arch your back so that only the tops of your shoulders are touching the slide. Four rules. I had memorized all four so I wouldn't do it wrong. (Well, technically, there's a fifth rule, but it involves pulling down swim shorts. Close call, but not worth it.)

Anyway, we were at the front of the line, waiting for the lifeguard to signal us that we could go on the slide.

"How tall are you, tyke?" the lifeguard asked me.

Seriously? Tyke?

"I'm four and a half feet tall," I told him as I edged toward the slide.

Four and a half feet is the minimum height for the slide. I had measured my height at home and I was fine.

But that lifeguard wouldn't let up. "Let me just double-check you over here. I'll quickly measure your height and you'll be on your way down."

As I walked over to the height-measurer wall, I saw Ellie start her slide. She was a little taller than me so I guess they didn't care about double-checking her. She forgot to cross her ankles, but otherwise she was doing well.

The lifeguard looked at the top of my head and measured it against the wall.

"Oh, no! You're not quite ready for The Swirl yet. So close! Next summer, pal, you're going to be all over this thing."

"Hmm?" I was confused. "I know I'm tall enough. I measured at home. Four and a half feet."

"Just about!" The lifeguard seemed way too happy about this conversation.

"Can I just go on it since I'm already up here? I won't go again."

"Ahh, nice one! No, no. Just walk back down the way you came up. Next!"

If there's anything more embarrassing than walking down the up line, I don't know what it is. My parents might say it's not being able to pay your rent. Peh, not even close. Do you walk past every single person in the world who can pay their rent? Do you have to say 'excuse me' to every one of them as you pass? I didn't think so.

I got to the bottom.

"Where were you? I was waiting for you here. Yahhhhh! What a slide! What! A! Slide! There's a bump in the middle of it. A huge bump! It bumped me in the air, right off the surface of the slide. Hello? Are you listening? I was off the slide for a sec, flying through the air." I had never seen Ellie this pumped before.

"I wasn't allowed on. Not tall enough."

"Ugh. Wow, bump! OK, umm, don't worry. It'll be all right. You'll be on there with me next summer. We probably won't come again this summer anyway. Next time we come here, you're on there."

That summer sucked.

2.

I've done two things since that summer. One is that I've gotten taller. I used a pencil to make my own height-measurer wall in my room. I'm exactly two inches taller than I was last summer. That lifeguard will have no chance.

The other is that I've learned a whole lot more about waterslides. I even did my independent school project on the most surprising waterslide facts.

There's one slide, Leap of Faith, where you're in a tunnel with sharks on the outside. There's another, The Point of No Return, that is so fast it takes only five seconds to fly down. There are slides that go uphill, slides with loops, even slides with trapdoors. There are slides where you go as fast as a car. I got a B on that project, which is a good grade for me, but I couldn't figure out why I didn't get an A+. The teacher wrote that I didn't offer a "balanced account of the risks of traversing waterslides." First of all: traversing? I looked up that word. You don't traverse a waterslide. You ride a waterslide. And second: there really aren't any risks. I mean, once in a while something bad does happen, but that's out of billions of people. Tell me something that has no risk. Using a phone? Last year, my friend's phone overheated and burned their hand. They had to go to the hospital to check it out. Boom.

There are people that test waterslides. That's what I want to do for my job. Most jobs are boring. My dad does something sometimes with people's taxes. My mom works in a doctor's office. The only reasonable job besides testing waterslides is testing video games. I know a girl who tests video games and gets paid for it. But why test whether something looks real when you can test what's already real?

3.

We were headed back to Hydrozone. My dad agreed to take us: me, Ellie, and Ellie's friend Mika. Mika's cool. She's a year older than me and Ellie, and she's quieter and calmer than Ellie too. They met a few years ago when they were in a split grade, with both grades smooshed into the same room. (The Split. Now that's a slide name. Imagine you get to choose halfway down which path to take to finish the slide? It could even be a race if the two people at the top 100 percent agree on which path they'll take.) Anyway, ever since then, they've stayed friends, even though they're never in the same class.

"You two ready for The Swirl?" I asked. Mika was on her phone, texting someone.

"Yep!" Mika said. "I've been on it before but wouldn't mind going again."

"Oh, you have? I haven't. This will be my first time. I'm so ready."

"Ahh, you're going to like it."

"Do you know how to go down fast?"

"Oh, yeah, it's a fast slide. Be ready." She seemed to be distracted now.

There wasn't much to do on the drive in. Ellie and Mika mostly looked at Mika's phone and laughed about things. I looked out the window and listened to the music in the car.

And then, we were there.

Ellie and Mika were putting on sunscreen. Taking forever, too. I was trying to wait patiently but it wasn't easy. "Let's go let’s go!" We had gotten there early. Hardly anyone was in the park yet. We needed to get to that slide fast, before the line filled up. If we could do that then I might get a second or third ride without waiting through the line in between.

We ran over to The Swirl. Up the ramps. No line, no one there, no waiting for songs to finish. Up the 50 narrow steps to the slide itself.

Ellie's turn.

Mika's turn.

My turn.

Woooosh! On my back, ankles crossed, arms folded, back arched, swim shorts a bit down. And I was out of there.

The slide starts with a steep decline. I picked up a ton of speed in those few seconds. Then, the twists and turns! Cut right, cut left, cut right again. You might think that these curves would slow me down. But not at all! I was flying, faster and faster. Then, another steep decline. My arms windmilled a little—not that, not now—but I managed to cross them again.

The next thing I knew, I was in the air. The bump had happened.

You know how it feels when you're in a down elevator and you jump as high as you can? The elevator's dropping while you're going up, and it takes a little longer than it should to land? The feeling during this split second that your boring mind knows you should be back on the floor but your body refuses to be bored? Yes? Now imagine that the elevator simply disappeared from below you when you jumped. Now it's just your body. Your mind has no say. That's the bump.

I hung there. Weightless and motionless, for one perfect second.

"Oh my god! Ellie! That was awesome! Now I know what you mean. Wow!" I had run back to Ellie and Mika. There was some guy with them. I think maybe he was from school.

"The speed! The amount of wind up there! That bump…."

"Umm, yeah, Aiden, it was cool," Ellie said.

"Cool? Cool is when the caf has those chicken bites at lunch. Cool is when you think you forgot your homework at home but you actually didn't. Cool is…."

The guy looked at me.

"Oh yeah, Kevin, this is Aiden. He, hehehe, loves waterslides."

"Hi, Kevin," I said. "What are you guys doing here? Let's go again!"

Mika shook her head. "We'd love to, but we're just kinda hanging out here for now. You can go though! Go check out that slide again, and we'll be here when you get back."

"Hmm? We're only going to be here for another couple hours. Look over there: Dad's bored. He's not going to want to stick around all day. Plus the park is still mostly empty, not tons of people yet. We can run up there one more time now, go down, run up again with a bit of a line but probably not too bad yet…let's go, we're wasting time!"

They all kind of seemed confused. "Don't worry," Ellie said. "We'll be fine. Go go go!"

What was the point of them coming to the park, then? I wondered this as I tore up the ramps, just ahead of what looked like a bunch of kids with a camp counsellor.

Zoom! I had even better form this time. No uncrossed-arms mishap. Even better arch. I even tucked my head and knees in on the bump, and I think that kept me in the air a little longer.

I went a third time.

A fourth.

The line was too long now. The place was packed. I walked around.

I wasn't sure what to do next.