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Meanwhile back at the ranch... Grandma was getting cross at Mom and Dad for being away, and at all three of the big cousins for being wild, but she was being a sweetheart to Nora and me. I don't know what she knew about Mom and Dad, but one of her great gifts was that she could tell beforehand when someone was about to come undone. Nora and I were acting completely differently from each other, but we were feeling the same thing. I had the feeling that the whole place--Grandma's house, the oyster-shell driveway, the raspberry bushes, the lawn, the boathouse--was beginning to go around like the start of a scary ride at an amusement park. The Spider. The Cobra. The Octopus. You got in one of the baskets and at first it was just the big flat circle that revolved. Very slowly. Then your particular basket spun a little, and then it flicked out on some jointed arm so you thought you were going to be thrown into the crowd. So you were going around in a big circle and spinning in a little circle and flicking in and out, faster and faster, and just when you couldn't stand another second, then the whole big circle suddenly jerked up on edge so the rim went way into the air, and you were going round and round and up. You opened your eyes and thought you were about to be thrown over the Ferris wheel, but then you were going down face-first into the ground.
Nora and I went on these rides every year at the Dogwood Festival. After the first year the scariest part was the slow part. It was when the machine began to hum and creak and was just barely moving, and it came back to you how awful it was. I would look at Nora and blame her, and she would look at me, and then we'd go slowly spinning way out, and I would feel the first pang of feeling sick, which wasn't from the motion but from knowing it was my own dumb fault. That's how it felt at Grandma's when Mom and Dad disappeared. I knew then that our family had been spinning slowly all year, and now it was getting faster and faster. And it wasn't built with wheels and hydraulic arms that finally brought you back to earth. It wasn't a three-minute ride with someone in a greasy ball cap to throw the switch to stop it. I looked at Nora and blamed her, but I was going to feel sick from knowing it was my own dumb fault.