We were pulling into an amusement park called Busch Gardens in Virginia. My dad hit the switch that turned off the radio. I was kind of annoyed because it was in the middle of my favorite song from Hamilton.

“Dad,” I said, “turn it back on. That was my favorite song.” There was no response. I saw him out the window walking away. I opened the door and ran after my dad, calling for him. I finally caught up with him. “Dad, you left without me,” I complained.

We kept on walking to the entrance. It read Busch Gardens! I smiled. Today was the day I was going to overcome my fear of big roller coasters. I was a little nervous but still excited. My dad handed me my ticket and told me to give it to the person when we go through the turnstile. I handed the lady the ticket.

She said, “Thank you.”

We walked on to meet Audrey and Brian. Brian had just had a party to celebrate a book he wrote. Audrey was Brian’s daughter. She was 11 at the time, and I was eight.

“Hi,” I said to Audrey in a cheerful tone to make a good impression.

She said, “Hi” back.

We had a conversation until we got to the actual park. She took an iPad out of her bag and showed me videos of all the rides. She pointed at the ride that we were going on first. I looked at it in horror. It had loop-the-loops, big drops, and twists. That was everything I was scared of. I shivered slightly.

We were lining up for a roller coaster called the Loch Ness Monster. I was very confused because everybody was talking so fast. We used our fast passes to skip the line. I sat down in the middle because I was the smallest. My hands were sweaty, and I was shaking. I was so nervous. I had never been on a rollercoaster this big. I felt a small drop down. The ride had started. “Ahhhhh!” I was so scared. The roller coaster was shaking my head back and forth. My least favorite part was when you were about to go down a hill and you’re going up with the cranking noise. My head tilted backwards, and my neck started to hurt. The cranking stopped. There was a small pause. Oh no, we were about to go down the drop. I put my hands up. “Ahhhhhhh!” Then because we were going so fast, the first loop-the-loop was unnoticeable. There was another drop. When going up, I looked down. It looked like 5,000 feet. I could already feel sweat trickling down my face. I had just noticed one more thing. At the bottom of the drop, there was a pool of water. I was so focused on how scared I was that I didn’t noticed that we stopped. I felt a sudden jerk. “Ahhhhhhhh!” I lifted my arms up like everybody else. It felt like we were falling for ten minutes. My arms started to hurt from holding them up for so long. We finally made a big splash in the pool of water. Water creeped up my arms and legs. It got into my shirt. We came to a stop. I unbuckled my seatbelt and stepped off. I was still pretty dizzy because of all the twists and turns. I waddled off with my mouth hanging open.

We went to the bar to get a drink. On the screen I clicked on Sprite. A gazillion different kinds showed on the screen. I never knew there were more than one kind. I wanted to try them all. First, I clicked on the vanilla flavor and put a little in my cup. It was too sweet. I tried every other kind. There was cherry, orange, blueberry, strawberry, and grape. My favorite was original. I tried a mix of every kind. I spit it out and filled with lemon-lime. I jumped up and down from all the sugar. Then, we got ice cream.

I picked up the map and looked at it. It was huge. I had to stretch out my arms to hold the whole thing. I asked my dad where we were.

He pointed to the bottom of the map and where we were going. He pointed to the very top. “There,” he said.

I looked at the map in horror. We had just passed the ice cream store. And even though we had walked for five minutes, we had only walked an inch on the map.

After 20 minutes of walking, we got to the ride. This one was even bigger than the other one. Big drops, five loop-the-loops, and it was going much faster.

“Here we are,” said my dad in an enthusiastic voice.

Neither Audrey nor I wanted to go on this one. Then, I saw a girl who looked like she was younger than me, and when she came back around, it looked like she was having fun. My feet felt like they were locked in place. My dad nudged me to move forward because the cart was here. I took a big step on to the cart. I sat in the middle again. I looked at the ride in front of me.

After the ride, I stepped off, my head still bobbing like a chicken. I was very proud of myself. The biggest ride I had been on before this was the mouse ride at Rye Playland. I think it had one drop, not steep at all and maybe 20 feet. I had definitely loved the first two rides here at Busch Gardens, but I knew there was more to come. After being on those rides, I knew I was ready for anything.