I amble ahead, keeping to the shadows of the alleyway. My heart is pounding, my brain flipping out. The only logical explanation for what I see doesn’t compute. It’s impossible to have worlds within worlds.
“Come on, work this time. Please?” The male speaks again, this time his voice louder, clearer.
The tapping of fingers on what sounds like a keyboard fills the air. What the freak? A high-pitch tone follows a few loud sequential beeps.
My hands fly to my ears. “Stop it! Turn it off!” The pain is excruciating.
“What? Huh?” The guy’s voice is so loud.
The tone stops and is replaced by another sound that can only be described as a chair scraping across the floor. A face pops over the edge of my universe.
I’m not sure who screams the loudest, me or the blond-haired, brown-eyed boy staring down at me, mouth open.
“What? Huh? How?” he says, echoing my own thoughts.
I cower against the side of a building, every inch of my body trembling. My mouth tries to move, but all I can do is stare and shake like a plucked guitar string.
“W-who are you?” the boy asks, never taking his gaze off me. His face is pale, and I’m pretty sure I’m the last thing he expected to see.
Once I find my voice, I counter him in a battle of wits. “Y-you first. Where am I?”
“Holy crap!” His warm breath falls on me, covering me in a fog of peanut butter and jelly. He disappears for a moment and returns, moving as if he’s sitting on a roll-around chair. “This is freaking awesome! You’re real. You’re actually real.” He smiles and claps his hands. His enthusiasm isn’t contagious.
I venture out of the shadows, and glare at him, my arms folded across my chest. “Of course I’m real, moron. What else would I be?”
“No, no. That’s just it. You can’t be real. It’s an impossibility, but here you are.” His grin widens. “This is like the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me.” He leans forward, his ginormous face in clear view above me. If there could ever be a man in the moon, it would be him. “Hi,” he says, flashing a mouth full of braces. “My name is Josh. Josh Granbury. Welcome to my theme park creation, Granbury Park.”
Confusion rushes over me like a tidal wave. His creation? What’s he talking about? Granbury Park isn’t his creation. It’s been here for decades and he can’t be more than eighteen. I pinch myself to prove I’m not in a dream, but I must be. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
Humor him. If I do, maybe this dream guy will tell me how to fix whatever is wrong, so I can get Dean and the others off that rollercoaster and get out of here. I smile up at him and say, “Nice to meet you, Josh. I’m Amber. Amber Jenkins.”
“Hmm, Amber Jenkins.” He taps his finger to his lip and rolls out of view. He comes back a moment later, a black and white composition book in his hand. He flips through the pages, and stops. Four pages in, he smiles and says, “Here you are. Amber Irene Jenkins, acrophobic, oldest of three kids. Parents divorced. Likes water skiing and baking cupcakes. Prefers hammocks to real beds.”
I stare at him, mouth open. “H-how do you know that stuff about me?”
“I know everything about everyone in Granbury Park. I should, since I created all of you. It’s all right here.” He waves the comp book in the air.
“Yeah, right.” So dream guy thinks he’s the Creator? Just go with it, Amber. You have to find out if he can help you. “So, um, what’s wrong with everything in Granbury Park? Why is everything frozen?” I dare not mention the human-size flea critters. He’ll think I’m nuts.
He tosses his book to the side and combs his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know. I’ve run the program a million times. I’ve checked the wiring, the connections. Everything is where it’s supposed to be. It sucks, because if I don’t find the solution tonight, I’m in deep crap.”
“I’m sorry. I’m confused.” Funny thing is, I really am.
Josh stands, and I draw in a deep breath. I have entered a dreamland of giants. “Granbury Park is the final project for my computer programming class. I’ve been working on it all year long, building all the rides, laying all the electrical wires so they’ll run. I made all the buildings, bought and installed all the plants. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent coming up with all the characters, you included, and incorporating that program into the one that runs the park.”
“Wait, wait. Are you telling me I’m a computer program?”
“Yeah, and a pretty darn good one, too. Somehow, I made you real but only in a virtual sense. I can see you, talk to you, you can interact with me. In short, you’re a learner, but I’m pretty sure if you tried to leave the park, you’d glitch.”
I give him a stern look. “I’d glitch. Riiiiight.” The last word releases as one long syllable.
“No, I’m serious. Try. Go on. Leave.” His gigantic finger, wound in a band aid, points to a door marked Exit.
I take his challenge and head for the door. It’s time to show Mr. Josh Granbury I can go anywhere I want without issue.
I push the door open. With a confident smirk on my face, I take a step over the threshold.
My leg turns into snowy static, much like tuning into a television channel that is off the air. I stumble back and kick the door closed with my foot.
“O.M.G.! This can’t be happening. Wake up!” I stagger around, my palms pressed to my temples. “Come on, Amber, wake up.” I pinch myself a few times, just to make sure I get the message. Red welts stand high on my arms, the sting throbbing from each one of them.
Josh chuckles. “Do you like inflicting pain upon yourself? Interesting.”
“Shut up, and go away,” I say, “unless you can wake me up from this nightmare!”
“Yeah, well, that’s kind of hard to do when you’re not asleep.”
His pursed lips and told-you-so eyes tell me everything I need to know, and it’s not what I want to hear. My heart sinks in my stomach as I fight back the tears. “I don’t believe you,” I say, my voice a trembling mess. “I can’t be a computer program. I just can’t.”
Josh sits in his chair and stares down at me with big puppy dog eyes. “Answer me this: where were you born?”
I search my brain. It comes up blank.
“When’s your birthday?”
Again, another blank.
“What are you parents’ names? How old is your brother? What happened at school today?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know! I can’t remember!” More of his questions fly my way. “Stop it! Why are you doing this to me?”
His voice softens. “I have to make you see you’re not real, Amber. You’re a figment of my imagination. Everything you remember, I programmed into you. You and Dean? It’s all a program. A video game, except, instead of playing it on the computer, I designed it to play on a real set. But something’s wrong, and I can’t figure it out. All I know is, if I don’t fix it, and it’s not ready to present to my class in less than seven hours, I’m going to fail my computer class. If I fail my class, I lose my chance at a scholarship. Lose my scholarship, I don’t go to college. I don’t go to college, I become a plumber like my dad, not that being a plumber is bad. Some folks, like my dad, make great plumbers. But I want more. If I have to resort to plumbing, my life will be over. My world will end. I’ll be finished. I’ll end up flushing crap out of people’s drains for the rest of my life, instead of designing and programming the next big thing in virtual gaming systems. I have to make this work.”
Poor kid. I take a moment to ponder what he said. He has more pending on getting these rides going than I do. I try to remember if I ever had a goal of going to college. I can’t even think it. So much of my life is empty, because I don’t have one. Literally.
I sit on a bench and consider my options. Even though our reasons are different, Josh and I want the same thing—to get Granbury Park operational again. I stand and face him.
“I’ll help
you under one condition. Since I have no life to speak of, I’d like, for one exceptional moment, to pretend I do. You have to program Dean to kiss me when he gets off the ride. In front of everyone. And he has to ask me to prom. Oh, and one more thing—you need to program out all my scrapes and bumps and bruises I got when I scrambled from Dragon Flight.”
Josh shakes his head. “I can’t do that … you know … take away the bruises and stuff. That’s not part of the program. You did that on your own.”
“But you said I’m not real. How can I get bruises and cuts if I’m not real?”
“I told you, I don’t know. It might be a glitch in the program. I didn’t design any of my characters to function on their own. I think when the park shut down, a runtime error occurred, somehow allowing your individual program to alter. It sounds irrational to me, but it’s all I’ve got. Unfortunately, it means you’ll have to face Dean McCall with a whole new look. If you’re okay with that, I can make everything else you want to happen, happen.”
I take a moment to consider his idea. Sure, I’d like to not be all banged up when I get my first real kiss, but what the heck? Maybe seeing my battle wounds will make Dean want me even more. I smile. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Josh Granbury. What do you need from me?”
Chapter 3
Hours pass and Josh grows more frustrated. Nothing we come up with is working, and plumbing is beginning to look like his only viable option for a future occupation.
“Damn it!” he says, banging his head on the table. “How hard can it be to locate a freaking bug?”
My ears perk up as I yawn. “Bugs? You’re searching for bugs?”
He looks at me, bags under his tired, bloodshot eyes. “Yeah. That’s what we call the glitches that infect a computer program.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so, earlier, dingbat? I saw four of them crawling around the Ferris wheel. Nasty, gross suckers.”
Josh’s face lit up. “The Ferris wheel? Are you sure?”
I nod.
His face breaks open in a wide grin. “Amber Jenkins, if I could kiss you, I would!”
He rolls across the room out of my sight. I hear finger-tapping and words like Eureka and Yeah, baby energizing the room.
Before long, lampposts in Granbury Park switch on. Carousel music fills the air. Arcade games fire up.
I laugh and run down the alleyway, back to the entrance of the park. “Josh, you did it!” I clap my hands and jump up and down. “This is amazing. How did you—”
He hovers over the park. “It was easy once you told me where to look. I wrote the program so well, the code sort of gelled. It looked so right. The problem was so subtle, a transposition of letters, I doubt Bill Gates would have found it.”
“Who’s Bill Gates?”
Josh laughs. “It doesn’t matter. Are you ready to get back on your ride?”
“So soon?”
“Sorry. I have to get to school, which means shutting this all down, loading it in the truck and getting there before seven-thirty.”
“Can you put me on the ride as the coaster pulls into the station?” I bat my eyes and try to look all five-year old cute.
“And have Dean flip out because you’re not sitting next to him? The poor guy will assume you fell out, and he’ll have a heart attack.”
“But I’ll have a heart attack if I ride the thing.”
Josh laughs again. “No, you won’t. I promise. You’re in very capable, programming hands.” He wiggles his fingers.
I love his smile. It’s comforting.
“I promise you’ll survive, and just imagine the payout when the ride is over.” Josh smiles and winks.
Blood rushes to my cheeks. I hope he doesn’t notice, not that it matters. After all, I’m only a computer program, a character in a game. I can’t die. I can’t have a heart attack, but I can have the most wonderful ending to my evening. A smile slides across my face. “Okay. You win, but you have to promise to tell me if you pass your class. I won’t be truly happy until I know you’re not going to flush crap for a future. I have to know you’re going to follow your dreams, and get what you want, too.”
“You got it. Ready?”
I look into his face, his eyes brighter than I’ve ever seen. “Yeah, I’m ready.”
He disappears from sight, and the taps begin again. Seconds later, I’m aboard Dragon Flight, the harness over my shoulders, the belt latched to the seat.
Josh appears above me, holding my sky—a plastic dome—off to the side. “Are you okay?” he asks.
I glance over at Dean, still frozen in time, and smile. “Yeah, I’m good.” I turn back to my rescuer. “Josh? In case I never see you again … thanks, for everything.”
“You’re welcome.” His voice falters. “I-I’m sorry you can’t be real.”
I shake my head. “It’s okay. No regrets. No apologies, okay? It’s all good. Now get to school so I can get down from this ride.”
His soft, milk chocolaty eyes melt my heart. “Thanks, Amber. I’ll never forget you.” The color of night falls over me again like a protective shield.
Chapter 4
I grip the handles of the harness and squeeze my eyes tight as the coaster tops the three-hundred foot lift.
My pulse thumps in my throat as the metal beast curves to the left. I squeeze my eyes so tight they hurt. Oh, no. Here we go.
My stomach lurches. Wind rushes past me as the steel dragon plunges toward the ground. Up we go, flipping over in a corkscrew.
I scream and laugh at the same time as the monstrosity rips and roars over the track. Never in my life have I felt so exhilarated and free.
The ride reaches the end and glides into the station. At the stop of the cars, our harnesses release. Dean lifts me from my seat and we run down to the exit, my hand in his.
“Oh, my gosh! That was amazing!” He takes me in his arms and spins me around, my legs swinging outward. His hair’s a mess, his eyes glistening as bright as the moon and stars above, and he’s grinning more than I’ve ever seen before. “Ride with me again!” he says, setting me on the ground.
“I-I don’t know.”
He faces me, his eyes full of concern and worry, and brushes my hair away from my face. He caresses the bump on my chin. “How did you get hurt? What happened to you?”
I’m touched by his sincerity. “I don’t know. I must have hit it on the harness, or something.”
His gaze sweeps over me, brow drawn in confusion. A slew of questions must be lining up behind his eyes, but like a good computer program, he smiles and says, “You know, Amber. This might seem sudden, but I’ve been wondering … would you like to go to prom with me?”
School girl giddiness erupts inside, but I force myself to stay calm and cool on the outside. I drape my arms around his neck, and say, “I thought you’d never ask.”
His cheeks pink up, and he engulfs me in a giant hug. Inside, my heart swells with happiness, so much I’m sure I’ll explode. Behind him, a message streams across a digital marquee: I passed! I’m going to college! I owe you the world, Amber Jenkins!
I smile. A tear of joy escapes down my cheek.
Dean lifts my chin, his breath hovering at my lips. “Are you okay?” He brushes his thumb across my cheek.
A message flashes across the marquee—It’s time.
I nod and smile. A tear falls.
“Are you sure,” Dean asks.
“Positive.” I run my fingers through his hair and smile. “Kiss me.”
His lips, soft and warm, press against mine. My foot pops behind me.
The marquee overhead flashes another message. Ready for more programming?
My belly tingles, and I can’t help but giggle. Oh, yeah, baby. Am I ever.
I drift into temporary oblivion, wrapped in the arms of the cutest guy ever to walk the halls of Newbury High. I have no idea what tomorrow will bring, but I can’t wait to see what the brilliant mind of Josh Granbur
y comes up with next.
END OF DRAGON FLIGHT
THANKS FOR READING!
Thanks for reading DRAGON FLIGHT.
Please leave a review of DRAGON FLIGHT on Goodreads right now while the book is still fresh in your mind. Just a quick note on what you liked about the book – it’ll just take a second and I’ll appreciate it forever.
Would you like to read other books by J. Keller Ford? Keep reading for a preview of IN THE SHADOW OF THE DRAGON KING, the first full-length novel in the YA epic fantasy adventure, The Chronicles of Fallhollow Trilogy.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Before moving on to the sneak peek, I’d like to take a moment to thank my amazing beta readers, Jennifer Eaton, Karen Clarke, and Jim Kramer for slicing and dicing this short story into the special tale that it is. There is not enough money or gold in the world to express my gratitude for your brutal, but welcomed honesty.
I also want to thank my son, Kevin, for, in a roundabout way, giving me the idea for this story. It’s wonderful to know my mind isn’t the only quirky one in the household.
SNEAK PREVIEW
IN THE SHADOW OF THE DRAGON KING
What follows are the first two chapters of IN THE SHADOW OF THE DRAGON KING in case you need something else to read right now. It is a YA epic fantasy about a realm that is on the brink of war, three teens who are destined to stop it, and a dragon bent on seeing they don’t.
“War is a necessary evil. There is not a day or time when each of us does not battle some sort of enemy either within or around us. The true test of our character lies in the instant when we choose to either ignore or defeat that which seeks to destroy us. It is the same in our kingdom. Hirth has seen its share of battles and this great province has ridden the wings of freedom for many an age; however, there will come a day when an evil so immense will seek to threaten our very existence. It is then the knights of Gyllen Castle will rise to the aid of Hirth and defend all that is dear – our families, our land, and our right to survive. When such a time comes, I will fight with honor and for glory and give my life, if my forfeiture of it will allow Hirth the chance to endure in peace. And while I know that the enemy may prevail and my life be extinguished from this body, my death will not be in vain for what is more honorable than giving one’s life for love of family, country…and freedom.” Sir Trogsdill Domnall.
Dragon Flight Page 2
