“NOOOOOOO! STOP IT!” My younger sister Natasha screams as loud as she possibly can. “TURN IT OFF!”  She absolutely HATES it when I put music in the car.
     “But that’s my favorite song!” I protest.
     “That’s what you said for the one before that! They’re not the SAME SONG!” Natasha whines.
     Annoyed, my dad turns off the radio. “Can’t you guys stay quiet for at least one minute?”
     “Hey, look over there! Aren’t those your friends’ cars?” my mom asks, trying to distract us. Our heads snap up, trying to see who’s there. It turns out it’s our friends cars, like my mom said.
     Suddenly, my dad’s phone beeps. “You have arrived at your destination.” My sister and I look around, trying to find out where we were. After seeing our friends’ cars park next to ours, and the tall,colorful slides peeking out of the gates,  we realize we are at some amusement park. We look around some more and see a large, wooden sign reading “All That Splash.” We then help the parents smuggle our lunches into the park, putting some at at bottom of every bag. Once we get into the park, we stop and look around in awe. The park was very ginormous, and very colorful. Woah!  This place is bigger than I expected. How are we gonna finish all these rides? Excited, we run off to the line of the closest ride before the parents can stop us.
     “Let’s go on this one!” I hear someone say. I’m not sure who it is because there’s still water in my ears from the last slide.
     “No, that line’s too long. How about this one?” I ask.
     “No, not that one. Let’s go on something else,” Carla responds.
     “Why not, are you scared?” I heard her sister, Nadine, sneer.
     “No, of course not!” she scoffs. “Ok fine, I’m scared. Its really big.”
     I didn’t hear that last part because I was staring off into space, deep in my own beautiful world.
     “Whatcha lookin’ at?” she startles me, bursting my bubble of everlasting peace and quiet.
     I don’t respond.She finds me not paying attention, dreamily gazing towards the food court.
     “Hungry already? We’ve only been on three rides! At this rate, we’ll be home by the time we get on half the rides. C’mon, just wait another ride,” she pleads. She then realizes I wasn’t staring at the food court, but at the ride behind it. The biggest ride in the park.  Bombs Away.
      “No way! You want to go on that? You were terrified to go on a tarzan swing last summer! There’s no way you’ll live through that!” She continues tormenting me on how stupid I am for even glancing towards the scariest ride in the park. Oh my god! Why does she hate me so much? I was just thinking! Besides, the only reason I was scared to go on the tarzan swing was because she hurt my arm. She thinks she’s so cool. Wait until I mention that she was also terrified but only went to have another reason to insult me.When will she get over teasing me? Right when I think I can’t handle it anymore, it’s our turn to go on the ride.
      I can only pray that she won’t continue taunting me in the raft we have to share, as our group of 8 kids was evenly split so each has a partner. Nadine and I were a pair, and the other 6 were split into Sara and Carla, John and Nathan, and Jessica and Natasha. Even though we were told to never leave our partners in case of an emergency, I knew Nadine was going to leave me sometime or another just to scare me, and tease me about it later. She wasn’t much older than me, but she took joy in making me feel bad. After the ride ends, which seems like forever based on the fact that it is really boring, we decide to go eat. As soon as we get there, the moms place our sandwiches and soda cans on the picnic table. We don’t realize how hungry we are until we put the sandwich in our mouth, and we scarf our lunch down in a minute. We talk for some time, and plan on what rides to cover in the next two hours. After another safety lecture we run off to the next ride: Lazy River.This ride wasn’t thrilling or anything, just a calm, peaceful ride where we floated in laps around the park. But, having the friends I have, we manage to make it fun by pushing each other off the tubes and trying to get away as fast as we can. After a few laps, we happen to have split into two groups. We had not noticed it, but when we had decided to go on something different, we realized that we were missing people. Meanwhile, our group wanders around the park trying to find the other group. To tell the truth, I am scared to death about what happened to them. I don’t know about Nadine, but if she’s scared she doesn’t show it. She catches me looking at her and notices the worried expression on my face.
     “Are you scared?” she sneers. “You realize we just lost 4 people, right? You’re so wimpy!” She stifles a laugh. At this point, I feel hopeless. Desperately, I glance at John and Nathan.
     “Nadine, stop that!” John exclaims. “I bet you’re a little scared too.” Then, we see the other group, and Nadine runs off to yell at them. I go over to John and thank him. He just smiles in return, and replies “I do what I can.”
     “Where in the world were you guys? We’ve been looking everywhere for you!” Nadine screams. Chattering, we head over to where the parents are and update them on what rides we will be going on. It turns out that we had gotten out at different exits at opposite sides of the park. After informing our parents that we’re going on the biggest, scariest slide in the park, the moms try to persuade us to not go, and give reasons on why it’s not safe.
     “What if you swallow a bunch of water and get poisoned?” says one mom. We just laugh it off and went to stand in line. Only one dad is brave enough to get on the slide, and that too was only because the kids couldn’t stand in line alone, and all other parents were way too scared. The ride, Bombs Away, is really huge, the biggest one in the park. The person going on the ride has to stand in a dark capsule. Then, the floor drops, leading into a long, curvy tube. Once it’s our turn to go on the slide, I hesitate. Along with the fact that it is 3 stories high, hearing the screams from the people before us had terrified me. What if the capsule breaks and I fall to my death? What if I drown? What if I suffocate? What if I swallow too much water and get a bad, bad disease that no one knows the cure to, and I die?  At this point, I really started to remind myself of Petal from the Sisters 8.  I watch John get in the capsule and his scream when the floor drops. Then it’s my turn. I hesitantly get into the capsule and stand in the position that they require. I’m glad Nadine was a show-off and went first to show she wasn’t scared, because if she saw me get into the capsule she would never let me forget it. I could hear my heartbeat echoing in the tiny capsule, over the racket of the latest One Direction song blasting from the speakers. While trying to steady my breath, I hear it. Startled, I looked up to the screen, which was now displaying the position you should be in for safest results. Then, the countdown begins.
     “3, 2, 1, BOMBS AWAY” After the “bombs away,” the floor suddenly splits in half, and I slide into the tube. It is really hard to breathe with the water rushing  over my face, and every time I open my mouth to scream in joy/terror (I’m still not sure which it is), I ended up with a mouth full of pool water, with God knows how much pee. After some time of holding my breath, I feel it slowing down. I then hear my friends and parents inquiring about the ride.After Nadine and Carla pull me out of the shallow pool the slide ended up in, I’m too busy spitting water/pee on the concrete. Shivering, we beg our parents to let us go again, but we fail, after our parents point out that it took us an hour to wait in line and the line just got bigger, and we’re cold, tired, and hungry. The fact that it was 7:30 and we were really cold, hungry and tired didn’t help our argument. However, we didn’t want to leave, it was so much fun. Our parents drag us into the cars and we drive away from All That Splash, wondering when we’ll come again.
     While driving home, our parents took a couple of different turns. Though I can never tell where we’re going by watching street names, I could tell we weren’t going home. When I saw my parents park and the headlights switch off, I could tell we’ve arrived at our destination without the help of my dad’s phone. I look outside and saw a huge building. With the dim glow of the street lights, I make out a chef’s hat and the letters “I T  L  N  O.” Italiano! Ok, so the fun isn’t over yet. I knew from prior experiences that going to a restaurant, mainly pizza places, with my friends would turn out very… interesting. We order our pizzas and all the kids sat at a booth. John takes a bite of cheese pizza, and after his teeth sink into the pizza slice, which was about three inches thick, the pizza surrounding the portion bit off reduced its size by 2 inches. Curious, he takes a paper towel and lays it on top of the slice. The napkin starts to get a little yellow. Then, John presses the napkin a little harder. The paper is now completely drenched in oil, and the pizza is about a half inch thick. After noticing how oily the cheese pizza is, we work on squeezing all the oil out of everyone’s cheese pizza. We then try to see how much oil is in the veggie pizza, and it turns out to be half as much as the cheese pizza amount. After some time, we are stuffed with oily pizza, and very bored. Our table is a mess of yellow napkins, and the parents and the “mature” kids were too busy chatting to notice us. We realize that we won’t be going home any time soon, and so we start to “clean up” and throw dirty napkins at each other, and soon end up with a cup filled with various items, such as spit, uneaten veggies, and used napkins. We each contribute something gross to the cup,and hide it behind the roll of napkins. Right after we hide it, the parents call us to go home. Snickering, we leave the place, wondering what the waiter would think of us.