Full Tilt opens with its protagonist, Blake, at an amusement park with his brother, Quinn, and his friends, Russ and Maggie. Quinn is upset because he lost his favorite hat—a black cap featuring a rude gesture—on a roller coaster. As Maggie worries about the way she looks in a funhouse mirror, Russ, her boyfriend, does little more than joke. Blake reflects on his hardworking ethic, which earned him a scholarship to Columbia University at 16 years old. They all realize that Quinn is gone. Quinn has previously gotten himself and Blake kicked out of the park for pranks. Quinn didn’t speak until past the age of three; riding a child’s roller coaster with their father prompted his first words, and Quinn became an adrenaline junkie. Since then, their parents split up, and their father left “on the night of our annual viewing of The Wizard of Oz” (5).

Blake finds Quinn scaling a roller coaster to grab his hat. A crowd watches as the 13-year-old starts to descend. Blake watches from the coaster’s exit stairs as Quinn crawls toward him; however, the coaster is a hanging ride, and a passing train nearly knocks Quinn from the scaffolding.