Bringing Down the Mouse (16 page)

But the subterfuge involved in fooling his parents in the late afternoons and evenings to allow him those hours of practice time was minor compared to what he'd been forced to do during the day at school. For as long as he could remember, the Whiz Kids had shared everything, from Marion's first trip to the emergency
room after eating a cookie made with sesame oil, to Jeremy's mother's pregnancy and the birth of the little diaper-filler he called a sister. From Kentaro's spelling-bee awards, to Crystal's tracking down of one of the rarest shades of granite. In the lunchroom, at recess, in the front hall, waiting for the bus. Those moments together, where everything was fair game and nobody kept anything back, had always been sacred.

But for the past four weeks, Charlie had been a ghost, disappearing as soon as the lunch bell struck, only to reappear at the very end of recess, or rushing off the moment that classes ended, invisible in the hallways and byways as he hurried over to the art room for more practice. Even worse, when he was with the Whiz Kids, he was always monitoring himself to make sure he didn't say anything to blow his cover. Finn called it the cardinal rule of the Carnival Killers; on top of all the other rules was the need for utter secrecy. The school might not understand what they were up to, and Miranda had made it clear that it was fundamentally important to her paper on them that they remain an island unto themselves.

At first, for Charlie, that meant lying almost daily about where he went, about Finn and Magic. And then there were the other sort of lies, when he passed one of
the other Carnival Killers in the hallways, pretending he didn't know them, pretending he wasn't glancing at them when he thought nobody was looking. The worst moments were the few when he and the Whiz Kids strolled past Sam on the way to a class or to the library; forcing himself to look the other way taxed every muscle in his neck and jaw.

Charlie knew that his friends were the smartest kids in the school; the slightest slipup would open Charlie up to an inquisition. He was always one step away from finding himself under a microscope, like a specimen in Crystal's vast rock collection, pelted and prodded and poked, until he crumbled like so much basalt. To avoid that, he'd kept himself quieter than usual, hardly joining in with the daily banter that was so much the food of their lives. Some days, he didn't say anything at all, and he could tell that his silence and withdrawn mannerisms were driving a wedge between him and the rest of the group. He knew that by keeping a secret as big as the Carnival Killers from the Whiz Kids, he was endangering the very essence of who they were: a group of geeky, nerdy, genius kids who had found one another, and in so doing, had built a world where they all belonged, where they had protection from the harsh realities of the jungle world that was middle school.

Just two days ago, Jeremy had actually put Charlie's fears to words while they stood shivering in their down jackets on the sidewalk that bordered the circular school driveway, waiting for their bus.

“If it's something we did,” Jeremy had started, without any pretext, his eyes downturned, concentrating on a crushed milk carton he'd been bouncing from one booted toe to the other, “you should say something. We can take it. We've been called everything in the book.”

At that, Charlie had almost told Jeremy everything. He felt so bad about lying to the Whiz Kids, about keeping something so important from them, and especially keeping it from his best friend—that was harder than anything he had learned from Finn and the rest. Particularly the fact that if Charlie made it through to the end of his training, Jeremy was going to be coming along with him to the Cheeriest Spot in the Universe. But Miranda's icy eyes and perfectly chiseled lips were in his head. He could only sigh and mumble an apology.

“It's nothing like that. I'm just tired. Maybe overextended with homework and the science projects I'm working on with my dad.”

It was another little lie, one he'd been using to explain the afternoons he couldn't spend with Jeremy at the park or wandering the creek behind his house. But
it was obvious Jeremy wasn't really buying it anymore.

“Yeah, I know about tired, remember? There's a six-month-old sharing my bedroom and my dad works a night shift three days a week to pay for these stupid boots. But that doesn't mean I disappear at lunch every day and treat everyone I know like trash. If you've found new friends to hang out with, you should just be honest. We'd all understand.”

Charlie had almost broken at that, but then the bus had mercifully pulled up to the sidewalk, and Jeremy had kicked the carton of milk hard enough to send it bouncing off one of the bus's big rubber wheels. They'd ridden to their shared stop in silence, and Jeremy had let the matter drop. Another week, Charlie'd told himself, and it would all be over, they'd be on their way to Incredo Land, and Jeremy would forgive him. And when Charlie got to the wheel, when Charlie
beat
the wheel, he promised himself he would tell Jeremy and the rest everything, no matter what Miranda wanted. She'd have her paper, the rest of the group would get their lifetime tickets to the amusement park, and Charlie would have his Whiz Kids back, with a couple of those lifetime tickets to share for the rest of their lives.

Of course, Charlie thought as the lightning thundered even louder overhead, causing the crowd to gasp
in near unison, getting to the wheel and beating the wheel were two very different things. Now that he'd had four weeks of practice and that he'd seen what the Carnival Killers could do, he was pretty sure that getting to the wheel was something they, as a group, could achieve. But beating the wheel was going to be up to him.

His eyes shifted from the jagged, brilliantly white bolt of lightning to the giant aluminum spheres, then down to the enormous cylinders at the center of the stage. When he closed his eyes for a brief second, he could picture the immense rubber fan belt spinning within one of those cylinders, carrying the current up to the aluminum in a blur of mechanical speed. The science behind the magic, that's exactly what Miranda was expecting from him.

Would he be able to give it to her? He was just a skinny kid who was good at numbers. He didn't have a magic wand or a wizard's hat. He didn't have access to any magic spells.

But what he did have was even more powerful than magic. He had math. Or specifically, a mathematical formula. With just four pieces of information, he could calculate how long it took a ball to roll down a bowl.

Four pieces of information. The diameter of the
bowl. The time the ball was dropped into the bowl. The time the ball finished its first rotation. And the time the ball finished its second rotation. With those four pieces of information, those four numbers, he could calculate when the ball was going to stop. Or, metaphorically, where a satellite was going to land.

Or even more metaphorically, where a spinning wheel was going to stop spinning. Because really, Charlie now understood, a spinning wheel was no different from a marble in a salad bowl or a satellite going around the earth. The arrow at the top, clicking its way from section to section, was akin to the marble or the satellite. The wheel was the bowl, or the earth.

So all he really needed to beat the wheel was to know the diameter of the wheel, the time at the moment the wheel started spinning, and then, as it went around, the time as it finished its first revolution, and then, infinitely slower, its second revolution. At the moment, he wasn't sure how he was going to find out the exact diameter of the wheel at Incredo Land, or how he was going to record the time that the wheel started spinning and the two other important marker points, but those were just details. The important point was, Charlie could, theoretically, beat the wheel.

Charlie shifted his gaze from the Van de Graaff
generator back to the magnificent lightning in the air.
From theory to practice, from an idea on a piece of paper to terrifying bolts of pure white energy flying through a pitch-black auditorium.
From theory to practice was really just a matter of mechanics, of muscle and sweat and strategy. A process, boxes to be checked off a list, emotionless obstacles to overcome.

The thought brought him back to the previous day, his last afternoon of practice, because in one more week, he was either on his way to Florida or back to being a normal sixth grader. He'd just finished climbing the ladder for a seventh time in a row, and even his palm hurt from slapping that darn bell at the top of the ropes again and again. He'd half walked, half crawled to the pod of beanbag chairs someone had piled in a corner of the art room, right beneath one of the blacked-out windows. Because it had been late, nearly nine p.m., all the other kids had gone home one by one, and Charlie had suddenly realized, as he lowered himself into the bulbous beanie cushion, that the only other person in the room was Miranda, seated at one of the drafting desks.

Charlie had realized that in four long weeks together, this was the first time he'd been alone with her. At the moment, most of her face was obscured by her jet-black hair as she leaned forward over the desk, but as he
settled into the beanbag, she had suddenly looked up, showing him a sliver of white enamel between the ruby lines of her lips.

“Charlie,” she'd said, her voice piercing the air. “I think you're ready.”

Charlie hadn't been able to disguise the pride that had washed over him. It wasn't just the feeling of belonging that had come with being part of the Carnival Killers; it was Miranda's approval, the fact that Charlie had earned her respect.

He knew, deep down, that his parents probably wouldn't have liked Miranda—in her perfectly tailored pencil skirt and cherry-red pumps; her manicured nails and perfectly styled hair; her flowing white blouse, knotted at the throat; and her shiny, sparkly watch—she was nearly an adult, and yet there she was, spending her evening helping a group of kids learn how to beat carnival games. And even though, over the four weeks, she'd let Finn and the rest do most of the guiding, she'd always been there, a presence you couldn't avoid.

She was doing it for a paper, and the tools they were using were physics, chemistry, and math, but still, it was a scheme practiced in secret, which they were going to use to win a prize. Charlie's parents wouldn't have understood.

“Sunday afternoon,” Miranda had continued. “Finn will make the arrangements. If everything goes as planned, we'll know you're ready for Incredo Land.”

It was strange to think that Ms. Sloan would not have made the arrangements herself, but the inner workings of a finely tuned machine were palpable—each member had their designated role, and it was clear that Finn was the head.

Now, two days later, standing in the darkness, watching streaks of lightning tear through the air, Charlie tasted sparks on his tongue, and an involuntary shiver ran down his spine. But though the oxygen around him was supercharged by the voltage spewing through the auditorium, the electricity in his veins didn't come from a Van de Graaff generator.

Sunday—tomorrow afternoon—Charlie was going to have to prove himself.

A trial by fire.

IT WAS TEN MINUTES
past two in the afternoon, the sky was a deep and blustery gunmetal gray, and Charlie had just come to the undeniable conclusion that there was no cool way to walk through a crowd while eating an ice-cream cone. It didn't help that Crystal had ordered him the Triple-Decker Halloween Scoop: almost half a foot high of vanilla and chocolate swirl, covered in orange and black sprinkles. Or that she, Jeremy, and Kentaro were all wielding similar cones. Charlie doubted that even Finn could have pulled off a suave stroll through the Sherwood fairgrounds behind a phalanx of brightly colored sprinkles.

Crystal had lunged toward the ice-cream booth the minute they'd ditched Jeremy's dad in the parking lot.
Crystal was paying because she'd gotten twice her regular allowance the day before to make up for the fact that her mother had inadvertently vacuumed up part of her lava-rock collection, which her cat had knocked off her desk and onto her bedroom carpet. Charlie would have seemed really out of character telling her he didn't want free ice cream, even though it was hard to play it cool with a face full of sprinkles. It was precisely the same reasoning that had forced him to arrive at the scene of Miranda's test with three quarters of the Whiz Kids in tow. When Jeremy had called to tell him his dad had offered to take the crew to the fair on the last Sunday before Halloween, Charlie couldn't have refused.

“Marion shouldn't have been so concerned about his face,” Jeremy remarked as they continued away from the ice-cream stand and out into the bustle of the fairground. “He'd have fit in perfectly with all the goblins and ghouls out and about this fine afternoon.”

Charlie faked a laugh. It was eight days before Halloween, which meant that the Sherwood Fair was in full swing, right in its sweet spot. The parking lot had been completely full, and it had taken Jeremy's dad a good twenty minutes before he'd found a muddy pocket on the tire-ploughed field to stash his UPS van. He was lodged so tightly between two sparkling SUVs, Charlie
had nearly had to climb out the window to get free. And Jeremy was right: Nearly half of the people cluttering the main glade of the Halloween Fair were in costume. Goblins, ghouls, witches, ghosts, the more popular television and movie characters, presidents past, present, and maybe future, and of course, vampires—so many flipping vampires, you needed a wooden stake and a clove of garlic just to navigate down the dirt path that ran through the center of the fair. The only costume that even came close to rivaling the vampire in popularity was the similarly ubiquitous zombie. Marion could have fit right in, especially with the zombies. The next time a deliveryman brushed him with a bouquet of roses in the elevator at his dentist's office, and his face exploded in firecracker hives like the sky above the Charles River on the Fourth of July, he could hide in plain sight at the Sherwood Halloween Fair.