Bringing Down the Mouse (27 page)

Flecks of moonlight glistened across the glassy surface of a meandering jungle pool as the artificial tones of an animatronic Macaw tore through the silent, humid air. Then a single figure cut like a serrated blade through the water—elegant, skillful strokes, arms sweeping in perfect arcs, legs kicking with practiced ease. The level of focus was almost frightening; from Charlie's vantage point, it appeared that to the kid in the pool, there was nothing else. It was as if all of existence had shrunk down to that moment, flesh against fluid, muscles contracting and expanding at a cellular level. And then, at the very last second, his hands shot forward, fingers gripping the concrete, and he came up, out of the water.
The smile on his face looked pure, unsullied by thought or pretense or even character. In that moment, he just was.

Charlie watched from within the shadows of the vast dormant volcano that rose up beside the curvy pool as Finn shook the water from his ears. When he couldn't contain himself any longer, he stepped out of the shadow of the volcano and sat on the edge of a reclining wicker patio chair.

“There's one thing I don't get,” Charlie said, half to himself, as Finn turned to look at him. If Finn was surprised to see him there, it wasn't evident on the older kid's face. “I mean, I understand why Miranda set this all up. She needed the money, and she knew, with the right group of kids and enough practice, we could pull it off. And that nobody would suspect a bunch of middle-school kids of working a system like this—beating beatable carnival games.”

Finn crossed his arms against the cement, resting his chin on a bicep, still watching Charlie, still smiling that pure, unsullied smile.

“But what I still don't get,” Charlie continued, “is what's in it for you? A little piece of the action? Just helping a member of the family? It just doesn't seem a part of who you are, to do all this for money. But without
you, none of this would have worked. You recruited us, one by one. You convinced me to join. You gave her credibility. Why? What's in this for you?”

Finn ran a hand through his longish hair. Then he sighed.

“You're a good kid, Charlie, but sometimes you think too much.”

Charlie listened as the artificial Macaw chimed in from his perch in a twiggy roost halfway up the volcano, a high, melodic birdsong.

“I thought that's why Miranda wanted me. Because I know how to think.”

“Double-edged sword, eh? Yeah, you know, I should tell you, Miranda actually didn't want to bring you in. She thought it would be easier just to take your project, reverse engineer it, and train one of us to pull it off. She was worried that you wouldn't have the guts to do what needed to be done. From your school file, she thought you were too much of a geek.”

The breeze felt wet against the back of Charlie's neck, but he didn't move, didn't even shift against the wicker of the chair.

“But I'd seen you around school,” Finn continued. “You and your friends, that chick with the rocks, the little guy, Mr. Allergies, Jeremy freakin' Diapers!—and
I convinced her otherwise. I could tell, yeah, you're a geek, Charlie, I don't think that comes as any surprise, but you've got a good heart, you're incredibly loyal, and you're stronger than you realize. I guess even I underestimated how strong.”

“That's not an answer, Finn.”

Finn paused, then cocked his head to the side. His smile seemed to change, turning crooked at the edges. His chin dug deeper into his bicep, his shoulders relaxing.

“On the plane, you asked me why I quit the swim team, the morning of the national meet.”

Charlie's pulse quickened. This was going in a direction he hadn't expected. He glanced around the pool area, but it was still deserted, the shadows from the volcano obscuring everything beyond ten yards.

“For years,” Finn said quietly, “for most of my life, really, I was obsessed with swimming. I'd wake up every morning at four, train three hours before school, then rush home after the bell, train another three. I was crazy about it; it was pretty much all I did. See, I didn't have great parents like you; my dad works all the time at the bank, my mom left us when I was three. But I'm not trying to get all ‘after-school special.' It wasn't about that; it was about me and the water, and winning. See, I
was good. Really good. And when I swam in a big meet and beat the other swimmers, it was the best feeling in the world. That feeling, it was everything. After a while, it was all that mattered.”

Charlie wasn't an athlete, but that day he'd gotten a taste of that feeling, he knew what it was like to be better than everyone else, to win. It was an incredibly addictive thing.

“By the time of that national meet, I had been training so much, my muscles were on autopilot. I was swimming faster than I'd ever dreamed possible. I was unbeatable. Everyone knew it. The coach, everyone on the team, everyone at Nagassack. Even the other coaches and swimmers.”

Finn was so low in the water now, Charlie could only see his eyes, heavily lidded, piercing green echoes of the moon.

“The night before the national meet, my dad had to work late. Really late. Around midnight, I couldn't sleep, so I biked over to the pool for one last dip in the water. The place was empty, I was alone.”

Finn slapped a hand against the side of the pool, sending up a spray of drops. Charlie jerked back so hard, he almost fell off the chair.

“Suddenly, it all drifted into place. The way my
body moved, the water flowing beneath me, the speed, the energy, the focus. I realized then what everybody else knew—there was nobody who could beat me. The competition was over. And the next morning, for the first time in my entire life, I didn't feel like swimming. People came up with so many reasons. I was scared. I was injured. I was a head case, crazy.”

Finn let his body float back from the wall so that he was barely hanging on to the edge with his fingers.

“But the truth is, I simply didn't need to swim. I already knew I could win. There was no point. I had nothing to prove.”

Charlie stared at him. He wasn't sure he understood, but he could see from Finn's face that he was truly serious—maybe for the first time since Charlie had met him.

“For me, this isn't about the money,” Finn said. “Or Miranda, or even the Carnival Killers. I'm doing this for me. I'm doing this to beat a beatable game. To prove that I can—to the only person I need to prove anything to. Myself.”

Charlie felt his legs numbing as the wicker dug into the backs of his thighs.

“You didn't have a problem with any of it. I mean, when there wasn't any money involved, yeah, it's beating
a beatable game to show that we can. But with fifty thousand dollars at stake—”

“It's a matter of perspective. I don't consider it cheating.”

Charlie wished he could be so cavalier, but now, knowing what he knew, he simply didn't agree.

“Math to beat a beatable game, right? Brains to level an unfair playing field. But the wheel—well, that's not just gonna take brains, and you know it.”

Finn looked at him for a full beat. Then he shrugged.

“You want to make me and Miranda the bad guys, Charlie? Okay. But I'm not the one with an iPhone in his pocket.”

With that, as Charlie digested the words, Finn pushed off with his arms, sending his body into a perfect backstroke, his hands slicing through the moonlit water with soundless ease.

Finn had a point, of course. Charlie had the iPhone in his pocket.

But he also had the inklings of a plan.

THE HAWK WASN'T WEARING
any pants.

It was a stupid, silly thought, yet Charlie couldn't clear it from his head; no matter how hard he tried, it just kept reverberating through his mind, jumping from cell to cell like a viral video across the web, pushing all logic out of the way as it threatened to consume every sparking neuron.
The freaking hawk wasn't wearing any freaking pants.
He had an electric-green hat with a little tassel, a red scarf, a shirt with buttons and cuffs—and then he was naked from the waist down. It didn't make any sense. He was a hawk and either he should have been totally nude, like in real life, or he should have been wearing pants. But there he was, beaky smile and jaunty crook in his tail, staring at Charlie from the
lined-off section of the enormous wheel, two sections down from where the thick plastic arrow rested, ready to click away, waiting for the wheel to move, around and around and around . . .

“Anytime, Charlie. Just give it a good spin. No pressure. Forget the crowd, forget I'm standing here, forget the tickets and the money. Give it a good ol' spin. It's just a game of chance.”

Charlie nodded. The man with the gray hair was wearing a similar suit from the day before, but his tie was bright red and covered in little pictures of Incredo Land characters; Charlie knew, without looking, that all five of the creatures from the wheel in front of him were there, tiny replicants made of twists of thread. Loopy. The Frog. Dandy the Squirrel. Boots the Kangaroo. And that darn, pantsless Maddy.

But standing there, trying not to look at the crowd that had swelled to at least a hundred people at the base of the stage that had been set up across the midway point of Solar Avenue, trying not to see the sack of money on the table in front of the wheel next to the big Plexiglas Red Cross charity box—the one the bespectacled man had referred to the day before, for new donations, with the inviting slot—
desperately
wanting not to feel the weight of the phone in his pocket, he knew that the
man was
wrong
. It wasn't a game of chance at all. It was math, pure and simple. Numbers wielded like a sword, designed to kill any semblance of luck or chance.

It was almost too much to bear. Charlie felt his legs weakening, his knees threatening to buckle under his weight. Finn was wrong; he wasn't strong enough to do this. He was weak, a geek, a nerd, he was Charlie Numbers, and he didn't have the will to go through with it.

And then he heard a cough from the crowd and saw Jeremy, a head taller than the kids on either side of him, anticipation splashed across his freckled, reddish face. That was all Charlie needed.

He gripped the wheel with both hands, and using all his weight, spun it as hard as he could.

Up close, the
click, click, click
of the arrow was like machine-gun fire in his ears; the sound echoed through his bones, erasing the last trivial vestiges of half-naked water fowl from his thoughts. His eyes were intent on the wheel, the images in each defined section that blurred as it spun—but no so much so that he couldn't pick out where one ended and another began. Loopy, Dandy, Boots, Maddy,
there.
The first revolution, and in that instant, Charlie brushed his hand against his pocket again, hitting the screen of the iPhone. The information
was entered into his satellite tracking program, and then his eyes were refocused, picking through the blur. Loopy, Dandy, Boots . . .
again.
Charlie touched his pocket a third time, marking off the end of the second revolution. Three little flicks, that's all it had taken, and in front of a crowd of over a hundred watching eyes. But nobody was looking at him, because right there, next to him, in swirling Technicolor, was the greatest misdirection one could ask for. A spinning wheel twice as tall as him, whirling round and round and round.

And then Charlie felt the vibrations against his thigh. Five little bursts, separated by a second between each one. It was his own design. He'd known that trying to actually look at the phone without anyone noticing would have been too risky, so he'd come up with a way that the phone could communicate with him secretly, using its vibrating ring. And now Charlie knew, for certain, where the wheel would stop. He looked over at the gray-haired man, who was smiling at him expectantly, and Charlie cleared his voice so that nobody would mishear:

“Maddy the Turkey Hawk!” he said loudly. Of course, it would have to be Maddy, Charlie thought sardonically. The gray-haired man repeated the words to the crowd.

The wheel continued to spin. Still a blur, but second by second, slowing down, the friction in the air and the tug of the wheel's axle eating away at its kinetic energy, joule by joule.

But by that point, Charlie was barely watching. He knew the math, he knew that the equation he'd plugged into the phone was sound, that the numbers wouldn't lie. He knew, for a fact, that when that wheel finally stopped spinning—

“Holy smokes!” the gray-haired man shouted. “You got it! Maddy! You win! Charlie Lewis, you just won fifty thousand dollars, and eight lifetime tickets to Incredo Land!”

Charlie turned back toward the wheel, and there he was, Maddy, bare tail feathers up in the air, right underneath the plastic arrow, frozen for everyone to see. Charlie had done it. The Carnival Killers had won. They had beat the unbeatable game.

And then, in that moment, everything seemed to happen at once.