Bringing Down the Mouse (21 page)

“Another winner! Give the Frisco Kid another ticket!”

Charlie wasn't sure when the guy had started calling him that. He knew the reason; one of the characters he had invented was a lonely boy from San Francisco, left to his own devices while his family took an older sister on rides he was too scared to ride. But the past eight hours had blended together into one big, frenetic mishmash. That's how it was, when you were living at ten thousand RPMs.

When he closed his eyes, all he got were glimpses. Slices of the day caught like images in front of a flashbulb.

•  •  •

Nine a.m.

Just thirty minutes from the moment he'd followed
the rest of his team through the entrance to the tent, and it was like he'd been there all his life. Even to Charlie, it was amazing how fast his training had kicked in; to the uninitiated, that first step inside that tent would have been like leaping off a cliff into a world of absolute chaos. The whole place was like a carnival on steroids, larger than life.

Except, when Charlie let it all sink in and allowed the logical, mathematical portion of his brain to digest what he was seeing, it was all a brilliant and beautiful facade, much like the rest of Solar Avenue. The place was more crowded and architecturally more vast than Sherwood, but at its heart, it was the same set of midway games. Once his senses acclimated to the science-fiction setting, it took Charlie only a few minutes to find the three games he could beat. Then it was just a matter of navigating through the thick crowd of kids, changing his face as he went, pulling the baseball cap out of his back pocket and rehearsing the characters he was going to cycle through as he moved from game to game: the lonely kid from San Francisco; the spoiled dentist's son from Arizona, who was so bored by all the rides that he'd come to the midway games to blow through his ridiculous allowance; the sickly child who'd spent the day before vomiting his way from the
Space Drop to the Haunted Moon, and was now relegated to the midway tent by his two brothers, who were sick of getting kicked off rides because of his weak stomach.

He didn't even pause as he reached his first target, the coins and plates, the game he felt most comfortable with, the one he had learned first and fastest. Working his way between a clutter of kids pitching coins haplessly in every direction, he slapped two dollars onto the counter, smiling eagerly at the carny as the man replaced his bills with golden coins.

Without even seeming to pause for breath, Charlie hit six plates in succession.
Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang.
The carnie stared at him for a beat, then reached up and rang an electronic bell.

“Winner, winner, winner, winner, winner, winner!”

And just like that, everyone at the counter was looking at Charlie, who was laughing like an idiot and going on about how his friends in San Francisco were never going to believe what had just happened, how his siblings were going to be so jealous that they'd spent the day on stupid rides. When the carny tore off a set of six white tickets with pictures of Loopy the Mouse stitched across the center of each, Charlie raised his eyebrows as if surprised.

“No stuffed animals? What, do we change these in for prizes?”

As the carnie explained the contest, Charlie pretended to listen and shrug. Meanwhile, he was taking in the reaction of the other kids around him. Some of them were well aware of the promotion, were even playing in groups to try to win a shot at the wheel themselves. Many others were just playing for the fun of it. Either way, it didn't matter. Charlie had tested the waters, and he knew now that it was just a matter of continuing what he'd started.

He palmed the tickets, thanked the carny, and strolled away from the counter. Jake Tucson passed him as he crossed beneath the blinking orange and black lights. Neither acknowledged the other. Just two kids at a carnival, strangers passing beneath the folds a circus tent. Jake took up Charlie's old position at the coin-toss counter, and Charlie worked his way to the spot at the balloon-dart game where Jake had just won a half dozen tickets of his own.

•  •  •

Eleven a.m.

The balloon-dart area had gone positively rowdy—shouts, cheers, arms pumping up and down. Charlie could barely stay on his feet as he was good-naturedly
jostled back and forth by hands as big as mitts. It had happened suddenly: A busload of bigger kids had surged around him just as he was settling in to his third hour of straight play. In fact, his hand had just emerged from his pocket with its folded-up twist of heating pad inside, a warmed dart poised to fly, when he was surrounded and nearly lofted right up over the counter. Charlie didn't need to listen hard to overhear who they were; he could have just read their matching sweatshirts. A junior high football team from Miami on a class trip similar to Charlie's own. The two ringleaders of the group, a heavyset African-American kid in a bulky gray sweatshirt and Adidas sweatpants, and a loudmouthed blond kid in jeans, matching sweatshirt, and high-top sneakers, had taken an immediate liking to Charlie because of his hat. And beginning right after his next three throws—the balloons popping like fireworks—they started cheering like maniacs with every throw.

The football kids were providing Charlie with natural
misdirection
, almost as perfect as flaming sticks tossed toward the sky. By the fifth balloon he'd popped, Charlie was grinning beneath the brim of his baseball cap; the carny wasn't even really looking at him as he tore off more prize tickets and slapped them on the counter next to more darts.

By the twelfth balloon, Charlie was enjoying himself so much, he didn't even notice that Greg was now standing about three feet to his right, also in the jumble of junior-high football kids. And Daniel, his red head stuffed beneath a wool cap that was part of a Brooklyn-hipster persona that Magic had dubbed “more dip than hip,” was a few feet to his left, also half swallowed up by a crowd of gray sweatshirts. Like Charlie, they'd recognized the natural cover of the crowd. Nobody was going to notice them in the loud mob of junior-high kids. Charlie didn't even see his teammates until all three of them happened to throw darts at the exact same moment. The three balloons exploded at once, right next to each other in the center of the board.

Bang. Bang. Bang!

The football players erupted in shouts. The two big ringleaders grabbed Charlie under his arms and lifted him right off the ground, shouting at the carny in unison.

“Winner, winner, winner!”

Charlie, feet dangling as he smiled helplessly, looked back and forth around the counter, and for the briefest of seconds his eyes met Greg's, then Daniel's. All three stifled grins.

“Do it again!” yelled the football player in the high-tops.

Charlie laughed. He certainly wasn't going to disappoint his fans.

•  •  •

Three p.m.

Back at the coin table.

Charlie was chewing on a granola bar that Jake had shoved in his pocket on their last pass across the tent, as he pushed through a set of what looked to be triplets grouped around the closest corner of the game counter. The three brothers were all chubby and red-faced, obviously frustrated with the way their day was going. Charlie could easily see why: They were throwing coins almost in unison, and every time, the result was the same. The coins skipped and scattered their way from plate to plate, disappearing to the floor—and yet again and again, the triplets kept hurling away, putting their thick biceps into it as they wound up like they were pitching for the Red Sox. Charlie waited until they were finished, their faces getting even more radishy as they finally ran through their last few dollar bills, and then leaned over the counter himself, flashing six singles to the carny. It was a different man than before—Charlie had counted at least two shifts gone by since the morning hours. Counting the shifts was another piece of Charlie's training; each change in shift
meant a new carny, a new set of eyes that hadn't just watched you win way more than you were supposed to, which meant you could do it all over again without much worry of getting noticed. This time, the carny was as thin as a pipe cleaner, with a high beak of a nose and eyes like beads. He had an exasperated look on his face, and Charlie immediately saw why.

Directly across the gaming pit, beyond the sea of clinking plates, at the counter right across from Charlie, he saw a group of high-school girls gathered around Finn. Finn actually had his back to the game, leaning so nonchalantly he was almost sitting right up on the counter. He was chatting to the girls, obviously charming them with his eyes, his manner of speaking, the smug way his lips turned up at the corners; as Charlie watched, one of the girls even reached out and touched Finn's jacket.

Then she laughed, and he held a gold coin to her lips. Without even turning toward the plates, he flicked his wrist back over his shoulder, sending the coin into a perfect arc. It hit a plate and stuck, and all the girls burst out in applause. The carny just stared at Finn's back, then shrugged and reached for another winning ticket from the roll attached near his electric bell. Finn didn't even turn as the man put the ticket on a pile that already looked to be thirty tickets thick.

What a jackass,
Charlie thought, and then he grinned. It was time for the Frisco Kid to get in on some of that action.

He kissed one of his own gold coins as if for good luck, and gave it a perfect toss toward the waiting plates.

•  •  •

Six thirty p.m. Just a few minutes before the close of the day's games.

“Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven . . .”

Charlie was eight feet above the ground and moving like a spider monkey, hands burning against the thick twists of rope, shoes barely glancing against the sides of the ladder as he shimmied forward. At the moment, all he saw were numbers, flashing around his head as he moved up the ropes—translucent and green, flashing behind his eyes as his body automatically calculated angles and weight, pivot points and torque. The numbers were everything—how his weight countered the natural spin of the ropes, how his center of mass had to be measured against the rotational pull of gravity. The numbers were his weapon, his strength, his own personal magic spell, and he could wield them like nobody else.

“Six. Five. Four . . .”

A few more feet, weight shifting back and forth, body smoothly moving up, and then there, right in front
of him, was the little button by the bell. His right arm shifted up, palm out, as his left arm moved in tandem, balancing those numbers, perfecting the equation, and then—

“Three. Two. One!”

His palm hit the button and the bell exploded in metallic ecstasy. The crowd of onlookers cheered, and Charlie's head cleared; the numbers sped back into the computer of his mind. He was staring straight down through the top two rungs at the rubber mat that covered the ground now ten feet below. His heart thudded, and for a brief second he almost lost track of his arms and legs, almost twisted over and sent himself plummeting down. But then, above the shouts, he could hear both Sam's and Finn's voices, and he fought back against the torque, refusing to let himself fall. He slid back down the ropes, hands and feet working together as he had been taught, and then righted himself at the base of the ladder.

The crowd was dispersing as the carny handed him another winning ticket. When the man turned away to take payment from the next kid in line for the ladder, Charlie suddenly found himself face-to-face with Magic, who was smiling from beneath what looked to be a turban. The turban was a heck of a contrast to
Magic's tie-dyed T-shirt and cargo shorts, but then, in the cultural smorgasbord that was Incredo Land, nothing was really out of place.

Before Charlie could say a word, Magic shoved a large plastic bag against his chest. Magic leaned close, whispering into his ear.

“This is for you. Don't spend it all in one place.”

Then he walked right past and headed toward the entrance to the tent.

Charlie waited until he was gone, then opened the top of the bag and peered inside.

Tickets. Jumbled together in thickets ten and twenty deep. He couldn't know for sure, but from the weight of the bag and what he could see, it had to be more than five hundred of them, maybe even closer to six. That meant that they'd all been winning at about the same rate, each of them winning more than ninety percent of the way through their matching budgets. Even if other groups of kids were also pooling their tickets, Charlie doubted he was in much danger of losing. Even though there were still a few more minutes left in the day, obviously the team felt pretty confident they had it in the bag. Everything had gone according to plan.

And the truth was, he had loved every minute of it. His skin felt like it was on fire, and his heart was still
pounding from the rope ladder. He hefted the bag up, holding it tightly against his chest like he was holding his favorite pillow, and fought the urge to laugh out loud.

“Charlie! Drat, man, you've been in here all day?”

Charlie turned to where Magic had just disappeared, catching sight of Jeremy as he bounced through the threshold of the tent. For the moment, at least, Jeremy's anger at him from the morning had seemed to disappear; Jeremy's face was a study in pure joy, from his bright red cheeks to the clown-size smile drawn across his lips. His red hair was matted with sweat, and his arms were pumping happily along as he crossed toward Charlie.

“We had the best freaking day. We hit the Space Drop three times, the Haunted Moon twice, and Saturn's Rings broke down halfway into the ride, so they let us stay on as long as we wanted after they got it going. I think my brain is still spinning around in my skull. Man, you got stuck with the worst group.”

Charlie's attention shifted halfway into Jeremy's monologue, as loud cursing erupted from directly ahead. It took him less than a second to realize where the cursing was coming from. Even without the theatrics, Dylan was hard to miss; at the moment, the big thug was bouncing
from foot to foot, his fists pounding against a gaming counter as he shouted words that would have gotten him kicked out of school for a week. Charlie looked past Dylan's angry, heaving shoulders, and saw that his nemesis was standing at the milk-bottle game, and it was plain what had just happened. Ten feet ahead of Dylan stood two obstinate milk bottles, one of them barely rocking in place, next to four downed bottles. Dylan was yelling at a carny who was just shrugging and shaking his head as Dylan's two buddies, Liam and Dusty, cursed right along with their leader.