Bringing Down the Mouse (24 page)

He'd come to the conclusion that he needed to tell Miranda what he was thinking. If anyone could help him through his concerns, it was her. Sam was fascinating and brilliant, but she was totally invested in what they were doing, and obviously looked to Miranda as a guiding force. Finn and Magic didn't seem to have any qualms with any of it, and Charlie doubted they even cared about the bigger picture. Finn had quit the swim team on the morning of the biggest and most important meet of the school year. It was obvious he had developed his own personal sense of right and wrong.

But Miranda was nearly an adult, and she was their leader. So Charlie wanted to hear it one more time from her. Before it was just him, alone, facing the wheel.

He set his jaw, reached out, and knocked on the door for a third time. But again, there was nothing but the soft tug of the violin strings. He could see a sliver of yellow light beneath the door, but no motion inside, no shadows or footsteps. Either Miranda was a heavy sleeper, or she wasn't home.

Charlie considered heading back to his room. He was sure he could get into his bed without waking
Jeremy, but he doubted he'd be able to fall asleep. Too many things were battling within in his head.

Looking at the locked door, listening to the dutifully honest tone of the violin, he came to another, sudden decision.

•  •  •

There weren't many adults who could resist a crying twelve-year-old, and the poor, harried woman behind the front desk was no exception. She was middle-aged, a little overweight, with a frayed bun of dyed-blond hair on her head and glasses hanging from a cord around her neck. By the time Charlie got the decibels up to a low wail, she was primed to give in to just about anything Charlie could have asked for. In fact, she looked like she was about to start crying herself, but that might have had more to do with being two hours into an overnight shift behind a desk with an empty faux jungle of a lobby splayed out in front of her. There were only so many times you could withstand listening to alien jungle noises pumped through speakers disguised as totem poles and tiki torches, while tourists wearing Velcro fanny packs took photos of the combination waterfall/gift shop, before you lost your mind.

“I just don't know how I lost my key,” Charlie bleated, rubbing his eyes hard enough to cause real
tears. “And if I knock on the door and wake the baby, my mom's gonna kill me. I was only supposed to step out for a second to get ice from the ice machine, but then I wanted to go see how the volcano by the pool was lit up at night, and then I lost track of the time.”

“It's okay, kid, I'll make an exception just this time—”

“And I've been trying my hardest to be good all week long, and my baby brother just cries all the time—”

“Look, kid, here's a duplicate key! Everything's gonna be just fine!”

Charlie sniffed, taking the electronic keycard from her, then grabbed the empty ice bucket he'd taken from a janitor's closet to use as a totally unnecessary prop, and headed back toward the lobby exit.

“Thanks, lady, you saved my life,” he choked out over his shoulder. But the woman had already gone back to the trashy celebrity magazine she kept hidden behind the front desk. Charlie's hysterics were just another unfortunate memory, and she had six more hours to go on her shift.

Key in hand, Charlie's sobs morphed into a grin; not only had he learned how to beat carnival games, but he'd picked up some Oscar-worthy skills along the way.

•  •  •

Miranda's door came unlocked with a supple mechanical click, and Charlie cast one final glance behind himself to make sure the hallway was still empty before using both hands to carefully nudge the door open just enough for him to slide inside. He knew what he was doing was wrong; sneaking into someone else's hotel room was a step beyond little white lies to his parents and friends. But he didn't see any other way to figure out what was going on.

The hotel room was similar to the one he and Jeremy shared: two double beds covered in vaguely jungle-floral prints, a set of glass doors leading out to a small patio, a few pieces of wicker furniture, a potted plant by the door, a flat-screen TV. But Miranda's room also had a sort of kitchenette, which consisted of a low counter supporting a coffeepot, a small cubic stainless-steel microwave, and a compact minibar. The minibar door had been left partially ajar, and Charlie could see that a fair number of its contents were already missing. Then he noticed the three empty miniature bottles standing like a tiny platoon of AWOL transparent soldiers behind the microwave, and a shiver of nervousness moved through him.

He didn't know where Miranda had gone, but from the state of the room, he doubted she'd be gone long.
Not just the minibar and the empty bottles—on a second glance across the room, he saw that her suede jacket was hanging on the back of a chair parked by the TV table, and she'd left a stack of papers sitting on the small desk by the doors to the patio. She was probably nearby, maybe meeting with Finn or the others, or taking a quick dip in the pool. Which meant he was going to have to act fast.

He was about to head straight for the stack of papers to see if they would shed any more light on Miranda when something else caught his attention. A flash of smooth black leather on the floor beside one of the beds. A little bigger than a paperback book, with a shiny chrome clasp and a designer's scroll across one side. Miranda's purse. It must have bounced off her bed when she'd tossed it there and now it was right in front of Charlie, like a gleaming invitation.

As bad as sneaking into Miranda's hotel room was, going into her purse seemed even worse; if there was one thing Charlie had learned about women from his mother, it was that a lady's purse was completely off limits. But Charlie didn't see any other choice. He was ten hours away from spinning the wheel, and he needed to know more about the woman behind it all.

As the violin music blended with the sound of the
blood rushing through his ears, he quickly crossed the room to the purse and bent down on both knees. It took him a second to figure out the clasp, and then he was inside, leafing through her possessions. Makeup, a little plastic mirror, a key chain, a few slips of paper with numbers written on them. And a little leather card holder, folded tightly closed. Charlie flipped it open and counted through six credit cards, all of them gold, with Miranda's name stenciled on each. That seemed like a heck of a lot of credit cards for an eighteen-year-old teaching student, but then, maybe she was from a rich family. She'd been able to front them each two hundred dollars and pay for their trips; maybe the money had come from one of these cards. He was about to shut the card holder and continue sifting through the purse, when a picture of Miranda caught his eye. It was a school ID card; she looked just as perfect under glossy plastic as she did in real life, those pitch-black bangs like a dagger over her icicle eyes. Charlie glanced past the picture and noticed a lot of red and gray writing—and then he paused, blinking hard. He suddenly realized that the card wasn't a Northeastern ID at all; above Miranda's picture it said Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His eyes narrowed, and he continued reading her ID. Beneath her photo were the words
DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
, followed by a student ID number.

Charlie shook his head. That didn't make sense. Miranda had told them she was a teaching student. Heck, she was a teaching assistant at Nagassack, getting credit for assisting the teachers there with grades seven and eight. Why would she need teaching credits if she was an engineering student?

His face paled as another thought hit him. She'd told the group that she had formed the Carnival Killers because she was working on a paper about group dynamics in middle schoolers. Would a mechanical engineering major at MIT be working on a paper on middle schoolers?

And what about her original claim that whatever little money came along with the prize for beating the wheel would go to her teaching department as charity. If she wasn't a student at Northeastern, had she simply been lying to them?

Charlie didn't know what to think. He stared at the ID card, frozen in place, listening to the Vivaldi in the background, feeling each vibrating violin string as if it was slapping against his face—

And then suddenly, the violins stopped. The room went dead silent.

Charlie hastily shoved the card back in the card holder, flipped the purse and let it fall back to the carpet, then leaped to his feet.

Miranda had entered the room but had her back to him as she fidgeted with the TV, choosing a new music channel. Charlie had no idea if she had noticed him in the room or not, but from the way she was swaying, he was pretty sure she had added to the three empty minibottles she'd consumed before heading out. He decided not to stick around to find out.

He leaped forward, his feet barely touching the carpet, and dove through the still-open door. He hit the hallway at full speed, nearly careening into the opposite wall, then found his balance and raced toward the elevators. He didn't look back until he was inside, hitting the down button with his thumb as hard as he could. Just as the doors shut, he caught a glimpse of motion from the direction of Miranda's room, a spray of jet-black hair, a flash of alabaster skin in the dim light from the hallway ceiling, and then the elevator doors clanked shut.

He was breathing hard as the elevator descended. If she'd seen him, well, he wasn't sure how he'd explain himself. But even more pressing, something was going on, and it wasn't good.

Miranda had lied. Charlie wasn't sure why, but he
intended to find out. It was now nearly midnight, which meant he only had a few more hours, and he wasn't going to be able to go any further without help. Which left him with only one option.

He was going to break the Cardinal Rule of the Carnival Killers.

THERE WERE FEW THINGS
more peaceful-looking than a gawky, redheaded kid in Spider-Man pajamas, splayed out faceup on a still-made double bed, cheeks splotched with chocolate from a half-eaten Toblerone bar, snoring away in the dim glow of a flat-screen TV. The pajamas were an inside joke; Charlie had convinced his parents to buy them for Jeremy for his eleventh birthday, insisting that the pj's were all that Jeremy had asked for, and Jeremy had been forced to smile and thank Charlie's mom and dad, all the while cursing Charlie under his breath. Two years later, the pajamas were now more than two sizes too small; they barely came down to his calves, and were frayed into nothingness right around his elbows. Spider-Man himself had
faded almost into oblivion; he was now more dull, reddish blob than well-defined superhero. But the funny thing was, over the years Jeremy had actually grown to love them, and wore them as often as he could, especially whenever Charlie was sleeping over.

Seeing him lying there, snoring away, a smile from the day's excitement still on his chocolate-covered lips, Charlie almost felt bad about what he was about to do. But then he flashed back to Miranda's room and the college ID, and he knew he had no choice. He needed his friend, and he needed him alert and awake.

Charlie held the glass of ice four inches above Jeremy's face, and then flipped it over. There was a moment's pause, and then Jeremy's eyes snapped open like window shades, and he jerked upward, sending the Toblerone bar and television remote skittering across the room.

“What the heck! Hey, man, I was sleeping!”

“I can see that,” Charlie said as he lowered himself onto the side of the bed. Jeremy was sputtering, slapping pieces of ice off of his face, neck, and chest. One piece managed to find its way under the material of his pajamas, and he wriggled back and forth to try to work it free. “You look like a big ginger snake trying to shed its skin. Sorry I had to use extreme measures,
but I need your help, and it can't wait until morning.”

Jeremy obviously heard the change in Charlie's tone; he could tell that his friend wasn't joking, and despite all the distance that had grown between them in the past few weeks, Jeremy didn't brush him away. Charlie felt even worse about all the lies and subterfuge; but that was over with now.

“I'm here for you, you know that. And I'm dressed to impress.”

That got a little smile out of Charlie, but his tone remained serious.

“I'm going to tell you something, Jeremy, and it's going to sound crazy, but all of it is true. All I ask is that you wait until I'm finished talking before you respond.”

Charlie took a deep breath, and then began at the beginning.

•  •  •

Ten minutes later, Jeremy was leaning back against a pillow, his hair like a demented red halo across the pillowcase. Every last vestige of sleep was gone from his eyes, and the chocolate on his cheeks had blended in with the burst of blush on his face.

“Holy cow, Batman. That's a crazy story.”

Charlie nodded.

“So you see why I've been acting so strange, and
why I couldn't tell you anything. I wanted to. But yeah, it's all pretty crazy.”