Bringing Down the Mouse (18 page)

Charlie envied his friend's state of bliss. No doubt, Jeremy was out cold in part because he'd spent the past three days literally skipping to and from school; even asleep, a wide smile pulled at his chapped, slightly orange lips. He'd been smiling and skipping from the very moment during morning study period, three days ago, that Warden Walker had informed him that Jeremy's name had been chosen, at random, to receive free passage to Incredo Land with the class trip, the result of a promotional campaign tied to the park's anniversary celebration. To Jeremy, it was like winning the lottery, and when Charlie had told him that his own parents had agreed to send Charlie along since his best friend was going, Jeremy had been too excited to even question the out-of-character largesse of Charlie's “practical” mom and dad. Charlie had used the same line on his own parents—that his name had been chosen at random for the free trip—and it had done the job.

Jeremy had been floating ever since. At the airport, as they'd been slogging their way through security, meeting up at the American Airlines gate with the other eighteen students who had signed on to the trip, they were getting a short, sweet lecture from Warden Walker. Walker was the main proctor for the four-day excursion—he had rules for every little detail—but his biggest pet peeve was public misbehavior. And to Jeremy, rules were meant to be broken, so when Warden Walker wasn't looking, acting exactly opposite to how you would behave at school was par for the course. Jeremy had been like a filament in a lightbulb, electrified to the core, bouncing on the balls of his feet, laughing at just about everything, and prone to hug anyone within two yards of his elastic arms.

He hadn't registered even a note of curiosity as Warden Walker had introduced the two other adults who would be proctoring the trip. Mrs. Cauldwell, an eighth-grade English teacher with short blond hair and a penchant for dressing more like a teenager than the much older woman that she was; and a teaching assistant with flowing, ink-black hair, angular features, and a smile so blindingly white, it could have powered a jet turbine.

Of course, Charlie knew that Miranda's position as
one of the proctors of the class trip was no more random than Jeremy's being chosen to receive the “promotional” free ticket to Incredo Land. Charlie had no idea how she'd managed to trick Walker into believing the story behind Jeremy's ticket, or how she'd gotten herself assigned to the trip, but then, Miranda wasn't the sort to leave anything to chance. She'd probably guaranteed herself a spot on the class trip the minute she'd begun training her team.

On the plane, Charlie reached into his pocket, his fingers touching two distinct objects, one small and round and very familiar, the other rectangular, smooth, and utterly wrong. The feel of the gold coin calmed his nerves, forcing the rumble of the plane's engines and the shudder of the fuselage moving through light turbulence into the background. His fingers, and the muscles of his hand and wrist, knew the coin intimately. He had practiced so much over the past few weeks, the coin was like an extension of his body. He no longer had to consciously calculate the proper arc or the amount of strength he'd need to flick the thing to land on a plate every time—his muscles just knew. Muscles had memory, and if you did something enough times, it became ingrained in the connective tissue. The coin, and the dart, and even the ropes of the ladder, these things were
all in his muscles now, as much a part of him as his very DNA.

But the other object felt nothing but foreign. He considered taking it out of his pocket, but even though Jeremy was asleep, he didn't want to risk his friend seeing the device and asking about it.

Just a little white lie, a borrowed iPhone, and now Charlie had almost everything he needed to beat the wheel. All he still needed, in fact, was one more piece of information—the diameter of the wheel itself. On the Carnival Killers' last day of practice, just twenty-four hours ago, Miranda had assured Charlie that she had a plan to get that information, but hadn't given him any details, just a confident smile and an almost maternal pat on the head.

Still, her confidence and the pride he'd gotten from pleasing her by being good enough to be a part of the Carnival Killers only partially made up for the fact that he'd borrowed the phone from his father and that he would have to lie to him to cover up that act.

A slippery slope, and he had the feeling he was about to slide right off the edge.

A quiet
ding
interrupted his thoughts, as the seatbelt light went off over his head. Although to Charlie, there wasn't such a thing as a “comfortable” cruising
altitude, he decided to use the opportunity to stretch his legs, to take his mind off the borrowed phone and the black void beyond the window to his right.

Getting past Jeremy's sleeping form and out into the aisle was a bit like climbing a jungle gym, but eventually, Charlie found himself shuffling between the rows of seats toward the back of the cabin, his eyes rapidly adjusting to the dim lighting. He recognized faces on either side, nodding at the handful of kids who recognized him back. Twenty among a coach class that seated a hundred and twenty wasn't a high percentage, but twenty middle schoolers would have stood out in a crowd ten times their number. Even above the constant rumble of the jet's engines and the rush of wind against the wings, Charlie could tell that the noise level was higher than usual; kids laughed, kids yelled, kids kicked at the seats in front of them and pounded their shoes on the floor. Charlie wasn't sure where Warden Walker, Mrs. Cauldwell, or Miranda were sitting, but they obviously were avoiding the back of the plane, where most of the kids were gathered. The deeper he went into the cabin, the more it felt like a school bus with wings.

A few steps farther down the aisle, and he passed by Sam's row. Again, he fought the urge to acknowledge her. Her face was bent over a magazine, something
glossy and filled with pictures of women who looked like Miranda and dressed like Mrs. Cauldwell. Then he was past her row, moving closer to the pair of lavatories that took up the last few feet of the plane's tail. He didn't really have to go, but he figured a little water splashed across his face would help his nerves. He took another step toward the tail.

And then he was tumbling forward, hands out in front of him, panic in his eyes. At first, he thought something had gone wrong with the plane, then he saw the leg stretched out across the aisle at ankle level, and heard the unmistakable, deep guffaw from the seat directly next to where he was falling.

Luckily, he caught himself on an armrest at the last second and managed to steady himself in a half kneel. He glanced up to see Dylan Wigglesworth beaming down at him, his eyes pinpricks in the thick, doughy rolls of his face. Next to Dylan sat Liam, and in the row directly in front of Liam, Dusty. Charlie's stomach dropped as he pushed himself back to his feet. He hadn't noticed the three thugs in the airport; they must have been in the front of the group as they'd entered the jetway. In retrospect, he shouldn't have been surprised that Dylan and his coterie were on the class trip; Dylan's father was an investment banker in Boston and was one of
the sponsors of his pituitarially challenged son's Little League team. Tickets to Incredo Land were probably nothing to the Wiggleworths, and besides, even for his parents, getting Dylan out of town for a few days was probably worth any amount of money. Unfortunately, that meant Charlie was stuck going on vacation with his bully in tow.

“Whoops,” Dylan chortled, giving Charlie a hard poke to the stomach. “Gotta be more careful, Numbers. Unexpected turbulence, and all.”

Charlie fought the urge to turn and run back down the aisle toward his seat. Instead, he tried to think of a comeback, and was about to say something about unexpected morons being much more dangerous than unexpected turbulence when he heard someone clear his throat a few rows ahead and saw Finn waving at him. Finn was in his usual outfit: leather jacket, distressed jeans, boots hanging out in the aisle. There was an empty seat next to Finn, and despite the unwritten rules of the Carnival Killers, he obviously wanted Charlie to join him. Charlie immediately forgot about Dylan and started forward, but Dylan grabbed his sleeve, pulling Charlie down so that Charlie's face was only inches from his own. Charlie could tell by the angry look in Dylan's eyes that he had also seen Finn a few rows back.

“Keep in mind,” Dylan snarled, his breath reeking of tuna fish and maybe even a little tooth decay, “Incredo Land is a big place. Maybe we get a chance to hang out without your bodyguard butting in. Wouldn't that be fun, Numbers?”

And then he let Charlie go with a little shove. Charlie stumbled the next few rows to where Finn was waiting, and dropped into the empty seat with a huff of relief. Finn grinned at him.

“Even at thirty thousand feet, you attract the nicest element, Charlie.”

Charlie had to laugh at that. He rubbed a hand through his hair. Dylan was a nuisance and a bully, but lately barely factored into Charlie's thoughts the way he had just a few weeks ago. Charlie had much bigger things to worry about than avoiding getting stuffed in a locker or thrown into a garbage can.

Finn seemed to read his mind, gesturing around the plane with an open hand.

“This is something, isn't it? Incredo Land is a freaking kick, man. The flight down is always the same. Kids laughing, smiling, playing in the aisles. The flight back, it's like the saddest plane in the world. You'll see. The flight back, it's gonna seem like a funeral. Everyone on the verge of tears, except us.”

The way Finn glanced at the other passengers, especially the other kids from Nagassack, he was dismissing them with his eyes. He and Charlie were in on a secret, and the rest of the kids were just civilians. Magic had used the term a few times, and it seemed apt.

“It's fun, isn't it?” Finn continued. “Being in on a secret.”

Charlie nodded, but then he felt the weight of the iPhone in his pocket, and he shrugged.

“It's exciting, that's for sure. But—”

“Sometimes a secret feels a little bit like a lie, right?”

The cabin jerked up, then swiveled right and left as the plane hit a brief spot of turbulence. Charlie's reflexes kicked in, and he grabbed at the armrest, his feet kicking out, hitting Finn's backpack, which was tucked under the seat in front of Charlie. It was the same black backpack that Sam had been stuffing into the overhead compartment—the same one that both he and Jeremy, and all the other kids on the trip had been given when they'd met Warden Walker and the rest at the airport. The backpacks had been donated by a local sporting goods store and had the Nagassack school emblem sewn across a back pocket: the outline of a golden bear beneath a cartoonish-looking sun. Originally, the kids were all supposed to wear matching
Nagassack sweatshirts to make them easier to corral in the airports, but somebody had suggested the bags instead, because they were perfect for carry-on, and besides, sweatshirts didn't make a whole lot of sense in Florida. Beneath Charlie's bright red sneaker, Finn's backpack felt stuffed.

“You gotta relax,” Finn said as the plane smoothed out again and Charlie found his breath. “And I'm not just talking about the flight. You know anything about Incredo Land, Charlie? I mean, apart from what they tell you in the brochures?”

“I know it's the cheeriest spot in the universe. Loopy Mouse and the Space Drop, the Haunted Moon ride and Solar Avenue and all that. Pretty awesome stuff.”

“Sure. It's all those things. But it's got a history, man, like everything else, and it wasn't always such a happy place. In fact, before the Incredo Corporation and the people behind the cartoon turned it into an amusement park, Incredo Land was one big swamp. Thousands of miles of cheap marshland, full of alligators and snakes and spiders.”

Charlie raised his eyebrows. He wasn't sure what Finn was getting at. But the intensity in Finn's eyes told him that it was something the older kid had given a lot of thought to.

“See,” Finn continued, “the folks who invented Loopy the Space Mouse wanted to build something on a very big scale to take advantage of the popularity of the television show; they needed land, lots of it, and they wanted to get it all cheap. So they chose a big swath of swamp in a part of Florida that nobody gave a hoot about. A big, bug-infested dump of ground outside of Tampa.”

“That's certainly not in the brochures,” Charlie said. Finn smiled.

“Yeah, it wasn't public knowledge back then, either. See, they were smart. They knew that if they announced that they were going to buy all this swampland in Florida, everyone would know they were going to build a new theme park, and then that icky, worthless swamp would become really expensive. So they used dummy corporations with fake names to slowly buy it all up. Basically, they were tricking people into selling them the land for cheap.”

Finn leaned closer, clearly impressed by the history he was retelling.

“In fact, not just the land—they even got the
dirt
dirt cheap. See, Boston University, yeah, the college in Boston, owned the mining rights to that land. So Incredo's owners created another fake company with a fake name, walked into BU, and bought the dirt rights
from them for fifteen thousand dollars. Once they had all that swamp, they cleaned it out, gutted everything, and built the amusement park. You know how much Incredo Land made last year?”

Charlie shook his head. “I couldn't even begin to guess.”

“Eleven billion dollars, give or take a few.”

Charlie whistled. That was a lot of money for a space-based amusement park built on top of a swamp.

“You still feel bad about putting a little spit on a coin?” Finn added, suddenly digging right into Charlie's thoughts with pinpoint accuracy. “Or pressing a few buttons on a phone?”

Charlie paused, then leaned back against his seat. Finn made a good point. Most kids thought about Incredo Land as this magical, incredible place, but it was also a business. A very profitable business. If the Carnival Killers had a way of using their brains to give them an edge in the face of that business, could it really be that wrong? Pushing a few buttons on a phone. Finn knew it was much more difficult than that. Charlie had written the equation that the phone would use to calculate the deceleration of the wheel; he'd come up with the theory that would allow them to beat the game. He was the final piece in the Carnival Killers' puzzle, and
Miranda had recruited him for just that purpose. Well, actually, she'd sent Finn and Magic to recruit him, but most significantly Finn, because Finn was the sort of kid that you didn't say no to, the sort of kid that most would instinctively follow.