Bringing Down the Mouse (12 page)

And then, finally, Marion stopped. Pen poised in the air a few inches above the page, breathing hard, the sweat now running freely down the sides of his face.
Then he grinned, settled back in his chair, and crossed his stubby arms against his potato-shaped chest. Their corner of the school library had gone dead silent, save for the creak of the heating pipes that crisscrossed the low ceiling and the occasional scrape of a plastic chair leg against the hardwood floor.

“Magnificent” was all Charlie could say, breaking the quiet as he peered down at the drawing from his perch at the end of the rectangular table that the Whiz Kids called their summer home. The library was as safe a haven as the Whiz Kids could ever hope to find; Charlie doubted Dylan and his ilk could even find the place without the help of an angry teacher.

“Might be your best work yet,” Jeremy agreed from Charlie's left. “You really captured his soul. The way the light ricochets off his hair, creating that little halo effect. Really top-notch.”

“A masterpiece,” Kentaro agreed, directly across from Marion. Kentaro was on his knees on his chair, better able to see over the table. He pointed one of his tiny fingers toward the drawing and grinned. “You better sign it, because when it ends up in a museum, you're going to want all the pretty girls who see it to know where it came from.”

Marion glared at him, indignant.

“Why would I care what a bunch of girls think of it? I'm an artist, I don't do this for the accolades. It's my calling.”

Crystal laughed, hunched low over the table next to Kentaro.

“Yeah, this is your
Mona Lisa
. But it's not finished. I know exactly what it needs.”

She reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a little plastic bag filled with something that sparkled, even in the dim track lighting of the library. She opened the bag and carefully sprinkled the substance onto the piece of paper. It was granular and soft, somewhere between dust and salt, and the way it stuck to the paper reminded Charlie of the glitter his mother used to decorate all their holiday cards, most of which were still stacked in the front closet of their house, because she'd absentmindedly forgotten to send them, even though the whole family had spent hours sticking stamps to envelopes and culling addresses from multiple contact lists.

Jeremy raised his thick red eyebrows, then gave the plastic bag in Crystal's hand a little flick.

“You keep a baggy of sand in your pocket? Like, a snack, or something?”

“It's not sand.” Crystal huffed. “It's quartz. Finely ground. For your information, quartz is the most
common mineral in the Earth's crust. A perfect mix of silicon and oxygen, which binds well to most surfaces, and it's very beautiful because it has a high refraction index, which, for you Neanderthals, means it sparkles extremely brightly in any kind of light. Just like Mr. Scar's hair.”

Although Charlie was a nerd himself, he still found amusing the matter-of-fact way Crystal spouted geological information. He knew she wouldn't have gotten the joke. Sometimes it seemed that the whole world, to her, was a laboratory to be processed and explained in precise scientific terms. It could be annoying at times, but it could also be cute; sometimes Charlie found himself laughing about something she'd said hours earlier. Sometimes he'd even wake up in the morning still cracking up about something she'd done the day before. Jeremy had teased him a few times about having some sort of crush on her, but Charlie didn't see it that way. She was just so unique, it was hard not to be charmed by her quirks.

In any event, when the rest of them looked on the piece of paper at the drawing Marion had made of the school librarian, Mr. Scarborough, they saw a perfect caricature. Superman shoulders stuffed into a light-blue oxford shirt, buttoned so high and tight up his neck that
his Adam's apple looked like a big meal being digested by a little snake; Clark Kent glasses perched on a diamond sharp nose; a blond—yes, arguably sparkly—hairline receding up a slope of shiny forehead like an alpine avalanche in reverse. It was an amazing drawing, especially done so quickly with a Bic pen in dim lighting. But that was the miracle of Marion, a kid who had once spent a week in the hospital because of an ant bite, not even a bee—just a simple garden variety ant; give him a pen and a piece of paper and he could capture your soul. He wasn't going for
precision
, he was going for something bigger. As smart as she was, Crystal never quite got that; Charlie had once spent a Saturday afternoon with her and the rest of the Whiz Kids at the modern art wing of the MFA, and at the end of the day, she'd simply commented: “Well, some people really do have trouble coloring within the lines.” With Crystal, you just had to understand, the world was supposed to live within the lines too.

But Jeremy, for his part, wasn't going to let Crystal off that easy. He got too much enjoyment out of baiting her. He put his hands to his mouth in mock surprise.

“You have a crush on Mr. Scar? Should we call him over so you can inspect his beautiful blond locks up close?”

Crystal glared at him from behind her zebra-rimmed glasses.

“I don't have a crush on anyone. I just think his hair looks a little like quartz. While your hair has the distinct glow of hematite. Which is the brittle mineral form of iron ore. If a rock could be stupid, it would be hematite.”

Jeremy cocked his head as if thinking it through.

“Isn't hematite magnetic? Yep, that sounds like me. I've been told I've got a very magnetic quality.”

“Well,” Kentaro chimed in, peering up at Jeremy, “like a magnet, you are kind of sticky.”

“That's true,” Crystal agreed. “I've seen you after gym class. You bind to your T-shirt even better than the quartz binds to paper. In fact, I'm surprised you aren't stuck to your chair right now.”

Now Charlie couldn't keep himself from laughing out loud. You could talk in hushed whispers at your own peril, but turn Mr. Scar's library into a banter-filled locker room, and you were in for a world of trouble.

Although to be fair, the place kind of
was
shaped like a locker room. Rectangular, with white cinder-block walls, low tiled ceilings, and windows that were little more than the sort of unopenable slits that you'd expect to find in the basement of an inner-city gym, or perhaps
a prison. In the direct center of the room sat a round wooden gazebolike structure, supported by brightly decorated turquoise pillars, containing a single round table with multiple built-in chairs.

With the gazebo as its physical and emotional center, the rest of the library consisted of low aluminum bookshelves that fanned out in a sunburstlike pattern. Closer to the gazebo, the shelves were packed tightly together, with barely enough room between them for a regular-size student to browse. The Whiz Kids had claimed the table closest to the library's entrance, for the simple reason that it was also farthest from Mr. Scarborough's desk, which was all the way on the other side of the room. At the moment, even as Charlie craned his neck back and forth, he couldn't catch sight of Mr. Scar's impressive shoulders or the waves of his receding hair. In fact, at first glance around the library he didn't see anyone at all, but then he saw a flash of motion from the other side of the gazebo. He waved his hands at Crystal and Jeremy, who were still jawing on about ferrous minerals and sticky substances, urging them to quiet down, when he suddenly realized that the motion he was seeing wasn't Mr. Scar at all.

It was three people, actually, strolling briskly between the library shelves directly toward the gazebo.
Charlie didn't fully comprehend what he was seeing until they seated themselves at the table in the direct center of the room.

Miranda Sloan was at the head of the Gazebo table, her back to Charlie, that cascade of pitch-black hair dancing down the bare skin of her neck. She had placed a large hardcover book on the table in front of her and was pointing out chapter headings with one of her talon-sharp, manicured fingers. To her right, leaning forward over the book to get a better look, was Greg Titus, the cocky seventh grader. And across from him, vaguely facing in Charlie's direction, though not looking at him all, was Sam Ashley. She was smiling at something Miranda was saying, and she shook her silky golden hair out of her smoke-colored eyes. Charlie couldn't help thinking that it would take more than a single bag of Crystal's quartz to get that hair right.

“What's up?” Jeremy whispered, looking at Charlie. “Is it Mr. Scar? Is he coming over? Because if he is, Crystal could sign the picture instead of Marion, maybe save us from detention when she confesses her undying love.”

“Shut up,” Crystal hissed back, shoving her bag of quartz back in her pocket like it was some sort of contraband. “If anyone is in love with Mr. Scar, it's you,
iron head, the way you keep going on about him.”

“It's not Mr. Scar,” Charlie responded simply, staring at the gazebo and its occupants. Miranda still hadn't turned around, but now Sam was glancing his way, and he thought he saw the slightest hint of a smile in the gray of her eyes.

Another coincidence? Charlie didn't even have to think it through, because he knew the answer. He looked over at Jeremy, who was busy flicking quartz dust at Crystal while Marion did his best to protect his Mona Lisa from the fallout of their escalating battle. Jeremy hadn't noticed the group in the gazebo, and even if he had, he couldn't possibly have connected them to Charlie. Which was good, because Charlie was having enough trouble keeping from explaining his association with Finn. He couldn't imagine what sort of trouble he'd get in trying to explain away Ms. Sloan, Greg, and Sam.

On the other hand, sitting there with his Whiz Kids, going about their regular routine in their desolate, safe corner of the Nagassack equivalent to a gulag, he found himself unnaturally attracted to that gazebo. His entire body seemed to be pulling him in that direction. And deep inside, Charlie felt something click.

Without a word, he rose from the table and started
down the aisle between the two nearest bookshelves. He moved so fast that Jeremy and the rest of the Whiz Kids didn't even look up from Marion's picture and their rapidly expanding quartz war. Before Charlie could take three breaths, he was at the steps that lead into the gazebo. He took them two at a time; he didn't want to give himself a chance to change his mind.

When he reached the table, Ms. Sloan looked up from the hardcover book. Before she could say anything, Charlie leaned low so that his friends across the room wouldn't see or hear him from behind the gazebo's pillars.

“You read my science paper. The one I submitted to the Massachusetts State Science Fair, on predicting a satellite's descent to the earth.”

Ms. Sloan's smile didn't move. Her lips looked like Marion had drawn them across the porcelain skin of her face, perfect and precise.

“Yes. By accident, actually. I was a volunteer judge, and when I saw your project, I knew you would be perfect for our endeavor. You have the brains for this, Charlie. With a little work, you'll take us exactly where we need to go.”

Charlie took another breath, then nodded slightly.

“I'm in. But I have one condition.”

Ms. Sloan waited. Charlie could feel Greg and Sam
watching him as well, but he didn't break focus.

“Jeremy Draper goes with me to Incredo Land. All expenses paid.”

“Diapers?” Greg blurted out, laughing. Charlie glanced at him with narrow eyes.

“Jeremy
Draper
. Yes. He goes or I don't go. He doesn't have to know anything about what we're really doing there. He won't be involved in this. But he gets to go on the class trip. This is a dealbreaker for me. He goes, or I don't go.”

Although he hadn't fully realized it until he'd seen the three of them in the gazebo, Charlie had come to the decision in the science lab, when Jeremy had waxed poetic on the perceived joys of Incredo Land. Charlie wasn't going to do this just for himself, or because it seemed like an amazing adventure, or because it was math turned into something powerful and profitable. He was going to do this for himself and Jeremy, two kids who didn't get things like this dropped in their laps every day.

Ms. Sloan waited a full beat, then shrugged her angled shoulders.

“Okay.”

Charlie didn't wait for her to say anything else. He quickly turned and headed down the steps, breathing
hard like he'd just run a marathon. His face felt flushed, and he couldn't feel his feet within his boots. Just as he stepped off the last stair and out of the shadow cast by the gazebo's high, turquoise pillars, he heard Sam's voice trickle after him, her words like fingers of velvet against the back of his neck.

“Welcome aboard, Charlie. Brace yourself, it's going to be a wild ride.”

IT HAPPENED SO FAST,
Charlie never had a chance to react.