Bringing Down the Mouse (9 page)

And eventually the wheel slowed all the way to a stop. Charlie's eyes moved to the arrow, and saw that the wheel had landed on Dandy. There was an audible groan from the offscreen audience, and then the video went dead. The TV screen returned to black, and Miranda spun back toward the classroom.

“Any questions?”

Charlie stared at her. She had to be kidding. Any questions? He didn't even know where to begin.

“That was Incredo Land,” he started, which seemed like as good a place as any. “A stage somewhere on Solar Avenue . . .”

“Wow, he really is a genius,” Greg jibed from the front row. “Hard to believe someone that smart is still in the sixth grade.”

“Quiet, Greg,” Sam said, swatting his arm. “Give him some time. Remember what we were like two weeks ago.”

Charlie looked from one to the other, then back at Miranda.

“Yes, Charlie, the video was shot at Incredo Land, exactly one year ago last November first. It's part of an annual promotion that the park has been running
for the past few years. One kid, age fourteen or below, gets to spin the wheel each November, and if he picks the right cartoon character, he wins a pretty nice prize. They call it the Wheel of Wonder, but it's actually a pretty standard carnival game, usually called a wheel of fortune.”

“A wheel of fortune,” Charlie said. “Like the game show.”

“If you want to get technical,” Greg chimed in again, and Charlie could tell he wasn't the sort to keep quiet for very long. “The game show stole the name from the carnivals, not the other way around.”

“And the carnivals stole the wheel,” Finn interrupted, “from an ancient Greek and Roman army tradition.”

“Greek and Roman?” Charlie asked. It had been a long time since he was the least knowledgeable in a classroom full of his peers, and he couldn't help noticing that he was enjoying the sensation.

“Yes,” Sam answered, before Greg could. “Greek soldiers used to draw numbers on a shield, turn it on its side, and give it a spin. They would bet on which number would come up. Eventually, they traded the shield for a chariot wheel, but the idea remained the same. Then it worked its way into carnivals, and eventually casinos.”

“The roulette wheel,” Charlie said. He'd seen them
on TV before, and had even once had a discussion with his dad about how they worked. But the wheel of fortune, or Wheel of Wonder, seemed much simpler than a casino roulette wheel, because there were far fewer segments to spin through, and there was no ball dropped onto the spinning surface that would bounce chaotically from segment to segment. Just a wheel with an arrow and a few cartoon characters.

Interesting stuff, but he had no idea what it had do with him. Or why these kids were in an abandoned art room during his recess period. Then a thought struck him:
Incredo Land
.

He knew that once a year, Nagassack offered students from grades six and up the opportunity to sign up for a class trip that was partially sponsored by the PTA, and that for the past few years, that trip had been to Incredo Land. His parents being as budget conscious as they were, Charlie had never really looked into the trip, but he was pretty sure it took place around the first week of November, because the kids that went often had to take make-up tests during their Thanksgiving break.

Curiouser and curiouser
.

Miranda must have noticed the look on his face, because she grinned.

“Yes, Charlie, the class trip this year is to Incredo Land, and happens to fall right when this promotion is going on. Which means that a student from Nagassack, if he or she is really, really lucky, might just have a chance to spin that wheel and win that prize. Which, if you're interested, happens to be eight lifetime tickets to all the Incredo Land theme parks. There's also a little cash prize, which can go to the charity of the winner's choice.”

Charlie raised his eyebrows.

“Eight lifetime tickets, that's a pretty incredible prize. But really, I don't know what any of this has to do with us.”

Finn leaned toward him.

“It has everything to do with us, Charlie.”

“Why is that?”

“Because this year, six weeks from now, actually, we are going to beat that wheel.”

Charlie looked at Finn, and saw that he was dead serious. Then Charlie shifted his attention to the other kids, and they were all nodding in agreement. He shook his head.

“It's not possible. I mean, even if one of us was lucky enough to get to spin the wheel, it's random, there are five possible outcomes, you'd have to guess right and there's no way you could know. It's just not possible.”

“Oh yes it is,” Miranda interrupted. “And there won't be any luck involved.”

Charlie paused.

“You know how to beat the wheel?”

“No, actually. You do.”

Charlie rocked back on his feet. He was stunned by her simple words and the matter of fact way she'd said them. At the same time, something clicked in the back of his mind, just an inkling, but he was beginning to understand why he was there. Why they had chosen him.

Like Finn had said, there weren't any coincidences.

But before he could respond, Miranda was moving to her left, toward the edge of the vast purple curtain that closed off the back part of the room. She reached for the material, then turned back toward Charlie.

“But first we have to get to the wheel. Which isn't easy. Thousands of kids try to get to the wheel each year, but only one gets to give it a spin.”

Part of Charlie wanted to walk right out of there, but his feet felt like they were glued to the floor.

“And how do we get to the wheel?” he asked.

Miranda smiled. With a flourish, she yanked back the velvet curtain.

“First, we're going to need to win a game.”

IT WAS THREE GAMES
actually, or one game broken into three parts.

Charlie stood frozen in place as the curtain swept all the way back to the blacked-out windows, revealing the far half of the art room. All the furniture had been removed, and in its place, well, it took a few minutes for Charlie to believe what he was seeing.

Carnival games.
Just like in the tent at the Sherwood Halloween Fair. Life-size and seemingly reconstructed with the utmost precision, the three games were spaced out from each other to fill nearly every inch of the semicircular area. Two of the games—a balloon-dart game like he'd watched Magic beat at the fair, and a coin toss like the one Finn had decimated—were to his right, and
to his left, a common rope ladder game. Charlie had seen the rope ladder before, had even tried it once or twice. Basically, it consisted of an angled rope ladder that started at the floor and ran up, at a forty- or fifty-degree angle, to where it was affixed to the wall. At the peak of the ladder was a little bell; the object of the game was to climb up the ladder and ring the bell. It sounded much easier than it actually was; the ladder would twist and turn under your weight, and Charlie had never seen anyone actually make it to the top of the ladder—other than the people who worked the game, who usually performed the feat to get you to believe it wasn't rigged, that it was indeed possible.

“You guys must really like carnival games” was all Charlie could think to say.

There was a moment's pause, then laughter.

“We really like to
beat
carnival games,” Magic said, rising from his chair. He strolled past Miranda and pointed to each game in turn. “Balloon darts, plate coins, and rope ladder. The three pillars of the carnival, and all of them completely beatable.”

“What do you mean, beatable?” Charlie asked.

Miranda smiled.

“What do you think it means, Charlie?”

“I think maybe you guys figured out a way to cheat.”

“Cheating is a strong word,” Miranda responded. “If a game is set up unfairly, would you consider evening the odds cheating? We don't intervene with the design of these games, and we don't break any printed rules. So, is using your brain to beat a game cheating?”

Charlie didn't know how to answer that. Of course, using your brain wasn't cheating, but there were plenty of things that were unfair. That didn't give you license to break the rules. Then again, if there really was a way to beat these carnival games that wasn't explicitly against the rules, well, would that really be so wrong? He'd watched Finn land three coins on those plates, and it definitely hadn't looked like cheating to him. And Magic popping those balloons, it hadn't seemed like he'd done anything against the rules.

“Maybe not,” Charlie finally said. “But what do these games have to do with Incredo Land and the spinning wheel?”

Miranda strolled over to the low counter facing the balloon-dart game. She lifted one of the darts off the counter, inspecting the metal point as she turned it over in her hand. Her bright red, manicured nails seemed much sharper than the end of the dart.

“These games are the gateway to the wheel. They've set up a Midway Center right on Solar Avenue at
Incredo Land, full of every kind of fair game you can imagine. By playing these games, you win tickets, and the kid who wins the most tickets in a single day gets a shot at the wheel. They count the tickets by weight right at the park's closing time, and the winner gets to spin the wheel the very next morning. The rules don't say anything about a group of friends pooling tickets; whoever shows up with the most tickets at the end of that promotion day gets to spin.”

“And that's going to be one of you?” Charlie asked.

“No,” Finn said, still in his seat, putting his feet up on the drafting table in front of him. “That's going to be you.”

“Me?”

Charlie still hadn't moved from right in front of the door. He didn't know whether to turn around and just get the heck out of there, or move deeper into the room to check out the three games up close. He was certainly intrigued. He felt like he was being asked to join some secret club. He'd joined clubs before: a chess club, a math club, an astronomy club, but never anything like this. Still, it didn't seem real to him. The idea that he was special enough to be asked to join—not just to join, but to star in this bizarre endeavor—it simply seemed like an elaborate, practical joke.

“Are we going to beat the claw game too? You
know, the one with the claw on a crane, where you try to pick up toys or stuffed animals. I think there's one at Chuck E. Cheese's with Star Wars action figures in it. I'd love a Chewbacca to go with the R2D2 I won at my last birthday party.”

The blond girl from the front row, Sam, shot him a look that would wither a rosebush.

“I know you're trying to make a joke, but the claw game, it's a sucker's bet.”

She flipped an errant strand of her long hair out of her eyes.

“A sucker's bet?” Charlie asked, his voice sounding a bit choked as he tried not to avoid her eyes. That shy feeling he got around most girls felt amplified a hundred times, but he wasn't going to shrink away in front of all these people.

“A sucker's bet. Which means that if you take that bet, you're a sucker before the game gets started. See, the claw games are rigged. Picking up a stuffed animal takes a certain amount of pressure applied over a certain amount of surface area. Picking up a golf ball with your fingers, for instance, is actually the application of pressure using the muscles in your hand, via the friction created by the pads of your fingers, translated to the surface of the ball.”

Charlie loved the easy way she spoke about complicated science. He found himself instantly enrapt, his shyness overwhelmed by her obvious intelligence.

“This pressure,” she continued, “or force, is known scientifically as PSI, pounds per square inch. It takes a certain amount of PSI for a claw to lift a stuffed animal—and the PSI applied by those claws isn't fixed. It changes based on whether the owner of the machine wants you to win or lose. Turns out, in the state of Massachusetts, there's an archaic law that says coin-operated vending games must pay out once every twelve tries. So the claw machines are set to only exert enough PSI to grab a stuffed animal in one out of twelve attempts. No matter how good you think you are, no matter how hard you try, you can only win one in twelve times.”

Charlie leaned back against the door. He was duly impressed. Not just by the science of what she had said, but by the way she had said it. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sparkling. She was passionate about this, the science behind a game. It wasn't just some stupid claw machine at Chuck E. Cheese's; it was something she could mentally take apart and understand.

“A sucker's bet,” Charlie finally said.

“Now you're getting the feel for this,” Finn commented, picking at his shoelaces. “Claw games,
basketballs thrown at hoops that are too small or wrongly shaped, baseballs thrown at milk bottles—”