by Ben Mezrich
Before Charlie could respond, Finn and Magic had reached the table. Magic brushed an errant clump of rice off Jeremy’s shoulder, while Finn glanced amiably at the group.
“Hey, guys. I’m Finn, and this is Magic. Charlie, it’s been a while. You have a free minute?”
Charlie could feel all his friends staring at him. His cheeks were pale, but he tried to sound as cool and collected as possible.
“It’s recess, so yeah, I mean, I guess so.”
Finn smiled.
“Good. If we can pull you away from your friends for a bit, there’s someone we’d like you to meet.”
With that, the two seventh graders headed toward the exit on the other side of the teachers’ table. Charlie watched them go. They left the cafeteria with such audacity and confidence that there was no shred of evidence that teachers would even mind the older students intruding on the lower grade’s lunchtime. Charlie turned back to his friends, who were still staring at him. Then he shrugged.
“I guess I’ll see you guys later.”
Without another word, he rose and followed Finn and Magic toward the door.
5
TEN MINUTES LATER, CHARLIE was still following Finn and Magic. The anticipation that had been building since he’d left the lunchroom was slowly being replaced by a more potent sense of annoyance. He’d expected them to lead him down a rabbit hole, but he’d thought it was going to be a much shorter trip.
He glanced past his two tour guides at the long industrial-looking hallway that extended out in front of them for what seemed like forever. Charlie hadn’t been in this part of the school building in years. In fact, he wasn’t really officially in the school building anymore; the hallway actually bisected an adjunct building the students affectionately knew as Old School, because it had once housed the art and music departments. Since the renovations that had begun with the new gym and had since grown to touch nearly every facet of the school, Old School had gone into disuse. Like with the outdoor waiting area for the lunchroom, there was always talk of how Old School would eventually be restored into everything from a computer center to a theater department, but for the moment the place was pretty much abandoned.
The carpeting beneath Charlie’s feet, which no doubt was once a brilliant orange, had faded into a nameless shade of yellow, and the wooden, windowless doors that lined either side looked scuffed, heavy, and foreboding. Charlie had to remind himself that he wasn’t being kidnapped, he was voluntarily following the two seventh graders into the depths of Old School—even if he couldn’t exactly say why.
For their part, Finn and Magic had remained silent for most of the walk. Charlie had fought the urge to ask them any questions. He could tell they were enjoying the building suspense—Finn was as much a showman as his stockier friend. Charlie was willing to humor them for the time being. After what Finn had done to Dylan in the lunchroom, it was the least he could do. And truthfully, he was curious; what did any of this have to do with him? Why had they singled him out?
Without warning, Finn came to a stop in front of one of the nameless, numberless doors, and gave the solid wood a double knock with the knuckles of his left hand. There was a brief pause, and then the door swung inward on creaky hinges. Magic grinned at Charlie, then waved him inside.
“You first. Mind the tiger; she only bites if you make sudden movements.”
Charlie looked at him, and Magic laughed.
“Kidding. She’s not a tiger. She’s more like a Cheshire cat. But she’s certainly got claws, so keep that in mind.”
With that, Magic gave him a little shove, and Charlie was through the open doorway.
After Charlie’s eyes adjusted to the surprisingly dim lighting, he realized that he recognized the room; he’d taken art classes there in first and second grade, though the place had obviously gone through some changes since he’d last stepped inside.
The first thing he noticed was that someone had taped black construction paper over all the windows, cutting out most of the natural light that had once bathed the semicircular front area in an orange, comforting warmth. The handful of bare bulbs hanging from what used to be blown glass light fixtures were barely enough to illuminate the hardwood floors, and though the room had no corners, there seemed to be plenty of shadowy alcoves between the long waist-high counters that ran along most of the curved walls.
The second thing Charlie noticed was that someone had hung a thick velvet curtain right down the center of the room, cutting it in half. From Charlie’s vantage point, he couldn’t see what was behind the curtain, but he knew from memory that the room extended at least twenty feet beyond the dark velvet; like an iceberg, most of the place was now hidden from view. And like an iceberg, what Charlie couldn’t see seemed way more ominous than what he could.
Directly in front of him, the room looked more like he remembered it. Two rows of little plastic drafting tables with chairs attached to them, white-topped with flat surfaces resting at an angle of about twenty degrees. Instead of a blackboard, the drafting tables and chairs had been set up facing a rather large flat-screen television. Standing directly beside the flat-screen TV was a woman, her back to the room. She was tall, angular, with long black hair hanging straight down the center of her back. She was wearing dark purple boots with exceedingly high heels. Even so, the woman would have been tall in bare feet.
She turned as Charlie entered the room and gave him a wide, extremely white smile.
“Charlie, we’ve been waiting for you. Come on in and take a seat, and we can get started.”
Despite the smile—and those magical, perfect teeth, made twice as large by her pencil lips—there was something terrifying in the angular contours of her face. Her cheekbones were so high, Charlie felt like he could rappel down them, and her eyes were like ice chips, glowing an unnatural shade of blue. Though her hair had seemed to flow freely down her back, like some sort of sable waterfall, her bangs were like a knife edge, styled so severely he could see every perfectly coiffed strand. She was pretty, but definitely much older than Charlie, and much older than Finn and Magic; she looked to be college-aged, though she could have passed for someone in the later stages of high school. She gave off an air of confidence that seemed to fill up the room. Even if the curtain had been made of lava instead of velvet, she would have remained the focus of attention. It took all Charlie’s inner strength to shift his gaze back to the rows of drafting tables and the four young faces looking back at him.
Because of the curtain and the somewhat terrifying woman, Charlie hadn’t even noticed the four kids seated in the front two rows when he’d first stepped into the room. Two of them he recognized from his own class at Nagassack: a redheaded boy named Daniel who had been in most of his math classes throughout elementary school, whose wide face was such a morass of freckles, it was hard to pinpoint where his hair ended and his forehead began; and Jake Tucson, a soccer player in a Nagassack team sweatshirt who always seemed to have his eyes closed, even when he was looking right at you. Jake had been in a lot of Charlie’s classes over the years, but he’d always sat in the back row with the other jocks, never seeming to pay any attention. In fact, Charlie wasn’t sure he’d ever heard the kid say a single word to anyone.
The other two faces were complete mysteries. Near the front of the room, closest to the flat-screen TV, was an African-American boy with shortly cropped hair and an unreadable smile. The kid’s clothes were impeccable; his jeans were a designer brand that Charlie’s parents would never have let him buy, and his shirt was charcoal-colored, made of a material that Charlie would have guessed was at least partially cashmere. He was also wearing a gold watch, the kind that Charlie had seen in magazine ads, the ones that usually featured tennis players or windblown guys on sailboats.
But it was the last face in the room that caused Charlie to look twice, because if she was a student at Nagassack, he couldn’t understand how he’d never noticed her before. Silken blond hair raining down against the shoulders of her snowy
white sweater. Round red cheeks perfectly balanced by a button of a nose, above a slash of red lipstick that couldn’t begin to conceal lips so plump, they could have come right out of a cartoon. And eyes, those eyes—well, if the woman at the front of the room had eyes like ice chips, this girl’s eyes looked like they were made of pure smoke. Gray on gray on gray, and yet somehow, when she smiled, as she was doing right then, they gave off a warmth that could have lasted Charlie through three days on the lunch line.
“Charlie,” the woman at the front of the room continued, “meet the gang. Finn and Magic you already know. Jake and Daniel are in your grade, so you might have met them before as well. Greg Titus is in the seventh grade and lives in Weston. And this is Sam Ashley. Sam is transferring into Nagassack in a couple of weeks. Her family is moving into the area from New York City, where I grew up, so I’ve been showing her around, helping her get acclimated.”
Charlie turned back to the woman by the TV, feeling heat rising up the back of his neck, which he attributed to the fact that everyone in the room was still looking at him.
“And you, well, I mean, you . . .”
“Who am I, right?” The woman laughed, but even the sound of her laughter seemed tight and controlled, like the skin taut across her cheekbones. “My name is Miranda Sloan. I’m a teacher’s aide in the master’s program at Northeastern. I’m doing a semester here at Nagassack, working with Mr. Glendale, helping out in algebra and basic statistics.”
Charlie nodded. Mr. Glendale taught seventh- and eighth-grade math and physics, and was also sometimes a homeroom monitor subbing in for the sixth graders when one of their regular teachers was out sick. He was a nice guy, a little clueless, midfifties, with almost no hair left on his head and a paunch that fought daily battles with the buttons of his usual uniform of a stiff white shirt and black slacks. He also wore ties that were way too wide and spent most of his classes with his back to the students, writing unintelligibly across the blackboard. Sometimes, when it was particularly hot outside, he sweated so much that the back of his shirt became nearly transparent, revealing so much back hair that some of the students called him Mr. GlenBear when he wasn’t listening.
Mr. Glendale didn’t seem to have anything in common with this woman. Nor did it make any sense that a seventh- and eighth-grade teacher’s aide would be gathering students together in an out-of-use art room to talk about algebra and statistics. The deeper Charlie went down this rabbit hole, the more confusing it all became.
“So what exactly are we doing here?” he finally blurted, deciding to take the direct approach.
Finn and Magic took seats in the back row, Finn gesturing toward an empty seat next to him. Charlie shook his head, opting to stay closer to the door.
“If it’s okay, I’ll stand.”
Miranda laughed again, then pointed to the door.
“That’s fine. Would you mind closing the door? Wouldn’t want just anybody dropping in.”
Charlie fought the sudden urge to run down the hall. What was the worst that could happen? He shut the door, then turned back to watch the woman flick the television on. He saw that beneath the TV, she’d hooked up an iPad. She hit the screen, and the black TV screen was replaced by the familiar frame of a YouTube video.
“Some people like to begin at the beginning, but I’m more the ‘begin at the end’ type of gal,” Miranda said, and then she hit play.
Charlie found himself looking at an enormous wheel that dominated most of the television screen, standing upright on a huge triangular frame. The wheel was broken into five sections, like a vertical pizza pie. Each section was brightly colored and contained a cartoon character. He recognized all the characters, because he was twelve, had access to a TV, and had eyes in his head.
Loopy the Space Mouse. His sidekick, the Frog. Dandy the Squirrel, with his bowler hat. Boots the Kangaroo. And Maddy the Turkey Hawk.
You pretty much had to have grown up in a cave not to know the pictures on the wheel, a constant presence on TV and in movies. They were the central characters associated with one of the biggest amusement parks in the world. Incredo Land, based outside of Tampa, Florida, was built around a futuristic theme, and was a place every kid dreamed of going. Loopy the Space Mouse was imprinted on more T-shirts and coffee mugs than the rest of the characters combined, but they were all familiar to Charlie, like a set of cartoon childhood friends.
But other than the recognizable characters, he had no idea what he was looking at. Then the camera panned back, and Charlie saw that the wheel was up on an enormous stage. And in the background—well, he certainly recognized the building that rose up behind the stage, disappearing right out the top of the screen.
“Is that Loopy’s Space Station? I mean, at Incredo Land?”
Magic shushed him. Charlie glanced from him to the other kids in the room, who were all intently watching the TV screen. If they were surprised to be watching some YouTube video shot at Incredo Land in Tampa, Florida, none of them was showing it. Unintentionally, his eyes shifted to the blond girl, Sam, but she was concentrating on the screen just like the rest. He forced his gaze back to the TV.
The view continued to pan back, and he saw that on the stage next to the wheel were two people. A middle-aged man in a suit and tie, with curly gray hair and wide, friendly eyes. And a kid, about Charlie’s age, in shorts and a T-shirt, red-faced and nervous. The man said something to the kid, who reached forward and grabbed the side of the wheel with two hands. Music started up from an orchestra somewhere offscreen. Then the kid gave the wheel a solid thrust downward, and it began to spin.
As it spun, Charlie focused in on the edge of the wheel. He saw that at the top of the frame, a little finger of plastic shaped like an arrow hung down against the front of the wheel, and that as the wheel spun, the finger flicked against tongs that marked the edge of each of the slices of pie-shaped sections. Although he was too far away to hear the clicks, he guessed that the wheel was making noise as it went, clicking away as the cartoon images blurred together in a swirl of wonderful color.
Charlie had seen wheels like that at carnivals before, and knew how they worked. Usually there was a picture of a prize on each of the wheel’s sections. You spun the wheel, it went around for a while, eventually slowed, and whatever the arrow was pointing at was what you won. But this seemed a little different, because instead of prizes, there were pictures of Incredo Land characters. Which made sense, because obviously from the giant castle rising up behind the stage, the wheel was in Incredo Land.
Charlie felt his natural curiosity rising up, and he was about to ask another question, when the man on the screen said something to the kid, and the kid shouted audibly: “Loopy!”
There was applause from somewhere offscreen. The wheel went around again and again, and eventually began to slow. Soon Charlie could make out the characters, still blurred, but distinct. Then the wheel slowed a little more, and he could see the colors separating, the bulbous eyes and rounded ears. His eyes could follow each cartoon as they went around and around, Dandy then Maddy then Loopy, etc., etc., etc.
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.