by Ben Mezrich
“Here ya go, now you’ve got a partner for the Ferris wheel, one I guarantee isn’t going to throw up on you.”
Then he walked right past them, his heart pounding in his chest. He exited the tent, letting the crisp October air flow down his throat and into his lungs. It had only been one game, three coins, one prize—but this wasn’t some mock-up in a deserted classroom; this had been real, live, under true carnival conditions. He’d still have to go back in and hit the balloon darts and the rope ladder, but even so, he’d already proven to himself—he could do it.
He was three yards past the flaps of the tent when he caught sight of Finn, standing by a barrel-shaped garbage can, flicking what looked to be pecan shells into the trash. Another yard and he saw Daniel, leaning against a bright blue Porta-potty, pretending to read a Spider-Man comic book. And there, in line for the same Porta-potty, three people deep, Jake, jumping from heel to heel as if he really had to go. Farther back, Magic, his face painted in bright yellow and red, juggling tennis balls to the great amusement of a group of third graders who had gathered just outside the face-painting booth. And a good ten feet behind Magic, Sam, her hands jammed deep into the pockets of her tight jeans as she pretended to kick a soda can against the fence that separated the fairgrounds from the parking lot.
But it took another minute, a few more steps, before Charlie caught sight of Miranda standing in the middle of a crowd of high-school kids dressed as vampires. Like the others, she pretended that she was a complete stranger, just a college girl spending an afternoon at a carnival.
And then, for the briefest of seconds, she broke character, looked right at him—and smiled. Then she turned, her jet-black hair fanning out behind her, and she was gone, lost in the sea of high-school vampires.
Charlie trembled. He shifted his eyes, back toward Finn and the rest, but they had faded away as well, vanishing into the depths of the Halloween Fair. Charlie felt the energy rising inside of him.
He had passed the trial by fire. He was officially one of them now.
And he was on his way to Incredo Land.
14
EYES CLOSED, IT WAS all physics and math, written in the language of engineering: steel and fiberglass, titanium and aluminum, iron bolts and copper screws. Eyes closed, it was an equation turned corporeal: spinning fan blades feeding air into twin gas turbines, where the air was compressed, sprayed with jet fuel, then ignited by an electrical spark. Eyes closed, it was theory turned to practice: a two-thousand-degree controlled conflagration, gasses expanding in a confined space, then forcefully funneled through an exhaust cone, creating thrust. Equal and opposite reactions, Newtonian physics, the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Thrust became momentum, forcing more air spiraling up the curved, retractable flaps of the wings, and momentum became lift.
But eyes open, it was an entirely different story. Charlie was loosely strapped to an uncomfortable vomit-green chair, clutching a plastic bottle of apple juice he had bought in the kiosk adjacent to the gate. Sitting there on the plane, beads of sweat started to form on his forehead as he thought about how he was enclosed in a veritable coffin-shaped, one-hundred-sixty-thousand-pound hunk of oblong metal that was hurtling thirty thousand feet above the ground, at almost six hundred miles per hour.
The logical portion of Charlie’s brain was no match for the pure, terrifying magic of modern flight, and his fingers whitened against the plastic bottle of juice as the 727 worked its way through the last canopy of clouds on its way to its predetermined cruising altitude. To make things even worse, the oval, tempered glass to Charlie’s right had gone dark a few minutes after takeoff, and now all he could see when he peered into the porthole-shaped window was his own pale reflection staring back at him.
He hadn’t always been afraid of flying. When he was younger, he had loved traveling by plane, and even though his parents had taken him on only a few short trips to New York and Washington, and once to Florida, he’d always looked forward to that feeling of flight: the rush as the engines growled to life, the thrill as the plane galloped down the runway, that indescribable, unique lightness as the plane lifted off the ground and took to the sky.
But now that he was older, his nerves had taken over. Which was ironic, because now that he was smart enough to know the science and the statistics, he knew, logically, that there were few places on earth safer than the cabin of a commercial airplane, and that a plane was literally built to stay in the air. But even so, he couldn’t shake the feeling that such a very large, heavy object shouldn’t be able to fly.
A matter of perception. Despite his fear, he couldn’t help smiling to himself as he imagined Sam mouthing the words. He fought the urge to crane his neck around to search for her toward the back of the cabin; when they were boarding, he’d caught a glimpse of her putting her black backpack into the overhead compartment five rows behind where he was seated, but he’d been well trained. He hadn’t even acknowledged the quick glimpse she’d thrown in his direction. Not that Jeremy, in a state Charlie could only describe as pure euphoria, would have noticed if he’d dived down the aisle and given her a great big hug.
As the plane finally broke free of the seemingly magnetic grip of the last few clouds and straightened into a thankfully smooth flight line, he shifted away from his reflection and looked at his lanky friend, splayed out in the aisle seat to his left. It was like looking at a giant, redheaded grasshopper made out of maniacally twisted pipe cleaners. Amazingly, only ten minutes into a three-hour flight, Jeremy was fast asleep.
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 beg
un 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-lo
oking 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.”