Bringing Down the Mouse Read Online Free PDF Page A

most respects. Two PhDs, in biology and virology, and just as much difficulty in dealing with the most basic elements of day-to-day life. Charlie’s mom could write papers that led to lifesaving drugs for cancer patients, but the last time she’d packed Charlie’s lunch for school, he’d opened up the brown bag to find two uncooked eggs and a piece of toast buttered with cottage cheese.
    Even so, the two parents together might have wondered why Charlie had been so insistent on going to the Sherwood Halloween Fair that particular Saturday afternoon. There were still a good eight weeks until Halloween, and though the fair opened on Labor Day, it didn’t really get going until halfway through October. Luckily, Charlie’s dad hadn’t bothered to ask why Charlie had wanted to make the trip. He’d just smiled and retrieved the keys to the car.
    â€œOf course,” his dad continued, still tapping the steering wheel and the GPS, “we could always stop at a gas station and ask directions. But then we’d have to find a gas station. I’m not even sure there is a gas station this close to Sherwood.”
    Charlie watched more green go by. There really wasn’t much of anything in Sherwood. The center of town, which they’d passed a few miles back, consisted of a tiny little diner, an even smaller general store, a brightly lit Dairy Queen, and a pair of competing real estate offices. The whole place had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sort of feel, and the only time anyone mentioned Sherwood was around Halloween.
    â€œDad!”
    Charlie pointed toward the windshield, just in case his father somehow didn’t see the banner a dozen feet ahead, stretched out between two telephone poles. The words themselves, SHERWOOD COUNTRY HALLOWEEN FAIR , fit on the sign because someone had drawn the letters too large, but the orange and black colors made it crystal clear that they had arrived at the right place.
    Charlie’s dad relaxed, navigating the Volvo the last few yards, and then he turned onto a packed dirt road. A makeshift parking lot opened up in front of them. At two in the afternoon, the lot was about half full; as the season progressed, the place would become so jammed with cars, they would eventually start turning people away. The fair didn’t have anywhere near the cachet or reputation of the much bigger Halloween carnivals, but for this leafy area, it was pretty much the only game in town.
    After they parked, Charlie followed his dad toward the front entrance to the fairground. A picket fence ended in an open barn-style gate, next to which sat the windowed ticket kiosk, run by a handful of teenagers in matching orange-and-black T-shirts.
    â€œFive bucks,” his dad mumbled as he paid the entrance fee. “Seems like it goes up every year.”
    Actually, it had been five dollars a ticket for as long as Charlie could remember, but complaining about the fee was one of his dad’s favorite rituals. Charlie’s parents often complained about money. With two tenured professor salaries and only one child, they were far from poor, but they’d always found comfort in the practice of living on a strict budget. Charlie had definitely inherited some of their conservative ideology; he had been saving most of his weekly allowance for years, and now there was a cardboard box under his bed with almost nine hundred dollars hidden inside. Jeremy, the only person who knew about the cardboard box, had often asked Charlie to take the stacks of five- and ten-dollar bills out when he came over, just to see what they’d look like piled up together on Charlie’s bed. Most months, Jeremy didn’t get an allowance; Jeremy was one of a handful of kids at Nagassack Middle School who was there on student aid. Jeremy’s dad was an assistant manager at the localShaw’s supermarket, and his mom had left nursing when she had given birth to Jeremy’s baby