73   FUN HOUSE / MIRROR

In the car, Peter said, “I need to tell you something.”

They drove toward Charlie’s house, so he could grab his gear.

“Since we’re doing second chances, I have one more thing to confess.”

Charlie kept his eyes ahead. “Okay.”

“My mom didn’t die.”

Charlie nearly drove them off the road, then the moment passed.

“She left. When I was really little. My dad told everyone she died. I’m sorry.”

Charlie didn’t say anything. He just stared ahead and drove.

“In a way, you’re lucky. Your mom was taken. Mine wanted to go.”

They stopped outside Charlie’s house. “I’ll be right back.” He paused. “The stuff about Tim. Did you put it out there?”

Peter nodded.

“What was it?”

Peter laughed bitterly. “His parents are crooks. They steal from the bank they own. They drank and gambled their own money away. Imagine that, lucking into a family fortune, old money, and just blowing it.”

“The dad steals?”

“Mom, too. There’s enough there to put them both in jail and wipe out their bank accounts. Tim’s trust fund, too.”

“He beats Mary. Blackmails her.”

“You don’t have to convince me. Besides, I already launched. It’s up to the Game now.”

Charlie went inside, leaving Peter in the car. The wind whipped past Charlie as he made it to the door. His dad was home, taking a breather before the evening shift. He looked up. “When did you get glasses?”

“Oh. A while ago.”

“We were packed at lunch. Full house, again. They’ve never seen the place so full. We’re doing something right, Charlie.”

He felt a crippling guilt then. His dad looked so happy. If the Vindicators’ plan worked, it might all go away. All the secret machinations of the Game to make this happen, they might just cease. And if the Vindicators’ plan failed, it was definitely going away. The Game would take Charlie’s father down with a righteous vengeance. Either way, his dad would probably lose.

Maybe that was his place in the world.

Charlie startled. Behind his dad, a figure was watching. A man in a white porcelain mask and black cloak. Watchers, Peter had called them. Why was the Watcher here? What did they do?

“What’s wrong?” his dad said, oblivious.

“Nothing.”

Charlie felt more eyes on him and looked up. Another figure was on the balcony, staring down. White mask, dark eyes.

Now there were others, too. He could feel them watching. Something was happening.

“Charlie?” his dad asked.

A sign behind his father lit up, an old-timey bulb board flickering on and buzzing in and out, like some run-down corner of Broadway.

THIS WAY it said, pointing him toward the stairs.

“I have to go,” Charlie said, distracted.

“What, you just…”

“We’ll talk later.”

He left his dad standing there, baffled, a hooded figure on either side staring at Charlie.

CAN’T MISS a sign said at the top of the stairs, a vintage vaudeville finger pointing up.

He pressed his way up the stairs warily, brushing past figures there, waiting for him.

The second floor of the house looked the same, no real changes through the Aziteks like in Peter’s house or at school, vines and cobwebs.

A TV was on in the upstairs den, and the Game or the network or whoever showed him Hillary on the screen, smirking, saying, “Wipe it? What, you mean like with a cloth?” He passed her into his dad’s bedroom, but it was dark and quiet and the stirring of figures was gravitating behind him, somewhere else. The image in the picture on his parents’ wall, a framed museum-shop poster of Starry Night, his mom’s favorite, quietly swirled, but everything else was unchanged.

He passed the hall bathroom and saw his reflection in a mirror.

He went back toward his bedroom and the TV had Trump on now, that shape-shifting lizard, saying, “I hope Russia can find those missing emails.… Those guys can hack.… I hope they find them!” A sign flicked on down the hall, burned-out bulbs glowing orange.

OVER HERE.

Charlie felt a growing dread. Too many Watchers were here, clustering around him. He could pass through them, but they stepped aside to make way.

He walked toward the laundry hamper, which now had a sign above it and an arrow, bulbs on the wall simmering, pointing down.

DIRTY LAUNDRY

The Watchers were behind him. He tried to ignore them, but he looked back finally because he couldn’t stand it and they were all there, white-glazed faces, featureless, appraising him. I’m not your fucking toy, Charlie wanted to scream, but he didn’t, because he knew he was. “Don’t open it,” a voice said, and he knew who it was before he even turned around because his mother’s voice was imprinted in his soul.

They waved her away and she disappeared, and Charlie didn’t know if her words came from an independent intelligence, free of the Game with its own will as she had told him, or if the Game was speaking through her.

The Watchers wanted him to open the door, so he wouldn’t. But that wasn’t free will either.

Cursing, riddled with curiosity and anger and shame, he thought, Fuck free will.

He opened the hamper door.