There was simply no way a gaggle of sugar-infused, over-stimulated sixth, seventh, and eighth graders were going to pay attention to a red-faced, bespectacled middle-school principal reading names off a clipboard, while a futuristic air train whiffed along an elevated track, twenty feet above the shiny crown of his rapidly balding head. “Quiet down!” Walker piped, but his words were lost in a sudden burst of the train’s laser cannon, which seemed to crack the very air. “Mrs. Cauldwell’s group will include Michael Thompson, Peter Crockett . . .” Even Charlie had trouble concentrating on the names as Walker droned on from the clipboard; Charlie’s gaze, like everyone else’s, was drawn to the buglike, glass-and-steel docking station that served as the entrance to Incredo Land, and the glistening curves of the air train, which was passing directly above Warden Walker as it slid along to the starting point of its circular route around the amusement park. When Charlie looked past Walker to the bank of turnstiles that led into the wide tunnel piercing the heart of the docking station, an artery pumping brightly clothed tourists into the park at a steady pace, even at eight in the morning on a bright, sunny Thursday, it was obvious that that was exactly what the creators of the park were going for.
