Charlie Numbers and the Woolly Mammoth (The Charlie Numbers Adventures) - Hardcover

Ben Mezrich graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. He has published seventeen books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Accidental Billionaires, which was adapted into the Academy Award–winning film The Social Network, and Bringing Down the House, which was the basis for the hit movie 21. He lives in Boston.

When Tonya Mezrich was little, she preferred art to reading. But then she learned that reading could be just as cool, and so could writing books. She attended Tufts University, where she studied French literature and art history. She later developed a jewelry line and clothing line and launched and cohosted the TV show Style Boston. She is the resident fashion expert at NECN and writes a blog about style and fashion at TonyaMezrich.com. She and Ben live in Boston with their two kids and a pug.

Chapter 1 1
CHARLIE LEWIS BRACED HIMSELF against the rocking of the deck beneath his feet, as the cold metal railing pressed into his lower back. He’d never been great with boats, or, for that matter, water in general. He wasn’t much of a swimmer, and he couldn’t catch a fish to save his life. The fact that he was now standing on a cargo ship parked at a dockyard in Boston Harbor, rollicking and rolling above choppy waves as high as Charlie was tall, made him question every decision he’d made over the past few weeks—if not every decision he’d made over the past twelve years.

It certainly didn’t help that the remaining rays of winter sunlight were shining blindingly down. In the distance, he could barely make out the giant face of the clock tower, rising up above the pincushion of buildings that made up Boston’s Financial District. The giant digital display told him it was five thirty in the afternoon, which meant Charlie should have been home from school already, maybe telling his mother about his day, or watching cartoons with his dad. Having professors for parents meant someone was usually home when he got out of his classes, and usually that was a good thing. But sometimes, like when things got seriously out of control, it meant when Charlie got home—if Charlie got home—he’d have a lot to explain.

Like how an otherwise normal Thursday late afternoon in February had gotten him here, to the very edge of a giant boat, his sneakers inches from the long drop down to the icy water of Boston Harbor.

The briny smell of the waves filled his nostrils as his mind began calculating the drop itself. The math wasn’t hard—not nearly as difficult as keeping his balance as each wave pushed against the mammoth boat, sending it bouncing high in the air despite the ropes that tethered it to the dock. It was 60 feet to the water; 720 inches, 1,828.8 centimeters. Given enough time, Charlie could have calculated how fast he’d be going when he hit, even how much liquid his body would displace.

He’d always found comfort in the math, the numbers. Numbers were concrete, something you could count, and count on. His affinity for numbers was so well known among his sixth-grade classmates that they’d attached the word to his name. Nobody had called him Charlie Lewis since fourth grade, when he’d aced a ninth-grade math test that had been handed out to his class by mistake: It was always Charlie “Numbers.”

As he stood on the edge of the ship pondering the numbers, he suddenly caught sight of something moving behind a barrel down below, on the nearby pier. He could see the border of a red swing coat under a yellow neon vest and a mop of familiar auburn hair: Crystal Mueller and Jeremy “Diapers” Draper were hard to miss, despite their best efforts to remain hidden. Crystal, known for her vast knowledge of geology that far surpassed any high school student’s, was the quasi coleader of the Whiz Kids. That was the de facto name of his squad of friends from Nagassack Middle School, the public school in Newton that served as home to Charlie and more than three hundred other students—the worst of whom had granted Charlie’s best friend, Jeremy, with his inescapable nickname. Charlie would always remember the day his friend had transformed from Jeremy Draper to Jeremy Diapers: The school bully, Dylan Wigglesworth, had tripped Jeremy, who’d then inadvertently emptied out his ever-present backpack all over the cafeteria, revealing his baby sister’s disposables instead of his science project.

Looking down at Jeremy and Crystal in their fairly awful hiding places, Charlie realized that—no matter how close they were—he was still on his own. Jeremy and Crystal might as well have been all the way across town.

So, instead, he let the numbers do their magic; he began to calculate. Not just the distance to the water, but suddenly everything became numbers—the height of the ship, the depth of the harbor, the density of the water, the temperature of the air. As his mind ran through the calculations, he absentmindedly glanced down at his hands, at the curved white object he held as it caught the sunlight, flashing almost as bright as a star.

Charlie looked up from the object and again found the clock tower in the distance. The display had shifted from time to temperature: The city of Boston was registering a blustery thirty-six degrees. Charlie knew that thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit was slightly above freezing, but mathematically still cold enough to illicit hypothermia; a human body hitting water at that temperature would have only a few minutes, even less if that human body happened to be the size of an average third grader. And the water of the harbor had to be many degrees colder than the ambient air.

“Not a good idea, kid. You might survive the drop, but not for very long.”

The voice cracked through the air like a leather belt pulled tight. Charlie looked back and saw a large, trash-can-shaped man coming toward him across the deck, followed by a second man, stringy and tall, dressed in green.

“Popsicle city, kid,” the second man added, grinning. His teeth were crooked and yellow, like thirty-year-old Pez lost for decades in the bottom of a drawer.

Charlie turned away from the men, forcing himself to go back to the math. Back to his calculations: distance, weight, temperature. How his exact body weight—fifty-eight pounds—would interact with the water, how much time he’d have before frostbite hit.

“Just hand it over,” the trash can of a man said, still moving closer. “Give it to us, and this doesn’t have to get ugly.”

Charlie inhaled deeply, the saltiness of the ocean palpable in his throat. Then he looked down again at the object in his hands. The object felt smooth and cold and heavy against his palms. He knew that if he handed it to the men, they probably would let him go. After all, without the object—without that important piece of evidence—he was just some kid that nobody would believe. Without evidence, he had nothing but a story. Wild, incredible, terrifying—but just a story.

Charlie shook his head. He had come this far. Too far. And people were counting on him. His friends were counting on him.

His friends.

And then he paused, a sudden thought trickling through the fear in his head. He balanced the heavy object against his chest with one hand, and reached into his pocket with the other.

His fingers closed against a cool plastic tube—and his mind started to whirl. Could it work? Was it possible?

He made a sudden decision, and mashed the tube with his fist, squirting the clear jelly inside all over his palm. Then he quickly yanked his hand out of his pocket, and began rubbing the stuff on his cheeks, forehead, neck, his hands and wrists—any exposed flesh—in as thick a layer as he could.

“What the heck are you doing?” the man in green asked, through a cruel laugh. “You don’t need sunscreen where you’re thinking of going.”

Charlie ignored the voice. He knew it was a long shot, but it was all he had.

As a cold breeze touched his cheeks, he grasped the object in his hand even tighter, then focused on the water—and the long drop down.

“Kid, don’t! You’re crazy!” one of the men shouted.

“I might be crazy,” Charlie said, “but I never miscalculate.”

He stepped forward off the edge of the deck, and suddenly he was plummeting toward the icy water below.