Authors: Kurt Dinan
“I’m worried the others are losing interest too,” she says. “It’s like every club here in the school. Have you ever noticed they all sort of die off in the winter, once kids have gone long enough to put it on their college applications? But I think with us it’d be too bad if we gave up. We have something awesome here.”
“Yeah, we should go into business.”
“One step at a time, Mongoose. So come on, will you help me?”
Guilty conscience versus time with Ellie?
No contest.
“I’m in,” I say.
“You don’t sound fully committed.”
“I’ll get there. It’s a good idea you have.”
“Wrong,” Ellie says. “It’s a great idea.”
“Right, a great idea. Let’s do it.”
“Game on!”
Ellie claps hard once and looks so happy I think she might kiss me. Call it horny-teenage-wishful-thinking.
“It’s going to take me a bit to figure out exactly how I want to do this, but I’ll let you know,” Ellie says. “Thanks a ton, Max.”
I figure I’ll just fake it until I feel it. It’s worked so far. Besides, it’s Heist Rule #17:
Commit one hundred percent.
But it turns out I don’t need to fake it at all. Commitment suddenly isn’t an issue.
Not after I get to school the next morning.
• • •
Like most kids, once I get off the bus and enter the school, I go directly to my locker to get my books for the day. But today that’s easier said than done because Stranko’s standing at my locker bay in front of a line of yellow caution tape. A large group of students laugh and talk excitedly as I weave my way to the front to see what’s going on. It takes a few seconds to understand what I’m looking at. It’s like the Blob has swallowed one of the lockers. But not just any locker—it’s my locker. Yellowish, spongy dough, sticky and reeking of yeast, is bursting from the locker, spilling from the air vents, and dripping onto the floor.
“That your locker, Cobb?” Stranko says.
I’m speechless.
“I should’ve guessed.”
Mr. Jessup arrives and tiptoes to my locker, approaching it from the side. He wedges his hand into where he thinks the combination lock is and pulls away a handful of mucus-like dough. Then Jessup inserts a key into the middle of the combination dial and flattens himself against the lockers, backing away as far as he can and still reach the latch.
When Jessup lifts the latch, the door bursts open. My folders and books and black hoodie slowly erupt from my locker in a mass of smothering dough, oozing onto the floor like beige lava. The final item to seep out is a dough-filled bucket along with dozens of black Chaos Club cards. Even from ten feet away, I can see none of them have the small water tower graphic on them.
“How many other lockers are there like this?” Stranko says to Mr. Jessup.
“Four,” he says.
You can probably guess whose lockers those are.
Ellie names it Operation Sex, Drugs, and Suicide.
My code name is Weegee, “after the famous crime scene photographer, duh,” Ellie says.
Her code name is Meryl, after actress Meryl Streep.
“I’m not sure she ever played a role like this,” I say.
“Because she couldn’t handle a role like this.”
Ellie and I stand on the high school football field on the eighth and final night of our photo shoot. I haven’t seen any of the other Water Tower Fivers since winter break started a week ago. That’s not by design but simply the result of busy lives. Schoolwork, sports, jobs, family responsibilities, and whatnot get in the way of what we’d all really like to do, which is work on destroying the Chaos Club. But no, Wheeler’s at the local tutoring center full time now, Malone’s busy anchoring people at the rock wall, and Adleta is in Orlando for a lacrosse tournament. That leaves Ellie and me to pull her prank, to which I say—excellent.
“Make sure you have the scoreboard in the background,” Ellie says, lying down on the fifty-yard line.
“The scene of the notorious Hitler-moustache prank,” I say.
“Exactly.”
I stand over Ellie and dump out a garbage bag. Condom wrappers, Bud Light cans, and an empty Maker’s Mark bottle spill onto the frozen field. I arrange them artfully around Ellie, the evidence of a wild night I’m certain neither of us has ever really had.
“Where did you get the alcohol?” I ask, shooting another picture.
“Out of my neighbor’s recycling bin. He has a real problem.”
“Like we’re ones to judge.”
“Exactly,” Ellie says. “Guilty of trespassing and possession of stolen goods. We’re headed for eternal damnation.”
I move to another angle and get low to the ground. Each camera flash is like a lightning strike.
“That should do it,” I say. “Unless you have any others we need to take.”
“No, we’re good. That’s the last one. No point in pushing our luck.”
Back in Ellie’s car, she changes her outfit in the backseat, threatening to decapitate me if I sneak a look. I take my chances anyway. Even with the heater going full blast, it takes a couple minutes for the car to warm up.
Ellie says, “So what about your prank?”
“What about it?”
“Have you thought of one yet?”
“I’m working on it.”
“You don’t seem at all interested in the guaranteed yes. I would’ve thought you’d jump all over that.”
“I’m going to do something. I promise.”
“If you’re not careful, you’ll run out of time.”
“Schools not out until May.”
“It’ll come faster than you expect.”
“Like my balls. Unfortunately.”
Ellie’s laugh is a sunshine-y sound I’ve come to depend on in the last week. It’s one of the few things giving me a break from my perpetual pissy-ness from the dough-in-the-locker prank. (Yeast, water, and dough in a bucket overnight, in case you were wondering.) Worse was that Stranko had the nerve to imply we’d played the prank on ourselves. Ellie’s crying at the suggestion put an end to that line of thought quickly, but it made me even madder than I already was.
We pull into my driveway shortly before ten o’clock. Except for our Christmas tree lit in the family room window, the house is dark. I don’t want to go in yet. The more time I’ve spent with Ellie, the more comfortable I’ve gotten with her. And the more comfortable I’ve gotten with her, the more I joke-flirt with her in a not-so-subtle-yet-safe way.
“Maybe we should celebrate the end of our photo shoot with a kiss,” I say.
“Oh, you think, huh?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s bad luck not to.”
“We’ll just have to risk it.”
You can’t blame a guy for trying.
“What did I tell you about
us
?” Ellie asks.
“You said after.”
“
Maybe
after, yeah. We have a lot to do still.”
“But are my chances getting better?”
“Oh, absolutely. With each passing moment.”
“Then I’ll be strong and soldier on.”
I go to get out of the car when Ellie says, “I do need one small favor on Monday.”
“What’s that?”
“A favor? It’s a small act of kindness. I thought you were smarter than that.”
“Tell me.”
“I want to see his look when it goes live. Can you make that happen?”
“How in the hell am I supposed to do that?”
“You? Maxwell Cobb? The mastermind behind the Stranko Caper? I think you can come up with something.”
Ellie does that bat-her-eyelashes thing that the female species has perfected through thousands of years of evolution. Like all males, I’m defenseless against it.
When I think later about what Ellie wants, I realize the difficulty isn’t in the execution but in having the balls to do it. I will because Ellie’s the asker, but I keep thinking of a quote I once heard about how there’s a fine line between courage and stupidity. In this case, it’s a very, very fine line.
• • •
The rest of the week is spent suffering through exam prep and wondering just what sort of moron schedules semester exams for the three days following winter break. The only answer I can come up with is a moron who loves to ruin kids’ vacations. In this case, Stranko. He takes exams überserious, even sending out an email to every high school parent about how all classroom doors will be locked when the bell rings and how tardy students will receive zeroes. So imagine Stranko’s irritation when Monday comes and students and teachers are milling in the halls, unable to enter any of the classrooms because none of the doors will open. Zero. Not a single one.
We’re all loitering in the halls, watching teachers pointlessly enter and reenter keys in their locks while Stranko pushes his way through the crowds, yelling at Mr. Jessup over the walkie-talkie to “get these damn doors open.”
“Wheeler?” Malone says to Ellie and me outside Watson’s room.
“No chance,” I say.
By some miracle of the universe—or, in reality, a combination of make-up work, extra credit, and much pleading by his mom and guidance counselor on the defendant’s behalf—Wheeler’s pulled his grades to within striking distance of passing. The looming reality couldn’t be more mathematically simple: Pass the exams, pass the classes. Fail the exams, fail the classes.
“Maybe Tim?” Ellie asks.
“Not me either,” Tim says, coming up behind us. “I’ve made my entry in the competition. Unlike some people.”
“Mine’s coming,” Ellie says. “Sooner than you think, actually.”
“What about you?” Adleta says to me.
“Someday.”
That’s when my phone buzzes.
And Ellie’s.
And Tim’s.
And Malone’s.
And everyone else’s around us until the entire hall is a sea of miscellaneous chimes, rings, and tones signaling arriving texts.
We all receive the same message:
Courtesy of the (Genuine) Chaos Club.
“Wow,” Malone says. “As much as I hate them, I have to admit that’s impressive.”
Word soon spreads that during the night, the Chaos Club took every door off its hinges and reinstalled it at another classroom. It’s takes the team of Mrs. B, Stranko, and Mr. Jessup the better part of a half hour to unlock every room with master keys.
How am I supposed to think of a prank that competes with that?
After Watson’s exam, which is easier than I expected, I say to Ellie, “Do you still need me to do it?”
“Absolutely. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, with the Chaos Club thing, I thought maybe you might want to have all the attention to yourself.”
“Are you kidding me? This is the best time. We’ll totally steal their spotlight,” she says. “Why do you have that look on your face?”
“Stranko, he’ll kill me.”
“Oh, foo. You don’t need to worry about him. Just be confident. It works every time,” she says with her best angelic voice and praying hands under her chin. “If you want me to, I’ll put in a special word with the big guy.”
“That’s good because I may be seeing Him sooner than expected.”
Mrs. Stephen’s precalc exam is next, and by the time I’m finished, I feel like I’ve spent the last hour and a half tumbling and crashing inside an industrial-sized dryer. I’m pretty sure the Pythagorean theorem and reciprocal identities were invented solely to make teenagers’ lives horrible. How else can you explain a teacher saying things like, “To find the zeros of the logarithmic function, one would exponentiate the left and right sides of the equation”?
The daily schedule for exam week at Asheville High makes almost as much sense as having the exams immediately after winter break. We get out ninety minutes early each day, but only after suffering through two, two-hour exams and a mandatory one-hour study session with our homeroom teacher. I’m five minutes into this study session when I get permission from Mr. Ewing to go see Stranko.
It’s time to die young.
• • •
I want to take my time getting to Stranko’s office, but unfortunately, I’m on a tight timetable. I make a quick stop in the bathroom outside the main office and turn on my phone’s video camera app before sliding it into the pocket of the shirt I’ve worn specifically for this purpose. As Ellie requested, I reach Stranko’s door at 11:42 a.m. His expression sours at the sight of me.
“Can I come in?” I say.
Stranko sighs and puts down the lacrosse magazine he’s reading instead of doing his real job, whatever that is.
“Sit.”
Shockingly, Stranko’s office doesn’t have black walls decorated with instruments of torture. Instead, there’s a desk, a bookshelf with actual books (and not just ones for coloring), a framed college degree on the wall (probably from an online university), and a minifridge (likely filled with human heads). The most shocking item is a picture on his desk of an older couple who are probably his parents or the scientists who genetically engineered him at the Asshole Farm. My only seating option is a straight-backed, wooden chair created solely for discomfort. The moment I sit, my ass starts aching.
“What do you want, Cobb?” Stranko said. “I’m sort of busy here.”
Uh-huh.
“Sir, I just came to say that over break, I did a lot of thinking and realized I need to make some changes in my life. With the new semester starting soon, I wanted to apologize for my behavior over the first part of the school year. I promise that second semester will be much less chaotic.”
And that, friends, is some Olympic-level bullshit. I look at the clock over Stranko’s head. 11:43—two minutes to go.
“Well, let’s hope you’re right about next semester,” Stranko says. “You could use some maturing.”
I have to hold down the middle finger struggling to show itself.
“Yeah, I could definitely grow up some.”
Stranko stares, trying to figure out if I’m being a smart-ass, and then sighs, leaning back in his chair. He has to be exhausted from the morning’s events with the doors. What he doesn’t know is that his day’s seconds away from getting worse.
“Look, Cobb, I’m not stupid,” he says. “I know what the students here think about me. That comes with the job. And part of that’s my fault because I’m not touchy-feely like Mrs. Barber, and I’ll never be. I’m intense and I can be a yeller—I know that. But do you think I enjoy being a hard-ass all the time? Believe me, it’s not fun. But it’s the job. What I do here, keeping all of you in line, helps Asheville be what it is, which is a damn fine place. I love this school. But once you let discipline slip, quality slips. That’s something my dad always used to say.”
I glance at the picture on the end table, taking a closer look at Stranko’s father. Although it’s just him and his wife smiling on a couch, the man’s eyes are hard.
“You probably could loosen up just a little,” I say, sort of joking.
Stranko half smiles—or maybe half un-frowns is more accurate.
“Agreed. And you could meet me in the middle by tightening up some.”
“I’ll do my best.”
It’s possible there’s a real human in Stranko somewhere—the joking, dancing, young Stranko just biding his time until he can make a triumphant return. Wouldn’t that be nice? The thought makes me not scared of him for the first time in my life. It’s not a feeling that lasts long.
“Actually, while you’re here, let me show you something,” Stranko says and removes a cell phone from his pocket and places it in front of me. “This is my new phone. I had to get this one because I lost my old one. In fact, interestingly enough, it disappeared on the day of your little stunt in the cafeteria with the trophy. Do you remember that?”
I swallow my terror.
“Is there anything you want to tell me about that day?”
I can barely get words out.
“What do you mean?”
Stranko leans so close and speaks so quietly that if anyone else were in the room, they couldn’t hear him.
“Don’t bullshit me, Cobb. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that my phone went missing at the same time you idiots were chasing each other around the cafeteria. I’m going to figure out what happened, and when I do, I’m going to rain hell on whomever was involved. If you have any information that could help, this is your chance to let me know.”
I don’t piss myself, but, man, I could.
“I don’t know anything,” I say.
Stranko doesn’t move.
“Of course you don’t, Cobb. Of course you don’t.”
A knock at the door saves me.
Mrs. Engen, Stranko’s secretary, hurries in and whispers something I can’t make out. Not that I need to hear her. I sit up and reposition myself to capture everything. Stranko performs a few clicks on his computer and goes from serious to concerned to infuriated all in a matter of seconds.
“You, get out.”
“What’s wrong?” I say.
Stranko doesn’t answer, doesn’t even tell me to leave again because he’s fully focused on the pictures Ellie’s uploaded onto our fake Chaos Club site. They’ve been there since this morning, but the program Wheeler pirated for Ellie only sent the mass email and text to the staff and student body two minutes ago.
“Dammit!”
Stranko pounds the desk so hard, he’s lucky his hand doesn’t go all the way through. I remain frozen, so the camera catches everything. Stranko’s eyes strain like they might come out of his head. It’s frighteningly awesome.