Don't Get Caught (8 page)

Have epic prank idea for the aerial photo. Details on the way.

Wheeler calls it Operation Schlonger, and Ellie assigns us code names matching our jobs:

She’s Right-Hand.

Adleta is H
2
O.

Malone’s Pornographer.

Wheeler’s Architect.

And me, I’m Mole.

Generally, capers fall into one of two categories:

1. Those like the Stranko Caper, where most of the work occurs during the heist’s execution.

2. And those where the majority of the work is done in planning and the actual heist is mostly hands-off.

Operation Schlonger is the second type.

The five of us have put in two weeks of prep work planning for today. As one thousand juniors and seniors leave the building at 10:00 a.m. to shoot the aerial photo, there’s really nothing to do but hope it all goes according to plan.

Malone and I walk near the front of the stream of students heading across the parking lot for the football field. All one thousand of us are wearing brand-new, district-paid-for yellow T-shirts with
Asheville High
displayed across our chests. It’s a perfect fall day with a cloudless, pale-blue sky overhead and just warm enough that no jackets are needed. Ellie’s ahead of us at the front of the line with Stranko and Jill Banks, the district’s public relations’ officer. Mrs. Banks is in a business-y skirt-and-jacket deal and always walks like she’s clenching a walnut between her ass cheeks. This whole
let’s share the awesomeness of Asheville with the world
stupidity is all her idea, but really it’s just a way to justify her existence and paycheck. When Mrs. Banks got out of her car at school this morning, Ellie was waiting for her, ready to explain she was to be her student ambassador during the shoot.

It’s Heist Rule #12:
Have an insider.

“Should be anytime now,” I say, watching as Ellie nears the gate.

“And if it doesn’t work?” Malone says.

“Shh, don’t jinx it.”

The line suddenly stops as Mrs. Banks and Stranko get to the stadium gate and see what Adleta was assigned to do last night. It’s five full minutes of standing around, the words “soaked” and “a swamp” drifting back from the front of the line. I watch Ellie the whole time, and she’s watching Banks and Stranko brainstorm a solution. It’s been two weeks since my disastrous failed kiss. In that time, I’ve done my best to avoid her, and when we have been together, she’s spared me more humiliation by never mentioning it.

Ellie waits for a break in the adults talking before tapping Banks on the shoulder and pointing to the other side of the school. After brief words between Stranko and Banks, the front of the line starts marching toward the intramural fields.

“Why do you look so surprised?” I say to Malone. “Adleta said he took care of it.”

“Yeah, color me skeptical.”

We step out of line and take a quick jog to the fence. The football field is more a swimming pool at this point, the result of Adleta’s sneaking into the stadium last night after practice and turning on the sprinkler system. Now the picture will be taken at the intramural fields, which have no bleachers or press box from where Stranko or Banks can get a bird’s-eye view.

It’s Heist Rule #13:
Set the rules when you can.

Once we reach the intramural fields, the section leaders, made up of senior student government members, take over. They call the members of their assigned homeroom, and the field becomes a mass of identical gold shirts. This whole prank is Wheeler’s idea, but I helped with the details and planning. One of his final jobs was to spray-paint the area in ten-yard sections like a real football field. It should make this go so much more smoothly and eliminate the chances of being discovered.

“Let’s go, everyone!” Stranko shouts into a bullhorn. “We’re running behind.”

I swear he’s glaring at me as he says it.

“I’d better get going,” Malone says. “I’m over there in Becca’s group.”

“You know what to do?” I say.

“Yeah, I think I can keep it straight, Einstein,” she says. “I already did the hard part anyway.”

“So to speak,” I say.

“Right, so to speak.”

The press release Banks sent to the media showed a diagram of the picture the hired pilot and photographer are supposed to take:
AHS Pride
, the letters formed by students standing in meticulously prepared positions in our yellow T-shirts. When Wheeler and I went to Malone with his idea and what we needed her to do, she was less than enthusiastic.

“Ew, gross! No way.”

“Come on. It’ll be awesome,” Wheeler said. “You’re the artist. We can’t do this without you.”

“Something tells me you’ve drawn your share of those before,” she said.

“Well sure, but not on this scale. It needs to stretch across the field and be broken down into forty sections, one for each homeroom. There’s no way I can do that.”

Malone looked at me for help, but I just smiled back. Her sigh of defeat came a lot quicker than I expected.

“Let’s just say for a minute I do this,” she said. “How are you going to get them to follow these instructions? Don’t you think Banks will have already sent them the design?”

“Max and I will take care of that,” Wheeler said. “So that’s a yes?”

Malone rolled her eyes and said, “And to think I call myself a feminist.”

“Do you need help? Because I can model if you need me to.”

“Sure,” Malone said. “Let me borrow a microscope from one of the science labs.”

“Ouch.”

I have Mrs. Nally for homeroom, and our position is on the fifty-yard line, close to Banks, just like Wheeler and I planned. Jeff Benz, he of Watson’s-senior-aide fame, is our StuGo, or student government, rep and charged with arranging us on the field.

“You,” he says, pointing to me and showing me the diagram. “You set up on the end here. The line forms behind you.”

The diagram Benz holds looks like something a sick computer would barf out. The sheet is covered with
x
’s, each representing a student’s placement on the field. Malone designed the layout so each team leader only has one piece of the map, not the whole image of the full design. That way, no one knows what’s being created. At least that’s the hope.

StuGo reps wander from group to group, making sure the sections line up as they should. Adleta’s in the front of his section, ready to intercept Stranko if there’s a problem. He gives me a thumbs-up and a big
this is going to be great
smile.

Adleta’s right to think that. Like I said, the hard part’s finished. Hopefully, that means never having to attend StuGo meetings ever again. Officially, student government is for kids who want to plan dances and decorate the school for various stupid reasons throughout the year. But unofficially, StuGo is for padding college applications. Normally, you couldn’t pay me enough to go to one of their meetings, but they were put in charge of organizing today’s activity. With the group’s “Everyone is welcome!” philosophy, infiltration was easy. Even easier was switching out the board-approved diagram and replacing it with Wheeler and Malone’s work. It’s not hard to be sneaky when every moron in the room is engaged in a hot, borderline violent debate about homecoming snacks: potato chips or pretzels? These are the heavy questions of the universe StuGo wrestles with on a weekly basis.

Now with the fake diagrams in the hands of the StuGo reps, everything is going beautifully. The juniors and seniors, just happy to be out of class, are following the barked orders, and we’re all well away from where anyone can see what’s really happening. All we need now is the pilot to fly overhead and shoot the picture. Simple. Just like we drew it up.

Then.

Ellie waves her arms to get my attention.

I give her a
What?
gesture with my hands.

She points violently to the far end of the intramural field, where Stranko and Banks are now walking with six beefy football players. Their destination? The thirty-foot-high scaffolding used by the marching band director during practice to make sure everyone is in lockstep with one another. Wheeler must’ve not seen the tower last night. I even missed it today in the daylight.

The five of us break rank from our homerooms and race to each other.

“If Stranko gets up there, we’re screwed,” Wheeler says.

“How much time do we have?” I ask Ellie.

“Five minutes before the plane shows up,” she says.

“We were so close,” Adleta says.

“I sort of wanted to see how it looked,” Malone says.

“I can give you an up close and personal,” Wheeler says, and Malone gives him a shove, but it’s a friendly one.

“No, we’re not giving up,” I say. “We need to stall.”

It’s Heist Rule #14:
Be ready to improvise.

• • •

“Mr. Stranko?” I say.

“What is it, Cobb? Why aren’t all of you with your homerooms?”

“We just thought you should know there’s something weird with the design.”

“What do you mean ‘weird’?”

“Isn’t it supposed to say Asheville Pride or something like that?” Ellie says.

“AHS Pride, yes,” Mrs. Banks says.

“Well, it doesn’t,” Adleta says.

“No, it does,” Banks says. “I drew up the design myself. The picture is going on the front of the district website.”

“No, he’s right,” Malone says. “We’re not forming letters. There are too many long, straight lines. It’s weird.”

Stranko looks over to the field where one thousand students stand, many of them staring into the sky, waiting on the plane to shoot their picture. We’ve only stalled for a minute. Somehow we need to kill four more.

“Help us push the tower over there, and we’ll see if you’re right,” Stranko says. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

If you’ve ever been in a tug-of-war with a semitruck, then you know what it’s like trying to hold back the scaffolding tower as the varsity offensive line tries to push it forward. Hard doesn’t even begin to describe what it’s like fake pushing when you’re really pulling. I use muscles I didn’t know I had. And I use them poorly too. Because despite our stalling, the wheels on the scaffold roll closer and closer to the intramural field. We’re within twenty yards of the far end of the field when Stranko orders us to stop.

“Are you sure you should climb without a helmet, sir?” Wheeler says, blocking his path. “Like when we repainted the tower?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass, Wheeler,” Stranko says and wraps the bullhorn’s strap over his shoulder and begins climbing. Mrs. Banks goes to follow him but stops when she realizes her skirt has no pocket for her phone. Ellie holds out her hand.

“I’ll hold that for you. We’ll stay down here.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Banks says, returning the smile. “We should talk about you doing an internship this winter. You’re just so pleasant.”

“That’d be super!” Ellie says. “What you do seems so interesting!”

I have to chew a hole in my cheek to stop from laughing.

Mrs. Banks climbs after Stranko, and Malone hits Wheeler in the stomach when he tries looking up Mrs. Banks’s skirt. From the field, a cheer goes up at the sight of an approaching plane from the west.

Mrs. Banks’s phone rings, and Ellie looks at it before answering. I lean in so I can hear too.

“We’re one minute out,” a voice says. “Are you ready for the shot?”

Ellie, doing her best Mrs. Banks’s voice, says, “Roger that, Brent,” before hanging up.

“Brent,” I say. “Like you’re old friends.”

“Oh, we go way back.”

It had taken Ellie two days of calling local photography studios to find the name of the photographer hired to shoot the picture. Once she hunted Brent Whoever down, it was a short conversation, just long enough to make one request as Mrs. Banks—that he tether his digital camera to the school’s Dropbox account. That way, any picture he shot would be immediately transmitted.

“Because I want to be able to update the website right away,” Ellie-as-Banks explained.

“That won’t be a problem,” Brent said to her.

That poor sucker. Because technically, by “the school’s Dropbox account,” she really means the anonymous Dropbox account Wheeler set up.

Just as the plane starts over school property, Stranko bellows a barbaric, “No!”

We all practically give ourselves whiplash looking up. Mrs. Banks is gaping at what she sees. Stranko fumbles with his bullhorn and shouts, “Clear the field! Clear the field!”

But it’s too late.

Banks’s phone rings in Ellie’s hand one more time.

Brent says, “
This
is what you want a picture of?”

“Take the picture,” Ellie says.

“Roger that…I guess.”

From the tower, Stranko shouts a final and pointless, “Clear the field!”

But from high overhead, Brent begins taking pictures on this beautiful fall day of one thousand students proudly representing the school in their gold Asheville High T-shirts, everyone strategically arranged to form the largest, most anatomically correct boner the world has ever seen.

Monday, the first day of homecoming week, ends with an announcement ordering all students to the auditorium for a mandatory meeting. Mrs. B, Stranko, and Officer Hale are already there, standing in the middle of the stage waiting for everyone. The five of us sit together near the back, no longer worrying about the old rule about not being seen together. Screw worrying about someone, somehow, connecting us to Stranko’s phone and the boner pic. We’re untouchable. I mean, did you see the aerial photo? Because over a million people have viewed it on H8box, not to mention the local news and even a few worldwide outlets crediting the picture to the Chaos Club, courtesy of Wheeler adding the club’s name to the picture. Yes, the Water Tower Five have gone global, just like Ellie predicted.

But even though the whole attempted-kiss debacle was almost a month ago, I still feel weird around her. How can I not? I always make sure there’s at least one other Water Tower Fiver between us as a buffer. Today, I’m lucky that we’re on opposite ends with Wheeler in the middle, crowing about his fake Chaos Club website that went live last night.

“Go ahead and admit it. I’m a genius, right?” he says.

“Yeah, man, it’s awesome. You have a future in counterfeiting,” I say.

Like Malone’s Chaos Club business cards, Wheeler’s version of the official website is close to an exact knockoff. He’s got the same pictures, history, contact email, timeline, and even a complicated slideshow—everything that would make a visitor to the site believe they were at the actual site. But if you look extra closely, you can see Wheeler’s followed Malone’s lead and included on each page the small white water tower with a five in the middle. And his final addition? A mock write-up explaining how the Chaos Club tricked the student body into producing the now-viral massive erection picture.

“But do you fully appreciate the finer points I added? I mean, come on, if this doesn’t piss off the Chaos Club, nothing will.”

He’s right about that. Included is:

1. A paragraph in the bio bragging that the club funds its pranks through fencing stolen items.

2. Pictures shot through bedroom windows of people in various stages of undress.

3. A photoshopped picture of Stranko in his underwear cavorting in the woods in the moonlight.

4. A video of a guy in a hockey mask with a voice distorter, antagonizing the Asheville cops and school administrators, ending his rant with, “The Chaos Club is unstoppable, bitches.”

Like I said, it’s awesome, if not highly disturbing.

“Where did you learn how to do all this?” Ellie asks Wheeler.

“H8box. It’s like the best teacher in the world. You can learn anything there.”

“Who’s the guy in the mask?” Malone asks.

“A H8box friend. He lives in St. Louis, so no one can ever link this to him.”

“And the stalking pictures?”

“Lifted from other sites. Do you like the one with Stranko?”

“I’ve got to give you credit on that one,” Malone says. “Great photoshopping. You should work for the CIA.”

“Yeah, he’s going to freak,” Adleta says. “The cops will probably show up.”

“Don’t tease me, dude,” Wheeler says. “Stranko getting braced by the cops is like my greatest fantasy. But I didn’t even show you the best part yet—pick a search engine, any search engine, and type in Chaos Club.”

On my phone, I start with the big search engines first like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, before moving on to lesser-known ones like DuckDuckGo and Dogpile. On each, Wheeler’s Chaos Club site is the top return.

“How did you do that?” Malone says.

“Trade secret,” Wheeler says. “So say it, everyone, I’m a…”

“Genius, Wheeler,” we all say. “You’re a genius.”

“Now just imagine what you could do if you tried in school,” Malone adds.

“Okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

As the remaining students trickle in and find a seat, Mrs. B taps the microphone and waits for quiet before starting.

“I hope all of you have had a good start to homecoming week. A special thanks to StuGo for decorating the halls.”

When we all entered the building today, the halls were filled with balloons, streamers, and posters. They barely survived the morning, and by the end of lunch, all of it was down. Now the hall floors resemble Times Square after New Year’s Eve.

“And speaking of StuGo and decorations, I can’t wait to see what they do with the gym for the dance this Saturday. I hope to see everyone there.”

If Mrs. B’s truly hoping for my attendance, she’s going to be disappointed. There’s zero chance of me asking anyone to the dance. One rejection a semester is my limit, thank you very much.

“Now,” Mrs. B says, “I’m sure most of you have noticed that our beloved Zippy the Eagle statue has been taken away for a makeover. I don’t know about you, but I will miss seeing him out there each morning. The good news is that this year marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of this school district. An end-of-the-year celebration marking this occasion is in the planning stages, and I’m happy to say that is when Zippy will make his return. The board office is hoping for student input, so anyone interested in joining the planning committee should come see me.”

I look down at Ellie, who’s already waiting for me.

“I’m on it,” she says.

It’s Heist Rule #15:
Gather as much info as you can.

Mrs. B thanks us, tells us to keep working hard, then hands the mic to Stranko, who swaggers his way to the front of the stage.

“I’m going to keep this short,” Stranko says. “I’ve brought Officer Hale here so you understand just how serious we are about this topic. At the beginning of the year, we made the rules clear to you, but recent actions have necessitated changes. I’m specifically referring to last week’s photo incident.”

Snickering fills the auditorium.

“Quiet!” Stranko barks. “Some of you may find what happened funny, but trust me, we will find the perpetrators. And when we do, they will be severely punished. Severely. Punished.”

Stranko punctuates the air with a finger, and Hale does the same. Monkey see, monkey do.

“So first,” Stranko says, “anyone caught vandalizing the school or disrupting school activities will face expulsion. Also, anyone with knowledge of vandalism, even if they didn’t take part, will be punished as well.”

Groans fill the theater.

“Also, in the past, we’ve been lax about students using the sporting fields whenever they wanted. But as of today, the fields are off-limits once school practices or games are over.”

More groans.

“And finally, any student caught on school grounds after eight o’clock who isn’t a part of a school function or activity will face suspension. This is a zero-tolerance policy. We are not fooling around.”

Behind Stranko, Mrs. B stands quietly. You figure Stranko had to be the one who strong-armed her into this new policy. Because can you say overkill?

“That’s all for now,” Stranko says. “We’ll be emailing this information to your parents this evening, and—”

Before I know what’s happening, Wheeler’s standing on his seat, his hand high.

“Excuse me, Vice Principal Stranko?”

The entire auditorium turns our way. Malone tries to pull Wheeler down, but he shakes her off.

“What?” Stranko snaps.

Wheeler says, “I think I speak for everyone here when I say how appalled I was by this prank. When I heard on the news how much money the school spent for that pornographic photo, I went from being limp on my couch to standing erect. I was stiff with embarrassment for the entire town. Once those delinquents in the Chaos Club are caught, I hope you’re extremely hard-on them.”

Wheeler smiles, looking as sweet and innocent as a child…a child who just threw out three boner euphemisms in ten seconds. Stranko’s chest heaves like he wants to launch himself across forty rows at Wheeler. Instead, in a moment of what must be Herculean restraint, Stranko says a steely, “Oh, they will be punished severely. You can guarantee that.”

We’re all released a few minutes later, and as we head up the aisle, Malone says to Wheeler, “Not smart. Why not just come out and confess that we did it?”

“Oh, come on. What’s he going to do? Expel us?” Wheeler says.

“Uh, yeah, that’s what he just said,” Adleta says.

“He did?” Wheeler says. “I must not have been paying attention.”

Ellie says to me, “Well, we wanted to write our names in the universe’s wet cement.”

“It’ll be fine,” I say.

“Exactly. We knew we’d have to take risks to destroy the Chaos Club. We’re not going to let some silly rules stand in our way.”

As the five of us stand in the lobby, Malone’s nemesis, Libby Heckman, and one of her hangers-on, Sara Yu, emerge from the auditorium. Libby’s carrying a half-finished charcoal drawing that, in all honesty, looks exactly like her, almost as if it’s a photograph. As they pass, Libby says to Sara, “Don’t you wish some people would just do everyone a favor and die?”

“Especially certain people,” Sara says.

Both girls start laughing their bitchy heads off, and something inside me just sort of snaps.

I say to the two of them, “And if some people aren’t careful, someone might falsify evidence proving they’re in the Chaos Club and give it to Stranko.”

Both girls straighten like they’ve just straddled an electric fence. They turn the corner, and Libby does a quick glance over her should at me. Her eyes are full of fear. Then the girls are out of sight, hopefully running for their lives. Wheeler, Adleta, and I start laughing, but Malone wheels around on me.

“Don’t do that again,” she says.

“Huh?” I say.

“I don’t need you or anyone else fighting my battles for me, Max. It makes me look weak, which is what they want. It’s embarrassing.”

“I wasn’t fighting your battles for you. It just sort of came out.”

“Well, try to keep yourself in check. You’re only making it worse. I’ve got it taken care of.”

“Taken care of how?”

Suddenly, Malone’s anger is gone, and she’s rising in front of me, growing somehow larger, her eyes full of fire.

“Well, there’s a contest going on, isn’t there?”

And when I hear the laugh that she and Ellie share as they walk away, I’m the one feeling fear. But for Libby.

“You guys want to do something?” Wheeler says.

“Like what?” I say.

“I don’t know, something. Does it matter?”

“I would but I can’t,” Adleta says. “Lacrosse conditioning and all.”

“You should just quit,” Wheeler says.

“Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”

Adleta leaves us, and I tell Wheeler I know where we can go, thus independently putting an end to Mom’s
I don’t want you hanging out with that Wheeler boy
rule. We’re halfway down the hall on our way to freedom when we pass Mr. Watson. He’s like a rock in the middle of a stream, standing still as a river of students floods past him.

“Ah, Mr. Cobb,” he says. “Can I talk with you a moment? Relax, you’re not in trouble.”

Wheeler tells me he’ll wait, and Watson and I step into the doorway of his classroom.

“I just wanted to tell you I’ve noticed a marked difference in you these last couple weeks,” Watson says. “And I mean that in a good way.”

“Um, thanks,” I say.

“There’s no need to thank me. I’ve just noticed how you’ve been carrying yourself differently of late, like you’ve grown up somehow. I see it in class, how you participate more. And in the halls, where you’re talking with more people. I’m not sure what happened to you, but I think it’s a nice change.”

“I didn’t think teachers paid attention to things like that.”

“Let me fill you in on a little secret, Max. Teachers are a lot more aware of things than we let on. Seeing you these last couple of weeks, I’m proud of you.”

I can’t help but smile.

“That’s all I wanted,” Watson says. “Go have fun with your friend.”

• • •

Five minutes later, Wheeler and I are pulling out of the parking lot in his cruddy Chevy Concours, a car mostly held together by duct tape and gum. But at least Wheeler has his own car and isn’t stuck having to borrow the mom mobile. Wheeler hauls ass off school property like we’re trying to outrun a nuclear blast, the music pumping so loudly through blown speakers my ears are close to bleeding. Within fifteen minutes, we’re outside of town, pulling off the road onto a bumpy trail that marks the start of Boyd’s property. I have Wheeler park in front of a trailer with a splintered front door and windows covered in thick plastic sheets.

“Your uncle lives in that shit hole?”

“He’s not my real uncle, but no, he mostly lives in the barn.”

We get out of the car and head down the dirt path leading away from the trailer. Weeds grow high on both sides of us, and the faded red barn looms up ahead. The only bright spot, literally, is a fifteen-foot-high metal sculpture resembling a shiny, upside-down pyramid with mannequin arms and legs sticking out in all directions.

“So he’s a serial killer?” Wheeler asks.

“If he is, we’re safe.”

Boyd’s barn is a junkman’s dream. You name it, it’s somewhere inside. Old kitchen appliances, rusted tools, torn furniture, computer keyboards and towers, black-and-white TVs, and rusty farming equipment fill makeshift aisles. The floor is concrete but barely recognizable for all the rope, pieces of sheet metal, and lawn equipment covering it. Everything in the barn goes to his sculptures, which, despite how he lives, sell for outrageous amounts of money. Whatever he does with the money, he apparently doesn’t spend it creating a comfortable living environment.

Music blasts from the back, where Boyd stands with a beer in his hand, staring at Asheville High’s very own Zippy the Eagle statue. Here, away from home, Zippy looks smaller, even fragile, despite standing six feet high with a wingspan covering ten feet. Boyd’s so fully focused on the statue that he doesn’t notice us until we’re only a few feet away. When he finally sees us, he comes over offering a hand.

“So, wait, you’re the one doing the restoration?”

“Yeah, cool, right?” he says. “Mrs. B helped me set it up.”

“Is this what she was talking about when you came to get me at the school that night?”