Don’t Get Caught

by Kurt Dinan

  “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 practi
cally 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.

  Chapter 11

  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?

  “Th
at’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.