by Kurt Dinan
“Great idea, Max,” Ellie says. “You come with me.”
• • •
When we’re around the corner of the fence and away from the others, Ellie takes out her phone and starts texting. I try to see what she’s typing, but her fingers are too fast.
“My parents,” she says. “They think I’m at the library studying.”
“But the library closes at nine on Thursdays.”
“That’s not something Mom and Dad would think about. They trust me too much.”
“It sounds like maybe they shouldn’t.”
“You’re definitely right about that.”
On the far side of the water tower, the woods are just an arm’s reach away and block out any moonlight. It’s chilly for September, and I regret not bringing a jacket.
Ellie moves in close and squeezes my arm, saying, “I’m glad you’re here.”
My mouth is a balled-up gym sock.
“Why’s that?”
“Because knowing other people makes it more fun, you know?”
Make that two balled-up gym socks.
We keep walking the perimeter of the fence, pointlessly looking around for clues. From the other side of the water tower, I hear Malone tell someone to shut up. Dollars to doughnuts it’s Wheeler.
“I thought it was crummy what Tami said in class today,” Ellie says. “I felt bad for you.”
“It wasn’t a big deal.”
“No, no one deserves that. Especially you.”
Each Thursday in philosophy, we have Big Questions of Existence, when Watson divides the class into two sides to debate whatever topic he chooses to torture us with.
Today’s question: Is every life valuable?
The topic was handled with the sensitivity and respect you’d expect from a class of teenagers. Admittedly, I didn’t pay too much attention. Instead, I was busy completing an extra credit assignment due in English second period. Normally, I’m not a big extra credit guy, but my grade sort of demanded it. Besides, it’s not like I could turn down this assignment: Concoct a Scheme in Which Gatsby and Daisy Live Happily Ever After. My idea involved Gatsby killing that bitchy tennis player Jordan Baker, then framing Daisy’s asshole husband, Tom, for the murder. It’s this type of thinking that goes a long way toward explaining my empty social calendar.
So while I was busy arranging for Tom Buchanan to spend the rest of his life locked up in prison, Watson called on Tami Cantor.
(Quick—ever known a nice person named Tami? Exactly.)
Tami, doing her best to live up to the reputation of every Tami in recorded history, said, “Look, some people just aren’t as important as others. Not everyone can be somebody. There have to be nobodies too. I’m not being mean. It’s just statistics.”
In the commotion that ensued, Tami decided to raise her position on the Bitch Power Rankings by saying, “Look, I don’t mean nobody in a bad sense. Nobodies can be good people. They’re just not very important. Like Dan over there. He’s nice and people like him, but he’s not special or anything.”
I looked up from my notebook, wondering just who Tami was talking about because there isn’t any Dan in our class.
Then I saw where she was pointing.
And everyone was looking my way too.
This is my life.
“My name’s Max,” I said.
Tami did a perfectly executed whatever shrug that made my face burn.
“We’ve been in classes together since kindergarten,” I said.
Tami huffed and said, “Well, that just sort of proves my point, doesn’t it? And don’t get so defensive. I’m not saying you’re a bad person. You’re just kind of there. You’re just Max, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Here’s the ethical question Watson should offer next week: Is it technically murder if you kill someone without a soul?
The dismissal bell rang seconds later, but Tami’s comment about me being a nobody, being Just Max, pinballed around my brain all day.
Now, fifteen hours later, here I am.
“Wait, you don’t believe Tami, do you?” Ellie says as we approach the fence gate.
“Uh, no, of course not.”
“Look, she’s the nobody, Max. The only reason people like her say things like that is because—” Ellie stops and points. “What’s that?”
Stuffed in one of the diamond-shaped holes in the fence gate is an envelope. Ellie almost comes out of her shoes to get it.
The front reads: Initiates.
“Should we call everyone?” Ellie says.
“No, you found it—you get the honors.”
Ellie tears into the envelope like she’s expecting a Wonka Golden Ticket inside.
Out comes another black Chaos Club card, and Ellie reads the back before turning it my way.
Climb up.
Chapter 3
When we get back to the others, Wheeler’s throwing rocks at a streetlight, Malone’s on the curb, comatose with her music, and Adleta’s off by himself, probably calculating long division in his head. So much for everyone looking for clues.
“We found something,” Ellie says. “Come see.”
As the card makes the rounds, Ellie bounces hard on her toes. Malone’s the last to read the instruction to climb. Then she looks up at the dark tower.
“I don’t like it,” she says.
“Why not?” Ellie says.
“Because now it definitely screams setup.”
“You’re just being paranoid,” Wheeler says.
“It’s called being smart,” Malone says. “Maybe try it sometime.”
Wheeler opens his mouth to say something, but his bruised ass keeps him quiet.
“They could be up there right now listening to us, waiting to see what we’ll do,” Ellie says. “We could be on a time limit.”
“Yeah, or someone could be up there waiting to throw us over the railing,” Malone says.
“Why did you even show up then?” Wheeler says. “No, don’t get all pissed again. I’m serious. If you’re just here to hate, why come at all?”
Instead of clobbering Wheeler into next week, Malone just makes a frustrated face and shakes her head.
“I’ll tell you what,” Ellie says. “Why don’t we take a vote?”
“Because this isn’t a majority-rules deal,” Malone says. “If someone doesn’t want to go up, they don’t have to.”
“Right, but we were invited here as a group, so we should act as one. Let’s just see what everyone else thinks. I’m for climbing, and I’m guessing you’re against it, Kate, so that leaves you three. So what do you think, Tim? Should we go up?”
Adleta shrugs and says nothing. And to think adults complain that kids today have no social skills.
“I’ll put you down as undecided,” Ellie says. “What about you, Dave?”
“Hell yeah I’m in,” Wheeler says. “Be a part of the club that once suspended Stranko’s car over the theater stage? I’m climbing that tower even if they want me doing it naked.”
“Thanks for that visual,” Ellie says. “Max?”
Great, as the tiebreaker, I have to choose between curiosity and skepticism. Fearlessness and logic. Not Max and Just Max. Not to mention, between Ellie and Malone, which could be the difference between being kissed or being punched.
“Well,” I say, stalling, “I am little suspicious, to be honest. Like Malone said, it’s all just very weird.”
Ellie goes eerily still.
“But,” I add quickly, “we weren’t chosen at random to be here. And the envelope does say Initiates. So there’s that.”
All four just stare at me.
You can hear crickets, and I mean literal crickets.
“Dude, what’s your point?” Wheeler says.
“Yeah,” Malone say
s, “shit or get off the pot.”
And somewhere in the far back corner of my head, I hear Tami Cantor calling me a nobody and the rest of the class laughing with her.
“Let’s go up,” I say. “Ellie’s right—this could be our chance to be a part of Asheville history. Maybe there’s another note.”
Ellie looks happy enough to kiss me.
Malone, not so much.
“Whatever,” she says, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Are you coming?” Wheeler asks her.
Malone looks up at the tower and taps her finger against her leg. Then her shoulders drop, and she reaches into her pocket.
“Okay, but I’m recording this just in case.”
• • •
Ellie leads everyone back to the gate where we found the envelope. She gives the gate a shake, and surprisingly, it opens.
“Creepy,” she says.
With six massive legs reaching into the night sky, the water tower is like an enormous metal insect preparing to stomp the high school. A ladder runs up the closest leg, and a safety gate extends twenty feet up the ladder’s base to prevent anyone—read: teenagers—from climbing. The safety gate isn’t locked either.
“So who wants to go first?” Ellie says.
Adleta grunts and starts up, a teenage King Kong climbing the Empire State Building.
Wheeler turns to Malone and says, “Ladies first.”
“Like I’m going to let you stare at my butt the whole way up.”
“You can’t blame a guy for trying.”
Wheeler begins climbing, and Malone follows. Ellie puts her foot on the first rung and looks back at me.
“You look like you’re going to throw up.”
“I’m not a fan of heights,” I say.
“Oh, don’t be silly. You’ll be fine.”
I may not be a fan of heights, but I especially hate ladders. I always think the rung I’m on is going to break away and send me plummeting. Climbing this ladder in the dark, the rungs sticky for some reason, only worries me more. But despite that, I’d be lying if I didn’t say how awesome this was. The higher I climb, the harder my heart pounds from the adrenaline. I feel like a jewel thief scaling a skyscraper at midnight on his way to steal the Hope Diamond. Then I make the mistake of looking up at Ellie in her tight pants climbing just ahead of me. My foot misses the next rung, and I awkwardly stumble. I have to wrap both arms around the ladder to keep from falling. Just what I want on my death certificate: death by yoga pants.
Up ahead in the darkness, Wheeler goes into a mock newscaster’s voice, announcing, “Five Asheville High School students fell to their deaths last evening when—”
“Shut up,” Malone says.
The climb takes only two minutes but feels like an hour by the time the ladder ends at the base of a metal grating no more than four feet wide. If a strong wind blows, a waist-high railing is all that’s there to keep me from hurtling to my death.
“Wow, this is higher than I thought,” Ellie says, looking out over the lights of the town.
Malone, recording everything with her phone, says, “I wish I had my climbing gear. I’d love to rappel off this.”
“What was it Jesus said, Ellie?” Wheeler says. “‘I think I can see my house from here’?”
And me, I want down. And not just down, but to roll in the grass and kiss the earth. Then, as I’m about to wuss out, Ellie’s hand is in mine and she’s leading me along the platform.
“Come on,” she says. “Let’s look for the next clue.”
Her hand is soft and warm, and if the platform gives away right now, I can die a happy man.
“You get to open the next envelope if there is one,” Ellie says. “Or maybe it’ll be like in the movies, and there’ll be a cell phone that rings and—”
My foot kicks something metal, sending it clanking and skittering across the platform before dropping into the night.
From the other side of the tower, Malone says, “What was that?”
I look down at my feet and see four more of what I’ve just booted—spray paint cans.
And in one horrifying moment, I realize why the rungs were sticky when we climbed.
Red paint covers my hands.
Oh shit.
I lean back for a better view of the water tower to see what’s been spray-painted there. The wet paint trails down from certain letters like red teardrops.
Double shit.
Heist Rule #5: When in doubt, run.
But we don’t get that chance.
Suddenly, the water tower lights blaze to life, illuminating the newly painted message for the entire town to see.
Assville High School—
Home of the Golden Showers
Both Malone and Wheeler say, “Shit.”
Ellie says, “Wow.”
Adleta says nothing.
And then a voice booms from a bullhorn below, where red-and-blue lights flash in the parking lot.
“This is the police. Come down immediately.”
So much for Don’t get caught.
Chapter 4
Officer Hale identifying himself as the police is a misnomer—sort of like the adult who rolls out the balls for us in gym class calling himself a teacher. It’s accurate only in the most technical sense. Hale’s the school security officer we’re supposed to go to if we’re being bullied or if we want to rat on someone. But he can’t arrest anyone. And he doesn’t have a gun. Which are pretty much the only reasons to become a cop in the first place, right?
Instead of driving us to the police station, Hale parks in front of the school administration office and death marches us into a conference room, where he orders us to give up our home phone numbers.
“And don’t lie to me,” he says. “Because I’ll know.”
So like any budding criminal, I lie. My parents are already going to kill me, so I might as well postpone the execution as long as possible.
Within twenty minutes, the conference room is filled with parents, each of them standing behind their delinquent children. I’m the only unclaimed kid, but Ellie’s parents stand so close to me, I’m hoping they’ll be mistaken for my parental representatives.
From across the table, Wheeler’s mom gives me a small, sad wave. Dave’s the bane of her existence. Her other two sons are fine, upstanding young men who earned full rides to college. Dave, not so much. I once asked him about this, and in a moment of actual maturity, he said, “Who wants to be like everyone else? Sometimes you have to break out and do it your own way.”
Yeah, and sometimes people go too far in trying to do that, Just Max scolds me as we sit awaiting our execution.
Minus a couple weird noises Wheeler seems to be making with his mouth, the room is eerily quiet, so it’s a relief when Mrs. B finally arrives. Mrs. B, or Mrs. Barber in the real world, has been the principal here for twice as long as I’ve been alive. As far as adult authority figures go, Mrs. B’s one of the most tolerable, and I’d be fine suffering through this embarrassment if she were the only administrator here, but no, Stranko’s with her.
My parents graduated from this very high school with Stranko twenty years ago, and all you need to know is that Stranko was voted Most Likely to Be Accused of Police Brutality. Cop, vice principal—there’s really no difference. Supposedly, Stranko’s been waiting for Mrs. B to retire so he can take over, but every year she returns, and you just know it makes Stranko want to scream his throat bloody. To make matters worse, Stranko hates me. It turns out he takes it personally if you quit his summer lacrosse camp two days in. And yes, you read that right—in my search for some purpose, I tried lacrosse. Feel free to laugh hysterically. Everyone else sure did.
“Well, good evening, everyone,” Mrs. B says. “This certainly isn’t the preferable way to meet, is it? Kids, whatever happen
ed to causing trouble during school hours? It’s way past my bedtime.”
Everyone laughs politely. Minus Stranko.
“To keep this orderly, I’d like to hear from Officer Hale first, then the students, before opening the floor to everyone else,” Mrs. B says. “Officer Hale, will you get us started?”
“Yes, ma’am. At approximately ten o’clock, I received an anonymous text reporting vandalism occurring at the water tower located on school grounds. Living close by, I drove over immediately. I quickly discerned something was amiss because the tower lights were off. When I parked, I could hear voices from up top. I ordered them down, and here we are, presently.”
“Wait,” Wheeler says, his head cocked, “you do know you’re not a real cop, right?”
Mama Wheeler rolls her eyes in an exhausted See what I have to live with? way before smacking Wheeler’s head.
“Thank you, Officer Hale,” Mrs. B says. “And for the defense?”
Ellie looks shamefaced at the table.
Malone’s face scrunches up like she doesn’t know how to start.
Wheeler picks at his fingernail with a paper clip.
And Adleta looks like he’s just been wheeled out from electroshock therapy.
“Well?” Mrs. B says. “Anyone?”
“We were set up,” I blurt.
I glance around the table, just as surprised by my outburst as everyone else. I slouch in my seat but fail to disappear completely.
“Would you care to elaborate?” Mrs. B asks.
Malone gives me a nod of encouragement, and when my silent prayer for a sudden embolism isn’t answered, I open my mouth. What follows is a ramble about the Chaos Club notes we received and the instructions to climb the tower. It’s sloppy storytelling at best, but the longer I talk, the easier the words come. I finish with, “Right after we saw the golden shower thing, Hale showed up. And that’s it.”
Mrs. B looks like she believes me. But Stranko’s glaring at me with such intensity I have to look away.
“Where are your parents?” he says to me, then turns to Hale. “Did you call his parents?”
“He said they were out of town. I left a message with his guardian.”
“Out of town?” he says to me.
