by Kurt Dinan
The next fifteen minutes are as un-date-like as they can possibly be. Ellie takes notes on files, commenting when she finds something interesting, while I make lame jokes and try to look at her while keeping my head pointed toward my laptop screen. Question: Is it possible to pull an eye muscle?
“Oh, here’s something,” Ellie says. “Look at this.”
I scoot close enough that our hips touch.
The file Ellie’s talking about is named AHS PR Plan, and it’s a bullet-pointed list on how to raise the school’s image in the community and beyond. Most of it’s standard bureaucratic nonsense, like increase the number of National Merit Finalists, offer more AP courses, a Celebrate Asheville festival, etc. But it’s the final item that stands out.
“Did you see this one about the aerial shot of the student body coming up?” I ask. “Have you heard about that?”
“No, why would they want that?”
“Maybe for the website? Or yearbook? I’m not sure.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know, but we’re looking for opportunities, right?”
After another ten minutes of eye straining and file reading, first one, then two and three cars trickle into the parking lot.
“The game must be over,” Ellie says. “Maybe we should get out of here.”
We pack up our stuff and leave the picnic bench. On the way to the car, I text the other three about the aerial photo, figuring maybe one of them can figure out an angle.
“So where to, Mongoose?” Ellie says.
“You’re the driver, Puma.”
“Well, we can either do more research or we can quit for the night.”
The last thing I want to do is more reading, but Not Max certainly doesn’t want to go home. Who knows when I might be out with Ellie again? If there is an again.
“Is there a third option?”
Ellie bites her lower lip, thinking it over.
“Do you trust me?”
Like she needs to ask.
• • •
Soon we’re heading back through town, passing the bright lights of the emptying football stadium. Eventually the subdivisions give way to cornfields and—God forbid—actual nature. I have no idea where we’re going and don’t care. Ellie’s singing along to the Grease soundtrack, and I join in, not embarrassed at all that I know all the words due to Mom’s addiction to musicals. After ten minutes, Ellie slows and turns onto a small dirt road bordered on both sides by Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted signs.
“Um.”
“Relax, Mongoose. The coast is clear.”
We follow the road and soon enter a forest I never knew existed. We weave our way up a large hill, the dirt road now nothing but a set of beaten-down tire tracks.
“You’re not taking me here to kill me, are you?”
“Don’t be silly,” Ellie says. “If I were going to kill you, I’d have poisoned your ice cream.”
She pulls into a ditch on the side of the road by a bullet-ridden sign now warning Trespassers Will Be Shot.
“Ignore that one too,” Ellie tells me, killing the engine. “Bullets can’t stop Puma and Mongoose tonight.”
I follow Ellie as she hikes up the hill through the trees. It’s so dark, I can barely make out her silhouette in front of me and have to trust in the crinkling leaves to keep up. If she is about to murder me, at least I won’t see it coming. Suddenly, the rustling stops, and Ellie puts her hand in mine. Warm electricity crackles up my arm. Her hand is cool but soft as she pulls me along.
“Close your eyes,” she says. “It’s just up ahead. No peeking.”
I do as I’m told, allowing Ellie to guide me for a dozen or so steps until the ground becomes softer.
“Okay, now you can look.”
I open my eyes and my mouth drops. We’re standing at the edge of a field at the bottom of a large hill. On top, where a full moon is rising, stands a twenty-foot platform with a massive radar dish pointing straight into the sky like a monstrous metal spiderweb. It’s something right out of a painting.
“Wanna race?” Ellie says.
Without waiting for my answer, she blazes away.
Now I understand where the name Puma came from.
Ellie’s freakishly fast, disappearing up the hill and into the night before I can get my legs moving. All I can do is follow the sound of her giggling as she sprints ahead of me, a wild animal unleashed. I do my best to keep up, but it’s useless. By the time I get to the top of the hill, sucking air like I’ve been underwater for two minutes, Ellie is leaning against the ladder, not even breathing hard.
“You should”—pant—“run track.”
“And let it interfere with my international spying gig? No way.”
“We’re not international yet.”
“Give it time, Mongoose. We’re going worldwide.”
Ellie starts up the ladder, and I follow slowly.
“The last time we climbed a ladder, it didn’t work out so well,” I say.
She smiles over her shoulder. “This time’ll be better. I promise.”
The metal is cold on my hands as I scale the platform and approach the radar dish. Ellie crouches at the top, waiting for me beside a mechanism made up of two massive cogs and a hand crank. The dish is inches over our heads. Ellie stands and her top half disappears through a cut-out space in the dish right above her. She works her hands up through the hole, then hoists herself onto the dish, which thrums in response.
“You coming?”
My shoulders are broader than Ellie’s, so I have a harder time squeezing through the space, but soon I’m standing on shaky legs beside her. Above us, the moon is blindingly white and so close that it looks like I can touch it. We stand enjoying the view and the silence. The sky seems impossibly large from here, and I feel smaller than I’ve ever felt.
“Isn’t it like we’re the only people alive?” she says.
“And at the highest point on the planet.”
“My dad says there used to be other dishes here too. One there,” she says, pointing, “and another there.”
“What was it all for?”
“To track satellites at first, then something with mapping the surface of the moon. Once the government sold the land, they tore down the other dishes. I guess they forgot about this one.”
“How did your dad find out about this place?”
“It belongs to someone in our church. He comes here when he needs to think.”
“And you?”
Ellie’s fingers tighten around mine.
“I come when I don’t want to think. When the Slaughterhouse-Five thing got really bad last year, I came here a lot. I was so angry at everyone—the people calling our house and hanging up, the kids at school saying I was a book burner—that I needed a place where I could just disappear.”
“Has it gotten better?” I ask.
“Better enough. I’ve just gotten used to it, I guess. I still want the Chaos Club to pay though. They made an already-bad situation even worse. Here,” she says, crouching down, “do this.”
Ellie begins crab walking backward to the edge of the dish. I don’t think about what I’m doing. I just follow her lead and am soon lying beside her, holding her hand, our heads on the lip of the dish, staring straight up into a thousand pinpricks of light.
“I feel like I could fall up,” I say.
“Or just disappear.”
“That’d be even better.”
Her voice is barely above a whisper. “So do you like it?”
“It’s awesome. Thanks for bringing me here.”
“I’m glad to share it,” she says. “I thought you could use something special. Whenever I feel lonely, this is where I come. It always makes me feel better.”
“When do you get lonely?”
&nb
sp; “Why does that surprise you? Of course I get lonely. And sad. And moody. I’m not always happy, Max. Who is?”
“Sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry. Everyone thinks they know how everyone else is, but they’re usually wrong. People see what they want to see. It makes everything easier. If they want to think of me as the sweet, happy church girl, that’s fine because I am that way too. It’s just not true all the time.”
Overhead, the flashing red lights of an airliner cross the sky. I should be cold, but Ellie’s hand in mine and her body beside me has me warm enough to stay here all night.
“What are you thinking about?” she says.
“Watson.”
“You’re here thinking about a sixty-year-old guy? You’re weird.”
I can’t help it. Out here in nature, my mind has turned to the Write Your Name in the Wet Cement of the Universe banner over Watson’s boards and Just Max/Not Max. Normally, I wouldn’t tell anyone about that, but Ellie’s not just anyone.
“Oh, Just Max isn’t bad,” she says. “He’s nice and sweet and smart. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the Not Max side of you too. We wouldn’t all be leading these dangerous lives if he wasn’t around. Just try not to overthink this. Enjoy being here in this space.”
It isn’t long before a special sort of silence descends. It’s a warm, comfortable quiet that puts me completely at ease. I’m not thinking about the Chaos Club, who I am, or anything. I’m just in the moment and it’s perfect.
“Can we come here again sometime?” I say.
“I’ll have to check my schedule. I’m pretty busy, you know.”
“What with skipping youth group and all.”
“And my job as a phone thief.”
“And eventual toppler of governments.”
We’re looking at each other as we say all this, and I know this is when I’m supposed to kiss her. I’ve also seen enough movies to know not to ask the girl if I can kiss her. The cool guys never do. Girls like confidence, and right now, Not Max is overflowing with confidence.
I lean in and begin to close my eyes…
Oh shit.
Ellie’s eyes aren’t closing. In fact, they’re growing wide with horror the closer I come.
Shit, shit, shit.
Now Ellie’s on her feet and backing away from me, looking mortified.
“I’m sorry, Max,” she says. “I mean, I like you and all but…”
“No, it’s okay,” I say, hoping I fall over the edge and die so I don’t have to think of this moment ever again. “I just thought, uh, you know…”
“It’s just we’re friends, and I don’t want that to mess that up. And right now I don’t want anything that could distract us from our Chaos Club plans. Is that okay? I’m sorry if I made you think this was anything more than just friends. Good friends, Max.”
Well, if we’re good friends, then maybe you can douse me in gasoline and light me on fire so I don’t have to hide in shame the next time I see you.
“I can live with just being friends,” I say, one hundred percent lying. “We’d better get back. It’s probably close to ten.”
• • •
On the return trip to town, Ellie has on the local college station down low, a slow instrumental song all echo-y that would make everything seem like a dream if this wasn’t all nightmare-y. It takes all my self-control not to throw my body from the speeding car.
At quarter past ten, Ellie pulls into my driveway, and I open the door before she’s even in park.
“Max, I’m sorry,” she says before I can escape. “You’re really a sweet guy.”
No, Just Max is a sweet guy. And sweet guys don’t get girls like Ellie Wick.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I’ll see you Monday.”
Unless I can find an Ebola patient to lick.
Inside the house, I head upstairs, where Mom and Dad are in their room, the lights still on. I try to creep by without being heard, but Mom has bionic ears and calls for me to come in. She’s in bed reading, and Dad’s in the bathroom, probably on the iPad, a habit that drives Mom crazy.
“Get your work finished?” she says.
“Yeah, sorry I’m late,” I say. “We stopped at Becca Yancey’s for her notes.”
“I’m glad it worked out. She seems nice.”
“Ellie? Yeah, she’s great.” Great at tearing my heart out of my chest and tossing it into a wood chipper. “I’m going to crash,” I say. “It’s been a long week.”
“Okay, sweetie,” Mom says. “Good night.”
I turn, ready to escape into the safety of my room, when she says, “Oh and, Max?”
“Yeah?”
“Research project my ear,” she says. “You owe us an extra day for that. Get some sleep.”
Awesome. First humiliation, now time added on to my sentence. What’s next? A paper cut on my eyeball?
I throw myself onto my bed and stare lifelessly at the knobs on my dresser, wondering how I could’ve been so stupid. That’s what I get for following the lead of fictional characters in unrealistic movies. I’m not sure for how long I stay zombified, but at some point I fall asleep, and I don’t move from that position until my phone buzzes at 2:37 a.m. with a text from Wheeler.
Have epic prank idea for the aerial photo. Details on the way.
Chapter 10
Wheeler calls it Operation Schlonger, and Ellie assigns us code names matching our jobs:
She’s Right-Hand.
Adleta is H2O.
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 s
houlder 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.”
