You have to love a girl who considers chest-straddling a punishment.
You have to love it even more if that girl is Ellie Wick and you’ve liked her since seventh grade. But even if I’m all for Ellie staying on top of me all night, we have a ten o’clock date to keep, so I enjoy the contact for a few more seconds before saying, “Okay, I’m here because of the Chaos Club.”
Inside, my hormones give me the finger.
“See how easy that was?” she says, standing up. “Come on, we don’t want to be late. We’re about to become a part of history.”
As we start across the soccer field for the gate, I look at Ellie from the corner of my eye. With her blond hair and big green eyes, Ellie’s as wholesome looking now in eleventh grade as she was back in middle school. Well, by now I don’t mean now-now because Ellie certainly doesn’t look wholesome at the moment. In fact, she looks lava hot. Black spandex tends to have that effect on me.
“So where was your invitation?” she says. “Mine was under my windshield wiper after school.”
“Taped inside my locker,” I say. I don’t tell her that even with my name on the envelope, I double-checked the locker number to make sure it was actually mine.
“They really can get anywhere,” Ellie says. “It’s like they’re ghosts. It’s so awesome.”
Awesome is the right word for the Chaos Club.
In just the last two years, the four-decade-old organization has: 1. Stacked tires all the way up the flagpole.
2. Filled a guidance counselor’s entire office, floor to ceiling, with water balloons.
3. Hacked the district’s website so anyone visiting was redirected to BarnYardLove.com.
4. Punished the school board for banning Slaughterhouse-Five by projecting pictures of them with Hitler moustaches on the scoreboard during the homecoming game.
There’s even a website dedicated to documenting their pranks.
But making the Chaos Club even more awesome?
Its membership is anonymous.
Its movements are untraceable.
And no one’s ever been caught.
So the big question is, why in the world was I, Max Cobb—Mr. 2.5 GPA, Mr. No Social Life, Mr. I’m So Lame the Career Interest Survey Recommended “Worker” As My Future Profession—chosen to receive an envelope with this message inside: 10:00 tonight at the water tower.
Tell no one.
CHAOS CLUB
I sure as hell don’t know.
But I do know that as we cross the dark parking lot, Not Max is fifty yards from finding out.
Chapter 2
Heist Rule #4: Be suspicious.
Like, someone on your crew acting out of the ordinary? Be suspicious.
Museum security system switches off without any complications? Be suspicious.
Breaking into the mansion goes too smoothly? Be suspicious.
Because when the characters in heist films don’t follow Rule #4, things go to hell and people go to jail.
But just one look at who’s waiting for us at the water tower and I know I don’t have to worry about Rule #4. Because there’s no way these three people are in the Chaos Club.
“Dude!” Dave Wheeler shouts across the parking lot at us. “You too? Excellent!”
“Isn’t he on house arrest?” Ellie whispers.
“I think the charges were dropped. Supposedly, the surveillance video disappeared.”
“He’s a friend of yours, right?”
“Sort of.”
Which is probably the only safe way to be friends with Dave Wheeler.
Back in junior high, Wheeler and I used to hang out, but Mom quickly (and correctly) pegged Wheeler as a “bad influence” and put an end to our outside-of-school friendship. Now the only time we really talk is in fourth period, Weird Science, where Wheeler’s my assigned “nature buddy,” as Mrs. Hansen calls it. Whenever the class goes outside, which is three times a week, Wheeler and I partner up on assignments, meaning I search for the insects or write a nature poem while Wheeler pretends to dry hump trees. Normally, I’d be pissed at such unequal work distribution, but since Wheeler is determined to graduate dead last in our class, the arrangement is probably for the best.
We meet Wheeler mid–parking lot, his arms out like Ellie and I have just returned from a decade in a North Korean prison camp. He has a tangle of hair that makes him look like he lives in the woods behind the school and is wearing a white Superchunk T-shirt with “I broke my back in a trust fall” printed across the front.
“Holy shit, Ellie Wick,” he says. “You’re about the last person I’d expect to see here.”
“You’ll find I’m full of surprises, Dave.”
“Yeah, like that outfit. If that’s what’s currently fashionable for churchgoing girls, I may have to start attending. Do your parents know you’re in public in those clothes?”
Ellie puts a finger to her lips and says, “What the Reverend and Mrs. Wick don’t know can’t hurt them.”
Wheeler claps once and points a hard finger at Ellie.
“Now that’s what I like to hear! And you,” he says, turning to me. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d gotten an invite?”