“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.
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.