? ? ?
The final and weirdest thing to happen that week occurs on Thursday evening while I’m dangerously flirting with an aneurism by studying precalc. My phone pings announcing a text, and I have to read the message twice to understand what I’m being asked to do.
Ellie: Tremblay’s Pet Shop. Buy 200 goldfish. Meet at the window outside Room 103 in an hour.
Me: ?
Ellie: Hurry, Mongoose.
What choice do I have? It’s Heist Rule #16: Be ready when your team needs you.
I use the excuse that I forgot I needed a copy of Macbeth for English tomorrow to escape the house. Tremblay’s Pet Shop is in Freehold, one town over, and it takes me twenty minutes to get there. When I arrive, it’s 8:55 p.m., and a guy so old looking I worry he might turn to dust right in front of me is locking up.
“I need two hundred goldfish,” I say.
He lets out a sigh that, considering his age, he probably shouldn’t. When you’re close to 150 years old, you should conserve as many of your remaining breaths as possible.
“Piranhas?” he says.
“No, goldfish.”
“I mean, do you have a piranha? Is that what the fish are for?”
“Oh, duh, yeah. Exactly.”
It takes Tremblay a good ten minutes to scoop out two hundred goldfish from the massive tank in back. Honestly, it’s more like two hundred give or take twenty. I seriously doubt whatever Ellie needs the goldfish for is dependent on exact numbers. The total comes to just under forty dollars, and I leave the store hauling a box with ten clear plastic bags filled with seriously freaked-out goldfish.
On the way back to school, I use Stranko’s school map on my phone to find out exactly who Room 103 belongs to. It’s Mrs. Roberts’s art room, located in the back of the building. Twenty minutes later, I’m giving myself a hernia as I lug what’s essentially a box of water to the correct window. Already there, waiting in the darkness and holding their own boxes, are Wheeler and Adleta.
“Goldfish too?” Adleta asks.
“From Tremblay’s,” I say.
“I had to go to the PetSmart in Athens.”
“I was all the way over in Bakersfield,” Wheeler says. “We should demand gas money.”
“No sign of Ellie?” I ask.
“Ellie?” Adleta says. “My text was from Kate.”
“I got one from both of them, telling me to move my ass,” Wheeler says.
The window blind suddenly goes up, and standing there are both Ellie and Malone, dressed all in black and wearing ski caps. Malone opens the window, and Ellie leans out, saying, “Come on, there’s not a lot of time.”
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“I’ll explain later. Hurry.”
We begin handing bag after bag of goldfish through the window to Ellie and Malone. With each bag we pass through, the girls disappear into the dark art room. I can’t see where they’re going, but I can hear water running inside. After I hand Ellie my final bag, she starts to close the window.
“Wait a minute,” I say. “At least give us some clue.”
Ellie and Kate break into grins, and Malone says, “Operation Aquatic Art is under way.”
Chapter 14
I have to wait until morning to see the final product. I show up to school early, but even then I have to fight my way through dozens of students already packed into Mrs. Roberts’s art room, where everyone is staring at the ten-foot-tall glass display case used to show off award-winning art. But it’s not the art that has their attention—it’s the six hundred goldfish swimming among the pottery and now-blurry charcoal drawings. Hanging from a paper clip chain attached to the case is one of Malone’s Chaos Club cards.
Both Malone and Ellie stand on chairs in the back of the room, and on my way, I kick a garden hose connected to the faucet on one of Roberts’s many paint-splattered sinks. I pull up a chair between the girls, both of whom are struggling not to smile.
“How’d you even get in here?” I whisper.
“We hid in the storage room until Mrs. Roberts left,” Malone said. “After that, the room was ours.”
“You guys waited here until we showed up at nine? That’s insane.”
“But worth it, right?”
There’s no denying that. The glass case is a massive pulsing orange cloud. In a day or two, it’ll be murky with fish crap, but for now— “It’s a work of art,” Ellie says.
“Shoot, I had to make up for the hours I spent on Wheeler’s boner diagram,” Malone says. “That whole thing left me with a bad taste in my mouth.”
“That’s what she said,” I say.
“Funny guy.”
When Adleta and Wheeler enter the room, Adleta bulldozes a path for them to the front of the crowd. After seeing what Ellie and Malone have accomplished, they come our way.
Wow, Adleta mouths to the girls.
Wheeler holds a thumbs-up close to his chest.
Soon, all five of us are on chairs, watching the revolving door of students enter and leave the room. Even teachers show up to see the school’s newest aquarium.