“I’m going up,” Becca’s voice says. “Hand me your pieces.”
The camera jiggles a bit as Becca climbs onto the statue’s base.
“Weird,” she says.
“What?”
“This thing isn’t as stable as I thought it’d be.”
No one in the crowd moves for the next two minutes as we hear whispered instructions. Stranko seems the most hypnotized, unblinkingly watching the movie. What’s funny is that nothing is happening on screen—we’re all just looking at the curtain. And while it’s good to hear Benz and Becca’s voices, I need them to step in front of the camera at some point.
“I think I hear a siren,” Benz says after a minute. “Are we good?”
“Yeah,” Becca says. “Let me make sure.”
The camera shakes again, and then, for the first time since the film began, there’s actually something to look at besides the curtain. Becca and Benz, neither of them in masks, step in front of the camera to admire their work.
“It looks great,” Becca says, holding up a hand to Benz.
He high-fives her and says, “The perfect way to end our time in Assville. Crap, that is a siren.”
The movie freezes on Becca and Benz staring at the camera, the whites of their eyes a creepy green.
Busted.
Somehow.
But the movie isn’t over, because as the picture of Becca and Benz slowly dissolves, a different picture—a much older photo—appears: Stranko getting shit on during his senior picnic.
The crowd’s laughter starts as a chuckle, then rises to full-on howling. I instinctively look to the soundboard and see Malone, Ellie, and Adleta now standing beside Wheeler. They’re all giving me sorry we just couldn’t resist shrugs.
Becca grabs Benz’s arm and starts for the parking lot.
“Let’s go,” she says.
“You’re dead, Cobb,” he says over his shoulder.
I don’t say anything.
Heist Rule #22: Gloating’s for amateurs.
Besides, with the Chaos Club exposed, it’s time for my entry in the prank off.
? ? ?
I kneel beside the base of the statue and slide open a small door. I quickly turn the red-handled valve and step away before anyone notices me. Seconds later, a loud hiss erupts from the statue. The noise stops Becca and Benz’s escape, and they come back to where I’m standing. People back away from the statue like this might somehow be part of the prank, as if the Chaos Club is now in the poisonous gas business.
They’re both right and wrong.
Right in that the hiss is a gas.
Wrong in that it’s not poisonous.
Because as even Wheeler can tell you, helium isn’t poisonous, but it is excellent for achieving liftoff.
The side panels of the statue’s base pop off as the weather balloons inside inflate and fight for room to expand. Then ten balloons permanently borrowed from Mrs. Hansen’s science room burst from the statue’s base and head for the sky. They lift ten feet into the air before the ropes attached to the statue’s base slow them down. Painted on each balloon for everyone in Asheville to see: The Water Tower 5.
At the foot of the stage, the members of my crew stand gaping at me. None of them knew about the weather balloons.
It’s Heist Rule # 23: Always know more than everyone else.
It takes less than a minute for the balloons to inflate to their maximum level, but then Zippy breaks from his base and rises into the air, first slowly, then more quickly, until he’s rocketing skyward.
Everyone—Stranko, Mrs. B, my crew, the hundreds of town citizens, even Benz and Becca—watches Zippy take flight, ridden by a naked Fake-Stranko.
It’s epic.
It’s art.
It’s glorious.
I step up to Becca and Benz, their heads staring skyward like everyone else here.
Screw no gloating.
“No, Jeff,” I say, “that’s how you write your name in the wet cement of the universe.”
Chapter 23
The school conference room is a circus car jammed floor to ceiling with clowns of all ages. Representing Asheville are Officer Hale, Mrs. B, Mayor Hite, and, with hate in his eyes, Stranko. Benz’s and Becca’s parents are seated beside their criminal children, and Ellie and I are here with our parents after voluntarily giving ourselves up. The only players not present are the three other members of the Water Tower Five, and I’m not about to pull them into this.
“Okay, Max,” Mrs. B says. “Let’s hear it.”
Look, I wholeheartedly believe there’s a time in your life when you have to tell the truth. This, however, is not one of those times.
“None of you believed me when I said I’d been set up,” I say. “I had to prove to everyone that I wasn’t in the Chaos Club, and the only way to do that was to expose them.”
“By taking part in felony vandalism?” Stranko says.
“Let Max speak, please,” Mrs. B says.
“Elaine, that statue was worth more than $25,000, and those kids—”
“It wasn’t the real statue,” I say.
Everyone’s mouths drop open like they’re on wires I just yanked.