Don't Get Caught(44)

And Malone’s.

And everyone else’s around us until the entire hall is a sea of miscellaneous chimes, rings, and tones signaling arriving texts.

We all receive the same message:

Courtesy of the (Genuine) Chaos Club.

“Wow,” Malone says. “As much as I hate them, I have to admit that’s impressive.”

Word soon spreads that during the night, the Chaos Club took every door off its hinges and reinstalled it at another classroom. It’s takes the team of Mrs. B, Stranko, and Mr. Jessup the better part of a half hour to unlock every room with master keys.

How am I supposed to think of a prank that competes with that?

After Watson’s exam, which is easier than I expected, I say to Ellie, “Do you still need me to do it?”

“Absolutely. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, with the Chaos Club thing, I thought maybe you might want to have all the attention to yourself.”

“Are you kidding me? This is the best time. We’ll totally steal their spotlight,” she says. “Why do you have that look on your face?”

“Stranko, he’ll kill me.”

“Oh, foo. You don’t need to worry about him. Just be confident. It works every time,” she says with her best angelic voice and praying hands under her chin. “If you want me to, I’ll put in a special word with the big guy.”

“That’s good because I may be seeing Him sooner than expected.”

Mrs. Stephen’s precalc exam is next, and by the time I’m finished, I feel like I’ve spent the last hour and a half tumbling and crashing inside an industrial-sized dryer. I’m pretty sure the Pythagorean theorem and reciprocal identities were invented solely to make teenagers’ lives horrible. How else can you explain a teacher saying things like, “To find the zeros of the logarithmic function, one would exponentiate the left and right sides of the equation”?

The daily schedule for exam week at Asheville High makes almost as much sense as having the exams immediately after winter break. We get out ninety minutes early each day, but only after suffering through two, two-hour exams and a mandatory one-hour study session with our homeroom teacher. I’m five minutes into this study session when I get permission from Mr. Ewing to go see Stranko.

It’s time to die young.

? ? ?

I want to take my time getting to Stranko’s office, but unfortunately, I’m on a tight timetable. I make a quick stop in the bathroom outside the main office and turn on my phone’s video camera app before sliding it into the pocket of the shirt I’ve worn specifically for this purpose. As Ellie requested, I reach Stranko’s door at 11:42 a.m. His expression sours at the sight of me.

“Can I come in?” I say.

Stranko sighs and puts down the lacrosse magazine he’s reading instead of doing his real job, whatever that is.

“Sit.”

Shockingly, Stranko’s office doesn’t have black walls decorated with instruments of torture. Instead, there’s a desk, a bookshelf with actual books (and not just ones for coloring), a framed college degree on the wall (probably from an online university), and a minifridge (likely filled with human heads). The most shocking item is a picture on his desk of an older couple who are probably his parents or the scientists who genetically engineered him at the Asshole Farm. My only seating option is a straight-backed, wooden chair created solely for discomfort. The moment I sit, my ass starts aching.

“What do you want, Cobb?” Stranko said. “I’m sort of busy here.”

Uh-huh.

“Sir, I just came to say that over break, I did a lot of thinking and realized I need to make some changes in my life. With the new semester starting soon, I wanted to apologize for my behavior over the first part of the school year. I promise that second semester will be much less chaotic.”

And that, friends, is some Olympic-level bullshit. I look at the clock over Stranko’s head. 11:43—two minutes to go.

“Well, let’s hope you’re right about next semester,” Stranko says. “You could use some maturing.”

I have to hold down the middle finger struggling to show itself.

“Yeah, I could definitely grow up some.”

Stranko stares, trying to figure out if I’m being a smart-ass, and then sighs, leaning back in his chair. He has to be exhausted from the morning’s events with the doors. What he doesn’t know is that his day’s seconds away from getting worse.

“Look, Cobb, I’m not stupid,” he says. “I know what the students here think about me. That comes with the job. And part of that’s my fault because I’m not touchy-feely like Mrs. Barber, and I’ll never be. I’m intense and I can be a yeller—I know that. But do you think I enjoy being a hard-ass all the time? Believe me, it’s not fun. But it’s the job. What I do here, keeping all of you in line, helps Asheville be what it is, which is a damn fine place. I love this school. But once you let discipline slip, quality slips. That’s something my dad always used to say.”

I glance at the picture on the end table, taking a closer look at Stranko’s father. Although it’s just him and his wife smiling on a couch, the man’s eyes are hard.

“You probably could loosen up just a little,” I say, sort of joking.

Stranko half smiles—or maybe half un-frowns is more accurate.