Don't Get Caught(5)

“Because this isn’t a majority-rules deal,” Malone says. “If someone doesn’t want to go up, they don’t have to.”

“Right, but we were invited here as a group, so we should act as one. Let’s just see what everyone else thinks. I’m for climbing, and I’m guessing you’re against it, Kate, so that leaves you three. So what do you think, Tim? Should we go up?”

Adleta shrugs and says nothing. And to think adults complain that kids today have no social skills.

“I’ll put you down as undecided,” Ellie says. “What about you, Dave?”

“Hell yeah I’m in,” Wheeler says. “Be a part of the club that once suspended Stranko’s car over the theater stage? I’m climbing that tower even if they want me doing it naked.”

“Thanks for that visual,” Ellie says. “Max?”

Great, as the tiebreaker, I have to choose between curiosity and skepticism. Fearlessness and logic. Not Max and Just Max. Not to mention, between Ellie and Malone, which could be the difference between being kissed or being punched.

“Well,” I say, stalling, “I am little suspicious, to be honest. Like Malone said, it’s all just very weird.”

Ellie goes eerily still.

“But,” I add quickly, “we weren’t chosen at random to be here. And the envelope does say Initiates. So there’s that.”

All four just stare at me.

You can hear crickets, and I mean literal crickets.

“Dude, what’s your point?” Wheeler says.

“Yeah,” Malone says, “shit or get off the pot.”

And somewhere in the far back corner of my head, I hear Tami Cantor calling me a nobody and the rest of the class laughing with her.

“Let’s go up,” I say. “Ellie’s right—this could be our chance to be a part of Asheville history. Maybe there’s another note.”

Ellie looks happy enough to kiss me.

Malone, not so much.

“Whatever,” she says, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Are you coming?” Wheeler asks her.

Malone looks up at the tower and taps her finger against her leg. Then her shoulders drop, and she reaches into her pocket.

“Okay, but I’m recording this just in case.”

? ? ?

Ellie leads everyone back to the gate where we found the envelope. She gives the gate a shake, and surprisingly, it opens.

“Creepy,” she says.

With six massive legs reaching into the night sky, the water tower is like an enormous metal insect preparing to stomp the high school. A ladder runs up the closest leg, and a safety gate extends twenty feet up the ladder’s base to prevent anyone—read: teenagers—from climbing. The safety gate isn’t locked either.

“So who wants to go first?” Ellie says.

Adleta grunts and starts up, a teenage King Kong climbing the Empire State Building.

Wheeler turns to Malone and says, “Ladies first.”

“Like I’m going to let you stare at my butt the whole way up.”

“You can’t blame a guy for trying.”

Wheeler begins climbing, and Malone follows. Ellie puts her foot on the first rung and looks back at me.

“You look like you’re going to throw up.”

“I’m not a fan of heights,” I say.

“Oh, don’t be silly. You’ll be fine.”

I may not be a fan of heights, but I especially hate ladders. I always think the rung I’m on is going to break away and send me plummeting. Climbing this ladder in the dark, the rungs sticky for some reason, only worries me more. But despite that, I’d be lying if I didn’t say how awesome this was. The higher I climb, the harder my heart pounds from the adrenaline. I feel like a jewel thief scaling a skyscraper at midnight on his way to steal the Hope Diamond. Then I make the mistake of looking up at Ellie in her tight pants climbing just ahead of me. My foot misses the next rung, and I awkwardly stumble. I have to wrap both arms around the ladder to keep from falling. Just what I want on my death certificate: death by yoga pants.

Up ahead in the darkness, Wheeler goes into a mock newscaster’s voice, announcing, “Five Asheville High School students fell to their deaths last evening when—”

“Shut up,” Malone says.

The climb takes only two minutes but feels like an hour by the time the ladder ends at the base of a metal grating no more than four feet wide. If a strong wind blows, a waist-high railing is all that’s there to keep me from hurtling to my death.

“Wow, this is higher than I thought,” Ellie says, looking out over the lights of the town.

Malone, recording everything with her phone, says, “I wish I had my climbing gear. I’d love to rappel off this.”

“What was it Jesus said, Ellie?” Wheeler says. “‘I think I can see my house from here’?”

And me, I want down. And not just down, but to roll in the grass and kiss the earth. Then, as I’m about to wuss out, Ellie’s hand is in mine and she’s leading me along the platform.

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s look for the next clue.”

Her hand is soft and warm, and if the platform gives away right now, I can die a happy man.

“You get to open the next envelope if there is one,” Ellie says. “Or maybe it’ll be like in the movies, and there’ll be a cell phone that rings and—”