Ivy and Jeremy gasped. Manny’s mouth dropped open and he nearly slid off his chair. “No way!” he cried. “No way! A real car crash?”
Jack laughed. “Awesome idea, Poppy. Get Rose in a car accident. Brilliant.” I knew he was being sarcastic. He rolled his eyes. “Are you crazy?”
I shook my head. “No. You don’t get it. No one actually gets in an accident. We fake a car wreck.”
“I still don’t get it,” Manny said. He grabbed the bag of chips, reached inside. Empty. He crinkled it up and tossed it at me. “Try again, only this time, make sense.”
“How do you fake a car wreck?” Jeremy asked.
“We don’t want to hurt anyone,” Ivy said. “Not even Rose.”
“No one gets hurt,” I said. “Let’s say we do it an hour before the play is supposed to go on. Or maybe half an hour. We stage a big accident on Division Street, say, a block from the school.”
“What good is that?” Jack demanded. “I really don’t get this, Poppy.”
I was becoming frustrated. My idea was awesome. I just was having trouble explaining it. “Don’t you see?” I said. “We block all traffic to the school so no one can get to the play.”
Silence while everyone thought about it.
Jeremy scratched his head. “You mean we block Division Street and Park Drive? More than one car?”
I nodded. “As many as it takes.”
Manny squinted at me.
“We wreck our own cars?” Ivy asked.
“We don’t wreck any cars,” I replied. “We push our cars together in the middle of the intersection. We make it look like we had a collision. We all stand around and wait for the police and let the traffic back up for miles. Everyone trying to get to school for the play, only no one can get there.” I gazed from face to face. “Don’t you see? They’ll have no audience. It’s awesome, right?”
“Yeah. Maybe,” Ivy said.
“If it works,” Jeremy said.
“It could work,” I said. “It could definitely work. Can you imagine Rose at school, waiting for the audience to pour in for the play, and no one shows up? Maybe a few people who walked there. But no one else. An empty auditorium. Can you imagine it?”
Jack laughed. “Yeah. I can imagine it. But it’s dangerous, Poppy. What if the police figure out the accident is a fake?”
“Jack, I thought you liked danger,” I teased.
He frowned. “I like danger, but I don’t like getting caught.”
“It might be genius,” Manny said. “Is it a crime to fake an accident?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “High school kids pull dumb stunts all the time, don’t they?”
“Right,” Manny agreed. “And when the cops show up and ask why none of the cars are even dented, we just say, ‘Punked you!’”
“Yeah. We just say it was a typical high school joke,” I said.
“Genius.” Manny bumped knuckles with me. “And we can stream the whole thing, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah, for later. Maybe later that night. We put the video online after all the excitement dies down, and everyone will know it was another prank by us.”
“I guess it’s cool,” Ivy said. She pulled her fingers through her long hair.
Everyone but Jack seemed to be getting on board.
“We’ll have two pranks for our YouTube channel,” Manny said. “The more pranks we pull, the more famous we’ll get.”
Ivy laughed. “We need a name for our group. Something to call ourselves, if we’re going to be an outlaw prank group.”
“How about the Outlaw Prank Group?” Jeremy suggested.
“That sucks,” I said. “It doesn’t sound cool at all. If we want to be famous—”
“How about the Prankers?” Ivy said.
Manny booed. “That’s lame. What’s a pranker? Sounds like a sore you get on your skin.”
“No. That’s called a Manny,” Jeremy said.
We all laughed. Jeremy can be funny sometimes.
“I’ve got it,” I said. “We’ll be the Shadyside Shade. Because we’re throwing shade on everyone.”
“Love it,” Ivy said. “Love it.”
Jack nodded. “Yeah. I like it. The Shadyside Shade.”
My phone vibrated. I glanced down at it. Keith calling. Keith, the forgotten man. Did I feel bad he wasn’t here with my other friends? He wouldn’t approve of our plan. He wouldn’t approve of our name, our new group, our new YouTube plans. Keith would probably walk out of the house anyway. Or if he stayed, he’d try to discourage us.
I didn’t take his call. I tucked the phone back into the armchair cushion.
“Are we at least going to try to make the accident look real?” Jeremy asked. “If we just have our cars touching in the middle of the intersection, it will totally look fake.”
“But we can’t really smash into each other,” Ivy said. “My dad would slaughter me if I put even a tiny scratch on his new Subaru.”
“We’re not going to smash into each other,” I said. “I think I have an awesome idea. Maybe—”
A door slammed, and I heard rapid footsteps. Heather walked into the room, hoisting a stack of books in front of her. She glanced quickly from face to face. “Hey, guys,” she said, “what are you all talking about?”
I shot a look at each one of my friends. I didn’t have to say it. We all knew for the prank to work, we had to be bound by silence.
“Not much,” I said. “Just hanging out.”
