The Shadow Club (6 page)

"Say it!" said Cheryl.

"I hate Vera Donaldson!"

O.P., who was next, looked around a bit nervously. She had been quiet all this time and knew perfectly well why she was here. O.P. was Korean, I think, but she didn't have any accent at all.

"I'm Karin Han . . . and . . . I guess I'm smart. I have the second-highest math and reading scores in the ninth grade. I get the second-best grades in just about everything, and Tommy Nickols always gets the best."

"Ughh! He's such a bozo," said Abbie.

"If I get a ninety-eight on a test," she continued, "then Tommy will get a ninety-nine. All the time. So last year he started to call me O.P, and now everyone does. It stands for 'One Point.'"

Randall giggled and Cheryl elbowed him.

"Yeah, everyone thinks it's funny. I don't mind being called it, but I hate it when Tommy Nickols says it. I guess I hate Tommy Nickols."

Last in the circle was Darren Collins, whose legs seemed longer than just about everyone's whole body. He was fourteen, but was getting pretty close to six feet already. I'll give you one guess what he did.

"Yeah, I'm second-best, too," admitted Darren. "I've never gotten MVP on any basketball team, I was always next in line—someone else always beat me out. Usually it doesn't really bug me that much, but for two years Eric Kilfoil has been making me look like a fool on the court all the time. He's like turned me into the team mascot or something, and makes everybody think
I
'm a dumb jock—but
I
'm not,
I
get good grades. Then he does these Harlem Globetrotter things to me, you know, like bouncing the ball off the top of my head, and then getting the shot in—and everyone laughs. Once, I got so mad, I stepped on his face and got taken out of the game. I hate Eric Kilfoil."

And it was back to me. By now the shadows were getting even longer; it was almost time for the sky to turn colors. A soft wind blew down into Stonehenge and the campfire crackled. The first part was done. Now came part two.

"Cheryl?" I asked.

"Oh, I forgot." Cheryl opened her folder and pulled out the charter of the club, written on imitation parchment paper. "Everyone has to sign this," she said, then began to recite the charter:

T
HE
S
HADOW
C
LUB
C
HARTER

We, the undersigned, do hereby form the Shadow Club
—an
organization dedicated to the righteous indignation of its members toward all those obnoxiousunbeatable people who make our lives miserable every single day. We shall no longer suffer their slings and
arrows. We
will be proud of who we are, and not let them get the better of us.

We hereafter swear loyalty and secrecy to the Shadow Club, and all of its members, for as long as this charter shall exist.

I had to smile. Cheryl's mom was a lawyer, and only the daughter of a lawyer could come up with such a legal- sounding charter.

"What's righteous indignation?" asked Jason.

"It means we have a good reason to be p.o.'d," said O.P.

Cheryl and I had already signed it, so she passed it on to Randall and gave him a pen.

"Shouldn't we sign this in blood?" asked Randall.

"No way!" said Abbie from across the fire. "I refuse to bleed."

"Well, it was just an idea. I figured it would make it more official."

Randall signed it, and passed it to Jason. The charter went around the fire, came back to Cheryl, and she put it back into her folder.

"Is that it?" asked Darren.

"One more thing," I said. "The pictures."

"Oh, right," said Darren.

Everyone reached into one pocket or another. I couldn't believe it; everyone had managed to get a picture.

"I hope you know how much trouble I went through to get this," said Randall. "I had to search through Drew Landers' swim locker. I found it in his wallet."

"I had to go and take a picture of David Berger," said Jason. "He had no idea why I did it."

"Good," I said. "Don't tell anyone why. Remember, no one tells anyone about anything we do in the club. That's part of the rules."

"Why do we need the pictures?" asked O.P.

"Symbolic gesture," said Cheryl.

Everyone held a picture of their mortal enemy in their bands. I held a picture of Austin. It had been a picture of both of us together, but I cut it in half. He smiled up at me from the picture and the smile said, "
You'll never beat me!"

"We'll see," I muttered to the photo, then made sure everyone was watching, and tossed the picture into the fire. The edges flared, the colors faded, Austin's red hair turned brown, then black, and those eyes died, shriveling to ashes. We'll see, I thought.

Cheryl went next, and everyone followed, until the last picture had been thrown into the fire.

"I now pronounce that the Shadow Club has begun!"

The wind became a bit stronger, and the fire crackled. Everyone sat around the fire there in Stonehenge, watching the ashes of the pictures disappear. Then, they all slowly looked up, then at each other, then at Cheryl and me.

"So?" said Darren.

"So, what?" I asked.

"So, what do we do now?"

Suddenly my feeling of power flew away. I hadn't thought about that. I hadn't thought past the burning of the pictures at all. What came next? I didn't know.

"So what's this club going to do?" asked Abbie. I looked at Cheryl, who I figured would have all the answers, but she just looked back at me the same way I looked at her.

"Well, we go and do stuff," I said.

"Like what?" asked Jason.

"I don't know . . . go to the movies . . ."

"Go bowling," suggested Cheryl.

"Play games," I said.

"I got a miniature chess set with me," said O.P. "Anyone wanna play?"

"Give me a break," said Darren.

"I guess we could just hang out together," said Randall.

"Boooring!" said Darren.

"He's right," said Abbie. "It does sound boring."

"What about miniature golf?" suggested Cheryl.

"Boooooooring!" said Jason and Darren together.

"Well, we could sell stuff and raise money," said Cheryl.

"For what?"

"For . . . Shadow Club T-shirts?" said Cheryl.

"Booooooooooooring!" they all said.

"Hey, I like you guys and everything," said Abbie, standing up, "but if I want to go out and do stuff like that, I have my own friends."

"Me, too," said Jason.

Darren stood up. "You know something, Jared?" Darren waited until everyone else was listening. "I think this was a really dumb idea."

"No it's not!" I said, standing up as well. I was a head shorter than him, and at that moment felt even smaller. Everyone seemed ready to agree that the club was stupid. Everything had been going so well; why did all this have to happen now?

"What's so good about it?" asked Darren. "So, you got us here, and we burned some pictures, and we signed a piece of paper. Big deal. I got better things to do on Friday afternoon. Why should I come to these dumb meetings?"

"Because . . ." I said, "because . . . we have stuff to do!"

"Like what?" asked Randall. Even Randall was a traitor! For a second I felt like it was over. Cheryl and I had lost complete control. But then I closed my eyes, thought for a second, waited until I felt the calm come back to my voice, and when it did, I had an idea—a fantastic idea that might just save the club!

"Like what?" asked Randall again.

"We have secret things we're going to do."

"Like what?" demanded Randall, getting annoyed.

I smiled. "Just like the charter says, we're dedicated to fight the unbeatables, and that's just what we'll do. We'll wage a secret war against them . . . a war . . . of practical jokes, to embarrass and humiliate them, just like they do to us!"

It took a few seconds to sink in. Jason smiled first, then O.P., then Randall.

"Oh, I love it!" said Abbie.

"Intense!" said O.P.

"Classic!" said Jason.

Cheryl turned to me, a bit worried. "I don't know, Jared. We didn't talk about this."

"I know, I just thought of it."

"Wait a minute," said Darren. "You mean we all work together to really bother the unbeatables, and since no one knows about the club, they'll never be able to figure out who's doing it?"

"I love it!" said Abbie again.

"Classic!"

"Intense!"

"Jared, we could get in lots of trouble," said Cheryl.

"Naah," I said. "It's just for fun. We won't hurt anyone, we'll just bug the heck out of 'em!" Now everyone was walkingaround thinking about it. "You should be glad," I whispered to her. "I just saved your club."

She didn't say anything back, because she knew it was true.

Darren looked at me and smiled—almost in admiration. "This could be interesting," he said. "Maybe this is a good idea after all!"

If Cheryl hadn't been convinced before, that certainly convinced her.

"Of course it's a good idea!" said Cheryl.

"But wait," said Abbie. "What kind of tricks are we going to pull?"

"Well," I said, "let's sit down and think about it."

For an hour we brainstormed ideas, all the practical jokes you could think of! We laughed ourselves loony just imagining them. It was incredible! All seven of us working together toward a common goal. A club, a real club.

We all exchanged phone numbers, then everyone got up, climbed out of Stonehenge, and went their separate ways, leaving Cheryl and me alone. I grabbed the bucket of water I had brought to pour over the fire.

"They all had a great time!" said Cheryl.

"Yeah! It's like a real club."

"It
is
a real club. I can hardly wait till next week. Little Becky won't know what hit her!"

"Neither will Austin." Just imagining it gave me goose bumps all over. I felt so good, I could have gone over and given Cheryl a big hug for thinking of this club. I wanted to, but I didn't. Like I said, Cheryl and I were just friends.

I poured the bucket over the dying fire. It sizzled, a cloud of steam and smoke came billowing out, and then the fire was gone. That's when I realized how dark it was getting. I could barely see the walls of Stonehenge around us now.

"We're gonna have lots of fun, I think. You get some good ideas sometimes, Cheryl."

"You, too." And then she gave
me
a hug. I couldn't believe she did, but I was glad, so I hugged her back. For that split second, it felt like everything in the universe was perfect, and we were the center of it, down there in Stonehenge.

Then the feeling passed, and she let me go, and looked down. I didn't know what to do with my hands, so I put them in my pockets, and we stood there feeling incredibly dumb, listening to the sizzling of the dying fire.

"Hey," yelled Randall from the lip of Stonehenge. "Hey, are you coming or what, Cheryl? What are you guys doing down there anyway, making out?"

"Die!" said Cheryl.

"Yeah, sure. I know," he said. "Well, whatever you're doing, let's go or we'll be late for dinner."

"I'm coming."

She climbed out of Stonehenge, and I followed. Before I left, I turned back and watched the last bit of steam rise from the campfire, and smiled. Monday was going to be the start of a fantastic week!

Spiders and Snakes

I CAN'T SAY we didn't have fun. We did. We had lots of fun, and the fact that the members of the club were the only ones in on it made it that much more exciting. They were nasty tricks we pulled—we knew that all along— but we felt the victims deserved whatever they got. Our plans were so clever, so ingenious, that it seemed we could never get caught. You see, we pulled tricks for each other: Darren pulled Cheryl's trick on Rebecca, I pulled Randall's trick on Drew, and so on. That way it would be hard to figure out who was responsible; after all, what possible reason would I have for pulling a trick on Drew Landers? I could get away with it because I wasn't even a suspect! Working as a team made it hard for anyone—even us, sometimes—to figure out just who was doing what to whom. I guess every nightmare has to start somewhere. Ours started here.

Lunchtime.Tuesday. It was raining, so everyone was crammed into the cafeteria, which still had the faint smell ofsmoke from the small fire the week before. Cousin Rebecca was getting a present today, but only the members of the Shadow Club knew about it, and we all watched, scattered across the room, so as not to look suspicious, patiently waiting for Rebecca to open that ridiculous lunch box with teddy hears all over it.

Darren had taken care of this particular trick, so the rest of us knew what to expect, but weren't exactly sure when to expect it. Rebecca was all smiles, singing songs from
Annie
to herself and friends because she had gotten the lead role. Then she turned to open her lunch box. Nothing happened. I looked around the room. All eyes of the Shadow Club were focused on her. She talked a little bit more, and reached into her lunch box, pulling out the little plastic container that held her sandwich. I grimaced, preparing myself.

Nothing.

She opened the sandwich box, and pulled out a wedge of a gooey-looking peanut butter sandwich. She opened her bag of chips. Nothing. She laughed and sang, and porked out on her peanut butter sandwich—and then she reached for the thermos.

Oh no! I thought to myself. The thermos! Oh, how terrible! How marvelously, wonderfully terrible. I looked over toward Darren, and knew that this had to be it, for a smile had crept over his face.

Rebecca unscrewed the cap to the thermos and tilted its open end toward the cup in her hand. A small green garter snake slithered its way out of the thermos into the cup, and then through sweet-little-Becky's fingers.