The Shadow Club Rising (4 page)

Brett was sent to class.

Although
he
began the fight with Tyson—although everyone knew that Brett created every disaster he was involved in—he was let go, and I was brought in for disciplinary action. Me, alone.

The fury had left me by the time I landed in Mr. Greene's office. Now there was a knot in my gut that spread out through my whole body, as if my entire body was clenched like a fist.

"I can see you've made no effort to clean up your behavior," Mr. Greene said to me.

"So, I got into a fight—so?"

He said nothing.

"I mean, everyone fights once in a while," I added, "and I haven't done anything wrong for months!"

He swiveled calmly in his chair. "At least not that we know about."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you played me for a fool once before, and I won't let it happen again."

It took a moment for me to process that.

"Kids like Brett Whatley are easy," he continued. "With Brett you always know exactly what you're getting. You know what fights he'll pick, what insults he'll throw. You know what he's going to do before he does it. He's predictable, and in my book that makes him pretty harmless."

I looked down at my shoes. "I don't think so."

"But you, Jared, you're not like that. When you pull something, you don't leave a trail behind you—there's no 'smoking gun.' You're quiet . . . and you're sneaky. In my book, that makes you dangerous."

It was all coming into focus now as he spoke: what he thought of me—how he saw me. The category he had me filed under. This wasn't about the fight, was it? The fight was just an excuse to bring me in—so he could read me this little riot act. It was as if these past three months had meant nothing. As if the only reason I hadn't been in trouble since then was that I simply hadn't been caught.

"Just because I'm quiet doesn't mean I'm sneaky."

"And just because you show remorse doesn't mean that you're really sorry for anything."

"I
am
sorry!"

"I wish I had a reason to believe that."

"You'll never have a reason!" I shouted at him. "Because you don't want to find one!"

He considered that and, for a moment, I could see him squirm a little. It was his job to peg kids, and he was good at what he did. So good that he would never accept being wrong. Whatever label he had chosen for me, he would fight to the death to make sure it stuck like a
kick me
sign tattooed to my butt.

"You don't know what's inside me," I said to him, feeling my eyes moisten, but I refused to be brought to tears.

"You're right, Jared, I don't," he said. "And that's what scares me."

Great Balls
of Fur

IT
TAKES
EVERY ounce of your strength not to become what they make of you. Your spirit could implode under the pressure the way mine did that day with Brett . . . but in a way that opened my eyes, letting me see the trouble brewing around me—trouble that everyone else was blind to.

The Winter Carnival was a tradition in our town, started by a mayor too cheap to pay for a summer carnival. Since no one else wanted to throw a carnival in the dead of winter, we ended up with twice the rides at half the price for two whole weeks instead of just one. This year I got a weekend job at one of the carnival ticket booths to take my mind off things. You learn a lot working at a ticket booth. The conversations of people in line make you a local expert, because the ticket booth is a crossroads for all the town gossip. Who was getting married and who was likely to get divorced; who was cheating on his or her spouse and who was cheating the government. I learned so much about Alec Smartz that I couldhave written his biography. There were the kids who were impressed by him—younger kids mostly—seventh and eighth graders idolized him. There were the girls who vied for his attention and were endlessly irritated by the fact that Cheryl got most of it. And then there were the others. The ones who neither worshiped nor fawned. The ones who were not amused.
"The way he plays that saxophone you'd think he was born with it growing from his mouth,"
they would say, or
"What, does he have a homing beacon in his baseball mitt?"
It wasn't so much their words, but the way they said them— oozing with hatred. A girl whose name I didn't know talked to me as I sold her tickets, telling me how Alec became the overnight star of the chess team.

"He keeps stomping on you until you stop moving," she said. "He doesn't just beat you, he
squashes
you." And she was right. It was like anyone with any talent was a cockroach he had to crush. "Someone ought to do something about him," she said. "Someone ought to put him in his place."

Then she winked at me. "Of course, it would take more than one person to do it right," suggested the chess girl. "Make it so it would stick. It would take kids with
experience
in that sort of thing."

Now I realized why so many of the conversations about Alec were loudly spoken in my direction.
Someone ought to put him in his place.
More than one person had suggested that to me, and with it came the unspoken threat,
"If you don't, Jared, then we will."

"Here are your tickets," I told her. "If you want more, go to the other booth across the park. Don't come back to me."

I saw Alec and Cheryl at the carnival that Sunday just before my shift ended. They had already been to the midway, because Alec was carrying around this huge blue giraffe he had won at one of the games. Although he could have left it somewhere, he made a point of lugging it around as he zigzagged through the carnival, in case there was anyone left who hadn't seen that he had won it. I imagined him sitting in his garage for weeks on end hurling footballs at tires, or tossing coins at little glass plates, so when it finally came time for the real event, he would do it in just one shot, making it look like anyone should have been able to do it. I was the one who noticed all the looks he got—the wide-eyed looks from those in his fan club, and the narrow-eyed glares from those who resented him.

When my shift was over I wandered through the fair, trying to convince myself that I really wasn't looking for Alec and Cheryl. His big stuffed giraffe was sitting propped up against the rail of the bumper boats. The line had already emptied out onto the semicircular dock of the bumper-boat pool. I hopped the rail and handed a few ride tickets to the attendant. He pointed me to one of the last available boats that actually worked, then started my engine with a pull cord, like a lawn mower.

Bumper-boat racing is more or less an individual sport. One person per boat, and everyone out for themselves. Even when you try to do it in teams, it's never long before your own teammates turn on you without warning. The little inner-tube boats began to bounce around like angry atoms in a mad scientist's brew, with everyone trying to keep away from the ice-water fountain in the center of the tank. You'd think someone would realize that getting drenched in the middle of winter wasn't anyone's idea of a good time.

Alec and Cheryl were in different boats, spinning circles, and careening into everyone around them. They hadn't seen me yet. I worked my way toward them, giving full throttle to the gutless boat engine.

By the time I reached the far side of the pool, Cheryl had been carried off in a current of boats. I floored my accelerator and hit Alec from behind, sending him spinning around and bouncing off the side wall. It got his attention.

"Jared!" he said, calling out over the noise all around us. "I thought they had you locked up in the ticket booth."

"I escaped."

He bumped me, and before I knew it we were moving in a circle around the outer edge of the pool, bumping each other.

"So, how do you like our school?" I asked him.

"You came to the bumper boats to ask me about school?" he said, sideswiping me.

I came around, pinning him against the dock. "I came to tell you something you might be too busy to notice."

"I notice everything." He tried to squeeze his way past, but I stayed just in front of him, keeping him pushed up against the dock.

"You might not notice
this."

"Come on, Jared," he said. "I paid good money for this ride—those were my last tickets."

"I'll give you new tickets," I said to him. "Just listen."

I leaned forward, getting as close to him as I could, and said as quietly as I could under the circumstances. "You need to watch yourself," I told him. "Because there are some people who aren't too happy with your success. I just felt I should warn you."

Then his face hardened as he looked at me. "Are you threatening me?"

But before I could answer I was hit so hard from behind that my boat spun circles, and my head was slow to catch up. It was Cheryl.

"You were a sitting duck," she said. "It was my moral obligation to nail you."

The ride attendant called the boats in, and the kids that resisted got pulled back to the dock with a long hook. Alec hopped out of his boat, but my knobby knees were stuck. He came up to me, leaned over me, and said, not too loud, but loud enough for Cheryl to hear, "Don't think I don't know about you and those awful things you made Cheryl do in the Shadow Club."

"What's this all about?" asked Cheryl, but before I could explain myself, Alec put his arm around her and led her away.

"He's just a little jealous, that's all," he said. "He'll get over it."

I didn't even try to stammer out any further explanation, because I knew that no matter what I said or denied, I would look as guilty as a corporate executive in a news interview. So I just sat there with my legs uncomfortably wedged into the tiny boat until the carny came to shoo me out.

It began less than half an hour later.

There were several versions of the story, but when you put them all together you come up with this: Alec and Cheryl were sitting in the heated dance canopy, eating hot dogs and listening to a bad country western band. There were other kids at the tables around them, and a few people on the dance floor. Everyone was having a good old country time, until Alec started taking a few sips from his Dr Pepper. He complained that it tasted funny and very innocently took off the plastic lid, to reveal that the Dr Pepper shared the cup with a hair ball the size of King Kong. In fact, if you believe the various accounts, the cup had more hair thansoda. In a few seconds Alec's face went through every shade of the visible spectrum before he leaped up, accidentally dumping the table and the hairy Dr Pepper right into Cheryl's lap.

Some say he puked right then and there, while others say he puked all over the dance floor. Still others claim he puked all over the lead singer's shiny red boots, but wherever his cookies landed, the fact that he tossed them was not in dispute. The story spread so quickly that a sonic boom echoed through the phone lines, and by morning the Furry Pepper Incident, as it was now being called, was quickly becoming a town legend like the Shadow Club itself . . . and that had me more scared than I had been in months.

I know what it's like to be trapped in a burning building—to have the smoke blind you, and the air turn into a furnace as you struggle to open a door—everything so far out of control that you can't even control your own bladder. I also know power. I've watched my will run unchecked, wreaking havoc among friends and enemies alike. I know how good it feels to be in control, and to feel that control reach beyond the limits of yourself until you feel larger than life. I know helplessness and I know power—and if I had my way, I would never want to be in either of those places again, because while one might burn your body, the other burns your soul.

If anything good came from the Shadow Club's dark adventure, it was the knowledge that I was capable of incredible acts of bravery, as well as profound acts of malice. Knowing the bad stuff is there is a good thing, I think, because you can always see it coming. You can protect yourself. You can chase it away before it takes hold and does any damage. But you can't fight what you can't see—and far too many kids didn't see the Furry Pepper Incident for what it really was . . . who didn't know that even the Great Flood began with a single drop of rain.

"Did you do it?"

Cheryl accosted me in a dead-end hallway in the math department. We were both late for class, but then, what choice did we have? Neither of us were willing to talk about this during passing time, when ears with the sensitivity of Geiger counters were hyperextended to hear gossip.

"Do you
think
I did it?" I asked.

"Are you going to play games with me?"

I shifted my heavy math book to my other hand.

"I suppose if I pleaded 'the fifth' you'd take my silence as guilt, wouldn't you? Why are you even asking if I've already been tried and convicted?"

"Did you do it?" she demanded again.

I found myself getting more and more angry that she, of all people, thought I was still capable of that.

"If I had a new girlfriend," I asked her, "would you put a clump of Bigfoot in her Coke?"

"No," she said, grimacing at the thought. "Of course not."

"Then how could you think that I would?"

She stood silently for a moment. I could see her shoulders relax. "So you're saying that you didn't do it."

I held out my book. "Do you want me to swear on my math book?"

"No," she said. The second bell rang, announcing that we were officially late without an excuse. "Alec says you threatened him."

"I
warned
him that there were some kids who aren't too happy with him. He just assumed I meant me."

"Are you . . . jealous of him, because he's going out with me?"

I wish I could have flatly denied it. I mean, what kind of moron admits to his former girlfriend's face that he's jealous? I guess I was that moron.