The Shadow Club Rising (11 page)

"Yeah," she said as if it was nothing. "And next week we're going to the movies."

"Good," I said. "That's great. So you actually like him."

"Yeah. Is that so hard to believe?"

"No, not at all." Now this was getting awkward. "It's just . . . it's just that Tyson's been through a lot, y'know. I just don't want to see him hurt."

"Sounds like you're jealous."

Well, maybe I was and maybe I wasn't. I hadn't quite sorted that out yet, but I was pretty certain that jealousy—if there was any—was secondary to my genuine concern for Tyson. At least the concern I felt when I wasn't feeling suspicious of him. Anyway, the last thing Tyson needed was a game of hormonal tetherball with a girl who took it too lightly.

"Just don't toy with him, OK?"

"What, are you his father now?"

"He doesn't have a father—in case you didn't know."

"So I've heard."

This wasn't going well, but before we escalated into the "fine-be-that-way" mode, Jodi disarmed.

"Listen . . . Tyson can take care of himself," she said. "And he does it pretty well." Then she looked me over. "Nice clothes," she said, in a way that made it completely unclear whether she liked my new clothes, or whether she was just being sarcastic.

"Yeah, well, it's a look," I said. "Anyway, Tyson's not the reason why I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to see if I could get your hat."

"My hat?"

"Yeah," I said offhandedly, trying to hide how much I really wanted it. "It's kind of cool."

"Why don't you just go to the Tennis and Squash Center and get your own?"

I pulled a bill out of my pocket. "I'll give you ten dollars for it."

"Suit yourself." She took my money, pulled the hat from her head, and handed it to me. I suppose ten bucks warranted no questions asked. Or maybe she just didn't care.

Regardless, anyone who saw me wearing the hat, even if they knew where it really came from, would know what TSC meant for me. It was exactly what I needed to make my bad kid illusion complete.

For lunch that day I didn't go out to Solerno's, I stayed in the cafeteria. I positioned my TSC hat just right, then I found a kid who wouldn't give me any trouble, and just pushed my way in front of him in line.

"Hey!" he complained.

I turned to him and stared. "You got a problem?"

He backed down and said nothing.

Quite a few kids noticed my behavior, and I took note of which kids were intimidated, which kids were annoyed, and which kids suddenly seemed to gravitate toward me, impressed by my new mean image. During the next couple of days, it was those impressed kids that I made a point of nodding to, and giving a friendly rap on the shoulder as I passed by, like they were all my new best friends.

Mitchell Bartok, a kid so tough he must have worn leather diapers as a baby, made a point of sitting at my lunch table on the third day of the Shaditude. We bad-mouthed teachers together and said some rude things about various girls we saw around the cafeteria. I pretended that I knew something about Harleys, and suddenly he was telling me his life story. Then, as the lunch bell rang, I turned to him and said: "Hey, Mitchell, all that stuff you did to Alec was pretty funny."

But he looked at me cluelessly. "I thought
you
did all that stuff."

"Yeah . . . yeah sure," I said. "Just kidding you."

When he was gone I opened my notebook and crossed him off my list of suspects.

Each day, when I got home, I went straight into the bathroom and peeled off my new self, like a full body mask. Then I stepped into a hot shower and scrubbed myself, feeling dirty, but knowing that the worst dirt wouldn't come off with soap. All those nasty things I said and did to build my new false image, all the tricks I was playing on kids like Mitch Bartok to ferret out the truth. I guess what bothered me most was that everyone seemed to believe my bad-kid act. I mean, I'm not a great actor, but in this case it wasn't hard to become what they made me. And it scared me . . . because part of me liked it—just as part of me had liked the secret power I wielded as the leader of the Shadow Club, back when we were at our worst. And so each day I didn't stop scrubbing until I could find myself underneath, and remembered that I liked my real self a whole lot more.

And then there were my parents, who seemed to have invoked a ten-foot-pole policy with me. Not physical distance, but emotional. I knew that Greene was preparing for a big meeting with them next week—and yet my parents said nothing to me about that, or any of the things Greene must have been telling them. That scared me more than their House un-American Activities questioning. It's like they were so worried, they chose to stick their heads in the ground, and broke off all communication with me. I mean, what if I really was up to something terrible? How could they not get after me for the way I was acting—even if it was just an act? I could forgive my parents for prying too much, but it was harder to forgive them for not prying at all.

Jodi showed up at our house that Friday—the end of my first week of Shaditude. She walked in the front door like she owned the place—serves me right for leaving it open. I was lying on my bed, trying not to think of anything in particular. I used to be very good at that, but in recent months my thoughts were way too focused much of the time—usually on things I didn't enjoy thinking about. I was tossing that seashell of mine up into the air, trying to see how high I could get it without actually hitting the ceiling. My mom once told me it was a very "Zen" thing to do—whatever that means. With my headphones blasting music, a freight train could have come through the house and I wouldn't have known. Naturally, when I looked up and saw Jodi there at my bedroom door I was startled, lost my concentration and the shell came down, hitting me in the face. I took the headphones off and the blaring music became tinny and distant.

"I'm looking for Tyson," she said.

"He's not here," I told her. "I'll tell him you came by."

But she didn't go just yet. She glanced at the ballistic seashell that had done its damage and now lay innocently on my bed. "You're supposed to do that with a baseball, aren't you?" she asked. "Y'know—toss it up and down."

I shrugged looking at the shell. "Baseballs don't break."

"Isn't that the point?"

"I don't know," I said. "Where's the challenge if nothing's at risk?"

"Wow," she said. "Deep."

She looked around, never stepping into the room. I felt like I was under a microscope again. "See anything interesting?"

"Your room's not what I expected."

I looked around. My desk was a mess of schoolwork, but otherwise, the room was pretty neat. There was a poster of Carl Lewis bursting through an Olympic finish line, because I'm a runner; a poster of a Ferrari Testarosa, because I like cars; and a poster of supermodel Lorna LeBlanc because . . . well, just because. All in all, my room was nothing out of the ordinary.

"What did you expect?" I asked. "Pipe bombs and hate literature?"

"Nah, you're too smart for that," she said, and then added far too seriously for my taste, "You'd keep that stuffmuch better hidden." She glanced at the shell, which had found its way back into my fidgety hands. "So what do you hear when you put that thing to your ear, the sea?"

"I hear the voices of all the kids I had to kill, because they saw my room." I thought she might laugh at that, but she didn't give me so much as a chuckle. "Yeah," I told her, "I do hear the sea and it reminds me of all the bad stuff that happened in October."

"If it were me," Jodi said, "I'd never put it to my ear."

"I like being reminded," I told her, "so I'll never do it again." I could sense that she didn't really believe me, but I didn't care who believed me anymore. "If you're dating Tyson, why are you so interested in me?"

Jodi shrugged. "A few months ago you almost got him killed, yet now he talks about you like you're God at fourteen, so I guess I was just curious." She backed out of the doorjamb, preparing to leave. "Tell Tyson I stopped by," she said, and she pointed at my eye, which was still aching from where the shell hit. "And you better get some ice on that, unless a black eye is part of your new look."

After she left, I put the shell in a drawer instead of back on the shelf.

If it were me, I'd never put it to my ear.

Maybe she was right. I had a world full of reminders already. There were enough people looking back at what I had done. That was one club I didn't need to be a part of anymore.

Alec
Blows Up

I SHOULD HAVE been the town hero for what happened next, but when you're pegged, you're pegged, and if people want to, they can see the worst of intentions in the best of acts. I spent the next lunch period alone in the library. It was one of those cold windy days when few kids would brave the walk to Solerno's. Most everyone was down in the cafeteria, and that's not where I wanted to be. I didn't want to see Alec, didn't want to think about him, so I sat studying world history, idly wondering if it could teach me anything about how to avoid bad situations. Unfortunately, all history taught me was that bad situations tended to get worse and worse until an awful lot of people were dead.

That's when O. P. sort of staggered into the library. The worried look was plastered as prominently across her face as the campaign fliers in the hallways. She sat down across from me, not saying anything, waiting for me to ask the obvious question.

"What's up, O. P.?"

"Somebody slipped this into my backpack," she said, and handed me a piece of paper. Scrawled on it, in a handwriting I could barely read, were the words:

We're on your side.

"Who's 'we'?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I don't know . . . but that's not all." She looked around, like a spy about to hand me some crucial microfilm, and then flipped the paper over to reveal that the note had been scribbled on a medical form—the kind that the school nurse kept in her office for every student. This one has been filled out, and the name on the form was Alec Smartz.

"Someone gave you Alec's medical info?" I asked, not quite getting it.

"I don't know what it means," she said, looking more worried than the time she forgot to study for a science exam. "But
I
'm beginning to think that maybe you were right about things starting all over again . . . and that maybe this note wasn't meant just for me—maybe it was meant for the whole Shadow Club.

"But what does it have to do with Alec's medical record?"

O. P. just shrugged.

I read through Alec's medical form three times—like I said, I'm not that great with details—but on the third pass I caught it.

At first I refused to believe that anyone would stoop so low, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that only one thing on that sheet of paper could be used against Alec. O. P. must have seen it in my face.

"What is it?"

I handed back the piece of paper, feeling the tiny hairs on my arms and legs begin to rise, even though the library was oppressively warm.

"Alec's allergic to penicillin."

I bolted out of there before I could see O. P.'s reaction, and raced down the hall, bursting down the stairwell, taking four steps at a time. I knocked a kid down as I crashed into the first-floor hallway. The cafeteria was at the far end, and us I ran toward it, putting all my speed and strength into my legs, I felt the same sense of futility I had four months earlier when I watched Austin Pace race barefoot toward a jagged pile of rocks lying in wait for him. Back then I knew I wasn't last enough to catch up with him, to stop him. That's exactly how I felt now.

I ran into the cafeteria door with the full force of my body. Someone caught behind the door yelped, but I never saw him. Instead I scoured the crowded room for Alec. He was in the far corner, surrounded by his close friends and bodyguards: an unlikely inner circle that ranged from the brawny likes of Moose SanGiorgio, to the weaselly Calvin Horner, who was responsible for Alec's nomination, and was probably the spy who took that video. Then I saw Alec reach for a bottle of orange soda. He had given up Dr Pepper, and anything that reminded him of it, for obvious reasons. He probably assumed drinking from a bottle was safer than from a cup—after all, anyone can mess with a cup—but was he cautious enough to listen for that telltale hiss as the soda was opened to make sure it hadn't been tampered with?

I pushed my way through crowds, knocking over kids in my way. The sound of crashing trays gained everyone's attention, but I couldn't worry about that now. Weaving between tables and leaping over chairs like a hurdler, I finally reached him. I tried to slow down, but lost my balance, nailing my gut against the side of the table. Alec had his head tilted back guzzling the orange soda, and I reached out and slammed it out of his hands.

"Hey, what the . . ."

It splashed all over the kids around him before landing on the floor, spilling out on the green linoleum.

"Are you nuts?" Alec yelled. "Have you totally lost your mind?"

I didn't have time for stupid questions.
"Was it flat?" I
asked.

"Huh?"

"The soda—
was it flat when you opened it?"

He just looked at me blankly, so I got down on my hands and knees, running my fingers through the sticky orange liquid. I wasn't sure what I was searching for . . . maybe undissolved granules within the soda that fizzed between myfingers.

I grabbed for the bottle that still spun on the floor. Nothing inside but a few drops of soda. I drank it. It tasted normal, untainted. I took a deep and welcomed breath of relief.

When I looked up, about a dozen kids were staring down in me. For a moment I locked eyes with Austin Pace, who was now a part of Alec's entourage. What's that old expression? My enemy's enemy is my friend? The two of them must have been getting along famously.

"He's insane!" said Austin. "He's gone completely off the deep end!"