The Shadow Club Rising (2 page)

And so I walked instead of ran.

"Oh, it's you," said Allison, Austin's younger sister, as she opened the door. She said it with such contempt, it was clear she had been practicing saying that for most of the day.

"Come in, Jared," said Mrs. Pace, with a smile that was way too inviting. Her husband sat in the background, reading in an armchair—but the moment I stepped over the threshold, he quickly folded his newspaper and went into the other room. Austin was nowhere to be seen.

"Please, make yourself at home," Mrs. Pace said. There was enough brightness in her voice to light up the Astrodome.

T
his is all too weird,
I wanted to say. Can I
go now?
But instead I just said, "Sure." And I sat down, trying to look comfortable, even though I felt as if I were sitting on a bed of nails.

"We're having pot roast," Mrs. Pace said cheerfully. "You eat meat, don't you?"

"He probably eats it raw," said Allison.

Austin came downstairs, slowly hobbling. The truth was, he had been walking just fine for the past few weeks, but whenever he saw me, his limp mysteriously returned. That was okay. After what the Shadow Club had done to him, if he wanted to rub salt in my guilt, he had every right to do it, so I played along.

"Still hurts?" I asked.

"Only when I move."

I offered a slim smile, but I couldn't hide just how uneasy I was about this whole dinner. He seemed to take some comfort in my discomfort. I stood up, putting out my hand to shake, knowing that he wouldn't take it. Seeing me put down my hand unshaken seemed another moment of satisfaction for him.

"I want you to know," he said, "that this wasn't my idea. It was my mother's."

The dining table was set for five, but only four sat down when dinner was served. Mr. Pace did not join us—although I could hear newspaper pages turning in another room.

As Mrs. Pace brought out the serving dishes, I found myself grabbing the food far too quickly—not because I was hungry, but because I wanted to occupy my mouth with chewing, so I wouldn't be forced to talk. Austin seemed to have the same idea, but his sister had different plans.

"So," Allison asked, "what was it like being suspended?"

I looked down at my plate, wishing the meat was a little tougher so I could continue to chew for a few minutes without having to speak. "It gave me a lot of time to think," I answered.

"I thought you had to have a brain for that," Austin said.

"Now, Austin," his mother said, "Jared's our guest tonight."

"So you keep telling me."

The newspaper turned in the other room.

Finally I broke down and asked the question that had been plaguing me since I had received this invitation. "I hope you don't mind me asking, Mrs. Pace, but . . . why am I here?"

"For dinner, of course," she said.

It was Austin who explained. "The self-help book my mom's been reading says we have to make peace with all the people we hate."

"And," added Allison, "there's nobody we hate more than you."

"More string beans, Jared?" asked Mrs. Pace.

Back in seventh grade I did a report on medieval torture techniques; people stretched on the rack, or made to stand in the dagger-lined shell of the Iron Maiden. I should have included "Dinner With the Paces" in my report.

I continued to stare into my food, moving my fork around and around until the potatoes became a brown sludge lagoon beside my island of meat.

"Listen," I said, unable to meet their eyes, "the Shadow Club was a mistake. What we did was wrong. And I'm sorry."

"You're sorry?" said a man's voice behind me. I turned around to see Mr. Pace standing at the threshold of the dining room. "You think that ruined ankle and the scars on Austin's feet will go away just because you say you're sorry?"

"No," I said, forcing myself to look him in the face, no matter how small it made me feel. "But I'm sorry anyway."

After he left the room I could still feel his eyes on me.

"I've lost my appetite," said Austin, dropping his fork on the plate with a clatter. Then he stormed away, remembering his limp halfway out of the room, leaving me to be killed by his mother's kindness.

I ate quickly, said a polite thank-you, and headed for the door—but even as I did, I knew that I couldn't leave like that. I knew I had to say something to Austin, though I didn't know what it would be. I found him in his garage, which had been converted into a game room, playing pool by himself.

"You're still here?" he said, shooting at the nine ball and missing completely. Either he wasn't very good, or my presence was throwing his game off. "What is it you want?"

I took a deep breath and spoke, not sure what I would say until the words came tripping out of my mouth. "I stepped down from the track team, I've apologized a thousand times, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. What is it going to take to even up the score between me and you? I want to know what I can do to make you happy, because whatever it is, I want to do it. I owe that to you."

Austin put his cue stick down. "You can't stand the fact that I hate your guts, can you?"

"I guess you have every reason to hate me," I admitted. "Me, Cheryl, Randall, and the others."

Then Austin took a step closer, and said, "Then let me hate you . . . because that's what makes me happy."

"How was dinner with the Paces?" my dad asked when I got home.

"Fine," I said. It was a one-word response that said nothing. Things were like that between me and my parents these days. Although I had always been able to talk to them before, ever since the disaster at the lighthouse, there was like this no-fly zone between us, and we really couldn't talk the way we used to. It was as if they didn't quite see me when they looked at me now. I don't know what they saw. It's very unsettling not to be able to see yourself reflected in your own parents' eyes, if you know what I mean.

"Just fine?" my dad said, pressing me for info.

"Yeah. Fine."

He opened the refrigerator like he wanted something to eat, but he was just pretending so that he didn't have to look at me. I knew that trick, because I often did it myself.

"Everything okay at school?"

"You mean aside from the casualties from the elephant stampede?"

Now he stared at me with one hand on the open refrigerator door.

"I'm kidding, Dad."

He shut the door. "You have your mother's sense of humor."

Funny, because Mom always accused me of having
his
sense of humor. Lately neither of them would take credit for me.

As I went to my room, I began to think about the ex- members of the Shadow Club. Cheryl, who had taken my offhand comment about forming a club for second-best kids and turned it into reality; her younger brother, Randall, who had always been hundredths of a second away from first place on every swim team he'd ever been on; Darren Collins, who never saw the glory he deserved in basketball; Jason Perez, whose dreams revolved around a trumpet solo he'd never been asked to perform; Karin "O. P." Han, who was always One Point away from having the highest grades in school. Abbie Singer, who was almost, but not quite, the most popular girl around. And then, of course, me—the king of the silver medal in the hundred-yard dash.

It all seemed so important just a few months ago, but when you terrorize your enemies the way we did, you lose your taste for blood—and although I still had the urge to be better at what I did, I no longer had the need to be better
than.

It all came down to this: I could deal with myself now. I had come to terms with the things we had done . . . but that look of hatred on Austin's face—that was something I still couldn't deal with.

"Do you hate me, Tyson?" I asked from the threshold of his room that night. It used to be our guest room, but now Tyson was a permanent guest.

He didn't answer my question. Instead he held up the drawing he was working on. "How do you like this one?" he asked. It was an intricate pencil sketch of a city skyline.

"I like it," I said with a sly smile. "It's not on fire."

"Ha-ha," he said. I think I was the only person who could joke with him about that—perhaps because I had been there during the last blaze he had set, when he burned down his house and nearly took both of us with it. I don't take blame for everything in the world, but a good part of that was my fault, too, because I was really the one who had pushed Tyson to do it.

I took a look at the drawing. It was good—all his artwork was good—and, like I said, the fact that he didn't draw any- j thing burning was a good sign. So many of his sketches and paintings had everything from airplanes to buildings to people being consumed by flames. His psychiatrist said it was good for him to air his demons through his artwork, but it still didn't make it any less creepy.

How Tyson ended up with my family is something I can take a little bit of pride in. After his lighthouse burned and I rescued him from drowning in the ocean, he had been taken away from his foster parents. They were the third ones he had lived with since his real parents died when he was just a little kid. With no one else willing to take him, he would have been stuck in Pleasant Haven Children's Home, which was neither pleasant nor much of a haven—it was just a last- stop orphanage with a deceptive name. I was the one who insisted that we take him in—that
we
become his new foster family. Although my parents were definitely not too keen on the idea of an angry pyromaniac kid in the house, they knew I owed him even more than I owed Austin. In spite of the history between Tyson and me, even Social Services agreed that placing him with us was better than sending him to Pleasant Haven. When I was younger I always kind of wanted a brother. Of course Tyson wasn't what I'd had in mind, but I sort of liked it.

Tyson turned a page in his sketch pad and started a new drawing, forgetting, or pretending to forget the question I had asked when I first stepped in.

"So, Tyson," I said once more, refusing to let him off the hook, "do you hate me?"

He shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah, sure," he said. "Maybe a little."

"Maybe a lot?" I pushed.

"I don't know," Tyson answered. "Somewhere between a little and a lot—but closer to a little—and anyway, I wouldn't have come to live here if I didn't like you more than I hated you."

I smiled. "You can't stand me when I drag you out of your room in the middle of the night." Tyson grunted like a bull. Part of my penance, as far as Tyson was concerned, was setting my alarm for 1:00 and 4:00 A.M., then hauling Tyson out of bed to take a leak, with the hope of breaking that nasty little bed-wetting habit of his, which I had so thoroughly announced to the entire school.

"How do you deal with it when people totally hate your guts?" I asked.

"Very badly," he answered, and I realized what a stupid question that was to ask him—a kid who always went ballistic at the drop of a hat. "Is this about Austin?" he asked, knowing where I had gone to dinner that night.

I nodded. "I thought he might give me time off for good behavior, you know?"

"More like life with no chance of parole?" "No," I said, "more like death row." And then Tyson said something that I'll never forget. "Sometimes people see you the way they want to see you," he told me, "no matter how hard you try to change it. It's like they'd rather twist the whole world just so they can keep seeing you the same lousy way."

It wasn't long until I knew how true that really was.

Alec
Smartz

THE LETHAL BREW that the Shadow Club had set to simmer would have boiled over eventually, no matter what anyone did—I'm convinced of that—but it was the arrival of a certain person in town that really turned up the heat.

When some kids move into a new neighborhood, they make no ripple at all. They just slip into the back of the classroom while no one's looking, or simply replace someone else who just moved away. Then there's the kid whose entrance is like a cannonball jump into a still pool. Alec Emery Smartz Jr. was that kid.

Alec was slim, good-looking, and entered school on the top level, socially, academically, and even athletically. Although he wasn't the tallest kid in school, something about him gave you the impression that he was. He rode into our school in a mythical kind of way and quickly became legend.

Now, just to be clear on this, I had no problems withAlec. Well, maybe just a little one when it came to him and Cheryl—but I'll get to that.

I first saw him in the office while I was filling out a tardy slip, because, well, punctuality has never been my strongest point. Alec was having a conversation with Principal Diller like they were golf buddies or something. Principal Diller asked if there were any extracurricular activities he might be interested in, and Alec responded in an "aw shucks" kind of way, saying, "I don't know—there are lots of things I like to do."

"Well, I'm sure you'll make a lot of friends here," Principal Diller said. Then he caught a glimpse of me and made sure Alec walked in the other direction. I pretended like that didn't bother me.

From that first time I saw him, I sensed Alec would be the epicenter of seismic activity in our school. It was the way he held himself, and the way he looked at you. Like he already belonged, before even making an effort. And then there was the name—"Alec Smartz." It was one of those cruel parental jokes that would be an eternal mystery. But then on the other hand, it was so obvious that only a moron would try to take advantage of it. Whenever some kid tried to call him "Smart Alec," he would say in a total deadpan, "Gee, that's clever. Nobody ever thought of that before," making the moron feel even more stupid than he was before, if that was possible.

But I guess, in a way, Alec Smartz was condemned to be what he was, the same way so many people became slaves to their name—like our music teacher, Mr. Musiker, and the guy who runs the fruit stand down on Pine Street, Mr.Groesser.