The Shadow Club

  We all followed as Randall was wheeled into a room. The doctor examined him again and then left with his parents to examine the X rays. When my mother stepped out, we were left alone with Randall.

  "Tell us what happened, Randy," Cheryl said.

  "I broke my hip," he said groggily.

  "We know," said Cheryl. "Paul said you were playing basketball? Where was it?"

  Randall closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Eric Kilfoil's," he said, "and I wasn't playing basketball."

  Cheryl and I looked at each other in disbelief, and that's when I realized that the entire bottom had just dropped out of the Shadow Club.

  "Tell us what happened, if you can," asked Cheryl. Slowly, quietly, Randall told us. He told us how he went over to Eric's house after he snuck out of school, instead of coming to Stonehenge. He told us that he had been planning it for days, and he knew no one was home. He told us how he climbed onto the roof of Eric's garage, carrying tools to take down Eric's backboard and hoop and steal it. Halfway through unscrewing the thing, however, the backboard fell without warning. Randall lost his balance, and plunged to the ground. "I would still be there if the neighbors hadn't heard me yelling," he said.

  "Why did you do it?" asked Cheryl. Neither of us knew that Randall could do such a thing. Sure, he was a brat, but planning to steal something like that . . . Well, it made us both wonder what else he might have done.

  "I did it for Darren," he said. "Because Darren's my friend, and he doesn't deserve to be treated the way Eric treats him. I just wanted to get Eric back for Darren, that's all."

  "Does Darren know you did this?" I asked.

  "No."

  I swallowed and asked the question that I was afraid to hear the answer to. "Randall . . . did you pull all those other pranks, too?"

  "No!" he said, grimacing from the pain in his side. "I swear, I only pulled this one! Only this one! Tyson pulled the rest!"

  Cheryl looked away from me when I turned to her, and finally the last piece of the puzzle snapped into place. It fit so well that I knew I was right. I had to be. I knew the truth, and it was so ugly that I was afraid to accept it. It was uglier and more horrible than anything we could have imagined.

  "Cheryl, can I talk to you?"

  "Sure." Cheryl gave Randall a kiss on his forehead, and even in his sedated state, he was able to lift his hand and wipe it off. We stepped out into the hall.

  "Do you think Tyson pulled all the rest of the tricks, like Randall said?" I asked straight out.

  "Of course," she said.

  "What about Austin?" I asked. "Did Tyson do that?"

  "I guess." Cheryl shrugged, and looked away from me— and that wasn't right; Cheryl doesn't look away like that. Not unless she knows something that she doesn't want to tell.

  It was time for me to pull a bluff. It was a mean, nasty bluff to pull on Cheryl, but I had to do it. Things were way out of hand, and if what I suspected was true, we were all in more trouble than humanly possible. I had to trick Cheryl if I was going to find out the truth.

  "You're lying!" I said right to her face.

  "What?"

  "I know he didn't do it!" I said. "You did it."

  That lawyer look came over her face—the look she had whenever she was about to argue somebody down into the ground.

  "How dare you accuse me of something like that, Jared Mercer! I thought we trusted each other!"

  "We do, but you did it."

  "You don't have proof of that!"

  "Yes I do," I lied. "I saw you. I saw you planting the stones, I just didn't want to say anything until now. I saw you, Cheryl!"

  My heart sort of locked up for a while; I would swear I was having a heart attack or something. If I was wrong, then this little lie may have just ripped apart my lifelong friendship with Cheryl. If I was right, then it would be even worse. Either way, we were going to lose.

  Cheryl gave me the lawyer look for a while longer, but the anger faded from her face.

  "You should have said something before," she said. "That wasn't fair." She looked away from me for a moment, then looked back. "All right, I did do it," she said. I bit my tongue and tried hard not to react. "I did it for you," she said. "I didn't mean for him to get so hurt. I just wanted to scratch him up a bit so that you'd get to run in the District Olympics like you wanted to."

  For a split second I had the nauseous feeling that this wasn't Cheryl. This was some vile, sickening creature that had taken Cheryl's form, but was still dark and evil inside. Then the feeling passed and I realized that this was Cheryl through and through—and what I saw in her was just a reflection of myself. That was the worst thought of all. It was like a disease that took root in both of us—all of us—the moment we started the club, and was growing ever since.

  "It's what you wanted!" she said. "Yesterday you said that you wished Austin was hurt! You told me so!"

  She was right; I had told her that. It was my fault as much as hers. "What about the other tricks, Cheryl?"

  "I didn't do them, honest, I swear. I only pulled that one. Only that one! Tyson pulled the rest!"

  It was just as I thought—no doubt about it. At first I figured that Tyson framing us would be the worst thing that could happen. This was even worse. I began to back away.

  "I'm sorry!" she said. "Don't look at me like that. I just wanted to help you! I'm sorry!"

  I couldn't face her; not right then. I didn't know if I could ever face her again—much less hold her hand, or kiss her. I didn't want to be near her, so I turned and ran.

  "Jared . . . !" she called after me, but I didn't stop. I could hear that she was already crying as she called my name. I had never seen her cry, and I guessed I wouldn't now, because I didn't look back.

  I burst into the lobby, passing my confused mother on my way out of the hospital. As I raced through the front door into the cold evening, never slowing down, the full meaning of my discovery began to hit home.

  Greene was right!

  Greene was right all along, about everything. The truth was that the Shadow Club did pull all of the pranks—all of them, but we didn't even know it! Cheryl hit Austin for me, Randall hit Eric for Darren, Jason probably blew up the fish tank for Randall, and the amazing thing about it was that everyone did it secretly; no one knew what the others were up to, and we were all convinced that Tyson had done all the rest.

  What had I done? Tyson was the most innocent of us all!

  I raced down the road, never slowing my pace. My gopher shirt was drenched in sweat by the time I had run the three miles to the ocean. As I approached the cliff, it occurred to me that Greene and Tyson were right about one more thing: the Shadow Club wasn't a club at all; it was a gang. Sure, we didn't have guns or switchblades, but we caused plenty of damage just the same. Hate doesn't need a weapon.

  We were a gang, and I was a bully. A gang leader.

  The ocean was rough, and the storm clouds were almost overhead. It was 6:00 and the sun had set long ago. I searched the small strip of beach, but neither Tyson nor the Shadow Club was anywhere in sight. I headed for Stonehenge.

  I burst through the trees and jumped down into the pit, half expecting nobody to be there, but, nearly hidden in the shadows, sat the four other members of the club, all shivering and soaking wet with seawater. They all had looks on their faces somewhere between terror and shock.

  "Where's Tyson?" I asked, terrified myself of what they might tell me.

  No one answered me for a while, then Darren looked up at me and spoke like a child.

  "Jared . . . I think we did something real bad . . ."

  I sat down with them. I didn't want to hear this, but I knew I had to. "We all did something real bad," I said, leaning against the stone wall, feeling the wind blow across my cold, sweaty shirt.

  Darren looked down, and no one said anything. In that long silence a thought came to me. I suddenly realized that Hell wasn't a place filled with fire and smoke—Hell was cold, wet, and lonely. Hell was the de
ad stone foundation of an old building in the woods.

  I pulled my knees to my chest, shivering as I felt the cold stone behind me, then laid my head in my hands, and said, "Tell me what happened to Tyson."

  The Confession

  WHEN YOU LEFT," began Darren, "we kept walking Tyson deeper and deeper into the water. He kept cursing and yelling like he always does, but then, I don't know, I guess he started getting really scared. A big wave crashed into his back, and he nearly went under. When he got his balance back, he starts begging, 'Please,' he says, 'please, I'll do anything you want, just let me out of the water.'

  "We all told him we wouldn't let him out until he confessed—then an even bigger wave breaks right behind him, and knocks him down, washing him toward us. I caught him. He was coughing and sputtering, and he says, 'I'll confess, I'll confess anything. Let me go home!' "

  That's where Darren stopped.

  "So, what happened?" I asked. They all looked at me. "Well? Tell me!"

  "He confessed," said Abbie.

  "What?"

  "He confessed, but not to the pranks." Abbie brushed her wet hair out of her face. "He said he didn't do the pranks, so he couldn't confess to that."

  "Go on, what did he confess?"

  They all looked at me, then looked at each other, then looked down.

  "The fires," said Jason. It took a few seconds to sink in. Jason continued. "He told us that he set all the school fires. He burned down the gym last year and set all the smaller fires. He set the cafeteria fire last month, too."

  "Why?"

  "He's a pyromaniac," said O.P. "That's what I figure. He gets off on setting fires."

  "Oh, God!" I buried my head in my hands, remembering how we all watched as the gym burned down last year. Yet somehow I couldn't hate Tyson anymore. I couldn't hate anyone for anything. Instead I felt sorry for him. Those dark, empty eyes weren't empty at all; there was fire buried in them that nobody saw. I wondered if Greene even knew about it.

  "There's more," said Darren. "This is the bad part." He leaned his head back. I could tell by his voice that he was crying a little. "When he told us about the fires," continued Darren, "I got real crazy. I . . . I started to dunk his head in the water over and over again . . ."

  "Oh, no!" I yelled. "How could you do that?"

  "I don't know! I just started thinking about that fireman they carried out of the gym last year, and about all the people that could have been killed, and if you were there you would have done the same thing, 'cause you were acting just as crazy as me!"

  A shiver began in my back, working its way up to my head. Darren was right, I probably would have done it.

  "We all helped," said Jason. "We all kept pushing him in the water, and he kept yelling, then gasping, then he didn't make any noises at all."

  "We were gonna stop," added O.P., "but a gigantic wave hit all of us. We were all knocked down, and by the time we got our balance and stood up, Tyson wasn't there."

  I stared at them in disbelief.

  "That's when the craziness sort of just went away," said Darren, "and we all realized what we had done. We searched and searched the water, but we couldn't find Tyson. It seemed like we were searching for ten minutes . . . and then, another wave rolled in, and we saw him tossed over in the crest, facedown. We all swam out to him and dragged him back to shore. It was scary, Jared—he was so limp and so heavy."

  "I resuscitated him," said O.P. "I didn't even know if I was doing it right, but I must have been, 'cause it worked. He coughed up water and just kept coughing, so we rolled him onto his side.

  "He was really dazed," continued Darren. "I don't know if he was even completely conscious at first, but then a minute later, he stumbles up, and begins to run away."

  "He threw a rock at us," said Abbie. "It nearly hit Darren in the head."

  "Do you blame him?" I asked.

  "No," said Jason. "Anyway, he ran up the way we came, coughing, cursing, and screaming, 'I'll show you! I'll show you!' That was the last we saw of him."

  So that was it. "What a mess," I said, figuring that to be the biggest understatement of my life.

  "There's one more thing," said Darren. "We came back here to wait for you on account of we were afraid to go home, since Greene had probably called all our parents. While we sat here waiting we found something out." Darren looked down—nobody could look me in the face.

  "Tyson . . . didn't. . . pull . . . the pranks," said Darren. He stopped for a while, then said, "I cut Vera's brakes," and Abbie said, "I poured paint in Eric's locker," and O.P. said, "I put David's trumpet behind the bus," and Jason said, "I put the blockbuster in the fish tank—I didn't mean to blow it up. I also hid the camera in Tommy Nickols' locker."

  "We figured Cheryl or Randall put the rocks down for Austin," said Darren.

  "Cheryl did," I said.

  "Thought so," said Darren.

  "What did you do?" asked O.P.

  I thought about it. "I did the worst thing of all," I said. "It was my idea to start pulling pranks to begin with."

  We sat there for the longest time, cold and wet, afraid to go anywhere.

  "So what do we do now?" asked Abbie. "What happens when we get home? What happens tomorrow? What happens at school on Monday?"

  "Whatever happens to us happens. We deserve it. Anyway, let's not think about any of that now." I stood up. "I'm going to Tyson's house," I said, "to start . . . unscrewing things up, and apologize."

  "How do you apologize for nearly killing someone?" asked O.P.

  "I don't know," I said. "I've never almost killed someone before."

  One by one they all stood to follow me, and we walked out of Stonehenge together, but as we did I noticed something and knelt down beside it. It was the pile of marionette heads, arms, legs, and bodies torn to bits. He must have spent hours on each one. Now they were beyond repair.

  "Why do you think he made those?" asked Abbie.

  "I think I know," said Jason. "He doesn't have any friends. He had to make up friends of his own."

  "We were all in his collection," I said. "I guess we should have been flattered." I stood and led the way to Tyson's house.

  Fire and Water

  SOMETHING WAS WRONG at the lighthouse.

  There were lights in the windows, but they were the wrong color, and they flickered.

  Darren realized it first. "It's on fire!" he said, and we ran toward it. "Tyson set the place on fire!"

  The front door was wide open, just as we had left it, and Tyson's aunt and uncle were still not home. As I peered in, I could see flames eating up the living room. There wasn't much time to think, or to do much of anything, but one thought did make its way to my brain. If Tyson was in there, and he died, it would be my fault, because we pushed him to do it. I knew that I couldn't live with that; I couldn't live with it for one single day!

  I ran through the front door, as the rest of the club screamed for me to stop.

  Inside, it didn't seem as bad as it had looked from the outside. The drapes were on fire, the furniture and part of the floor, too, but I could make my way around easily, if Iheld my breath. I ran down the hall that was just beginning to catch fire, but when I looked into Tyson's room I had to turn away—the fire was everywhere. I couldn't see a thing, and could feel the heat all around me! There was no way I could get near the room.

  Fire moves faster than most people probably think it does. When I turned around, the hallway was blocked off by flames, so I turned and ran through a door, finding myself in the kitchen. It was amazing, but nothing in the kitchen was on fire yet. I closed the door behind me.

  That's when I began to get scared. Really scared. It just came over me, nearly making me pass out. Smoke filled the room, and I could hear the rumble of the flames eating up the walls around me. There were no windows in the small kitchen, and only one other door. I ran to open it.

  It was locked.

  Turning the knob, I pushed on it again and again, but it wouldn't budge. I was
trapped! I heard the television explode in the living room, and I realized that coming into this burning house was the biggest mistake I had ever made. That's when I did it.

  I wet my pants.

  That's right, I wet my pants, and I'm not ashamed of it either! I was on the verge of frying to death! No human being can stand that stress.

  Anyway, I didn't realize it right away; I was too busy kicking at the door. Then for no particular reason, I turned the knob and pulled rather than pushed. The door opened.

  How stupid! I thought to myself. How stupid it would be if I died because I was too much of an idiot to pull the door instead of push it!

  I closed the door behind me and found myself in a round room, standing before an old wooden spiral staircase. I was inside the base of the lighthouse.

  Behind me the roar of the flames got loud, and I knew that the kitchen was history; I had gotten out just in time. Ahead of me lay the spiral staircase, no windows or doors, and so up I went.

  At the top of the stairs, I found myself inside a dirty glass booth, the light cage, I think it's called. In the center of the round booth was the old light that hadn't been used for dozens of years.

  I saw him right away. Tyson sat between the light cage and the railing that ran around it, clutching something in his hands and rocking back and forth. He saw me right away, too. I stepped out of the light cage, and onto the ledge. He looked up at me. His eyes were red from tears; my eyes were red from smoke. He picked something up that lay next to him—a broken piece of brick—and he hurled it at me. It hit me in the shoulder. I tried not to feel it.

  "Go away!" he said through his tears. "Just go away!" He threw something else—this time a shard of thick glass. I ducked and it went over the rail.

  "I hate you!" he screamed. "Hate-you-hate-you-hate- you! I wish you were dead! I wish . . . I wish you were never horn!"