The Shadow Club

  Then Randall went up to him. Randall was a year younger and four inches shorter than Tyson, but that didn’t matter. Randall went right up to him, and grabbed the front of his shirt, and wrinkled it in his fist. He got really close to Tyson, and snarled at him in a way that I'd never heard Randall snarl.

  "Your life isn't worth much if you breathe a word of this to anyone, you stupid slimeball." We all waited a moment, and then, out of nowhere, Randall spat in Tyson's face. "That's what you get for spying, sleazebag."

  The fight had left Tyson. He looked down, wiping his face, and mumbled, "You didn't have to do that."

  Cheryl and I stared at Randall as he backed off. Randall looked at us and shrugged. I tried not to think about what Randall had just done.

  "Can I do that, too?" asked Jason. No one answered him.

  "Why don't you go home, Tyson?" I said. "And forget you ever saw us. For your own good."

  Tyson turned, mumbled something nasty under his breath, and left.

  The fire needed more wood, but no one felt like feeding it. It was dark now, and our parents were probably beginning to wonder where we were. No one felt much like talking after Tyson left, and so a few minutes later, the meeting broke up. Cheryl and Randall waited as I poured water on the fire.

  "So what's next for the Shadow Club?" asked Cheryl. I stepped up out of Stonehenge, then reached out my hand, and helped Cheryl. I never did let go of her hand after she was out—and strangely enough, I didn't seem to care. I didn't even care if Randall noticed that we were holding hands—which he didn't. Although it was starting to get chilly, Cheryl's hand was soft and warm, and it felt good to hold it.

  "What's next?" I said. "I don't know. More tricks maybe?"

  "Maybe."

  "We used all the good ones," said Randall. "How can we top those?"

  "I don't know," I said. "Why don't we think about it, then we'll all talk at our next meeting."

  "Are you worried about Tyson telling everyone?" Cheryl asked.

  "Aren't you?"

  "Yeah."

  "What can we do to him if he tells?" asked Randall.

  "I don't know," I said.

  As we walked back through the woods, I was certainly glad that Cheryl's hands were warm. Because mine kept getting colder.

  Two hours later, at 8:00, I left my house again. I told my parents that I was going over to Cheryl's to work on a science project. Since I never lied to them, and I had always been pretty responsible and trustworthy, they believed me and let me go. Needless to say, there was no science project , and I had no intention of going to Cheryl's house. I would have liked to, but I had some important business to take care of.

  I began running at a slow pace. I ran past Cheryl's house, and past all the houses on the street. I ran to the edge of the neighborhood, and then down the road that passed by Stonehenge. I could have taken the shortcut through the woods, but I didn't feel like doing that at night.

  I ran for about a mile, which was not hard for me, and then saw what I was looking for. At the edge of the woods, on a wide grassy knoll, stood the old lighthouse. A small wooden home had been built around the old stone tower, and no light had shone in that tower for maybe a hundred years. It only made sense to me that Tyson lived in a lighthouse with no light.

  I was curious about Tyson and the mysterious secrets I had heard so many rumors about, secrets of his past and of his family. I was not there because I was curious, though; I was there for a reason. If I could find a secret—any secret— about Tyson, then I could bargain with him. I wouldn't tell his secret, if he didn't tell about the Shadow Club. It was a simple enough plan, but finding the secret was not going to be easy.

  My hair is blond, and easy to see, so as I got closer, I pulled the black hood of my sweat jacket over my head.

  As I approached Tyson's house, I began to get a bit frightened, thinking about all the things I had heard in the three years that Tyson had lived in town. Some said that Tyson lived with his aunt and uncle—that's what Tyson said—but we weren't quite sure. Someone heard that they were actually foster parents. But whatever they were, one thing was certain: Tyson didn't live with his real parents, and no one knew why. There were dozens of rumors about that. Some said that they had abandoned Tyson on a street corner, some said that they were dead, and some said they beat Tyson, and were in jail. Ralphy Sherman said that they were a family of ax murderers and hid out in the woods somewhere, but then, Ralphy Sherman also said that he went skydiving without a parachute on Sundays, so no one put much faith in the ax-murderer story—still, you never know.

  Anyway, those were the thoughts that were toying with my mind as I got closer to Tyson's remodeled lighthouse.

  It wasn't much of a house. It was like a small shack, built right up on the edge of the cliff, attached to the lighthouse It was small but well kept.

  Keeping myself low, I made my way to the side of the house, and peered into a window. Two people who seemed on the verge of being elderly sat on a couch watching TV. I stood there for a few minutes. Tyson was not there, and these people—who must have been Tyson's "aunt and uncle," or whatever—did not move from the couch at all.

  They're dead, said a voice in my brain that sounded a bit like Ralphy Sherman. They're dead, and they've been stuffed!

  Just then, the woman mumbled something about how many commercials were on the tube nowadays. So much for them being stuffed.

  I ducked again and made my way around the side, just by the edge of the cliff. Again I looked into a window. Thin time I had found Tyson's room. It was small, with just enough room for a bed and a desk, and Tyson was sitting at his desk, working on something. For some reason, I sort of expected Tyson's room to be like that. There was a second window, overlooking the ocean, and the far wall was bare except for a single picture, smack in the middle. The framed photo was of a kid who looked an awful lot like Tyson, but younger, standing with a man and a woman—definitely not the people who now sat in the living room. This must have been Tyson with his real parents.

  What I saw on the other wall seemed completely out of place. Hanging from hooks on the wall were puppets—or not puppets, but marionettes—little dolls with carved hands and feet and drawn faces, hanging by dozens of strings. I knew for a fact that those kinds of things were expensive, but Tyson had lots of them. Then I saw another one, sitting on Tyson's desk next to a mess of wood, plastic, fabric, and knives that Tyson was fiddling with. That's when it hit me that Tyson had made these! I looked back at the ones hanging by the wall. Each had a different face and wore different clothes. There was one with loud clothes, wild hair, and big breasts that kind of looked like Abbie. One with red hair and white shoes that kind of looked like Austin, and one with blond hair that I swear looked kind of like me. I mean, I knew it was all a coincidence, right? Still it was creepy all the same.

  So, Tyson made puppets. Could that be a big enough secret, I thought? Naah. I needed something bigger. Something that would shut Tyson's mouth up like a clam. I stood there outside, peeping into Tyson's window, then the living room window, then the kitchen window, waiting for something. I knew spying like that was a low-down thing to do, but I had to do it for the good of the club. I tried to think of myself as 007, instead of as a Peeping Tom.

  After twenty minutes, I began to worry that perhaps this was not going to work. Maybe Tyson's secrets were so well hidden I would never find them.

  And then Tyson's "aunt" said something.

  "Ty," she said, "did you make your bed this morning?"

  "There weren't any clean sheets," said Tyson from the other room.

  "There are now. Make your bed."

  Now, this might seem strange to you, but I had a feeling about this one, a really good feeling. Quickly I made my way around to Tyson's room. He was gone, but in a moment, he came in with a sheet. He put it on the chair and pulled back his bedspread to make the bed.

  In one instant, I knew everything I needed to know about Tyson McGaw.

  "How ya doin'
, Gopher?" said L'Austin. He had just done his morning laps and was ready to do his sprint on the grass, when I crossed the field toward school on Monday. The "Gopher" business was getting way out of hand, and we both knew it. Not only had the entire team decided my new name was Gopher, but half the school was now calling me that, and it was getting worse. Some kids didn't even know my real name; I was just the Gopher. It was enough to make me want to quit the team, but that was just what Austin wanted, and I wasn't about to let him get the better of me.

  "What are you smiling about?" asked Austin. "Get faster over the weekend?"

  "Maybe," I said, smiling.

  "You better be on time for practice today," he said, "or else I'll make you do extra laps."

  "What are you, coach now?" I asked, still smiling.

  "Coach, captain, what's the difference? The point is, yougotta listen to what I say, right?"

  The smile was leaving my face quickly.

  "See you later, Gopher." He blasted off barefoot across the grass, moving faster than any ninth grader in the world except for me should be able to run.

  "Watch that you don't run into any friendly spiders, Austin!" I yelled after him. He stumbled for a moment, but kept on running.

  As I left the field I passed his stupid white Aeropeds resting in the grass. A month into school, and they were still as white as snow. Stupid shoes. Well, who cared about Austin? I had a mission that morning, and I was not about to let old Tarantula-head spoil it.

  Off I marched into the building and waited by my locker for a sign of Tyson McGaw.

  "Get out of my face!" said Tyson. I was standing right next to him as he opened his locker. The second the door opened I pushed it shut.

  "That's no way to talk, Tyson."

  "All right," said Tyson. "Get out of my face, moron."

  "I'm not in your face, I'm standing next to you. Do you have problems judging distance? Is that it?"

  "Just leave me alone." Tyson opened his locker and put his books in.

  "I just wanted to tell you something, Tyson."

  "Yeah, like what?"

  "I just wanted to say that I like the puppets on your wall." Tyson snapped his head to me. That crazy look in his eyes became fuller.

  "What do you know about it?"

  "I saw them. I looked through your window one night, and I saw them."

  "You're lying!"

  "Why would I lie, Tyson? Besides, how else would I know about them?"

  Tyson said nothing. He just stared at me.

  "Is that what you do all the time, make puppets?" I asked.

  "Is that all you do, look in people's windows?" he said. "Anyway, it's none of your business, and you'd better not look in my window anymore!"

  "Why not? Got something to hide, Tyson?"

  "You just better not, that's all."

  "You spied on us, so I just spied back on you. There's also something else I know about you, Tyson."

  "What?"

  And staring straight at him I said, "I know that you're a bed wetter."

  Suddenly that crazy look in his eyes became even more frightening than I thought it could. It was as if Tyson's eyes were a window to some dark, horrible place that only he knew about. It was like his eyes could have turned me to stone.

  "That's a lie," he snarled, like a caged animal would snarl.

  "I saw, Tyson. I watched you change your sheets. I saw the stains on them. I saw the rubber sheet. I know all about you, Tyson."

  "It's not true!" he growled.

  I didn't say anything.

  "I hate you!" he yelled. Then, soften "You better not tell anyone, because if you do . . ."

  "Quiet!" I said. "All right, I'll make a deal with you. If you don't tell anyone about the Shadow Club, I won't tell anyone about your rubber sheets. Is it a deal? C'mon, is it?"

  Tyson stared at me, unable to speak. His frightening, empty eyes got deeper, then suddenly it was like the bottom dropped out of his mind. He bared his teeth, snarled, and lunged at me, grabbing my hair and my throat, fighting like no normal kid fights. In a second, dozens of kids were all around watching—most laughing at Tyson, like they always laughed.

  "I'll kill you if you tell," he screamed. "Killyou-killyou- killyou-killyou!" I pushed him away, but he came right back at me. Maybe I should have been punching him back, I don’t know. I guess I felt it was unfair to hit him, so I just kept pushing him off me, and he kept lunging, with tears in those wolf eyes.

  Finally, Vice Principal Greene came running down the hall and grabbed Tyson, shaking him and talking to him as if he were trying to shake someone out of a bad nightmare. Eventually Tyson snapped back into sanity.

  "What is this all about?" Mr. Greene asked me. I shrugged. "Nothing," I said. "He just came at me. I think I must have bumped into his locker."

  And Mr. Greene believed me, because I was always such a good kid who never caused anyone any problems. It scared me to think what I could get away with if I really wanted to. It scared me and bothered me to think of how I was toying with poor Tyson's head, so I tried not to think about it.

  "All right, Tyson, why don't you tell me why you went after him?"

  Tyson just looked at him, then at me, with his jaw open, as if he would spill out the whole story. Then finally he looked down.

  "He bumped into my locker," said Tyson.

  "Fine. Let's have a talk in my office, Tyson," said Mr. Greene. He looked at the crowd in the hallway. "Didn't I just hear the homeroom bell? Don't you all have somewhereto go?"

  The crowd began to break up, and Greene walked with Tyson down the hall. Tyson turned back to look at me, both of us realizing that I had him over a barrel, and there was nothing he could do about it. I winked at him, and he threw back at me that stone-turning gaze of his.

  I guess in some ways I had turned to stone, but it wasn't by Tyson. It was by the Shadow Club.

  The Best of Friends

  AS USUAL, MOST of us pretended not to know each other at school that week. Sure, Cheryl and I hung around together, but as far as the rest of the club went, well, we just winked at each other in the halls. The secrecy of our friendships made the meetings at Stonehenge very special.

  By next Friday's meeting, however, I was feeling awfully strange about things. Tyson hadn't spilled the beans to anyone, as far as I knew, and none of us had gotten caught for any of the practical jokes we had played, but still something didn't sit quite right. Maybe it was the feeling I'd got when I told Tyson I knew he was a bed wetter. Maybe it was the fact that I had to spy on him like a Peeping Tom. Or maybe it was the fact that Tyson had called us a gang. Whatever it was, I took the feeling to the meeting with me, and I couldn't shake it. I held my hands close to the fire. It seemed that for the past few meetings nothing I could do would keep my hands warm.

  "You know," said Darren, "I never thought this thing would work. I mean, I never thought we'd all actually . . . you know, like each other."

  "I'll say," said Abbie. "Look at this group: we've got a jock, a brain, a nerd, a sosh, a brat, a lawyer, and the Gopher! Who'd have thought we'd all get along!"

  I smiled, but down inside I cringed. The kids in the Shadow Club were the only ones in school left who didn't call me the Gopher.

  "I'm not a jock!" said Darren.

  "And I'm not a nerd!" said Jason.

  "Yeah, but you know what I mean," said Abbie.

  I knew what she meant. Except for Randall, Cheryl, and me, none of us had really known each other before the club.

  "I guess when you have something in common," said O.P, "it's easy to be friends." Oh, yeah, sure, we really had a lot in common, I thought.

  "We all hate somebody," I said.

  O.P. turned to me. "What?"

  "We hate somebody. That's all we have in common. A little bit sick, huh?"

  "Naah," said Darren. "It's like war. Common enemies bring people close, you know?"

  "But we're not at war," I said.

  "Yeah, we are," said Jason. "We're fighting fo
r our right not to be humiliated by the unbeatables."

  "I say we nuke 'em!" said Randall.

  "And I say that's not funny!" I yelled. I wondered which was worse, wanting to nuke somebody, or wishing someone was never born. There were seven of us, all wishing that seven other people in the world had never been brought into it. That's the kind of hatred you read about in war books; the kind of hate that kills millions of people.

  Everyone around the circle looked at me as if I had cussed Randall out.

  "I think you're taking this all too seriously, Jared," said Cheryl. "It's just for fun."

  "I think he's feeling guilty," said Abbie.

  "What for?" said Darren. "Our jokes didn't hurt anybody, did they? I mean, sure a spider got killed, but I kill spiders every day. Do you see me crying about it?"

  He had a good point, but it didn't make me feel any better. I took my hands away from the fire. Almost immediately, they began to get cold again, but when I put my hands down, Cheryl grabbed one of them and held it gently, out of everyone's view. That's when I began to feel a bit better about everything.

  "I think I know what it is," said O.P. "I think he's worried about Tyson talking."

  "No! That's not it," I said, and took a deep breath.

  "You want out of the club? Is that it?" asked Darren.

  "No, of course not. I like the club—I love the club . . . but . . ."

  "But what?" said Darren. "Get to the point."

  "Maybe we should stop the tricks," I said.

  Cheryl turned to me. "Jared, our charter is based on revenge."

  "Yeah," said Randall. "The tricks were your idea. Don't wimp out on us, Jared."

  "Yeah, Jared," echoed Jason.

  "Hasn't it been great fun so far?" asked Abbie. I thought about it. It had been great fun.

  "And didn't everyone deserve what they got?" asked O.P. She was right. They all deserved what they got.

  "And don't you enjoy being president of the club?" asked Cheryl. She hooked me with that one, and that's when any guilt or doubt I had inside switched off completely. Until that moment, I had never thought of myself as president, but as I looked around the fire, I saw that everyone was looking at me—not just looking at me, but looking up to me—me, the Generic Kid, who never stood out in a crowd, and whose face nobody could remember.