The Shadow Club

  What an idiot I had been! Here I was, the leader of this club, and I was on the verge of throwing it all away. I wasn't about to do that.

  "Maybe what we need is a slight change of club policy," said Cheryl. I knew what she meant; I picked right up on it. Keep my voice firm; no more wishy-washiness. If I was the president, then I was going to tell them how the club was going to work.

  "All right," I said in my power voice, "if we're going in keep this club from falling apart—or even worse, from getting caught—we have to stop the tricks for a while."

  Randall and a few of the others whined.

  "Quiet!" I said. "I'm not finished." I couldn't believe how quickly they stopped whining. I held back a smile. We were in charge, both Cheryl and I; we had power, and my voice didn't crack once! "We have to stop the tricks, and only pull them once in a while—when we really feel somebody deserves it. That way, we can give them exactly what they deserve, when they deserve it, and we'll never get caught I That's our new policy, right, Cheryl?"

  "Right!" Cheryl smiled, and held my hand a bit tighter.

  Everyone looked at each other for a few moments, then Abbie said, "That makes perfect sense to me," and everyone agreed; even Darren.

  "What do we do in the meantime?" he asked.

  "Eat more marshmallows." Cheryl tossed him the bag.

  "OK," said Darren, and he did just that.

  After that, everything lightened up. Cheryl and I were in charge. Everyone knew it, and everyone accepted it. For the rest of the afternoon, we talked about everything from the fires at school to whether or not anything Ralphy Sherman ever said in his whole life was true. It was great, for, as Cheryl said sometime during that afternoon, we were a bunch of kids—not a gang—having fun without doing anything wrong (or at least we weren't doing anything wrong at that moment). We were good kids, with good grades, from good homes. Everything about us was good, and there was nothing to feel bad about. Nothing at all. Was there?

  When the meeting broke up, as usual I put out the fire. Strangely enough, putting out the fire and leaving Stonehenge had become my favorite part of the meetings. I didn't know why. No, actually I sort of did know why.

  Today Randall had gone off with everyone else, leaving Cheryl and me alone. Cheryl always waited for me. I liked that.

  "You had me scared for a while," she said as I doused the fire. "I thought you were gonna say something that would break up the club."

  "I wouldn't do that," I said, smiling. "It's too much fun."

  "Sure is!" said Cheryl. I took her hand as we left Stonehenge. "So what was bothering you before?"

  "I guess I started to feel bad about things."

  "Never feel sorry for the enemy!" she said. "Does Austin feel bad every time he calls you the Gopher?"

  "No, but I'm not talking about Austin. I feel sorry for Tyson."

  "The slimeball? Why? All he ever does is say nasty things to people and fight. I don't feel sorry for him, and I don't trust him. We'll be lucky if the creep doesn't snitch on us."

  "He won't snitch on us," I said.

  "How can you be sure?"

  "Because I am."

  Then Cheryl stopped walking and a wide smile appeared on her face. "You did something, didn't you? You found a way to keep his mouth shut!"

  "You could say that."

  "What did you do?"

  "I found out a secret. That's all."

  Cheryl's ears seemed to pop up like a rabbit's. "Secret! You know a secret about Tyson McGaw? Tell me, tell me, I have to know!"

  "No. I can't."

  "Why not? I won't tell anyone."

  "I have a deal with Tyson. I won't tell if he doesn't."

  "I don't count, though," she begged.

  "A deal's a deal."

  "Who's gonna know?"

  "I will."

  "So Tyson's a better friend than I am?"

  "No. Forget I said it. I don't want to talk about Tyson anymore."

  Cheryl could see she was not going to get anywhere. She sighed. "Fine, be that way. I guess we'd better be getting back."

  I didn't feel like going back though. It was warm for October, and it was just getting toward my favorite time of day.

  "Wait a second, the road's that way," said Cheryl, pointing.

  "No, it's not," I said playfully. "It's this way." I knew I was walking in the wrong direction, but I wanted to see if Cheryl would follow. She did. I ran in front of her.

  "Jared, I think there's a cliff that way, be careful."

  "C'mon," I said.

  I slowed down as I heard the crash of waves somewhere far below. I could see the horizon through the trees, and soon I came out onto a grassy cliff above the ocean. Cheryl found me a moment later.

  "See, I was right, bozo," she said. "I have a good sense of direction. You should have listened to me."

  "I know," I said, with a silly smile on my face.

  "C'mon, we'll be late!"

  "I know," I said, with that same smile.

  She looked at me, not quite sure what to make of it. "You're nuts, you know that?"

  "I know," I said, and she laughed. Although I had come to Stonehenge in the worst of moods, I was in a good mood now, and I wanted that good mood to last. I was with my best friend and was having a great time.

  "If my parents scream at me for missing supper, I'm blaming you," she said.

  I smiled at that, and she smiled back. We sat down together close to the edge of the cliff, but not close enough tofall.

  "We really are presidents of the club, aren't we?" I said,

  "Yeah, we are."

  "There's so much power in that, you know; being in charge of a club . . . I mean . . . five other kids letting us make decisions."

  "Isn't it fun?" She squeezed my hand tightly.

  "I think I like that the most—even more than I liked getting back at Austin. I like the power. It's like . . . it's like being king of a very small country. I think I'll run for class president this year."

  Cheryl laughed.

  "Why are you laughing at me?"

  "I'm not laughing at you, I just think it'll be funny, because you'll be running against me."

  "You're going to run for class president?"

  "Sure, why not? Don't you think I'd be a good president?"

  I smiled. "Yeah, I do."

  "Hey, maybe we could run together—we're a team, right?" She looked at me, then we both looked out over the ocean, sort of afraid to look at each other for too long.

  "The last time we got to talk alone like this was when we were up in the tree house," she said, "talking about how much we hate Austin and Rebecca."

  "I don't want to talk about them," I said.

  "Good. Then let's talk about Tyson's secret."

  "I don't want to talk about that, either."

  "Then what do you want to talk about?"

  "Nothing, I guess."

  I smiled, she smiled, and then, for no particular reason, I leaned over and I kissed her on the cheek. She instantly looked away from me.

  I felt so stupid. I mean, here she was, my best friend, and I kissed her. How stupid could I get? My face turned as red as the sunset. I was going to say, "I'm sorry," but didn't have the guts to say much of anything at all.

  Then she turned to me again and kissed me on the lips. Let me tell you, I didn't know how to feel just then. I felt so good about it, but at the same time, it felt so strange, as if we were doing something wrong. As if I wasn't supposed to be enjoying this. As if we wouldn't be friends anymore when the kiss ended.

  But when the kiss ended, we were still friends—only our friendship was a little bit different, and I knew it would probably never be the old way again.

  "Oh, boy . . .," I said.

  "Yeah . . .," she said.

  "Hmmm . . .," I said.

  "Well," I said. "What now?"

  "I don't know."

  "Nobody's going to believe us," I said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "No one e
ver believed us when we told them we were just friends, and we weren't going out. Now they'll never believe us."

  "Are we going out now?"

  "I don't know, are we?"

  "I don't know, do you want to?"

  "I don't know, do you?"

  "I don't know," said Cheryl. "I always thought of you sort of like a brother."

  "You thought of me like Randall?"

  "Yuk! No way!"

  "Well, then I guess you didn't think of me like a brother."

  I tempted fate and kissed her again. Now I didn't care what anybody thought. I didn't care if people thought we were always going out. I didn't care if people said things. I didn't care if some golden rule was written across the sky saying that you can't go out with your best friend. I didn't care. Those were tree-house rules for tree-house friends, and the tree house had grown much too small these past few years.

  Someone’s Idea of a Joke

  EVERYTHING CHANGED just a little bit after that Friday afternoon. I found myself thinking a lot more about Cheryl, and spending all my free time with her. Randall made a big deal about it, and tried to spread whatever nasty rumors a kid brother can get away with spreading, but it didn't bother us; we were having too good a time together to worry about it. After a few days it was hard to imagine what it was like before we started going out.

  We knew this was just the start of a wonderful time in both of our lives, and the next few months were going to be great. I had a feeling that everything would start going my way. In just a few weeks Coach Shuler would be choosing the one runner to represent the school in the District Olympics, and now I really believed that I would, just once, beat out Austin. Between Cheryl, the Shadow Club, and the progress I was making on the track team, I figured I had it made.

  Things never turn out the way you plan, though. Badthings have a way of coming back at you, kind of like A boomerang. I don't think anyone ever gets away with anything, you know? Sure, maybe they think they might get away with things, but in the end—could be years later even—boom! That boomerang comes flying right back in their face.

  The Shadow Club had a boomerang, and it seemed topick up speed on its way back. It was a strange boomerang that nobody quite expected and nobody quite understood, but it hit every single one of us so quickly, so furiously, that we never knew what hit us.

  There are lots of good jokes you could pull on somebody's locker. You could hide in it, and scare the daylights out of them when they opened it. You could put a rotten egg in it, that's always good for a laugh. You could set up a bucket of water that would pour on their head when they opened it; that was always good for a laugh, too.

  But what Eric Kilfoil, the star basketball player, found when he opened his locker was not funny at all. It was no joke; it was downright nasty. Everything was there, just where he had left it before basketball practice, but things were definitely not the same. Someone had gone into his locker and drenched everything, his clothes, his new sweats, even his books, with black paint. And not the kind that comes out, either. This was thick stuff that could never wash out. He was so mad, he began to kick all the lockers. I could hear it all the way out on the track.

  His clothes were ruined, his books were ruined, even his science project was ruined, and you know what?

  The Shadow Club didn't do it!

  There are tricks and there are tricks. This was just plain mean, and Darren, who saw the locker, had no idea who would do such a thing, or why.

  Eric Kilfoil became the first mysterious victim in a wave of unexplained crimes.

  There was a locker search next Monday. Everyone knows that locker searches are illegal, but that doesn't matter much when someone steals the principal's eight-hundred-dollarcamera.

  Mr. Diller, the principal, was the kind of guy who thought that the kids in our school were to blame for all of Earth's problems, and he was sure one of us must have stolen his camera. He had us all line up by our lockers, one class at a time, and one by one he searched each locker, leaving no stone unturned. You see, that camera was his life, and any kid caught with it was going to see trouble like no one had ever seen before. I'd never seen Diller this mad. Ralphy Sherman said that he had seen a bum walking away with it, which just made Diller more certain it was still in school.

  My row of lockers was the last one to be checked.

  One by one Mr. Diller had us open our lockers, to prove to him we didn't have his camera, and one by one we cleared ourselves of blame.

  Then he came to Tommy Nickols, O.P.'s archenemy, Tommy opened his locker, just like the rest of us. It was a mess: papers everywhere, old library books that were way overdue, and a black strap sticking out from beneath them, Tommy looked up at Diller, then back down at his locker, and Diller reached in, pulling on the strap. Out came his eight-hundred-dollar camera.

  "I didn't do it!" was all Tommy could say. "It wasn't me, it wasn't me!" But the evidence was staring us all in the face.

  Tommy began to cry, even harder than he did when Octavia got stomped on. "I didn't do it!" he wailed, over and over again.

  I looked across at O.P., Cheryl, and Darren. I could tell by the looks on their faces that they had nothing to do with this. This was not a Shadow Club prank, and I believed Tommy Nickols. Tommy was a good kid, and this stank of sabotage. Someone had planted that camera, I knew it, but I couldn't figure out who would do such a thing.

  Mr. Diller, on the other hand, believed what he saw. Tommy Nickols, the ninth grade's best student, was suspended for three days.

  David Berger, in spite of the sliming event, was still chosen to play a solo with the high school band, and as usual, he made everyone in the junior high band feel lousy about it.

  One afternoon, as the buses were loading up to go home, David came running out of his bus like a maniac. It was just before track practice, and I was talking with Cheryl—which I was doing quite a lot of lately—when he came bursting between us and asked, "Hey, has anybody seen my trumpet?"

  "Why would we have seen your trumpet?" answered Cheryl.

  He ran to another group of kids, desperately asking, "Hasanyhody seen my trumpet? I think it's been stolen!"

  He asked every kid who came out of school, ran into the school, then came out a few minutes later. He was near tears. "I checked all the classrooms. I know I had it with me. Somebody stole it!"

  None of us thought much of it until about thirty seconds later, when the buses began to pull out, and a horrible crunching noise sounded from the back tires of bus number five.

  When David saw it, he nearly dove beneath the wheels to save his trumpet, but it was too late. By the time the bus driver realized what was going on and stopped the bus, David Berger's silver trumpet had been crushed flat, never to play, or slime anyone ever again. He held it up and tried to push down on one of the valves, but it didn't move. He tried a bit harder, and the valve fell off; the thing might as well have been flattened by a steamroller. David sort of wandered off in shock, holding his trumpet as if it were a baby.

  A minute later, Jason Perez ran up to Cheryl and me.

  "I didn't do it," he said. "I didn't, honestly, I didn't!" andI knew he was telling the truth. It seemed that someone else had picked up the pranks where we had left off. It was as if all the hatred built up by the Shadow Club became an invisible monster that went around pulling its own horrible pranks. I knew there had to be a more logical explanation, though.

  "Well, maybe all these kids have other enemies, too," said Cheryl. "Maybe it's all just coincidence."

  "Maybe," I said, "or maybe someone's trying to frame us."

  Greene’s Eye

  "TELL ME ABOUT the Shadow Club, Jared." Mr. Greene sat in his tiny office, with the venetian blinds open. I could barely see his face, because the sky behind him was so bright. All I could see was his silhouette. My heart seemed to stop for at least five seconds when he asked me the question.

  "The Shadow Club? What's that?" I said. It was a stupid thing to say, but he had caught me off g
uard.

  "Something you know about," said Mr. Greene. I had gotten a note during third period that said he wanted to see me during lunch. It didn't take me long to figure out that Tyson had told him about the club.

  "Oh, oh that," I said. This wasn't going to be easy. "It's just a group of kids. We get together, go to the movies, play board games, you know."

  "Why do you call it the Shadow Club?" he asked, twiddling his thumbs and sitting in his big chair, behind his big desk, in that small room.

  "Because we meet late in the afternoon," I said. "When there's lots of shadows. Can I go now?"

  "Not yet. I'd like to know a little more about the club first."

  "Like what?"

  "Like who's in it."

  "Is it all right if I eat my lunch in here?" I asked. He nodded. I began to chow down my sandwich, and shut up real quick. I ate my sandwich, my chips, and Greene waited until I was down to the core of my apple before he spoke again.

  "You never answered my question."

  "Which one?"

  "Who's in the Shadow Club?"

  "Me!" I said, smiling.

  "Who else?" asked Greene.

  "Hard to remember. Like I said, there's lots of shadows. I don't see their faces. Can I go now?"

  "No, not yet."

  I sighed and looked at my wrist, pretending I had a watch. Be calm, I thought to myself. Don't sweat. If I sweat, he'll know I'm scared. I couldn't let him know that. I looked up at him, but all I could see was the dark blob of his big head.

  "Could you close the blinds?" I asked. "The sun's in my eyes."

  "Certainly." He turned around, and shut the blinds. Now I could see his face; his eyes watched me from behind those thick glasses. I decided that I liked it better when I couldn't see him.

  "Why won't you tell me who's in the club, Jared?" he asked.

  I sighed. "Because it's a secret club," I said. "I'm sworn to secrecy."

  Greene didn't seem to react at all. He just sat there, staring out at me from behind his bug-eyed glasses. "Secret club?"

  "Yeah, weren't you ever in a secret club when you were a kid? Is there something wrong with that?"