We all knew there would be no more school that day; not till they were positive there was no fire left, and the building had a chance to air out. Still, they couldn’t let us go home until 3:00, and so the school yard began to resemble a junior high school riot, with kids playing all sorts of unruly games that made the teachers all start pulling out their hair.
«... a club,” said Cheryl.
“Huh?” I asked, not having heard her.
“I said we should form a club of all the kids who are second-best.”
I laughed. “Yeah, right . . . and one by one do away with everyone in our way! Mwaaah-ha-haa!”
“No, I’m serious. We could have a club just for fun—something that only we could have, and none of the ’unbeatable’ kids could be in it, a second-best club!”
“That’s a stupid idea,” I said.
“No it’s not! We could all go and do things, and have fun, and really make the ’unbeatable’ kids jealous that we thought of it before they did. We’ll be one up on them for a change.”
“Yeah? Who would be in this club?”
“I don’t know. We’d have to think about it for a while, and come up with some names. I’ll bet there are lots of kids who’d want to be in it—my brother, for instance.”
“Nobody else’ll want to do it. They’ll laugh at us.”
“But if they don’t, Jared, we could be starting something big, a secret club that will go on for years after we’ve gone on to high school!”
I thought about this. Cheryl always had a way of convincing me of things. But this time she wasn’t the one who convinced me. It was someone else.
“Hey, Jared,” someone called. It was that familiar voice, a voice I didn’t want to hear. I could almost see those Aeropeds and that red hair, and those long bony arms.
“Hey, Jared, wanna race?” asked Austin. “First race of the season.”
So this was it. The challenge. Austin was always the one to challenge first. Usually he waited until the second week, when he had seen me run and was absolutely sure he’d be able to beat me. This time he asked on the second day, and there were too many kids around for me to turn down the challenge.
“Don’t you think it’d be better if we waited till the field was clear?” I said.
“Isn’t this clear enough?”
I turned around. Sure enough, the field was clear enough to race. Austin had come over with about ten kids, and more kids were joining us, because everyone knew what he was up to, and everyone knew about our rivalry.
“Maybe we should wait until your legs grow some more,” he said. Everyone laughed. I laughed, too; better to be laughed with than laughed at, right? Inside I wasn’t laughing, though.
“Fine, then,” I said. “Right now.”
Austin smiled that crocodile smile. “Greg, go about sixty yards, and judge us.” Greg Miller, one of the new seventh graders on the team, obeyed, as if he had been given an order by God.
So this is where it begins, I thought, this year’s competition. This year’s war. I felt strong, I felt ready to run, I felt like I always felt when I raced with Austin—that maybe this time I would beat him.
We got down into starting position, then Austin got up.
“Wait,” he said, and took off his precious shoes, then his socks. He was going to run barefoot. “OK.” He got back down. “Ready to lose?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
Martin Bricker got ready to start us, as more and more kids turned to watch. Even teachers were watching. So this is where it begins.
“On your mark . . . get set . . . go.’”
I took off like a bullet, cutting through the wind and pounding the grass with every last bit of my strength. I didn’t turn to look, but I could see in the corner of my eye that we were neck and neck.
Ten yards were gone.
I looked toward Greg, down the field, and concentrated on turning everything I had into power.
This is for every time you beat me in races as a kid!
I pushed harder.
And this is for when you came back to do it again last year!
I pushed harder.
And this is for how you made me feel this morning!
I pushed harder.
We were still neck and neck.
Thirty yards were gone. Thirty to go.
The cheers faded away behind us.
And this is for challenging me in front of the whole school, and this is for everything you’ll ever try to do to me for the rest of our lives, and this is for those stupid running shoes you wear!
Forty yards gone.
I was ahead of him by a foot! I was beating him! I pushed harder.
Fifteen yards to go! Fifteen to go!
And then, like he’d been holding it all back, he flew out in front of me. He didn’t inch out, he flew out, like I was standing still. He moved like a machine in fast forward; a ship blasting into hyperspace. He was a foot in front of me. Two feet. Three feet. He turned to look at me, and smiled that awful smile of his.
I lunged. I dove forward in a wild attempt to reach the finish line before he did, but he was there before I hit the ground. I was moving so fast that I skidded along the grass, skinning my elbows and ruining my pants.
The Agony of Defeat.
I felt like that skier who wipes out on the ski jump every Sunday on Wide World of Sports. The Agony of Defeat: skinned elbows and ruined pants and a laughing LAustin Space.
By now kids were crowding around Austin.
“Wow, did you see Austin take off?”
“Wow, he really beat him bad!”
“Wow, Austin’s so fast!”
Wow this, and wow that. Austin was loving every last bit of it. They crowded around him and left me there on the ground to examine my elbows.
“You shouldn’t race Austin, kid,” said a seventh grader. “Austin beats everybody.”
Austin looked down at me. He was barely winded. “You ran pretty good . . . for a gopher!” he said, and everyone laughed.
“Gopher!” they all said. “Gopher, Gopher, Gopher!” Austin raised his hands to conduct them as they all chanted in unison: “Go-PHER! Go-PHER! Go-PHER!” over and over again.
I could have killed him! I could have ripped him limb from limb, but then I thought about Tyson McGaw. No. I wasn’t Tyson. I was civilized, and I wasn’t going to attack Austin. Instead I stood up, brushed myself off, and waited till the gopher-chanting stopped. Then I looked Austin straight in the face, and put out my hand.
“Nice race, Austin.” I shook his hand. Let me tell you, it took all my strength to do it, too.
“Yeah,” he said. “See ya around, Gopher.” I turned and left while everyone crowded around Austin. My elbows had just begun hurting.
Cheryl was there waiting for me. That’s one thing about her; she was always there, and she never laughed at me either.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
I looked back toward Austin, then turned to Cheryl and asked, “So, what are we going to call our club?”
The Charter at Stonehnge
I don’t think anyone knew what used to be there, but whatever it had been, only the old stone foundation remained, in a clearing in the woods. The stones were worn and covered with moss. Inside the rectangular stone foundation was a pit about six feet deep and twenty feet across, filled with bushes and trees. It could have been there for a hundred years—nobody knew.
Cheryl, Randall, and I had found it years ago, exploring as kids, but it seemed too eerie to play in, so we had left it alone, filing it away in our heads for future reference. The old foundation sat there in the thick woods between Cheryl’s house and the ocean, waiting. I had always thought of the foundation as waiting—waiting for someone to use it again, I guess, or maybe just waiting to disappear into the earth, like the building that once stood above it had.
It was waiting, all right, and on the second Friday of ninth grade, I had this certain exciting feeling that it was waiting for us.
I walked around the edge until I came to a place where the foundation had given way, and the earth sloped down into the pit. I climbed down into the center, and Cheryl followed.
“It looks like it could almost be magical,” she said.
“Maybe it’s haunted or something.”
“Well, don’t go and make it all spooky,” she said. But it was spooky already; spooky in a fun sort of way, like the mummy cases in the museum, or a ghost town. There was a feeling to the place that made anything we could possibly do there seem very, very important. It would give our club meetings a hint of mystery.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Four-fifteen. They’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”
As I looked around, I began to see things you couldn’t see from up on the ledge. There were old green Coke bottles, and aluminum cans with the old-fashioned pull-off tabs that they stopped making years ago. There were designs on the cans that I didn’t even recognize. For all I knew they could have been here since the building came down. All around us were little bits of the past that no one had touched for years and years. It was magical—like that Stonehenge place in England, mysterious rocks with a hidden history.
“Let’s call this place Stonehenge,” I said to Cheryl.
“Great!” she said. “I like that.” She climbed back up to the edge and sat on a moss-covered cinder block at the lip of the pit. The edge of Stonehenge.
“I feel like . . . a witch,” she said.
“You look like one!” I said. She had stepped right into that one!
“Shut up! You know what I mean. It’s like we could conjure up ghosts here!”
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Four-twenty,” said Cheryl.
At first, I had felt funny talking to kids about this club; I was afraid they would laugh in my face—but no one did. Picking out the kids for the club became like a game. Cheryl and I would keep our eyes open, watching for kids in our exact situation; kids who were second-best, were miserable about it, and had to live under the shadow of some nasty “unbeatable” person, who rubbed their noses in it every day.
We ruled out some kids right away, others took longer, but finally we came up with a list of five kids who would be perfect. We didn’t want a big group; seven, including us, was just fine. One by one, either Cheryl or I spoke to them when no one else was around. And you know what? Every single one of them wanted to be in the club—The Shadow Club— as Cheryl and I named it. So we called the first meeting, then marked the trees so that everyone could find our secret meeting place in the woods. At any second they would converge on the old foundation, and the Shadow Club would be born.
“What time is it?” I asked.
Cheryl looked at me with those give-me-a-break sort of eyes, and said, “Stop being ridiculous,” so I didn’t ask anymore.
I climbed back down into Stonehenge to start up the campfire.
* * *
The sun was near the horizon and shadows were getting long and dark when everyone finally arrived. By now the little campfire I had started in the center of the big square foundation pit was burning strong. It wasn’t dark, and it wasn’t cold, and we didn’t have marshmallows to roast, so the campfire didn’t seem to make much sense, but it was there for a very good reason that only Cheryl and I knew.
“I guess we should start by formally introducing ourselves,” I said.
“But why?” asked Randall. “We all know each other already.”
“Shut up,” said Cheryl. “You’ll see.”
“I’ll start,” I said, clearing my throat. I had practiced my speech a few times at home, so I didn’t feel funny being the first one to go. “My name is Jared Mercer. I am the second-best runner in the school, second to Austin Pace, the most conceited, obnoxious . . . Is anyone here friends with Austin?”
Nobody raised their hand, so I continued.
«.. . conceited, obnoxious, pain-in-the-neck kid ever to be on any track team. He takes every chance he gets to make me feel lousy, just because I’m not as fast as he is.” I paused for effect. “I hate Austin Pace.” I turned to Cheryl, and she began.
“My name is Cheryl Gannett. I am, and have always been, the second-best singer, dancer, and all-around performer in my family. Even my own mother forgets I can sing. Now it’s the same way in school. My cousin Rebecca, who thinks she’s God’s gift to the universe, gets all the attention. I hate Rebecca.”
“I get it!” said Randall. “OK, it’s my turn. My name is Randall Gannett, and I’m the best swimmer in the eighth grade.”
“Randall...,” Cheryl said impatiently.
“Shh!” said Randall. “Like I said, I’m the best swimmer, but Drew Landers thinks he’s better than me . . . but he’s not.”
“Randall, you can’t do that,” said Cheryl.
“Why not? It’s true!”
“You have to admit it,” I said. “You have to admit to being second-best, otherwise you can’t be in the club.”
“But he’s not better than me!”
“No?” said Cheryl. “Did you ever beat him in a race?”
Randall looked like a cornered animal. “Almost...,” he said.
“So he is faster.”
“He cheats!” said Randall.
“How can you cheat in swimming?”
“Well, he’s taller! If he wasn’t taller, I would win.” Randall shut up after that one, and looked around the circle, feeling embarrassed.
“Maybe we should go on, and come back to you later,” suggested Cheryl.
“No, I’ll go,” said Randall, defeated. Now he looked down and fidgeted with a stick. “I’m the second-best swimmer, OK? Drew Landers is better than me; he always beats me by a tenth of a second, and then he laughs at me. He even laughs at me during swim meets, when everyone on the team is supposed to be cheering one another on.” Randall looked up for a moment, then back down at his twig. A sad, but mean expression came over his face. “Even though I take second place all the time, he still laughs at me. And he calls me Duckfeet, because my feet are a little big. And next year when all the ninth graders graduate, he’ll be the best on the team, probably the captain, and he’ll still laugh at me every day. I hate Drew Landers.” Randall looked up at Cheryl. “Are you happy?”
“That’ll do,” said Cheryl.
Jason cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. He was rarin’ to go. “My name is Jason Perez.” He took off his glasses, probably feeling self-conscious about them. He was also self-conscious about being fat, even though he wasn’t fat anymore; he had grown into his weight. “I play trumpet,” said Jason. “I’ve been playing for four years, and I’m finally getting good enough to play first trumpet for band, and I’ve been taking extra lessons, but then last year, David Berger just up and decides he wants to learn trumpet, and in like three months, he’s better than everyone, so he gets every single solo, and every single award, and I get absolutely nothing, ever, no matter how hard I practice, and I really hate David Berger!” He stopped for a second, and we all thought he was done, but then he started up again. “Last June, when they picked kids for the Young Musicians Society, did I get picked? No! David Berger, David Berger, all anybody ever hears about is David Berger! I can’t stand him, and now he’s been picked to play for the high school band— can you believe it? And then ...”
“Jason,” I said, interrupting, “how do you say all that without breathing?” There were a few giggles from around the circle.
“Well, sorry,” said Jason. “I thought you wanted to know.”
“You can tell us after everybody’s had a chance,” said Cheryl.
Everyone turned to Abbie, who had her strawberry blonde hair in some new style that was hard not to stare at.
“Well, as you know, I’m Abbie Singer, and I have abso
lutely no idea why I’m here.” And that’s all she said at first.
“C’mon, Abbie, you know why,” said Cheryl.
“No, I really don’t. I’m not second-best at anything—I don’t even think I’m third-best. I do hate Vera Donaldson, like you said when you first told me about this club thing, Cheryl, but she is definitely not better than me in anything.”
I turned to Cheryl, but Cheryl didn’t say anything. It was Jason who spoke, very softly. “I know why you’re here,” he said, looking down at the pair of glasses he held in his hands. “You’re here because you’re the second-prettiest girl in school.”
Abbie thought about this. “Is that why, Cheryl?”
“Well, you are the second most popular girl in school.”
Abbie smiled. “Yeah, I guess I am, aren’t I?”
“Vera Donaldson is a snot,” said Jason. I thought that was too nice a word for her.
“Well, not everyone thinks so. She’s the most popular girl in school,” said Abbie, “and she hates my guts. I don’t know why, but every time there’s a guy who likes me, she always steals him away first, just for fun, or tells him nasty things about me. Do you know how it feels for people to say nasty stuff about you like that? And none of it’s true! Absolutely none of it!” She clenched her teeth and her hands rolled into fists. “Just thinking about her makes my head hurt.”
“Say it!” said Cheryl.
“I hate Vera Donaldson!”
O.P., who was next, looked around a bit nervously. She had been quiet all this time and knew perfectly well why she was here. O.P. was Korean, I think, but she didn’t have any accent at all.
“I’m Karin Han . . . and . . . I guess I’m smart. I have the second-highest math and reading scores in the ninth grade. I get the second-best grades in just about everything, and Tommy Nickols always gets the best.”
“Ughh! He’s such a bozo,” said Abbie.
“If I get a ninety-eight on a test,” she continued, “then Tommy will get a ninety-nine. All the time. So last year he started to call me O.P., and now everyone does. It stands for ’One Point.’”
Randall giggled and Cheryl elbowed him.
“Yeah, everyone thinks it’s funny. I don’t mind being called it, but I hate it when Tommy Nickols says it. I guess I hate Tommy Nickols.”
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