The Shadow Club Rising

by Neal Shusterman

  A WARNING . . .

  By the time I reached the far side of the pool, Cheryl had been carried off in a current of bumper boats. I floored my accelerator and hit Alec from behind, sending him spinning around and bouncing off the side wall. It got his attention.

  He bumped me, and before I knew it we were moving in a circle around the outer edge of the pool, bumping each other.

  "So, how do you like our school?" I asked him.

  "You came to the bumper boats to ask me about school?" he said, sideswiping me.

  I came around, pinning him against the dock. "I came to tell you something you might be too busy to notice."

  "I notice everything." He tried to squeeze his way past, but I stayed just in front of him, keeping him pushed up against the dock.

  "You might not notice this." I leaned forward, getting as close to him as I could, and said as quietly as I could under the circumstances. "You need to watch yourself," I told him. "Because there are some people who aren't too happy with your success. I just felt I should warn you."

  Then his face hardened as he looked at me. "Are you threatening me?"

  "The author deftly narrates a suspenseful story . . . the plot moves along quickly and sustains the tension until the last page. Hard to imagine it being any better written."—VOYA

  For Erin Dayne

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Shadow Club would not have risen had it not been for the following intrepid individuals, whose support and encouragement paved the way for this book: Dr. Steve Layne, whose passion for The Shadow Club convinced me that it deserved a sequel; Stephanie Owens-Lurie, whose support and editorial wisdom has been a guiding light throughout my career; Kathleen Doherty, who first rescued the Shadow Club and saw the potential for a sequel; Frank Hodge, whose dedication to children's literature has touched thousands of hearts from coast to coast; Jeff Sampson, David Ruskey, Rachel Morgan-Wall, and all my other on-line fans, whose ideas and enthusiasm continue to inspire me : ); and Dr. Donald Levy, for his friendship and expertise on allergic reactions. And my children, Brendan, Jarrod, Joelle, and Erin, who are a critical audience for all my first drafts and a constant source of joy and inspiration.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  The Iron Maiden

  Alec Smartz

  Freaks Like Me

  Great Balls of Fur

  The Ghosties

  The Microscope and the Magnifying Glass

  I Am Not Now Nor have I Ever Been a Waste of Life

  A Bitter Pill

  Shaditude

  Alec Blows Up

  Fire With Fire

  Weekend Warriors

  Silver Bullet Theory

  Oxy-morons

  Dead Reckoning

  Random Acts of Violets

  THE

  SHADOW CLUB

  RISING

  Prologue

  THE SEA AND I have never been friends.

  We're more like neighbors who nod politely in passing while keeping a respectful distance. There was a time when the sea and I battled. It was a night lit by the flames of a burning lighthouse, when the surf was charged with an offshore storm. It was the moment of my greatest triumph, and my deepest failure—triumph because I beat the sea, cheated death, and saved a kid's life; failure because I finally had to admit my guilt for every awful thing the Shadow Club had done. It wasn't just admitting it to others, I had to admit it to myself. If you know what happened—and you probably do, since it's no secret in this town—then you already have your own opinion of me. If you don't know about it, well, all the better, because maybe you won't judge me before you get to know me.

  There are times now when I'm drawn to thoughts of what happened. When my mind is quiet, I start thinking about that day. I have this shiny seashell, about the size ofmy fist, that I found on the beach when I was little. Sometimes I'll lie on my bed and toss it up and down, fidgeting with it while I think about things I should probably try to forget. They say you can hear the ocean in the spirals of a seashell, and I used to believe it with all my heart. But now, of course, I know it's just echoes of the world around you, caught in the twisting spiral. Which maybe explains why I do hear the ocean when I put my ear to the seashell these days. Not just the ocean, but the roar of the flames from that burning lighthouse—two things still caught in the spiral, echoing round and round in my own world.

  That's the way it was with the Shadow Club. We thought it was all over, but it had only just begun. The fires, the war against Tyson McGaw, all the dark and dastardly pranks—they were nothing compared to what happened next. In the end we had all confessed to the things we had done—we thought that by purging ourselves of the guilt, it would all just go away. Of course we knew we'd have to pay for the things we did, but even then there was relief in knowing that once we paid our debts to society, we could gather up our lives again and move beyond it. But anger and hatred and resentment—those feelings are as slippery as a greased pig: hard to handle, and even harder to catch when they get loose. Feelings like that don't die easily—they just move on to other people if they can't have their way with you.

  Like I said, we'd thought it was over, until February, when everything crept up on us, slamming into us from behind like a traffic accident.

  It started, like so many things in my life seemed to have started, with Austin Pace. But this time things were a whole lot different. . . .

  The

  Iron Maiden

  I HAVE A BIKE, but I don't ride it much. In our town there are too many hills, and the roads aren't paved as well as they should be. The shoulders are littered with rocks broken loose by the rains and the roots of tall pines. I've always relied on my feet to get me places. In the mornings I run to school, even in the winter, when my nose and ears grow so cold that they feel numb all through first period.

  Now that I was officially off the track team, all that running I did to get from place to place meant a whole lot more to me. But on this particular day I didn't run, I walked, because I wasn't in a hurry to get to this destination.

  It was the middle of January. Cold to me, but then nowhere near the deep freeze that other parts of the country got. While other places were getting blizzards, we'd just get rain, and when snow did fall it never lasted. The only white Christmas we ever see is from the fog that rolls in from the ocean.

  It was getting dark as I walked along the winding, tree- lined road that led to the homes on the hill. My social studies teacher said that in Third World countries the higher up you are on the hill, the poorer you are, because it means that you don't have any water or electricity. But not so in the world I live in. The homes up the hill have pools and big yards and picture windows with million-dollar views. Austin Pace lived about two-thirds up. Not high enough to be in a mansion, but high enough to be able to look down his nose at two-thirds of the rest of us, which he had always done quite well.

  Three months ago I had been indirectly responsible for breaking his ankle—and now I was going to his house for dinner. I had to admit I couldn't have come up with a worse punishment myself. I kept reminding myself that I wasn't actually the one who spread those sharp rocks on the field— rocks that cut up his bare feet and mangled his right ankle. That had been Cheryl Gannett—my life-long friend and now ex-girlfriend. She had done it for me without my knowledge or consent to get Austin back for all the nasty things he had done to me. She did it because I was the second- best runner—all the members of the Shadow Club were second best at something. I had to admit that none of the indignities he had made me suffer came close to the vicious games the Shadow Club had played. Austin had once apologized for treating me the w
ay he had. That was in the nurse's office, after I carried him off the field. He reneged on his apology later, though, when he found out I was partially to blame for his injury. "Pain makes people delirious," he said, and claimed he hadn't meant a word of it.

  So then why was I being invited to dinner? I asked myself. Had Austin finally accepted my apology? Or was it because my parents paid his uncovered medical expenses with the money they had set aside for buying me a car in a couple of years? Maybe he felt bad because I had resigned from the track team as part of my penance for the Shadow Club's deeds. Or maybe, I thought, he invited me over to dinner just to poison me.

  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.

  This 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.