The Shadow Club Rising

by Neal Shusterman

  The air is gone, I thought. The boat is entirely underwater now. How deep was the marina? How far down would the boat sink? And if I did find the hatch now, how far would I have to swim to reach the surface? Twenty feet? A hundred? With my lungs ready to explode, I propelled myself forward, my head still bumping against wood, then finally I surfaced into a pitch-black space. Coughing, sputtering, gasping deep breaths of air, I tried to get my bearings. I had no idea where I was, but as my breathing came under control, I heard just to my right someone else breathing.

  "Alec?"

  "Leave me alone!" His voice came through what must have been clenched teeth. I knew, because I was clenching my teeth to keep from shivering my fillings out. Now I had felt around enough to get a good idea where we were. We were in an air pocket at the very tip of the bow.

  "Come on, the hatch is only about ten feet back," I told him. "We can make it, easy."

  "Fine. You can go," Alec said.

  Now, considering the fact that I was freezing and scared out of my mind, I was in no mood to deal with a pouting five-year-old, which was exactly how Alec sounded.

  "Alec!"

  "You wanna know why we moved here?" Alec said. "You wanna know why?"

  "Alec, this really isn't the time for some deep, personal conversation, OK?"

  "It's because they hated me there, too. We moved here so I could get a fresh start in a place where all the other kids didn't hate me."

  "Not everyone hates you—just half of everyone." I couldn't believe I was being dragged into this. "Can't you just shut up long enough to save your own hide?"

  "I hope they all drown," he said. "Every last one of them."

  "No you don't—and don't even think it, because if any of them do drown, you'll never forgive yourself for thinking that."

  "If they don't drown," Alec said, "maybe I should."

  There was a splash next to me, I felt something brush past me, and for a bizarre moment my mind filled with the image of a shark—but instead someone surfaced and began taking deep breaths.

  "Jared," said Tyson, struggling to clear the water from his lungs. "I felt you swim past me before. You missed the hatch."

  "Tell me something I don't know."

  "I'm going to kill you for not teaching me how to swim underwater," Tyson said.

  "I was going to get to it, eventually," I told him. "Alec's here, too." I moved over and bumped my head against an iron crossbeam that felt uneasily loose.

  "So, are we just going to sit here and drown ourselves? Is that the plan?" Tyson asked.

  "Alec's feeling sorry for himself," I informed Tyson. "Says he wants to die."

  I could hear Tyson's teeth chattering now. "He might get his wish."

  Just then I felt the boat hit bottom, shifting again. The jolt shook loose the crossbeam. It came plunging down, clipping my shoulder. I heard Alec yelp as he was struck and forced under by the weight of the beam. Suddenly the water that was just below my neck was up to my chin.

  "Tyson!" I called.

  "I'm OK," he said. "But Alec—"

  "Alec!" I called. No answer. "Alec." But my voice was silenced as the last of the air emptied from the air pocket, and the old tugboat shuddered as it finally gave up the ghost.

  Dead

  Reckoning

  I WISH I could say that Tyson and I performed a heroic underwater rescue and saved Alec's life . . . but I can't.

  As for the tugboat, its fall to the ocean deep wasn't exactly of Titanic proportions—in fact, the hatch was only a few feet underwater, and the tug's pilothouse still poked out of the bay like the conning tower of a submarine. But you see, it doesn't matter how much water there is; people can drown in one foot of water as easily as they can drown in a hundred feet.

  I came up through the hatch, surprised by the short distance I had to rise until breaking the surface. My eyes quickly adjusted to the light, and when I looked around, I could see that the other kids had already made it to safety. Now they all clung to the edge of a dock no more than twenty yards away. They looked like a wet pack of stray dogs.

  "We need help!" I screamed to them. "Alec's still underwater! He's pinned under a beam. I think . . . I think he might be dead."

  Nobody moved—not a single one of them. I was furious, but not entirely surprised. Having just gotten off the tug with their lives, death had just been close enough without them having to haul it out from the depths.

  Brett was the first to speak.

  "The suction!" Brett yelled, clinging to a piling like a barnacle. "We got to stay away on account of the suction when it goes down."

  "It's already sitting on the bottom, you idiot!"

  Still we received no help, and Tyson—well, being the weak swimmer he was, it was all he could do just to tread water and stay afloat.

  Cold as it was, I took a few deep breaths and went back down the hatch alone. My lungs held out as long as they needed to—a minute, maybe more. Then I surfaced, and the others watched as I came out from behind the pilothouse of the tug. Tyson, who had waited for me, labored to dog- paddle himself to the dock. I, on the other hand, had a much more grim task. With my arm across his chest, I pulled the limp, lifeless Alec in a slow, cross-chest carry toward the dock—just as I had done to Tyson four months before. Only this time, there was no fighting or kicking or struggling. Alec was a dead weight, putting up no fight at all. When I got halfway there, a few others jumped into the water to help me. We hauled him up onto the dock. I never knew a human body could be so heavy, so awkward. We let him go, and his head hit the wood with a thud. Water spilled from Alec's mouth. His lips were blue. His eyes half open. I don't know if any of the kids had ever seen a dead body before, but if they had, it was in much saner circumstances, in a funeral parlor surrounded by flowers and organ music. Half the kids there stared in disbelief; the other half looked away, unable to face what they saw. I labored to give him mouth-to- mouth, but nothing made any difference. Finally I stepped back from him and turned to the kids shivering around me.

  "You got what you wanted," I said to the water-logged members of the new Shadow Club. "Alec Smartz won't be bothering anyone anymore."

  No one said a thing. Brett looked as if he might pass out, stumbling for an instant, then he turned and he ran off the dock as fast as his legs could carry him, and kept on going.

  "We're sorry," said Tommy Nickols. He'd been the ninth grade's best student until Alec came along. "We're so, so sorry—"

  "Sorry?" I said. My voice growing louder as I spoke. "Tell his parents. Maybe it'll make them feel better, you think?" I couldn't tell whether the moistness in his eyes was tears, or just seawater. "You're gonna feel sorry for the rest of your life—all of you—and you know what? The feeling only gets worse."

  Tommy finally burst into tears. "I'm sorry," he said. "Sorry, sorry, sorry."

  By now Tyson had climbed up onto the dock as well and was catching his breath, his gaze fixed on Alec. "Someone ought to close his eyes," Tyson said. "It's not right leaving them open like that."

  I looked around until I found the one girl who seemed to be trying to hide behind all the other kids, trying to be just a spectator and not a culprit.

  "Jodi, you get yourself over here," I demanded. "Close his eyes."

  "No," she said sheepishly. "You can do it."

  "You owe it to him, Jodi," said Tyson, with more conviction in his voice than I had ever heard. "You do it, or nobody here will ever forgive you."

  With that kind of pressure, Jodi finally came forward. The other kids parted for her, as if she had suddenly become an untouchable. With everyone watching, she knelt down in front of Alec's body. There were other kids crying now— some sobbing, others sniffling quietly. Jodi looked around one last time, hoping there was someone who would give her a last-minute reprieve from having to do this, but no one would. So, on her knees, she reached forward with two fingers spread like a peace sign toward Alec Smartz's half- opened eyes. Then, just as she was about to touch his lids, Alec said:r />
  "Get out of my face."

  If ever in the history of our town there was a Kodak moment, this was it. Jodi shrieked, and the skin on her face seemed to peel back as if she was under fighter-jet G-forces. She stumbled backward with the shock and fell on to the wet dock with a splash and a thump, receiving what I hoped was a whole constellation of splinters in her rear.

  Like I said, I wish I could say that Tyson and I performed a heroic underwater rescue and saved Alec's life, but I can't. Because Alec didn't need saving. Like everything else, he was good at swimming. He had been hit by the falling crossbeam, but freed himself, and when the last of the air was forced from the air pocket, he was the first one out of the hatch. But I had a brainstorm on the way out—a brainstorm that turned Alec into a much-needed silver bullet; the very silver bullet we needed to deal a mortal blow to that monster called the Shadow Club. Alec was more than happy to play his part, because he got all the benefits of dying without actually having to go through with it.

  He had hid in the tugboat's pilothouse when I went back down the hatch. The hardest part for him had to be not blinking and not flinching when his head hit the dock. I swear, for a moment there even I thought he was dead.

  "That's not funny," said the chess-team girl, as Alec stood.

  "It wasn't supposed to be funny," I told her.

  Jodi got to her feet. "You're sick," Jodi said. "Both of you."

  I had to laugh at that, but the laugh quickly faded. She actually thought we were the sick ones.

  "You think your twisted little joke makes any difference?" she said. "The Shadow Club still has plenty of things left to do."

  But I shook my head. "The Shadow Club is dead," I toldher.

  She looked around, unsure of her own support and, facing each other, we drew our lines in the sand as well as one could on a wooden dock.

  "How many of you think the Shadow Club is dead?" I asked.

  It was like a trick question in math class. Everyone looked to one another, no one wanted to make the first move, but Tommy Nickols, who was quite often the first to get any right answer, stepped forward. Then came another and another, until it became an entire mob moving over to stand beside Alec, Tyson, and me. I can't say Jodi was left alone—she wasn't. There were five or six kids who still stood beside her. I suppose there would always be those kids who found hate too tasty a flavor to give up. But the others— well, let's just say they lost their appetite.

  Jodi broke off her cold eye contact with me and turned to Tyson, softening up a bit. "You don't owe him anything, Tyson," she told him. "You don't have to pretend to be on his side."

  Tyson shrugged. "And just because we were going out doesn't mean I have to pretend to be on yours."

  The police arrived quietly on the hill, no sirens, no rush. It was a single cruiser probably sent to investigate a call from a hillside neighbor who claimed boats were falling from the sky on this cold Presidents' Day. By the time they saw us, half the kids had run off—including Jodi—and the ones that remained were ready to confess whatever deeds they had done. These weren't the ones who needed to talk to the police, however. They needed to talk to their own parents. They needed to talk to Mr. Greene—to stand in his ruined house and confess to him. If we brought the police in now, we'd have nothing but hard feelings and headlines. Neither would do these kids any good.

  I really did want to nail Jodi Lattimer to the wall for what she had done, but as the officers approached, I knew there was no chance of that.

  "Jared Mercer," Deputy Lattimer said. "I should have known." He looked at the bunch of kids who were trying hard not to shiver. "What happened here?"

  "The tugboat fell," I told him. "The wind blew it loose. We saw it fall."

  "How come you're all wet?"

  "Polar Bear Club," Alec quickly answered. "We read about them in the news—you know, people who go swimming in the middle of winter. We thought we'd try it."

  "It sucked," added Tyson.

  Deputy Lattimer studied Tyson for a moment. "Haven't I seen you with my daughter?"

  "It won't happen again."

  "Good."

  He asked a few more questions, but in the end, he took the whole thing at face value. We were just a bunch of kids doing something stupid on Presidents' Day. I know I should have felt bad looking him in the eye and telling him something completely untrue, but I had been a good kid and I had been a bad kid, and both had taught me a thing or two. Such as "honesty is the best policy," except when it's best to lie. Having seen firsthand the lengths to which parents will go to protect their children, I knew this was not the time or place for the truth about his daughter.

  He offered to shuttle us all home, but there were few takers, as it was better to be cold and wet than show up at home in a police car.

  Once he had gone, the rest of us left for warmer places, no one talking as we made our separate ways home. I lingered with Tyson and Alec for a little, taking some shelter from the wind behind a boarded-up tackle shop.

  "Did you really have to give me mouth-to-mouth?" Alec asked.

  I cringed at the memory. "I had to make it look realistic. Believe me, it was no great pleasure."

  Tyson held his arms across his chest as a gust of wind added to our chill. "You think your mom will have something good for dinner?" Tyson asked.

  I laughed. To my mom even Thanksgiving came out of a box, and today was only Presidents' Day. "What do you think?"

  Tyson sighed. "Probably pizza or takeout."

  I turned to look at what was left of the tugboat. Its pilothouse was still above water, but I knew it would completely submerge, come high tide.

  Then I looked at Alec, still swollen from the beating he had suffered. What do you say to a kid who, two hours ago tried to kill you, then almost got killed himself? "You wanna come home with us, Alec?" I asked. "Hang for a while?"

  "Not really," he said. But he was soaked, the wind was still blowing, and as he looked up the road, I could tell he was thinking how much farther away his home was than mine.

  "Sure, maybe for a while," he said.

  Because sometimes it's like they say, "Any port in a storm."

  Random Acts

  of Violets

  MY ALARM WENT went off the next morning, chirping its evil shrill call, and after I hit the snooze button half a dozen times, Mom came to roust me out of bed. I rose to a typical morning—the only hint that anything out of the ordinary had happened were the bruises and muscle aches I had earned the day before.

  Tyson was already at the breakfast table, inhaling a bowl of Corn Pops. Dad was mumbling to himself in his standard ritual of searching for his misplaced car keys.

  After what happened, you'd think the world would just stop on its axis, but Tuesday came with such dull normality, it was enough to make a person sick. The sun, at least, had the common courtesy to hide its face behind a blanket of clouds for most of the day.

  School wasn't much different; classes rolled at their typical snail's pace, and although I saw many of the kids who had been there the day before, none of us made eye contact.

  I stopped by Mr. Greene's office before second period. I didn't know quite what to tell him. He deserved to know the whole story, but I wasn't up to reliving it. By the look of him, he wasn't up to it either. He looked older today. Well, maybe not older, but a bit more world-weary, as if his body and spirit no longer felt like fighting gravity. I wondered if I had that look, too.

  "You'll be happy to know that the Shadow Club finally took a silver bullet, chased with a stake through the heart."

  Mr. Greene eyed me with a suspicious mix of emotions. Then he said, "Brett Whatley has disappeared. Does that have anything to do with your silver bullet?"

  "Yes, and no," I told him. "Brett ran off when he found out he had killed Alec Smartz."

  Greene showed confusion, rather than shock. "But I just saw Alec a minute ago—"

  "Exactly."

  Greene stepped forward, about to ask something, but took a d
eep breath, reigning in his own curiosity. "Thank you," he said. "You'd better go, or you'll be late for class."

  I turned and headed for the door, but just before I left he said, "Be vigilant, Jared."

  I turned back to him. "Excuse me?"

  "Stakes and silver bullets don't always take," he said. "Be vigilant."

  I left, closing the door quietly, taking with me an uneasy vertigo left by Greene's advice.

  The next day Brett Whatley stumbled out of the woods two towns away and headed straight for the nearest police department, where he tearfully confessed to having killed Alec Smartz.

  When they called the Smartz home to inform the parents of this awful crime, Alec answered the phone, casting serious doubt on Brett's claim.

  "Brett just kept sobbing and sobbing," Alec told me. "He couldn't believe I was alive. He didn't even ask how. 'You're the best, Alec,' he says, 'I love ya, man!'"

  "He actually said 'I love ya, man'?"

  "Swear to God—and then he tells me he's my slave for life."

  "You gonna take him up on it?" I asked.

  "I don't know. Maybe just long enough to have him clean out our garage."

  Apparently our silver bullet had pierced Brett's brain and turned him into a repentant puppy. I knew it would set the mood for the other club members as well, but I wasn't satisfied. There was still more to do.

  Mr. Greene had been right—killing the Shadow Club wasn't good enough—because then it would become legend, the way it had before. Its memory would loom larger than life, enticing others to invoke it again. No, the Shadow Club needed a different fate. That's why I went to the mall and ordered a whole bunch of denim caps to replace the ones lost at sea in the tugboat plunge. In school I found each of the kids who had been there and shoved a hat into their hands, telling them exactly what I expected them to do and exactly when I expected them to do it. And although none of them wanted any part of it, many of them reluctantly took the hats and agreed. That's how I found myself the leader of the Shadow Club again.

  The following Saturday morning, the bitterly widowed and lately deflowered Hilda McBroom awoke to a commotion on her lawn. What she found was a whole bunch of kids wreaking havoc in her recently murdered garden. She stormed outside, cordless phone in hand, no doubt ready to call 911, which she probably had on auto dial.