Нил Шустерман - The Shadow Club

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.”

Last in the circle was Darren Collins, whose legs seemed longer than just about everyone’s whole body. He was fourteen, but was getting pretty close to six feet already. I’ll give you one guess what he did.

“Yeah, I’m second-best, too,” admitted Darren. “I’ve never gotten MVP on any basketball team, I was always next in line—someone else always beat me out. Usually it doesn’t really bug me that much, but for two years Eric Kilfoil has been making me look like a fool on the court all the time. He’s like turned me into the team mascot or something, and makes everybody think I’m a dumb jock—but I’m not, I get good grades. Then he does these Harlem Globetrotter things to me, you know, like bouncing the ball off the top of my head, and then getting the shot in—and everyone laughs. Once, I got so mad, I stepped on his face and got taken out of the game. I hate Eric Kilfoil.”

And it was back to me. By now the shadows were getting even longer; it was almost time for the sky to turn colors. A soft wind blew down into Stonehenge and the campfire crackled. The first part was done. Now came part two.

“Cheryl?” I asked.

“Oh, I forgot.” Cheryl opened her folder and pulled out the charter of the club, written on imitation parchment paper. “Everyone has to sign this,” she said, then began to recite the charter:

We, the undersigned, do hereby form the Shadow Club—an organization dedicated to the righteous indignation of its members toward all those obnoxious unbeatable people who make our lives miserable every single day. We shall no longer suffer their slings and arrows. We will be proud of who we are, and not let them get the better of us.

We hereafter swear loyalty and secrecy to the Shadow Club, and all of its members, for as long as this charter shall exist.

I had to smile. Cheryl’s mom was a lawyer, and only the daughter of a lawyer could come up with such a legal-sounding charter.

“What’s righteous indignation?” asked Jason.

“It means we have a good reason to be p.o.’d,” said O.P.

Cheryl and I had already signed it, so she passed it on to Randall and gave him a pen.

“Shouldn’t we sign this in blood?” asked Randall.

“No way!” said Abbie from across the fire. “I refuse to bleed.”

“Well, it was just an idea. I figured it would make it more official.”

Randall signed it, and passed it to Jason. The charter went around the fire, came back to Cheryl, and she put it back into her folder.

“Is that it?” asked Darren.

“One more thing,” I said. “The pictures.”

“Oh, right,” said Darren.

Everyone reached into one pocket or another. I couldn’t believe it; everyone had managed to get a picture.

“I hope you know how much trouble I went through to get this,” said Randall. “I had to search through Drew Landers’ swim locker. I found it in his wallet.”

“I had to go and take a picture of David Berger,” said Jason. “He had no idea why I did it.”

“Good,” I said. “Don’t tell anyone why. Remember, no one tells anyone about anything we do in the club. That’s part of the rules.”

“Why do we need the pictures?” asked O.P.

“Symbolic gesture,” said Cheryl.

Everyone held a picture of their mortal enemy in their hands. I held a picture of Austin. It had been a picture of both of us together, but I cut it in half. He smiled up at me from the picture and the smile said, “You’ll never beat me!”

“We’ll see,” I muttered to the photo, then made sure everyone was watching, and tossed the picture into the fire. The edges flared, the colors faded, Austin’s red hair turned brown, then black, and those eyes died, shriveling to ashes. We’ll see, I thought.

Cheryl went next, and everyone followed, until the last picture had been thrown into the fire.

“I now pronounce that the Shadow Club has begun!”

The wind became a bit stronger, and the fire crackled. Everyone sat around the fire there in Stonehenge, watching the ashes of the pictures disappear. Then, they all slowly looked up, then at each other, then at Cheryl and me.

“So?” said Darren.

“So, what?” I asked.

“So, what do we do now?”

Suddenly my feeling of power flew away. I hadn’t thought about that. I hadn’t thought past the burning of the pictures at all. What came next? I didn’t know.

“So what’s this club going to do?” asked Abbie. I looked at Cheryl, who I figured would have all the answers, but she just looked back at me the same way I looked at her.

“Well, we go and do stuff,” I said.

“Like what?” asked Jason.

“I don’t know . . . go to the movies...”

“Go bowling,” suggested Cheryl.

“Play games,” I said.

“I got a miniature chess set with me,” said O.P. “Anyone wanna play?”

“Give me a break,” said Darren.

“I guess we could just hang out together,” said Randall.

“Boooring!” said Darren.

“He’s right,” said Abbie. “It does sound boring.”

“What about miniature golf?” suggested Cheryl.

“Boooooooring!” said Jason and Darren together.

“Well, we could sell stuff and raise money,” said Cheryl.

“For what?”

“For . . . Shadow Club T-shirts?” said Cheryl.

“Booooooooooooring!” they all said.

“Hey, I like you guys and everything,” said Abbie, standing up, “but if I want to go out and do stuff like that, I have my own friends.”

“Me, too,” said Jason.

Darren stood up. “You know something, Jared?” Darren waited until everyone else was listening. “I think this was a really dumb idea.”

“No it’s not!” I said, standing up as well. I was a head shorter than him, and at that moment felt even smaller. Everyone seemed ready to agree that the club was stupid. Everything had been going so well; why did all this have to happen now?

“What’s so good about it?” asked Darren. “So, you got us here, and we burned some pictures, and we signed a piece of paper. Big deal. I got better things to do on Friday afternoon. Why should I come to these dumb meetings?”

“Because ...” I said, “because . . . we have stuff to do!”

“Like what?” asked Randall. Even Randall was a traitor! For a second I felt like it was over. Cheryl and I had lost complete control. But then I closed my eyes, thought for a second, waited until I felt the calm come back to my voice, and when it did, I had an idea—a fantastic idea that might just save the club!

“Like what?” asked Randall again.

“We have secret things we’re going to do.”

“Like what?” demanded Randall, getting annoyed.

I smiled. “Just like the charter says, we’re dedicated to fight the unbeatables, and that’s just what we’ll do. We’ll wage a secret war against them . . . a war . . . of practical jokes, to embarrass and humiliate them, just like they do to us!”

It took a few seconds to sink in. Jason smiled first, then O.P., then Randall.

“Oh, I love it!” said Abbie.

“Intense!” said O.P.

“Classic!” said Jason.

Cheryl turned to me, a bit worried. “I don’t know, Jared. We didn’t talk about this.”

“I know, I just thought of it.”

“Wait a minute,” said Darren. “You mean we all work together to really bother the unbeatables, and since no one knows about the club, they’ll never be able to figure out who’s doing it?”

“I love it!” said Abbie again.