Нил Шустерман - The Shadow Club

When morning came, everything was ready. All of us arrived super early to put up the papers around school. Nobody suspected.

Vera arrived at school, and was greeted by a piece of paper taped to the front entrance that said the following, in her unmistakable handwriting:

Dear Diary,

It’s getting worse. I see him every day, and I want to talk to him, but I can’t. I don’t think he likes me. I’m sure he doesn’t. I’ll bet he thinks I like all those guys that keep asking me out.

I love the clothes he wears, and I love the way he talks, but he never talks tome. I love his hairstyle, and you know, he really has grown taller over the summer, I’m sure of it.

I can’t tell anyone, Diary, because they’ll all think I’m nuts, but I think I’m in love with Martin Bricker, and I don’t know what to do.

I was there when Vera saw it. She didn’t scream, she just sort of moaned in disbelief. Other kids had seen it already—half the school had read it. Vera tore the page down, and ripped it up, but as she went in, she saw the same piece of paper on every single classroom door in the school.

Everybody stared at her.

“Martin?” they sneered. “You like Martin?”

Even Tyson McGaw laughed at her—and if Tyson laughs at you, you know you’re in trouble.

Vera, you see, was a ninth grader. And Martin was an eighth grader—a short eighth grader. If ever in history there were two people not meant to be together, these were the two.

Vera’s face turned red, although it was hard to see it beneath all of that makeup, and she ran into the girls’ bathroom, where she stayed till at least third period.

Martin Bricker, on the other hand, was in heaven all day.

Just as Jason Perez had told us, David Berger and his silver trumpet got all the solos in band, and he was always called to play with the high school band. At this weekend’s high school football game, he had a solo that neither he, nor anyone sitting in front of him, would ever forget.

It was a simple enough plan that O.P. had thought up, but it would have been easy to get caught there in broad daylight, under the bleachers. O.P. had a lot more guts than anyone ever gave her credit for.

The band had warmed up and gotten ready to play. Jason told us that once their first march started, David wouldn’t play a note until his solo came up, and that was perfect.

After warming up, David put his trumpet down next to him. He didn’t notice when it was pulled away underneath the bleachers a moment later, and then returned to the exact spot where he had left it.

The song began, David stood up for his solo, blew into his mouthpiece, and a whole containerful of green slime poured out of the other end. It was just the kind of green slime you could buy in any toy store, but that didn’t matter; it was disgusting, and that’s all that anyone cared about. The bandleader and half the football team stared at David in amazement.

David, still unsure of what was going on, blew harder into his trumpet, and the green slime blew out of the end and all over the band. As far as the band was concerned, this was the end of the world. They all began to yell and run out of his way as David blew into the trumpet again, sending slime flying, this time along with a dull tone from the trumpet that sounded pretty rude. In ten seconds the band had cleared out and was running to the locker rooms to get out of their slimed outfits, leaving David alone, his face turning red as he continued to slime the bleachers.

The next trick, by far, was the most dangerous. I was there, because it was my turn to pull a prank. Cheryl and Randall came along to watch.

Midnight. Wednesday. We stood outside Drew Landers’ open bedroom window.

“Maybe we ought to think of another trick,” said Cheryl. The lights were out in the house, and we were sure Drew was asleep, but still . . .

“No way!” said Randall. “This is perfect! Perfect! We have to do it. Trust me, Drew can sleep through anything! Once, he fell asleep in math, and they couldn’t wake him up! They had to call in the nurse!”

Cheryl turned to me. “If you still want to do it, then I’m with you.”

I smiled, and carefully removed the screen, then climbed in through the open window.

Drew Landers’ room was a mess. I mean, I’ve seen my room get pretty scary, but this was a pigsty. It was hard to walk without stepping on things that crunched.

Drew slept under a mass of covers in his bed. We could hear him snoring more loudly than the roar of the filter on the huge fish aquarium in the corner.

“Look at this,” whispered Randall, pointing to a whole row of swimming trophies on a shelf above the aquarium. Cheryl put her finger to her lips to shut him up.

Drew did not hear a thing. He continued snoring as I very carefully rolled the covers away from his feet. He was wearing dirty socks. Moving a fraction of an inch per second, I peeled back the socks until his feet, which smelled a little like chlorine and a little like vinegar, were sticking straight up at me. I reached my hand out to Cheryl, and she handed me the nail polish.

When Drew woke up in the morning, just as we had thought, he didn’t change his socks, and fifteen hours after we had left his house, an incredibly embarrassed Drew Landers had to explain to the entire swim team why his toenails were painted red.

Eric Kilfoil, the basketball star, was a sweater. Not the kind you wear, but the kind that drips all over the floor during a basketball game. Antiperspirant didn’t help his sweat inn problem very much, but, as Darren told us, Eric would always roll on a sizable helping of antiperspirant under his arms before going out onto the court.

The trick that Abbie planned turned out to be much more complicated than it sounded, because, not only did we have to switch antiperspirant bottles, but we also had to make sure that Eric never saw what he was coating his armpits with. In the end, we had to black out the locker room at the perfect moment, just to keep Eric, and the rest of the basketball team, in the dark as to what was going on.

We were all there in the stands when the basketball team came out of the dark locker room and into the gym. Darren looked up from the floor and gave us the “OK” sign.

The team wore their warm-ups through the layup drills. Finally, when the game was about to start, the warm-ups came off, revealing the team uniforms. Eric’s was already beginning to look sweaty.

It was jump ball, and, of course, Eric jumped. His arm went up, and in the excitement, nobody noticed Eric’s underarms but the referee. The whistle dropped out of his mouth.

The other team had possession of the ball, and Eric ran down the court, taking his position as center of the 2-1-2 zone. His arms went up, and that’s when everyone else saw it: fluorescent green sweat under his arms, soaking the sides of his shirt!

Well, the captain of the other team dribbled the ball through the defense, then stopped dead when he saw Eric’s little problem.

“Hey, what’s with the armpits, dude?” said the kid with the ball.

Now, when somebody says something about your armpits, you have to look; you can’t help it, even if you’re in the middle of a basketball game. Eric reached under his left arm and came out with a fluorescent green hand. The kid shot a basket over Eric’s head to score.

Had the joke ended there, we would have been more than satisfied—but it didn’t.

We didn’t count on Eric being color-blind.

“I’m bleeding!” cried Eric, stumbling around the court, showing everybody his very green hands. “I’m bleeding! I’m bleeding!” The game sort of stopped as everyone tried to figure out if this could be possible. If it was, Eric must have been an alien. “Help, I’m bleeding, I’m bleeding!” he cried. “Call the nurse!”