Нил Шустерман - The Shadow Club

The fire was still at full blaze when we carried Tyson down into the stone foundation. He had stopped struggling some time ago. We let him go, and he stood, his back against the wall, with all seven of us standing in front of him.

“What is this, a gang?” asked Tyson. I thought about that for a second, but let it fly out the other ear.

“There’s seven of us, Tyson,” I said, “and only one of you. You had better tell us what you saw.”

“I wouldn’t tell you if you were the last person on earth!”

“Beat him up!” yelled Jason, standing in the background, pounding his fist into his other hand. “Make him talk!”

“Yeah!” yelled O.P.

“No!” I said. I could see that being rough with Tyson just made him clam up even more. We needed a different approach.

“Listen, Tyson,” I said. “We don’t want to hurt you, or anything. We’re all friends, right?”

“No,” said Abbie.

“I said we’re all friends . . . right?”

Everyone reluctantly agreed.

“Now, why don’t you tell us what you saw?” I backed up a little bit, giving Tyson some room. He looked around at us, and seemed a bit less angry—although that crazy look he had in his eyes never went away. He looked at us for a long time, and then said:

“All I saw was you guys laughing. That’s all. I saw you laughing for a long time. That’s all.”

“You expect us to believe that?” said Cheryl.

“It’s the truth!”

“Then why did you run!” demanded Darren.

“I don’t know. Because you started chasing me. That’s why.”

“We chased you because you were spying on us,” I said.

“Well, I just wanted to find out what you were laughing about, OK? That’s all.” Tyson looked at us all with that mean, dark look in his eyes, then hung his head. “I just wanted to find out . . . because I thought that maybe you were talking about me, and that’s why you were laughing.”

“Why would we talk about you?” asked Cheryl.

“Because people talk about me. I hear it. They think I don’t, but I do. They laugh at me all the time, and call me slimeball. Anyway, that’s all I saw. Laughing.”

“We don’t believe you,” said Cheryl.

I sort of half believed him and half didn’t. “What are you doing around here anyway?” I asked.

“I live near here . . . down that way,” he pointed.

“You’re lying,” said Randall. “There are no houses around here.”

“There’s one,” said Tyson. “On the cliff, by the ocean.”

“The lighthouse?” said Jason.

“It’s not a lighthouse anymore. I live there.”

Everyone was quiet for a while. Nobody knew what to say next. If Tyson was lying, there was nothing we could do about it. He’d never tell the truth, no matter what we did to him.

“All right,” I said. “I don’t care what you saw, or what you heard, but I’ll tell you one thing; if you so much as tell another living soul that you saw us all here, you’ll be sorry. Do you swear never to tell anyone?”

Tyson looked down. “Maybe.”

“No maybes.”

“All right—but on one condition.”

“What?”

Tyson looked at me, and for a very brief instant, I saw something else besides that stupid-crazy look in Tyson’s eyes. I don’t know exactly what it was that I saw, but it was kind of like what you see when you look into a baby’s eyes, and Tyson said, “I swear I won’t tell a soul . . . if you let me in your gang.”

“What?”

“Please, I’ve never been in a gang before. I’ll do a good job—a great job—just let me in your gang.”

“It’s not a gang!” I screamed into his face, and shook him as hard as I could. “You don’t know a thing!”

And then Tyson changed again. The craziness was back.

“Well, to hell with you!” he said. “All of you! I don’t want to be in a gang of bullies, and you’re the biggest bully of them all!”

“I’m not a bully!” I screamed at him, then pushed him back against the wall as hard as I could. If there was one thing in this world that I was not, it was that. I was not a bully! I grabbed him and pushed him against the wall again, to make my point clear.

Then Randall went up to him. Randall was a year younger and four inches shorter than Tyson, but that didn’t matter. Randall went right up to him, and grabbed the front of his shirt, and wrinkled it in his fist. He got really close to Tyson, and snarled at him in a way that I’d never heard Randall snarl.

“Your life isn’t worth much if you breathe a word of this to anyone, you stupid slimeball.” We all waited a moment, and then, out of nowhere, Randall spat in Tyson’s face. “That’s what you get for spying, sleazebag.”

The fight had left Tyson. He looked down, wiping his face, and mumbled, “You didn’t have to do that.”

Cheryl and I stared at Randall as he backed off. Randall looked at us and shrugged. I tried not to think about what Randall had just done.

“Can I do that, too?” asked Jason. No one answered him.

“Why don’t you go home, Tyson?” I said. “And forget you ever saw us. For your own good.”

Tyson turned, mumbled something nasty under his breath, and left.

The fire needed more wood, but no one felt like feeding it. It was dark now, and our parents were probably beginning to wonder where we were. No one felt much like talking after Tyson left, and so a few minutes later, the meeting broke up. Cheryl and Randall waited as I poured water on the fire.

“So what’s next for the Shadow Club?” asked Cheryl. I stepped up out of Stonehenge, then reached out my hand, and helped Cheryl. I never did let go of her hand after she was out—and strangely enough, I didn’t seem to care. I didn’t even care if Randall noticed that we were holding hands—which he didn’t. Although it was starting to get chilly, Cheryl’s hand was soft and warm, and it felt good to hold it.

“What’s next?” I said. “I don’t know. More tricks maybe?”

“Maybe.”

“We used all the good ones,” said Randall. “How can we top those?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Why don’t we think about it, then we’ll all talk at our next meeting.”

“Are you worried about Tyson telling everyone?” Cheryl asked.

“Aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“What can we do to him if he tells?” asked Randall.

“I don’t know,” I said.

As we walked back through the woods, I was certainly glad that Cheryl’s hands were warm. Because mine kept getting colder.

Two hours later, at 8:00, I left my house again. I told my parents that I was going over to Cheryl’s to work on a science project. Since I never lied to them, and I had always been pretty responsible and trustworthy, they believed me and let me go. Needless to say, there was no science project, and I had no intention of going to Cheryl’s house. I would have liked to, but I had some important business to take care of.

I began running at a slow pace. I ran past Cheryl’s house, and past all the houses on the street. I ran to the edge of the neighborhood, and then down the road that passed by Stonehenge. I could have taken the shortcut through the woods, but I didn’t feel like doing that at night.

I ran for about a mile, which was not hard for me, and then saw what I was looking for. At the edge of the woods, on a wide grassy knoll, stood the old lighthouse. A small wooden home had been built around the old stone tower, and no light had shone in that tower for maybe a hundred years. It only made sense to me that Tyson lived in a lighthouse with no light.

I was curious about Tyson and the mysterious secrets I had heard so many rumors about, secrets of his past and of his family. I was not there because I was curious, though; I was there for a reason. If I could find a secret—any secret— about Tyson, then I could bargain with him. I wouldn’t tell his secret, if he didn’t tell about the Shadow Club. It was a simple enough plan, but finding the secret was not going to be easy.