Нил Шустерман - The Shadow Club

“Do you think Tyson pulled all the rest of the tricks, like Randall said?” I asked straight out.

“Of course,” she said.

“What about Austin?” I asked. “Did Tyson do that?”

“I guess.” Cheryl shrugged, and looked away from me—and that wasn’t right; Cheryl doesn’t look away like that. Not unless she knows something that she doesn’t want to tell.

It was time for me to pull a bluff. It was a mean, nasty bluff to pull on Cheryl, but I had to do it. Things were way out of hand, and if what I suspected was true, we were all in more trouble than humanly possible. I had to trick Cheryl if I was going to find out the truth.

“You’re lying!” I said right to her face.

“What?”

“I know he didn’t do it!” I said. “You did it.”

That lawyer look came over her face—the look she had whenever she was about to argue somebody down into the ground.

“How dare you accuse me of something like that, Jared Mercer! I thought we trusted each other!”

“We do, but you did it.”

“You don’t have proof of that!”

“Yes I do,” I lied. “I saw you. I saw you planting the stones, I just didn’t want to say anything until now. I saw you, Cheryl!”

My heart sort of locked up for a while; I would swear I was having a heart attack or something. If I was wrong, then this little lie may have just ripped apart my lifelong friendship with Cheryl. If I was right, then it would be even worse. Either way, we were going to lose.

Cheryl gave me the lawyer look for a while longer, but the anger faded from her face.

“You should have said something before,” she said. “That wasn’t fair.” She looked away from me for a moment, then looked back. “All right, I did do it,” she said. I bit my tongue and tried hard not to react. “I did it for you,” she said. “I didn’t mean for him to get so hurt. I just wanted to scratch him up a bit so that you’d get to run in the District Olympics like you wanted to.”

For a split second I had the nauseous feeling that this wasn’t Cheryl. This was some vile, sickening creature that had taken Cheryl’s form, but was still dark and evil inside. Then the feeling passed and I realized that this was Cheryl through and through—and what I saw in her was just a reflection of myself. That was the worst thought of all. It was like a disease that took root in both of us—all of us—the moment we started the club, and was growing ever since.

“It’s what you wanted!” she said. “Yesterday you said that you wished Austin was hurt! You told me so!”

She was right; I had told her that. It was my fault as much as hers. “What about the other tricks, Cheryl?”

“I didn’t do them, honest, I swear. I only pulled that one. Only that one! Tyson pulled the rest!”

It was just as I thought—no doubt about it. At first I figured that Tyson framing us would be the worst thing that could happen. This was even worse. I began to back away.

“I’m sorry!” she said. “Don’t look at me like that. I just wanted to help you! I’m sorry!”

I couldn’t face her; not right then. I didn’t know if I could ever face her again—much less hold her hand, or kiss her. I didn’t want to be near her, so I turned and ran.

“Jared ...!” she called after me, but I didn’t stop. I could hear that she was already crying as she called my name. I had never seen her cry, and I guessed I wouldn’t now, because I didn’t look back.

I burst into the lobby, passing my confused mother on my way out of the hospital. As I raced through the front door into the cold evening, never slowing down, the full meaning of my discovery began to hit home.

Greene was right!

Greene was right all along, about everything. The truth was that the Shadow Club did pull all of the pranks— all of them, but we didn’t even know it! Cheryl hit Austin for me, Randall hit Eric for Darren, Jason probably blew up the fish tank for Randall, and the amazing thing about it was that everyone did it secretly, no one knew what the others were up to, and we were all convinced that Tyson had done all the rest.

What had I done? Tyson was the most innocent of us all!

I raced down the road, never slowing my pace. My gopher shirt was drenched in sweat by the time I had run the three miles to the ocean. As I approached the cliff, it occurred to me that Greene and Tyson were right about one more thing: the Shadow Club wasn’t a club at all; it was a gang. Sure, we didn’t have guns or switchblades, but we caused plenty of damge just the same. Hate doesn’t need a weapon.

We were a gang, and I was a bully. A gang leader.

The ocean was rough, and the storm clouds were almost overhead. It was 6:00 and the sun had set long ago. I searched the small strip of beach, but neither Tyson nor the Shadow Club was anywhere in sight. I headed for Stonehenge.

I burst through the trees and jumped down into the pit, half expecting nobody to be there, but, nearly hidden in the shadows, sat the four other members of the club, all shivering and soaking wet with seawater. They all had looks on their faces somewhere between terror and shock.

“Where’s Tyson?” I asked, terrified myself of what they might tell me.

No one answered me for a while, then Darren looked up at me and spoke like a child.

“Jared . . . I think we did something real bad ...”

I sat down with them. I didn’t want to hear this, but I knew I had to. “We all did something real bad,” I said, leaning against the stone wall, feeling the wind blow across my cold, sweaty shirt.

Darren looked down, and no one said anything. In that long silence a thought came to me. I suddenly realized that Hell wasn’t a place filled with fire and smoke—Hell was cold, wet, and lonely. Hell was the dead stone foundation of an old building in the woods.

I pulled my knees to my chest, shivering as I felt the cold stone behind me, then laid my head in my hands, and said, “Tell me what happened to Tyson.”

“When you left,” began Darren, “we kept walking Tyson deeper and deeper into the water. He kept cursing and yelling like he always does, but then, I don’t know, I guess he started getting really scared. A big wave crashed into his back, and he nearly went under. When he got his balance back, he starts begging, ’Please,’ he says, ’please, I’ll do anything you want, just let me out of the water.’

“We all told him we wouldn’t let him out until he confessed—then an even bigger wave breaks right behind him, and knocks him down, washing him toward us. I caught him. He was coughing and sputtering, and he says, ’I’ll confess, I’ll confess anything. Let me go home!’ "

That’s where Darren stopped.

“So, what happened?” I asked. They all looked at me. “Well? Tell me!”

“He confessed,” said Abbie.

“What?”

“He confessed, but not to the pranks.” Abbie brushed her wet hair out of her face. “He said he didn’t do the pranks, so he couldn’t confess to that.”

“Go on, what did he confess?”

They all looked at me, then looked at each other, then looked down.

“The fires,” said Jason. It took a few seconds to sink in. Jason continued. “He told us that he set all the school fires. He burned down the gym last year and set all the smaller fires. He set the cafeteria fire last month, too.”

“Why?”

“He’s a pyromaniac,” said O.P. “That’s what I figure. He gets off on setting fires.”

“Oh, God!” I buried my head in my hands, remembering how we all watched as the gym burned down last year. Yet somehow I couldn’t hate Tyson anymore. I couldn’t hate anyone for anything. Instead I felt sorry for him. Those dark, empty eyes weren’t empty at all; there was fire buried in them that nobody saw. I wondered if Greene even knew about it.