Нил Шустерман - The Shadow Club

“Well, I gotta go change,” said L’Austin. “You coming to the first track meeting this afternoon?”

“Of course.”

“Well, get there on time,” he said, smiling that crocodile smile at me. “They’re picking team captain today. I wouldn’t want you to miss that.” He turned and ran toward the locker room.

Team captain today. Already that smoldering feeling was growing. Austin had done it again. In five minutes he had put me beneath his two-hundred-dollar running shoes, and flattened me like a cigarette butt.

“You ain’t got a chance against him,” said a voice a few feet away from me. Standing there, right next to the bleachers, was Tyson McGaw, who, when it came to being weird, was head and shoulders above the rest. Tyson had stringy greasy hair, a dirty face, and his left nostril was larger than his right because he spent so much time with his finger in it. Nobody much liked Tyson, and he was definitely not the person I cared to talk to right now. Not after being humiliated by L’Austin Space.

“Why don’t you mind your own business, Tyson?” I said. “People don’t like you spying on ’em.”

“I wasn’t spying!” said Tyson, mean and defensively, like he was looking to get into another one of his famous fights. Tyson was an odd bird. Half of the time he seemed kinda nerdy and off in his own greasy little world; the other half of the time he was being nasty and picking fights like he was a tough. The last thing I wanted on the first morning of school was to fight Tyson. Not that I couldn’t beat him up; I could—he was kinda weak and scrawny. It’s just that he doesn’t really fight like a human. He fights more like an animal, kicking and clawing and biting.

“Well, spying or not—whatever you want to call it— don’t do it anymore . . . at least not to me, ’cause I don’t like it.”

I got down from the bleachers, and began to walk toward the school building.

“You really don’t stand a chance,” mumbled Tyson as I passed him.

“And how would you know?” I yelled into his face. Now I was mad! “You’re not on the team—you’re not on any team! All you do is watch everybody else’s business, and stick your nose in it. Don’t you have any business of your own? What goes on between Austin and me has nothing to do with you, got that?”

Tyson shut up. I don’t think he expected me to get that mad.

“Just get out of my sight, Tyson. Don’t talk to me unless you have something decent to say.” I turned and walked toward class. Tyson mumbled something nasty beneath his breath, but I didn’t want to push it any further. I ignored him and continued walking.

As I got into the building my anger shifted away from Tyson, and back to Austin. What burned me most was that Tyson was probably right: conceited, arrogant L’Austin Space had all the odds in his favor, and I hated Austin all the more for it. I began to imagine how nice it would be if there was a great conspiracy against all the L’Austin Spaces in the world.

“Now, I want you all to know right up front that this is no namby-pamby team,” said Coach Shuler, as he fidgeted with his whistle. “Once you’re in, I don’t want you all quitting and joining Little League, or a soccer club, or something like that. This might not be high school, and we might not work out five days a week, but anyone who knows me can tell you that I expect hard work. Isn’t that right, Jared?”

“Right!” I said, surprised that he called me out of everyone else.

“So if you don’t want to be here, leave now.”

In the back, two seventh graders, who in one day had already gotten a reputation of being obnoxious, stood and went to the door, laughing. As they left, one of them turned and said, “Adios, Commandant.” Some seventh graders laughed. No one who knew Shuler laughed.

Shuler looked at his clipboard. “First of all, boys meet Mondays and Wednesdays; girls meet Tuesdays and Thursdays. Anyone who wants to can practice with both teams...”

As Shuler spoke, my mind began to wander. I looked around the gym. It smelled new, but didn’t look much different than the old gym. You would think that when a gym burns down, a school would build a nice, new-looking one, but no. This gym was a carbon copy of the old one.

In each corner of the gym, a different team was meeting, and more were meeting outside. It looked like about forty kids were going out for track—a few more boys than girls. By next week that number would be cut in half. The coach never cut anybody, but people just lose interest and drop out.

L’Austin Space sat about ten feet away from me. He sat in the middle of a crew of seventh graders, already setting himself up to be the “Team Hero” for all of the new kids to look up to.

Shuler flipped a page on his clipboard. “As you can see, we have a beautiful new gym . . . and because of last year’s fires, the gym is completely off-limits when a teacher isn’t present. The doors will remain locked. That goes for the auditorium, and just about every other unsupervised place. I know you’ve heard it from all of your teachers—now you’re hearing it from me.” He flipped another page.

“Next, we have something new this year. Something I think you’re going to like. A bunch of the local school districts are getting together to have a sort of mini-Olympics, and yes, there will be track events.”

There were various cheers from around the room, including my own.

“That’s the good news,” said Shuler. “The bad news is that each district enters one team, which means that each school can only have one runner.”

Various “Aws” from the group. I kept quiet. I’m sure Austin did, too. I felt a knot begin to form in my stomach.

“Now, before we go down and assign you gym lockers, there’s one more order of business.”

“The captain!” said Martin Bricker, an eighth grader who had a good chance of being captain next year, but was the only one who thought he would make it this year.

“That’s right,” said Shuler. “This is for old team members only. Here are pencils and slips of paper. When I say so, I would like all the old team members to come up and fill out a ballot. All you have to do is put the name of the person you would like to be captain this year.”

“Don’t we get to campaign?” asked L’Austin.

“No, we don’t get to campaign,” mimicked Shuler. “You all know each other; you don’t need any presidential debates. There will be one captain for the boys, and one captain for the girls. Boys vote for boys; girls vote for girls. If you’re not sure what you are, ask me and I’ll tell you.”

Someone lifted Sarah Dozer’s hand. She elbowed him in the ribs.

“OK. Come on up. Here’s the ballot box, and please put the pencils back in the can when you’re done.”

I filled in Martin Bricker’s name, figuring it was low-class to vote for myself, and I certainly wasn’t about to vote for Austin.

As Austin approached the ballot box, he turned to me and smiled that crocodile smile that screamed “You loser!” from across the room. I smiled that “We’ll see” smile right back at him.

“When will you have the results?” asked Martin.

“They’ll be posted on the main bulletin board tomorrow, by lunch.”

The group groaned.

“C’mon, it’s only one day. Now, when I call your name, come up and I’ll give you your locker number.”

That night Cheryl and I sat in her old tree house, talking and trying to get my mind off of the election. I never remembered the tree house being so small. I bet it was even too small for Randall to sit in comfortably now. Sometimes I like growing, but at times like that I didn’t. I remember when I could lie down across the floor in the tree house. It could fit all three of us—me, Cheryl, and Randall—each in our sleeping bags, late at night, telling ghost stories and drinking chocolate shakes, which were still one of my favorite foods in the world. I loved those days.