Нил Шустерман - The Shadow Club

“Thanks,” I said.

“You don’t seem too happy about it.”

“No, I’m happy. I’m just a little upset about not being captain. That’s all.”

“Sure, I understand. You can hang around here for a few minutes if you like. I’ll give you a late pass for homeroom.”

“Naah, that’s OK.” I’m sure he could tell by my voice that it wasn’t OK. I didn’t have a poker voice either.

“Listen,” he said, “there’s always high school.”

“Right,” I said, silently thinking how L’Austin Space would win again when we were seniors in high school. “Thanks,” I said.

“Least I could do. You’re a good kid, Jared. I feel bad for you.”

“Naah, don’t feel bad for me. I don’t want you feeling bad for me.”

“Well, I mean that I think sometimes life gives people the short end of the stick, you know, and I think you deserve more.”

“Thanks,” I said, for the twelve-hundredth time.

“See you this afternoon?”

“Yep.”

“Be early,” he said, “so you can take attendance.”

The hall was empty when I left the gym, except for one kid; none other than L’Austin Space himself was standing outside the gym doors. He was waiting for me. It wasn’t a coincidence.

“Oh, you spoke to the coach already, huh?” he said.

“Yep.”

“So he told you I won?”

“How did you already know?”

“He spoke to me first,” said Austin. “You don’t think he’d tell you before he told me, do you?” Austin waited for an answer, but I didn’t give him one.

“I bet you’ll like being team secretary,” he said.

“Assistant coach!”

“All it really is is team secretary. Hey, I’ll make sure to give you lots of memos to type. Maybe you can come over to my house sometime and answer some phones,” he said, laughing.

I turned and walked down the hall. He followed, his Aeropeds gliding across the floor. I wanted to step on them, and leave nice gray tread marks on the snow-white leather toes.

“It’s not secretary,” I said.

“All right, ’gopher’ then.”

I stopped. “What?”

“You know, Gopher: ’hey Jared, go-pher this, hey Jared, go-pher that, hey Jared, go-pher, go-pher, go-pher.’”

I just scowled at him. He saw the anger in my unpoker face, and laughed. “Just kidding,” he said, in the nastiest, most obnoxious tone a person could come up with, then he laughed harder and turned away, his Aeropeds bouncing off down the hallway, squeaking on the floor.

I felt more humiliated than I’d felt in a long time as I walked down the hall. It wasn’t the fact that I was assistant coach that bothered me, it was the fact that Austin knew first, and as usual, made fun of me, calling me “Gopher.” It was bad enough to feel hidden in his shadow, but to be humiliated; that was something else. He was twisting the knife.

How would I feel if Austin Pace had never been born? Let’s not talk about it.

The alarm went off at 1:30. That’s right, you guessed it: another school fire. I can’t say I wasn’t glad to hear the alarm bell; I hadn’t been able to concentrate all day because of what had happened that morning. At least now I could feel angry without having to pay attention to teachers at the same time.

Used to be nobody raised much of a fuss when the fire alarm went off. The teachers would just get the class up and funnel them “in an orderly manner” down the stairway and out into the field. Now it was much quicker, and much more serious. Used to be they were all drills or false alarms, but last year there were three real fires. The last one burned down the gym.

Now, as we marched into the hall, I could swear I already smelled smoke.

The scene out in the field was much more chaotic than any of the teachers could stand for. Kids were running in the field, and the neat little rows of classes were breaking down into mobs of kids—a good many of them pressing up against the fence to see the smoke pouring out of the cafeteria. It wasn’t a whole lot of smoke, but it was enough to cause a commotion.

I didn’t really care to watch the fire; I had my own problems to think about. If I sound heartless, it isn’t because I didn’t care about anyone left in the school. I had overheard the principal say that the school had been cleared, and there was nothing to worry about, except for the cafeteria burning down (which, believe me, is exactly what the cafeteria deserved).

While the cafeteria smoked, I fumed, still filled with the anger Austin had put in me that morning.

“I don’t want to talk about it!” I told Cheryl when she asked me about the track team. She knew exactly what I meant when I said, “And don’t ask again.”

“Well, join the club,” she said.

“Why, what’s wrong with you?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “It’s just that the play they’re doing this year is Annie.”

“So?”

“So, guess what snotty little brat is absolutely perfect for the role?”

“Rebecca’s trying out?”

“I don’t even think she has to. They’ll just look at her and give her the role.”

Cheryl continued to complain at me about Rebecca and other things. I turned to look at the school. The firefighters were standing by the fire truck, doing nothing in particular, which meant that the fire was not a big one and had been put out right away. The cafeteria had been saved, although it would probably smell like smoke for the rest of the year.

We all knew there would be no more school that day; not till they were positive there was no fire left, and the building had a chance to air out. Still, they couldn’t let us go home until 3:00, and so the school yard began to resemble a junior high school riot, with kids playing all sorts of unruly games that made the teachers all start pulling out their hair.

«... a club,” said Cheryl.

“Huh?” I asked, not having heard her.

“I said we should form a club of all the kids who are second-best.”

I laughed. “Yeah, right . . . and one by one do away with everyone in our way! Mwaaah-ha-haa!”

“No, I’m serious. We could have a club just for fun—something that only we could have, and none of the ’unbeatable’ kids could be in it, a second-best club!”

“That’s a stupid idea,” I said.

“No it’s not! We could all go and do things, and have fun, and really make the ’unbeatable’ kids jealous that we thought of it before they did. We’ll be one up on them for a change.”

“Yeah? Who would be in this club?”

“I don’t know. We’d have to think about it for a while, and come up with some names. I’ll bet there are lots of kids who’d want to be in it—my brother, for instance.”

“Nobody else’ll want to do it. They’ll laugh at us.”

“But if they don’t, Jared, we could be starting something big, a secret club that will go on for years after we’ve gone on to high school!”

I thought about this. Cheryl always had a way of convincing me of things. But this time she wasn’t the one who convinced me. It was someone else.

“Hey, Jared,” someone called. It was that familiar voice, a voice I didn’t want to hear. I could almost see those Aeropeds and that red hair, and those long bony arms.

“Hey, Jared, wanna race?” asked Austin. “First race of the season.”

So this was it. The challenge. Austin was always the one to challenge first. Usually he waited until the second week, when he had seen me run and was absolutely sure he’d be able to beat me. This time he asked on the second day, and there were too many kids around for me to turn down the challenge.

“Don’t you think it’d be better if we waited till the field was clear?” I said.