The Shadow Club Rising Read Online Free PDF Page A

I wandered through the fair, trying to convince myself that I really wasn't looking for Alec and Cheryl. His big stuffed giraffe was sitting propped up against the rail of the bumper boats. The line had already emptied out onto the semicircular dock of the bumper-boat pool. I hopped the rail and handed a few ride tickets to the attendant. He pointed me to one of the last available boats that actually worked, then started my engine with a pull cord, like a lawn mower.
    Bumper-boat racing is more or less an individual sport. One person per boat, and everyone out for themselves. Even when you try to do it in teams, it's never long before your own teammates turn on you without warning. The little inner-tube boats began to bounce around like angry atoms in a mad scientist's brew, with everyone trying to keep away from the ice-water fountain in the center of the tank. You'd think someone would realize that getting drenched in the middle of winter wasn't anyone's idea of a good time.
    Alec and Cheryl were in different boats, spinning circles, and careening into everyone around them. They hadn't seen me yet. I worked my way toward them, giving full throttle to the gutless boat engine.
    By the time I reached the far side of the pool, Cheryl had been carried off in a current of boats. I floored my accelerator and hit Alec from behind, sending him spinning around and bouncing off the side wall. It got his attention.
    "Jared!" he said, calling out over the noise all around us. "I thought they had you locked up in the ticket booth."
    "I escaped."
    He bumped me, and before I knew it we were moving in a circle around the outer edge of the pool, bumping each other.
    "So, how do you like our school?" I asked him.
    "You came to the bumper boats to ask me about school?" he said, sideswiping me.
    I came around, pinning him against the dock. "I came to tell you something you might be too busy to notice."
    "I notice everything." He tried to squeeze his way past, but I stayed just in front of him, keeping him pushed up against the dock.
    "You might not notice this."
    "Come on, Jared," he said. "I paid good money for this ride—those were my last tickets."
    "I'll give you new tickets," I said to him. "Just listen."
    I leaned forward, getting as close to him as I could, and said as quietly as I could under the circumstances. "You need to watch yourself," I told him. "Because there are some people who aren't too happy with your success. I just felt I should warn you."
    Then his face hardened as he looked at me. "Are you threatening me?"
    But before I could answer I was hit so hard from behind that my boat spun circles, and my head was slow to catch up. It was Cheryl.
    "You were a sitting duck," she said. "It was my moral obligation to nail you."
    The ride attendant called the boats in, and the kids that resisted got pulled back to the dock with a long hook. Alec hopped out of his boat, but my knobby knees were stuck. He came up to me, leaned over me, and said, not too loud, but loud enough for Cheryl to hear, "Don't think I don't know about you and those awful things you made Cheryl do in the Shadow Club."
    "What's this all about?" asked Cheryl, but before I could explain myself, Alec put his arm around her and led her away.
    "He's just a little jealous, that's all," he said. "He'll get over it."
    I didn't even try to stammer out any further explanation, because I knew that no matter what I said or denied, I would look as guilty as a corporate executive in a news interview. So I just sat there with my legs uncomfortably wedged into the tiny boat until the carny came to shoo me out.
    It began less than half an hour later.
    There were several versions of the story, but when you put them all together you come up with this: Alec and Cheryl were sitting in the heated dance canopy, eating hot dogs and listening to a bad country western band. There were other kids at the tables around them, and a few people on the dance floor. Everyone was having a good old