The Shadow Club Rising Read Online Free PDF

country time, until Alec started taking a few sips from his Dr Pepper. He complained that it tasted funny and very innocently took off the plastic lid, to reveal that the Dr Pepper shared the cup with a hair ball the size of King Kong. In fact, if you believe the various accounts, the cup had more hair thansoda. In a few seconds Alec's face went through every shade of the visible spectrum before he leaped up, accidentally dumping the table and the hairy Dr Pepper right into Cheryl's lap.
    Some say he puked right then and there, while others say he puked all over the dance floor. Still others claim he puked all over the lead singer's shiny red boots, but wherever his cookies landed, the fact that he tossed them was not in dispute. The story spread so quickly that a sonic boom echoed through the phone lines, and by morning the Furry Pepper Incident, as it was now being called, was quickly becoming a town legend like the Shadow Club itself . . . and that had me more scared than I had been in months.
    I know what it's like to be trapped in a burning building—to have the smoke blind you, and the air turn into a furnace as you struggle to open a door—everything so far out of control that you can't even control your own bladder. I also know power. I've watched my will run unchecked, wreaking havoc among friends and enemies alike. I know how good it feels to be in control, and to feel that control reach beyond the limits of yourself until you feel larger than life. I know helplessness and I know power—and if I had my way, I would never want to be in either of those places again, because while one might burn your body, the other burns your soul.
    If anything good came from the Shadow Club's dark adventure, it was the knowledge that I was capable of incredible acts of bravery, as well as profound acts of malice. Knowing the bad stuff is there is a good thing, I think, because you can always see it coming. You can protect yourself. You can chase it away before it takes hold and does any damage. But you can't fight what you can't see—and far too many kids didn't see the Furry Pepper Incident for what it really was . . . who didn't know that even the Great Flood began with a single drop of rain.
    "Did you do it?"
    Cheryl accosted me in a dead-end hallway in the math department. We were both late for class, but then, what choice did we have? Neither of us were willing to talk about this during passing time, when ears with the sensitivity of Geiger counters were hyperextended to hear gossip.
    "Do you think I did it?" I asked.
    "Are you going to play games with me?"
    I shifted my heavy math book to my other hand.
    "I suppose if I pleaded 'the fifth' you'd take my silence as guilt, wouldn't you? Why are you even asking if I've already been tried and convicted?"
    "Did you do it?" she demanded again.
    I found myself getting more and more angry that she, of all people, thought I was still capable of that.
    "If I had a new girlfriend," I asked her, "would you put a clump of Bigfoot in her Coke?"
    "No," she said, grimacing at the thought. "Of course not."
    "Then how could you think that I would?"
    She stood silently for a moment. I could see her shoulders relax. "So you're saying that you didn't do it."
    I held out my book. "Do you want me to swear on my math book?"
    "No," she said. The second bell rang, announcing that we were officially late without an excuse. "Alec says you threatened him."
    "I warned him that there were some kids who aren't too happy with him. He just assumed I meant me."
    "Are you . . . jealous of him, because he's going out with me?"
    I wish I could have flatly denied it. I mean, what kind of moron admits to his former girlfriend's face that he's jealous? I guess I was that moron.
    "Yeah," I told her. "Yeah, I am, a little . . . but that's not what this is about."
    And then, to my amazement, she said something that no one had said to me for a long time.
    "I believe you."
    I should have shut my mouth then—quit while