The Shadow Club Rising Read Online Free PDF Page B

I was ahead—but of course I didn't.
    "Actually, I kinda like Alec," I said. "I mean, he's an okay guy, once you get past his perfection problem."
    She looked at me sideways, and that one look told me I was done for.
    "Just what do you mean by that?"
    "Well, just . . . um . . . that he's weird about being good at everything."
    "There is nothing wrong with aiming high."
    "There is when you're hunting ducks with a bazooka." By now I was so far into it there was no sense pulling back. "I mean, overkill must be the guy's middle name. It's like he would die if someone else got to be the center of attention."
    She crossed her arms in her prosecutor posture.
    "If he's so totally into himself," she said, far too calmly, "then why is he helping me run for class president?"
    I stumbled over my own thoughts for a moment, wondering when she had decided to run, and why I didn't know about it. There was a time when I would have been first to know.
    "That's great," I said. "I'm glad he'll be helping your campaign." And then I added, "Prove me wrong about him— and I'll eat my shoe."
    "You're on," she said, shaking my hand. "Only I get to pick which one—I want to make sure it's nice and grungy."
    She turned and strode off to class, but I couldn't let her go—not yet, because there was something I had to tell her— something I had been thinking about since the moment I heard about the hair ball.
    "I've been thinking of reconvening the Shadow Club."
    My words stopped her dead in her tracks, but she didn't turn around. She just stood there for a few seconds, her back still turned.
    "I thought maybe we could all get together and stop things from happening to Alec," I told her.
    "You won't need to stop it, because nothing else will happen," she said, and continued on to class.
    The administrators of our school district haven't quite come to grips with the twenty-first century, or even the twentieth, for that matter. Our desks are the same shellacked, pen- carved relics they used fifty years ago. There are still holes for inkwells in the corner. We're not required to wear uniforms, but every Friday we still have to dress up for assembly. We also have that rare animal called a "junior high school"—seventh, eighth, and ninth grades all together, leaving only three grades for our senior high school. If it were up to our district superintendent I'm sure we would all be in little red schoolhouses that dotted the coastline.
    I really didn't mind the junior high school thing. I mean, sure, I wanted to be in high school, but there was something to be said about never having a freshman year. Our town has only one junior high and one senior high—massive buildings across town from each other—built in the days when schools were giant institutions like prisons, which meant that few things would change when I made the move from ninth grade to tenth grade, other than the length of my run every morning. Same basic kids, same basic attitudes—and what you sowed in kindergarten, you were still reaping in twelfth grade.
    Since the senior high had only one feeding school, it had been decided some years ago that during the winter lull after Christmas vacation and before the standardized tests, elections would be held for next year's class president. Whoever won the honor in ninth grade would walk right into senior high, master of tenth grade.
    Nominations came during the next Friday's assembly. The assembly featured a former state representative who was so old we were afraid he would expire before his parking meter outside. Following him were our official presidential nominations. It was common knowledge by now that Cheryl planned to run. She had weathered the storm of the Shadow Club far better than I had. Rather than earning her the label of "questionable kid," as it did for me, her involvement left an aura of awe around her. It was just the kind of quality that could get a person elected, and she knew it. Of course you couldn't nominate yourself, and so