The Shadow Club Read Free

He stretched out his legs, went to get his shoes, then came by the bleachers.
    "What's up, Jared?" he said. "Have a good summer?"
    "Pretty good. What about you?"
    "Great!" he said. He put his foot up on the first bench and stretched his calf muscle. "You like my running shoes?" he asked. "They're Aeropeds. The best running shoe made. Cost almost two hundred bucks."
    I nodded.
    "Maybe if you had these shoes," said L'Austin, "you might be able to come close to giving me some competition this year, huh?"
    "Maybe," I said, which wasn't what I wanted to say. I won't tell you what I wanted to say.
    "Been workin' out?" he asked.
    "Yeah," I said. I had been. Every spare moment I had.
    "Good. Me, too. Every day, all summer up at Junior National Running Camp. Hey, guess what?"
    "What?"
    "I might qualify for the Junior NCAA championships."
    "Really."
    "Uh-huh. Tough competition, but my time now is averaging a quarter of a second faster than last year's sixty-yard qualifying time, so I've been trying to get it even lower. My dad says if I qualify, then next year he'll find me a private coach and train me for the Olympics." He smiled that I'm- better-than-you smile at me. "So," he said, "what have you been up to?"
    "Me? Oh, I just went to European Runners Training Camp, where you run cross-country up and down the Alps all day long with famous Olympic athletes."
    "Really?"
    I sighed. "No. Actually I just hung around and worked at Burger King making hamburgers. Hard work, that Burger King. Builds muscles in your fingers."
    "I'll bet," said Austin.
    "You know I was the youngest one they ever had working at hat Burger King?"
    "Yeah, well that makes sense," said Austin. "I mean, who else are they gonna get to do the stupid flunky work but a kid, right?"
    I didn't say anything after that.
    "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 Ipassed 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