The Shadow Club Read Free Page A

Austin and me has nothing to do with you, got that?"
    Tyson shut up. I don't think he expected me to get that mad.
    "Just get out of my sight, Tyson. Don't talk to me unless you have something decent to say." I turned and walked toward class. Tyson mumbled something nasty beneath his breath, but I didn't want to push it any further. I ignored him and continued walking.
    As I got into the building my anger shifted away from Tyson, and back to Austin. What burned me most was that Tyson was probably right: conceited, arrogant L'Austin Space had all the odds in his favor, and I hated Austin all the more for it. I began to imagine how nice it would be if there was a great conspiracy against all the L'Austin Spaces in the world.
    "Now, I want you all to know right up front that this is no namby-pamby team," said Coach Shuler, as he fidgeted with his whistle. "Once you're in, I don't want you all quitting and joining Little League, or a soccer club, or something like that. This might not be high school, and we might not work out five days a week, but anyone who knows me can tell you that I expect hard work. Isn't that right, Jared?"
    "Right!" I said, surprised that he called me out of everyone else.
    "So if you don't want to be here, leave now."
    In the back, two seventh graders, who in one day had already gotten a reputation of being obnoxious, stood and went to the door, laughing. As they left, one of them turned and said, "Adios, Commandant." Some seventh graders laughed. No one who knew Shuler laughed.
    Shuler looked at his clipboard. "First of all, boys meet Mondays and Wednesdays; girls meet Tuesdays and Thursdays. Anyone who wants to can practice with both teams . . ."
    As Shuler spoke, my mind began to wander. I looked around the gym. It smelled new, but didn't look much different than the old gym. You would think that when a gym burns down, a school would build a nice, new-looking one, but no. This gym was a carbon copy of the old one.
    In each corner of the gym, a different team was meeting, and more were meeting outside. It looked like about forty kids were going out for track—a few more boys than girls. By next week that number would be cut in half. The coach never cut anybody, but people just lose interest and drop out.
    L'Austin Space sat about ten feet away from me. He sat in the middle of a crew of seventh graders, already setting himself up to be the "Team Hero" for all of the new kids to look up to.
    Shuler flipped a page on his clipboard. "As you can see, we have a beautiful new gym . . . and because of last year's fires, the gym is completely off-limits when a teacher isn't present. The doors will remain locked. That goes for the auditorium, and just about every other unsupervised place. I know you've heard it from all of your teachers—now you're hearing it from me." He flipped another page.
    "Next, we have something new this year. Something I think you're going to like. A bunch of the local school districts are getting together to have a sort of mini-Olympics, and yes, there will be track events."
    There were various cheers from around the room, including my own.
    "That's the good news," said Shuler. "The bad news is that each district enters one team, which means that each school can only have one runner."
    Various "Aws" from the group. I kept quiet. I'm sure Austin did, too. I felt a knot begin to form in my stomach.
    "Now, before we go down and assign you gym lockers, there's one more order of business."
    "The captain!" said Martin Bricker, an eighth grader who had a good chance of being captain next year, but was the only one who thought he would make it this year.
    "That's right," said Shuler. "This is for old team members only. Here are pencils and slips of paper. When I say so, I would like all the old team members to come up and fill out a ballot. All you have to do is put the name of the person you would like to be captain this year."
    "Don't we get to campaign?" asked L'Austin.
    "No, we don't get to