I could see Alec now through the plastic, as though I was looking out from a fishbowl. He wasn't laughing or even grinning anymore. The look on his face almost mirrored my own, but he was unable to stop himself.
A bee had rested on the rim of my ear. I could feel it spiral around until it was forcing itself into my ear canal, probing deeper as if my ear were the mouth of a flower. Finally I came to my own edge, and felt myself slipping off.
I screamed. I didn't care if the bees got in my mouth now, I didn't care about anything. All I cared about was the sound of my scream, echoing in the jug.
I barely noticed the light suddenly pouring into the garage, or the sliding door of the van opening. I barely saw Alec being pulled out, and when the jug was finally pulled off my head and I saw Jodi—wonderful, horrible Jodi-- standing there, with Tyson right beside her, I still screamed Even after the jug was gone, I still kept on screaming, believing, in my heart of hearts, that I would never stop.
Because of Alec.
Because of the bees.
And because Tyson was wearing a hat that said TSC.
Oxy-morons
ALEC HAD DISAPPEARED by the time Jodi and Tyson untied me, pulled away by kids whose faces I didn't see. "They're giving Alec what he deserves," Jodi said.
As soon as my arms were free, I felt all over my face and neck, still expecting the telltale swelling that would come from a lethal bee sting—but I had been lucky. Now the intense fear I had felt resolved into an aching head, and a weary sense of mental vagueness, like I was watching all this from a distance. Or maybe I just wished I was.
I followed them from Alec's house, downhill, wishing I could go home, but not feeling strong enough to do anything but follow.
"I'm really not a part of it," Tyson said on the way, when Jodi had gotten a few paces ahead and couldn't hear. "You've got to believe me."
"I believe you."
"I haven't done a thing, you've got to believe me."
"I believe you."
"She just told me today—I wouldn't be caught dead wearing this hat if Jodi and I weren't going out, you have to believe that."
"I believe it." But apparently Tyson had a harder time convincing himself than he did convincing me.
"Where did they take Alec?" I asked Jodi.
"Where do you think?" she said.
I followed them to the Ghosties, and to the tugboat, still resting in its cradle at the edge of the seawall. I climbed up through the hole in the hull to find them all there, crowding the hull of the old boat. Not seven or eight kids. Not a dozen, but thirty, maybe more. Kids from younger grades, maybe even a high schooler or two, all of them proudly wearing that terrible hat. It was late in the day now, and the weird upside-down attic space was lit by at least a dozen flashlights aimed at odd angles, casting jagged shadows that made Frankensteins out of everyone's faces.
And they all came to me when they saw me.
"Hey, Jared," they said. "Good to see you." They put their hands up for high fives, and when I didn't return them, they just clapped me on my shoulder or back as I passed, heading toward the front of the boat where their new leader awaited. It was Brett Whatley.
"I knew you'd end up with us sooner or later," said Brett, his arms crossed proudly as he stood toward the front, straddling the V-shaped hull. Moose SanGiorgio was also there, lurking large in the shadows. As always, his hulking presence enhanced the bitter flavor of the situation. Behind Brett was a wooden post supporting the deck up above. Tied to that post was Alec, or what was left of him.
Whatever they had done to him, they had done it quickly. His clothes were covered in mud, or at least I hoped it was mud. His face was swollen, bruised, and bleeding.
I turned to Moose. "You were supposed to be his bodyguards!"
Moose raised his eyebrows. "We were double agents."
"It was my idea," Brett had to add.
My head was still pounding, my ears still buzzed with the memory of the bees. All I wanted to do was crawl up into a ball in the corner and let all this be someone else's problem, but I couldn't. The sight of Alec, battered as he was, brought my senses back into focus, and my thoughts back into clarity.
"What makes you think Alec won't tell who did this to him?"
"He won't tell," said Jodi, "because he knows if he does, it will only get worse."
"Yeah," echoed Brett. "Alec has paid his debt to society. After today, if he doesn't bother us, we don't bother him."
But somehow I found that hard to believe.
"As you can see, this is bigger than you now, Jared," Brett said.
"No sense fighting it," added Jodi as she took her place beside Brett. So they were the ringleaders now, like Cheryl and I had been, but while Cheryl and I were fueled by resentment, these two were fueled by hate. You could feel it radiating from them like an aura. You could smell it as strongly as skunk.
"Alec thought it was you doing all that stuff to him!" Brett laughed. "He didn't have a clue."
"It was my hair in his soda," said Jackson Belmont.
"But I put it in," said J. J. Welsh, who worked the fair's food concession.
"I gave them the skunk," Jodi said.
"But we put it in the minivan," said the Rangley twins.
"I had some fun with Lunar Glue," said Angela Wyndham.
"I had some leftover penicillin," Wendy Gorman said.
I looked around me. All of them were guilty. And they were proud of it.
Brett gloated. "We are your last best defense against the scum of the universe."
I shook my head. "Tommy Lee Jones—Men in Black. You still can't come up with an original line, Brett."
Brett just shrugged.
"Keep dealing in hatred," I said, "and it'll bite you in the ass."
Still nothing. "Our hatred is justified," he said.
Justified hatred? "Oxymoron." I said.
That got a reaction from Brett. "What did you call me?"
Jodi grabbed him before he could lunge at me. "It means two things that don't make sense together. Like 'jumbo shrimp.'"
But I was also thinking of it the other way, because all that hatred was definitely keeping this pack of morons from getting enough oxygen to the brain. Unfortunately they needed something more than just fresh air, but I didn't know what it was.
I turned to Tyson. "You're okay with all of this?"
If his shoulders sank any lower they'd be dragging on the floor. "Not exactly . . ."
I knew I should have been pissed at him, but I wasn't, because I knew who he was, and what he had come from. He had gone from being the neighborhood outcast, to being accepted, and even dating the girl of his dreams. Today he was being asked to sell his soul to keep his new station in life. I knew it was tearing him apart. Still, I noticed he had taken off his TSC hat.
I looked at Alec. I'm sure he heard all of this. Even with swollen eyes I could see him watching, but when I approached him he turned away, unable to look me in the face. I knew what he was feeling now—hatred for the others, and guilt for what he had done to me. It wasn't just his face that was screwed up, it was his soul now, because he had been at the edge. He had tried to kill me, and the memory would be with him all his life.
I went up to Alec. I don't know what I felt for him—disgust, pity, anger—but regardless of how I felt, I knew one thing was true, and I knew Alec needed to hear it.
"I forgive you," I told him. He turned his head away. But I grabbed his chin and forced him to look at me. "Listen to me, you lousy SOB! I understand why you did what you did to me. I forgive you." I let go of his face, and this time he kept eye contact with me.
"I'm sorry," he said weakly.
I nodded. "Apology accepted." Then I turned toward Brett, speaking loudly enough so that everyone could hear.
"This ends here."
"I don't think so," said Brett. He was in his element now, the power going straight to that slab of meat loaf he called a brain.
"There are an awful lot of people in
this town who need to be taught a lesson," Jodi chimed in.
"We've got lists," added Moose.
"Yeah," said Brett. "Lots of them—and everyone on those lists is gonna get what's coming to them."
The chess girl came up behind me. "It's a good thing, Jared—you'll see."
"Yeah," added Tommy Nickols. "People around here will start thinking twice before doing things that bug us."
"Who made you judge and jury?" I asked them all.
"You did, Jared," answered Jodi. "The whole thing was your idea, remember? That's why we trashed Greene's place for you. That's why we saved you from Alec today. That's why we brought you here."
Hearing her say that heated my blood to a boil. I had done some awful things, but I would not take the blame for all of this! I may have started the Shadow Club, but it took all of them to breathe new life into it. I reasoned that if I still held some mysterious power over this club, now was the time to wield it.
I went straight up to Brett. "I started the Shadow Club, and I ended it," I said. "Take that stupid hat off your head." I reached up and swatted off the hat, and in turn he hit me, knocking me across the boat. It rocked slightly in its cradle as I hit the side.
"We don't really need you," he said. He grabbed me again and threw me across to the other side of the boat. Everyone shifted out of the way of our fight. "Are you beginning to get the picture?"
My answer was a punch to his jaw. It stunned him, but not enough. He grabbed me again and hurled me to the other side of the boat.
Then the world began to move.
Metal fatigue. That's what they call it when a piece of hardware gives way and something big comes tumbling down, usually taking a whole lot of lives with it. With all those kids jammed into the hull of the old tugboat, something was bound to give. I heard the wood creak, and somewhere a piece of metal snapped, falling to the ground with a muted clang. Then the rusted steel cradle that held the tugboat gave way, and with a crash of metal, the entire ship fell to one side.
I've never been in an earthquake, but I imagine that's what it feels like, because thirty kids were hurled off their feet as the tugboat rocked to the right, then to the left, coming to rest. No one was screaming. People don't really scream in a real emergency—not unless they have a good long time to think about what is going to happen to them. There were just a few gasps and groans as kids hit the bulkhead. Funny thing about being in the hull of a ship that's tilted over on its side—you can't tell which way is down. It was strange enough with the floor tilting up like a V from the center, but now, with the ship fallen over on its side, my equilibrium was all thrown off. When I tried to stand up I just fell over as if I was drunk.
Everyone tried to gather themselves back together, wondering what had happened, but I already knew. The boat was resting in such a way that the hole in the hull—the one we all climbed through—should have been flat against the concrete now, leaving no way to get out. But instead there was light pouring through the hole—in fact, more light than before.
"Nobody move," I shouted, and for an instant everybody actually listened to me. We might have made it out had it not been for Brett. He was behind me, next to Alec, but he pushed me out of the way and made a beeline toward the hole in the hull, hurling kids out of the way in his panic to escape. When he finally reached the hole at the back of the boat, he jumped out and disappeared, falling like a paratrooper out of a plane. Then came his surprised distant yell, suddenly silenced by a splash that told me what I already suspected:
When the boat cradle gave way and the tug had fallen out, the tug's back end had slid over the edge of the seawall. There was no telling how close the entire tug was to slipping off the ledge and into the sea.
"Nobody move!" I screamed again, but Brett had already opened the door to panic. Now, having had enough time to think about their predicament, kids began to scream and jump over one another, racing for that little hole.
"Don't!" I yelled. "Don't you get it? We have to stay toward the front or—"
The boards creaked as the boat slid a little farther. Still they were crowding the hole, dropping through, one by one, into the water of the marina, figuring it was better than being trapped in the boat. It was like thirty people trying to escape from an elevator that was about to plunge.
I suppose I was in a panic, too, because I froze, not knowing what to do. But the thing about this I will always remember is that Tyson had the presence of mind to see the whole picture. He grabbed me by the shoulders to get my attention.
"Untie Alec," he said, looking me straight in the eye.
His look said everything. It gave me the whole picture, and the picture was this: with everyone shifting the weight of the precariously balanced tug, nothing we could do would stop it from going over the edge—which meant that things were about to get a whole lot worse. If we didn't untie Alec now, it might be the last chance we got.
And so, as the other kids crowded the hole, Tyson and Igot behind Alec and worked the ropes. Luckily for us they weren't exactly seamen's knots. A little bit of tugging and they came undone. Alec didn't have much energy left, but he did dredge up enough to groan and complain at us all the while, still only seeing his own predicament and not the greater danger. Just about the instant the last knot came undone and Alec pulled his hands and feet free, the boat listed more on its side, giving off that sickly creaking of wood.
"Brace!" I said, grabbing onto the post that Alec had been tied to. The light through the hole changed, the world tilted, and gravity took over. My mind was filled with the strange surreal sight of twenty kids floating weightless in the hollow hull of a boat. Time seemed to dilate for that horrible instant, then everyone was smashed back down as the tug hit the water.
I was torn from the post. My shoulder hit a rib of the hull, not hard enough to break, but hard enough to leave a deep bruise, assuming I survived to have a bruise. There was no light coming through the hole in the boat now, only water gushing in like a geyser. In seconds, the back end of the boat was filling up with water. The only light now came from various flashlights the kids had held, all of which were now scattered on the ground, aiming in random directions. I grabbed one and shone it into the faces scurrying up from the stern of the boat. How many kids could I count? How many had gotten out before the boat fell? What if someone was knocked unconscious by the fall and was still down there in the stern—or even worse, what if kids who were already out in the water were hit by the falling tugboat? There was no way to know.
A single ladder at the tugboat's widest point went up to a closed hatch, which I assumed led up to the main deck of the tug.
"This way," I shouted, pointing the light at the ladder. When I shone the flashlight back at them, the water level was higher. The entire stern was underwater now. Those kids farthest away were treading water and it was already beginning to pool around my feet, soaking through my sneakers. Then came that horrid creaking of wood again as the boat shifted from its side back to center, forcing the stern to sink even deeper. The few kids that hadn't screamed yet were screaming now.
The first kids reached the ladder and began scrambling up.
"One at a time," I yelled, but, of course, it was no use. When panic sets in, common sense is always the first casualty. They were on top of one another, tugging at each other, fighting to get up the ladder just as they had fought to get out of the hole before the boat fell. The first kid to the top of the ladder pushed on the hatch, but it didn't give.
"It won't open!" he screamed. "It's nailed shut. It's nailed shut and we're all going to drown!"
"Hit it again!" I told him. "Harder this time!"
When he hit it, the wood rattled enough for me to know that it wasn't nailed shut. It might have been locked from above, but like everything else in this old vessel, the lock would have rusted into nothing after years of salty air.
There were three kids up there now, all clinging to an edge of the ladder, pushing at the hatch with their arms and with their shoulder
s. Finally the hatch broke and flung open, letting in that wonderful light of day. The water was up to my knees now, and the flooding hull got dimmer and dimmer as more and more flashlights submerged and shorted out. Once it was open, those kids on the ladder didn't look back; they went out through the hole and the rest began to follow.
The water was up to my waist and rising fast—I could see it spilling in from between the weak, rotten boards of the hull, and still there were more than a dozen kids to get out.
None of them looked at me as they passed, they just kept their eyes fixed on that ladder and freedom. All the while, Tyson stood next to me, one hand on the ladder, the other grabbing floundering kids, helping them to the ladder. The last one to go was that chess-team girl—the one who had been so anxious for me "to get back at Alec."
"Checkmate" I wanted to say, but I didn't. Instead I just pushed her up toward the ladder, and she grabbed the rungs.
The water was up to my chest now, and that's when the cold really hit me. I could feel my muscles knotting, balling up in shock. I thought the ocean was cold in October when I had taken the plunge and saved Tyson, but that was nothing compared to this.
When all the others were gone, and Tyson and I were ready to go up the ladder, something occurred to me with a sense of dread that was sinking faster than the ship.
I hadn't seen Alec on the ladder.
I told Tyson, and he hesitated for a second. The water rose past my armpits.
"He must have gone up. Right? We got everybody out. He must have gone up."
"One of us would have seen him."
I wasted no time and did a surface dive, swimming as far down as I could go in that sunken hull, but even with the flashlight I couldn't see anything clearly in that murky water. I found nothing but loose timber, dead flashlights, hats—so many hats—then my own flashlight shorted out, leaving me in darkness.
I was at the end of my breath, and I realized I hadn't saved enough air to make it back to the ladder. With my chest aching and my head pounding, I swam forward, but when I got to where I thought the ladder was, I came up, bumping my head against a crossbeam, and I was still underwater.