Free The Shadow Club Rising by Neal Shusterman

came into the kitchen. "He said he would call to see how I was doing with my new foster family." Tyson took my waffle. "So how am I doing?"
    Dad relaxed. He was much more at ease with Tyson lately than he was with me. "Aside from eating us out of house and home, you're doing fine." Then he said his standard good-bye, and left.
    "I really don't like lying to my parents," I told Tyson after my father was gone.
    "Hey, what use am I if I don't teach you some bad habits?" he said.
    "Anyway," I reminded him, "it won't hold up very long. He'll call Greene back, and I'll get my butt kicked halfway to China."
    "Naah," Tyson said. "Your dad's not a butt-kicker, and anyway, he's not going to punish you for something you didn't do."
    I wasn't so sure about that. I knew I had broken my parents' trust before. Would they believe me now, or would the weight of everyone else's suspicion sway them? When the Shadow Club was brought to justice the first time, they had taken away all my privileges—TV, video games, time with friends, time anywhere unsupervised. Gradually they had begun to give those things back, but they still withheld the most important thing of all: their trust. I had always taken it for granted that a parent's trust was a right, not a privilege.
    As I pondered my own parents' faith in me, there was a knock at the door. I opened the door to see a kid standing there. A kid with a crew cut. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was Alec. Then it occurred to me that his little run-in with the Lunar Glue would leave him like that. I took a step back, almost expecting him to sock me or something, but that's not what he had in mind. He had a new look on his face. Yes, I could see anger there, but now there was something else, too, on top of the anger and resentment. It was fear.
    "I want to know what I have to do to get you to stop," he said.
    Tyson came in from the kitchen, took a few moments to gauge the situation, and slipped out the back door, realizing this was between just me and Alec.
    "Why don't you come in," I said to him.
    "Why? Is there an anvil hanging over the door?"
    I backed up and opened the door wide to show him there was nothing about to fall on his head. Then he stepped in. Ihurried to the kitchen.
    "Want a waffle?" I asked him, fumbling with the package of frozen waffles.
    "Not hungry."
    "The haircut kinda suits you," I said, and then grimaced, realizing how dumb it was to say it.
    "No, it doesn't," he said. "My cheeks are too big. I look like a chipmunk with a crew cut. What is it going to take to make you stop?" he said again.
    This was a white flag of surrender, and as much as his arrogant nature irked me, I was even more bothered to see him defeated.
    "You've got it wrong, Alec," I told him. "I'm not the enemy."
    "Then what are you?" he said. "Because you're definitely not a friend."
    I put my hands in my pockets. He was right, I wasn't a friend, but that really wasn't my fault.
    "You don't have friends, Alec," I told him. "You have subjects, and servants."
    "You wish you had a tenth of the respect that I had, but you don't, and that's why you hate me, isn't it? That and Cheryl."
    "Leave Cheryl out of this." Then I leaned against the counter and took a deep breath. He was trying to draw me in, to make me angry, but I wasn't falling for that.
    "Listen," I said, "maybe this was the last prank. Maybe, Just maybe, the person who did it has realized it's gone too far, and they feel sorry they did it."
    Alec stared at me, his eyes cold, unbelieving.
    "And maybe they don't."
    No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't help but face his angry distrust with matching defiance. "I guess we'll just have to wait and see, won't we."

 
     
     
    A
Bitter Pill
    IWASCALLEDINTO Mr. Greene's office right after lunch.
    There were several chairs in Mr. Greene's office: a plush comfortable one for setting kids' minds at ease, a beanbag for less formal counseling sessions . . . and then there was the old wooden chair; a