Prologue

I SUPPOSE YOU want to know all about us, don’t you? All the nasty, horrible details about the vicious things we did. How we planned the accidents, how we plotted against everyone who got in our way. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it?

Well, it wasn’t like that—not to us anyway—not at first. Things just got carried away, that’s all. We were all good kids—I mean really good kids. Not a single kid in the Shadow Club had ever done anything bad and there wasn’t a single delinquent in the bunch. Not at first.

I still don’t know how it all happened. We just lost control, ya know—too many bad feelings have a way of spinning together into one killer tornado, and none of us in the Shadow Club knew how to stop it, or for that matter, where it was going.

I haven’t told anyone the whole story yet. I don’t like to talk about it, because it scares me. I get nightmares. When I was little, I got nightmares about werewolves, or dumb things like that. Now I get nightmares about myself. And since it happened, I’ve been catching other kids looking at me funny, like I’m a different person now, like I’m that monster I dream about. But it’s not true! And I don’t know how to prove to them that I’m still me! I’m just a whole lot smarter now, that’s all.

Like I said, I haven’t told anyone, but I can’t keep it in anymore. If I do, I’ll go crazy.

So listen closely. I’ll tell you all there is to know about the Shadow Club . . . but you have to promise you won’t hate me when I’m done.

I’ll begin long before any of the bad stuff happened, before I spied on Tyson McGaw—even before the first meeting. Way back when that tornado wasn’t even a breeze, just a bunch of thoughts kept secretly in the back of our minds, thoughts we were sure no one else could understand.

It all started that day in the graveyard . . . .