“Brooke talks to them all the time,” Tiffany said. “They’re the ones who told us about the TCIs. Obvi.”
“Plus they sent us this really cool volumizing mascara last week,” Britt added. “It’s made by like NASA.”
I couldn’t begin to fathom why NASA would be designing mascara, but didn’t bother to ask Brittany if she was mixing up her acronyms. I had more important things on my mind. “Don’t you guys ever wonder who the Big Guys are?” I asked.
The twins stared at me, clearly not comprehending such curiosity.
I tried to put this in terms they would understand. “For all we know, they could be really hot or something.”
That got identical contemplative looks out of the two of them, until Brittany realized that our superiors in Washington were “probably like really old,” and then the two of them shrugged off the entire conversation and began to apply a second coat of glitter to my body, on the off chance that my sparkle had waned during the course of our conversation.
Each and every girl on the Squad was a master of deception, but the more time I spent with them, the better I got at reading the subtleties of their body language, their tones of voice, and their patterns of behavior. For the twins, worrying about my “sparkle quotient” was more or less the norm, and every instinct I had told me that all they knew about our superiors was that they had access to cosmetic prototypes that would have made other fashionistas drool.
Like the other girls I’d spoken to, save for one, the twins didn’t know anything about the man who’d been our liaison in Washington on our last mission. The only person I hadn’t spoken to about it was Brooke, and that was because Brooke and I didn’t talk. She issued orders. If I was in a good mood, I considered following them. Besides, I was positive that Chloe knew something she wasn’t sharing, and if Chloe knew the truth, Brooke did, too.
They just didn’t want the rest of the Squad to know it.
The fact that the twins were getting a little too personal with their glitter distribution kept me from dwelling on my little mystery too much. I was afraid that if I let Brittany and Tiffany continue with their dastardly glitter ways, I’d be sparkling where the sun don’t shine in no time.
“Don’t you two have somebody else to glitter?” I narrowed my eyes, and to my incredible relief, they stopped the glitter application to answer my question.
“Oh, no,” Tiffany said seriously. “You’re the only one who needs G.A.”
G.A.?
“Glitter Assistance,” her twin clarified.
When it came to makeup, the twins didn’t trust me to know my lips from my lids. You confuse eyeliner and lip liner once, and you’re branded for life.
As if they somehow knew that a brief makeup-related thought had crossed my mind, the twins whipped out tubes of lip gloss in synchronized motions, and before I could so much as threaten bodily harm, my lips were pink and shiny and tasted vaguely like strawberries.
It was times like these that I really needed to do something, anything, that made me feel like me. Not too long ago, I’d found out that I wasn’t the only Squad member who’d been cheerlead-o-fied upon joining up, and I didn’t want to get to the point where my cover became my identity. I was still me, and unlike Zee and Chloe, I had no desire to forget it and become somebody else.
“Anyone want to spar?” I asked. There was nothing like a good fight to make me feel like myself again. It must have had something to do with those “aggressive tendencies” my school counselors were always talking about. Luckily for me, one of the perks of being on the Squad was the amazing underground facility called the Quad. I was still finding my way around, but the week before, I’d discovered a first-class training room, with plenty of space for a little friendly hand-to-hand.
“School starts in twenty-eight minutes,” Tara told me.
I think she vastly underestimated my need to hit something. Or someone.
“That gives us at least twenty minutes,” I said. “Come on, who’s up for it?”
I glanced at Brooke, and for a long moment, she stared back at me. I recognized the thirst in her eyes. She was a competitor, plain and simple, and as odd as it seemed, a morning fight sounded just as good to her as it did to me. When I first joined the Squad, I thought Brooke and I were complete and utter opposites. I was the anticheerleader, and she was the poster girl.
These days, I wasn’t quite so sure.
“We’re wearing cheerleading uniforms,” Tara said, making an admirable stab at talking me out of what I’m sure she thought was a very bad idea. “And body glitter.”
“I promise I won’t hurt anyone’s glitter,” I said, my eyes still on Brooke. The last time we’d fought, she’d ended it before either of us had had much of a chance to win.
“Brooke.” Chloe Larson stepped in front of Brooke, effectively blocking me from her view. “I thought we’d go over the chant order for the pep rally. I think we may want to put ‘Clap Your Hands’ before ‘Stand Up, Up.’”
Brooke’s facial expression never changed, but I could almost hear her internal sigh as she realized that neither one of us was getting a rematch this morning. “Just a sec,” she told Chloe. “Lucy?”
“Yeah huh?” Lucy popped out of a nearby bathroom stall, and I blinked as the glare off her glittery chest struck me straight in the eye.
“Toby wants to spar,” Brooke told her. “Make it interesting.”
Lucy was little, perky, and happier than just about any person I knew. Needless to say, the happiest girl in the world wasn’t exactly my first-choice punching bag. Then again, I’d never seen her fight, and if there was one thing the past few weeks had taught me, it was that underestimating any of these girls was a very, very bad idea.
“You ready?” Lucy asked me, bouncing on the balls of her feet. I nodded, and beside me, Tara sighed.
“You want me to come with?” she asked.
I shook my head. I was pretty sure I could handle Lucy, and because it was Lucy, who’d always been nice to me in her own special Lucy way and who hadn’t, for instance, forced gloss upon my unwilling lips in the past five minutes, she wasn’t in any real danger from me, either.
Lucy bounded back into the bathroom stall, and then returned a moment later. “So how’s your day going?” she asked, coming up and hooking her arm through mine. “I mean, I know it’s pretty early, but so far, so good?”
I was glossed and glittered and on edge, and I had a sinking suspicion that I wasn’t going to be getting any answers about our superiors any time soon, but I also had an assignment, and the thought of tailing Jacob Kann after school was enough to make up for the rest of it. With any luck, I’d actually get to break into his hotel room.
“So far, so good.”
Five minutes later, we were in the training room, and Lucy was sitting on the ground doing a butterfly stretch, the soles of her feet touching each other, and her knees pushing down toward the ground.
I took a few deep breaths and warm-up kicks, and by the time Lucy bounced (literally) to her feet, I was ready to go.
We stood there for an elongated moment, looking at each other, and then Lucy flew at me. She was fast—I’d give her that much, and she knew how to put what little weight she had behind a punch. Despite the fact that I’d told myself not to underestimate her, the speed of the movement took me off guard, and she managed to catch the edge of my shoulder as I belatedly moved to dodge her blow.
Without thinking, I turned, absorbing the force and moving with it, and grabbed her arm. With a single, smooth movement on my part, Lucy was flying through the air, and I was reminding myself that I really didn’t want to hurt her.
Realizing she was airborne, Lucy somehow managed to turn her flight into a technically perfect front flip, and as soon as she landed, she came at me again. For several minutes, we got stuck in that pattern—Lucy advancing on me enough to punch or kick, me dodging and using her own momentum to throw her into some kind of twisting flip. After the first time, none of her punc
hes or kicks touched me, and even though she seemed to be having a good time, I was starting to feel kind of bad and figured it was time to end things.
As she landed from her umpteenth flip, I moved forward, kicking low with my left foot in a motion meant to sweep her feet out from underneath her. She fell, but was back on her feet instantly, and as I tried to temper my reaction to her skill level, she managed to land a solid kick to my chest.
I grunted, spun, and came disturbingly close to throwing myself into a roundhouse. Keeping my head in the game, I short-circuited the movement. My roundhouse was not a thing to be taken lightly.
“Ummm…Toby?” Lucy’s voice was somewhat hesitant as she backed away from me slowly.
“Yes?”
“Remember how Brooke said for me to make it interesting?”
I nodded, relatively unconcerned. Lucy was good—definitely better than I’d expected, but there was a very real chance I could have taken her with my eyes closed.
“Toby?” Lucy prodded.
“I remember.”
Lucy smiled tentatively. “Just checking.” She moved quickly, her hands blurring with the speed at which she reached back and somehow produced two sharp, metal objects.
Throwing knives? What the…
And then we were fighting again, and instead of dodging Lucy’s punches, I was avoiding the thrusts of the knives. I grabbed hold of her left arm and twisted her wrist until she dropped the weapon, and then barely managed to duck before the knife in her right hand came whizzing at my neck.
I needed to put space in between the two of us. Fast. Without even thinking, going entirely on instinct and years of training, I flew into a series of back handsprings that took me away from her and landed just in time to see Lucy take aim and throw the final knife.
I dove down and out of the way, twisting to allow my shoulder to absorb the impact as my body hit the floor, and then I rolled on autopilot back to my feet.
Lucy smiled hopefully. “Wasn’t that interesting?”
My heart was beating hard against my rib cage, and the adrenaline was flowing. I opened my mouth and then closed it again. I wasn’t sure whether to be incredulous or ticked, or possibly oddly elated. On the one hand, Brooke had more or less told Lucy to throw knives at me. On the other hand, it had made things more interesting. I could take Lucy with my eyes closed. Lucy with knives was another story altogether.
In the end, I settled for disbelief. A month ago, Lucy and I hadn’t even lived on the same plane of social existence, and now she was throwing knives at me, in the friendliest of all possible knife-throwing ways.
“Yeah, Luce,” I said. “Really interesting.”
Her smile brightened the second she got that I wasn’t mad at her, and she immediately began babbling. “We don’t use knives that much. Most of our weapons are a lot more covert, and we don’t engage in much hand-to-hand contact with our marks. I mean, if cheerleaders started pulling out knives, then people wouldn’t see us as cheerleaders, you know?”
It occurred to me to wonder where exactly she’d managed to hide the knives. Cheerleading uniforms weren’t exactly ripe with knife-shaped hiding places.
“I’m thinking of seeing if I can fit one of these things into some kind of brush or comb,” Lucy continued. “Or maybe some poms. That would be awesome.”
This conversation was disturbing on so many levels, but as the two of us straightened our ponytails and headed off to class, I couldn’t help but think that it could be worse.
For example, I would have been far more disturbed had Lucy taken her cue from the twins and started talking about Noah.
CHAPTER 3
Code Word: Rumor Mill
“Miss Klein, how kind of you to join us.” Mr. Corkin, my history teacher, flashed me an evil look as I slid into my seat. I’d somehow managed to make it through my first four periods and lunch before taking a fevered (and, I might add, futile) stab at glitter removal. As a result of that last-minute attempt, I was late to fifth hour, and Corkin, who hated me as much as I hated history, was thrilled to have a reason to engage in Toby bashing, his favorite non-Olympic sport.
Before I’d joined the Squad, he would have done more than verbally berate me for coming into class a good three minutes late, but at this school, being a varsity cheerleader or football player meant something. As sick as it was, my uniform and the insane amount of blue glitter on my chest completely insulated me against the threat of detention. Plus it really didn’t hurt our cause that the vice-principal, the man in charge of discipline, was our faculty sponsor.
“Perhaps you’ve gone deaf as well as ill-mannered.” Mr. Corkin was intent on getting a response out of me, even if it meant repeating himself. “How kind of you to join us.”
Despite my Cheerleaders Get Out of Jail Free card, I didn’t respond to Mr. Corkin’s comment with, “How kind of you to KISS MY CHEER-SKIRT-COVERED BOOTY,” which was, believe me, on the tip of my tongue. Instead, I went with a slightly more diplomatic approach.
“Body glitter emergency,” I said darkly, my face completely and utterly devoid of expression. It was, all things considered, an asinine excuse, but if anyone other than me noticed that fact, they hid it well, and without a word, Mr. Corkin moved on with his lecture.
After about five minutes, I started to get twitchy, and surprisingly enough, it had nothing to do with Corkin’s monotone and everything to do with the fact I wasn’t used to sitting through class in my uniform. Between the spandex underwear covers (“bloomers” or “spankies” depending on your mood and which made you feel like less of a complete idiot to say) and the supershort polyester skirt/shell combo, I was in cheerleading agony. Add to that the fact that trying to scrub off the glitter had simply resulted in itchy, glittery skin, and whatever dignity I’d originally managed to hold on to during my transformation from “not” to “hot” was seriously in danger.
As class progressed, I could feel myself getting more and more wound up. I wasn’t a fan of sitting still, and whatever steam I’d blown off dodging knives that morning was long gone. Even remembering the glint of steel as Lucy flung her weapon directly at my body did nothing to allay my misery.
I was beginning to wonder if this class would ever end. Then again, once class was over, it was only T-minus two hours until the final bell, the pep rally, and the official end of my life as an outsider. The majority of the student body had already accepted me as popularity royalty. Brooke’s word was law, and she’d chosen me for the God Squad. I’d already moved from the fringes to the central table at lunch, and when it came to halftime performances, I was officially a veteran of butt-shaking.
But in another two hours, as I waved goodbye to my last ounce of dignity, I was going to stand up in front of the entire school and encourage the student body to put their hands together for our football team, a group of guys who, by and large, deserved a kick to their collective crotch far more than they deserved applause.
I tried not to let myself think about the fact that there was one football player who seemed to have as much derision for the whole system as I did. His name was Jack Peyton, he was tall, dark, and drop-dead gorgeous, and even though he was the school’s most eligible bachelor, he accepted that position with an ironic detachment that I almost had to respect. He was smart, sarcastic, and more charming than I’d ever given him credit for. And three weeks earlier, we’d kissed.
At the time, he’d been my mark—the son of a local baddie, the head of a law firm that had its well-protected fingers in everything from terrorism to the mafia. As if that didn’t complicate things enough, the discovery I’d made about our superiors, the one that I’d spent the past few weeks trying to sort out, was that Jack Peyton was almost as connected to our program as he was to our enemy. His uncle was our liaison in Washington, the Charlie to our Angels, and most of the girls on the Squad didn’t have a clue. I had no idea how one Peyton had ended up at the head of what was more or less a terrorist cell, while the other headed the CIA unit designated
to take that cell down, but either way, Jack was the crown prince of Evilville, and as a bonus, the ex-boyfriend of not one, but two varsity cheerleaders. He was off-limits in every possible way, and I’d kissed him. Not, in retrospect, my best move, and the fact that I’d followed the kiss by punching him in the stomach and bolting out the door hadn’t exactly shown the kind of grace under pressure you might expect from a teenage operative. It definitely wasn’t my finest moment, and since then, I’d been doing my best to avoid Jack. Not an easy task considering we sat at the same lunch table and shared a bus to away games.
“Psssssssst. Toby.”
It took me a second to realize that the girl next to me was saying my name. Even after being on the Squad for nearly a month, I still wasn’t used to the fact that people actually knew my name. I’d gone to eight schools in the past ten years, and except for the bullies that I’d been forced to take out, none of the other kids had ever paid much attention to me. I was anonymous, and I preferred to stay that way.
“Psssssst. Toby!”
Persistent, wasn’t she? I cast a glance at Mr. Corkin, who was prattling on about some battle I couldn’t have cared less about, and then I turned back to the girl and answered.
“Yeah?” I tried for a tone that conveyed, “Stop talking to me, and do not, under any circumstances, ask me a question about cheerleading, body glitter, or Jack Peyton.”
Unfortunately, either my tones weren’t very expressive, or the girl next to me really didn’t excel in reading between the lines.
“Is it true that the God Squad has their own line of body glitter with Calvin Klein?”
One of the most widespread rumors when I’d made the varsity squad was that I was Calvin Klein’s love child. Proof that, as I’d long suspected, people at this school were dumb.
“Pssssst! Toby!”
Miss Persistent wasn’t going to quit until I gave her an answer, and so I did. “Yes,” I deadpanned, tired of shooting down ridiculous rumors. “Calvin Klein. Body glitter. Entirely true.”