Killer Spirit (3 page)

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.”

“That is like so fab.” The girl didn’t pause a second before plowing on. “So is it true that Jack Peyton is going to ask you to homecoming during the pep rally?”

“WHAT?” I’m not sure whether my response was a yelp or a yell, but whatever it was, it was loud.

“Miss Klein!” Mr. Corkin was not pleased, but I wasn’t exactly in a state of mind to care.

“Would you mind terribly,” he said tartly, “if I asked you to save your conversations, as stimulating as I’m sure they must be, for after class?”

“Not at all,” I said through gritted teeth. I had bigger problems than Corkin, like the fact that the words
Jack
and
homecoming
had just been used in the same sentence. I wasn’t going to homecoming, and I certainly wasn’t going with Jack.

No way. No how.

Completely oblivious to the nature of the thoughts beating against the inside of my skull, Mr. Corkin smirked, pleased that I’d backed down for the second time in one day. And just like that, something inside of me snapped. I needed out of this class and away from the rumor mill. Most of all, I needed to wipe the cocky expression right off his history teacher face.

“Mr. Corkin?” I said, pitching my voice to mimic his exactly. “Would you mind terribly if I asked you to KISS MY—”

“Miss Klein!”

Fifteen seconds later, the smirk had been firmly wiped off of Corkin’s face, I was on my way to the vice-principal’s office, and the rumor mill was effectively five thousand miles away.

All in all, I was pleased.

CHAPTER 4

Code Word: Detention

The vice-principal was not nearly as pleased with my performance in history class as I was.

“You’ve been doing so well,” he told me. “I really thought the other girls were rubbing off on you. None of your teachers have complained, and you’ve only been sent to my office a handful of times.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell Mr. Jacobson that the fact that I’d stayed out of trouble had less to do with the way that I’d changed and more to do with the fact that the way people treated me had changed. In the P.S. (pre-Squad) period, I’d primarily gotten into trouble for mouthing off and for beating up football players who richly deserved it, including, but not limited to, those who threatened the life of my little brother. Now the football players didn’t mess with me. It was funny, they’d never been scared of the fact that I could take any of them at any time, but now that I was one of
those girls,
all it took was a warning look, and they left Noah alone.

I had to wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that being beat up by the loner girl wasn’t anywhere near as humiliating as being beat up by a cheerleader. In all likelihood, it was probably more closely related to the fact that the collective feminine wiles of the Squad kept the boys at this school firmly under our (and I include myself in this group loosely) thumbs.

As for mouthing off, maybe I had changed. Not for the reasons that Mr. J thought, but maybe I’d stopped being quite so openly rebellious once I’d started to learn to keep my real thoughts and feelings (and, in some cases, my real identity) hidden behind whatever cover I was assigned.

I frowned. The idea was, to say the least, disturbing.

“I haven’t changed,” I told Mr. J. If I had, I certainly hadn’t meant to.

“Toby, you cannot tell a teacher to…ahem”—Mr. J consulted the slip of paper Corkin had sent with me to the office—“kiss your posterior region. I expect you to show all of your teachers, even the ones you don’t like, a certain amount of respect.”

Given that this was high school, no one concerned themselves with whether or not Mr. Corkin gave me the same courtesy. Even if I’d arrived to class on time and kept my mouth shut, he would have found something to say to me. He’d hated me at first glance, judged the proverbial book by the cover, and despite the fact that the cover had since changed, his attitude toward me hadn’t. He restrained himself from being too openly nasty, lest he incur the wrath of the administration, the PTA, and whoever else the Squad had in its pocket, but he still hated me.

And I had no respect for him.

I opened my mouth to explain this, perhaps explicitly, but Mr. J cut me off.

“I know,” he said, “and believe me when I say that I don’t think you’re entirely to blame for this situation, but we still need to do something about it.”

The poor guy looked so torn. I blame the cheerleading uniform. He just couldn’t give detention to a girl who had
BHS
emblazoned across her chest.

“I should give you detention,” he said, sounding for all the world like a kid faced with eating the most dreaded of vegetables, “but I know how hard you girls have been working lately to get ready for the big game against Hillside this weekend, and I can only imagine how much stress you’ve been under.”

The sad thing was, Mr. J didn’t know about the true nature of the Squad. He really thought we were just cheerleaders, and this was the way he treated us. I can only conclude that he had some kind of mental illness or childhood trauma that gave him an incredible soft spot for all things cheerleadery. I made a mental note to ask Zee about it, and the moment I did, I started to wonder if the government had anything to do with the fact that the vice-principal at Bayport High had a weakness for cheerleaders. It would be just like the Guys Upstairs to handpick a vice-principal guaranteed to allow us to do whatever we wanted, or, more to the point,
needed
to do.

“If this happens again, Toby, we’ll have to have a very serious talk.”

He couldn’t even bring himself to really properly threaten me, and this from a guy who’d never had trouble chewing me up and spitting me out before I’d ascended to the top of the social echelon.

“Just give me detention,” I grumbled. I’d hated the favoritism at this school before I’d been a cheerleader, and I wasn’t all that fond of it now.

“Toby, I would never ask you to skip the pep rally this afternoon over something as mild as a disagreement with a teacher.” Mr. J looked shocked at the mere suggestion, as if he hadn’t told me how serious my behavior was moments before.

“The pep rally,” I repeated, and then the image of Jack watching as I jumped up and down and cheered my butt off popped into my head, followed directly by the words that had driven me here in the first place.

So is it true that Jack Peyton is going to ask you to homecoming during the pep rally?

“Go ahead,” I told Mr. J. “Ask me to skip the pep rally. Please.”

It would solve almost all of my problems. I wouldn’t have to take the final step in my transformation to cheerleaderdom, I could successfully avoid Jack and any questions he may or may not have been planning to ask me that afternoon, and being in detention might even make me feel a little more like my old self. It didn’t resolve the body glitter situation, but all things considered, that was probably hoping for too much.

“Toby, Friday is homecoming. It’s a big game, and a big dance, and this pep rally is the start of it all. The nominations for homecoming court will be announced. I can’t let you miss that.”

“Sure you can,” I encouraged, trying to keep the hopeful expression off my face. “I did a very bad thing. I deserve to be punished. No pep rally for me.”

“No,” Mr. J argued. “You didn’t do anything. Not really, Toby. We both know how Mr. Corkin can be. I’ll be sure to talk to him about his attitude toward you.”

I’d seriously had dreams like this before. Corkin sending me to the office only to get his butt chewed out? It was priceless. It was not, however, necessary, and avoiding the pep rally was. There was no way I could just play hooky. The Squad didn’t work like that, and neither did I. But if Mr. J told me I couldn’t go…

“It really wasn’t Mr. Corkin’s fault.” I practically choked on the words, but I said them. “I have an attitude problem. I have no respect for authority.”

I could tell just by looking at him that Mr. J wasn’t buying it. He’d somehow rewritten history so that I was the victim here, and nothing I could say or do would convince him otherwise.

“I told him to kiss my a—” I said desperately.

Mr. J, darn him, started laughing before I even finished the final word.

“It’s not funny. It’s bad. Very bad.” Even as I tried to make the argument, I couldn’t help but remember the look on Corkin’s face, and it took everything I had to keep from laughing myself.

“Toby, you’re a good kid, and the other girls need you. It’s homecoming, and I’m feeling generous. Don’t bother arguing. I’m not giving you detention, and that’s final. Now go back to class.”

It was official. My life had done a complete one-eighty. A month ago, I couldn’t have begged my way out of detention, and right now, I couldn’t beg my way in.

“On second thought,” Mr. J said. “Don’t go back to class just yet. I think you and Mr. Corkin need a break from each other. Why don’t you just take a breather?”

What kind of messed up system was this? I shouted profanities at a teacher, and as punishment, I got to skip out on the rest of the aforementioned teacher’s boring lecture? How was this even possible?

You’re a cheerleader, I told myself. And a spy. Anything is possible. Except, it appeared, getting out of the pep rally that afternoon. Go figure.