Killer Spirit (4 page)

CHAPTER 5

Code Word: Pep Rally

“Clap your hands, everybody! Everybody, clap your hands! Let’s hear it for the Lions—make some noise, you Bayport fans!”

Clap-down-clap-clap-down-clap-down-clap-down-clap-clap.

It had taken me hours to really get the clapping rhythm for this cheer. I’d finally managed to do it, but only by matching the claps (two hands hitting each other) and the downs (hands hitting your knees) with zeroes and ones respectively and converting the whole thing into binary. Twisted, I know, but that’s what happens when you choose the members of your varsity cheerleading squad based on who has and hasn’t hacked into the Pentagon.

“Clap your hands, everybody. Everybody, clap your hands!”

I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be doing this, and I certainly didn’t want to be smiling a big, goofy smile. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much of a choice on any of the above. The others hadn’t quite converted me to the way of the cheerleader, but I’d accepted the fact that when you cheered, however reluctantly, you did it like you meant it. Just because I didn’t particularly want to be a cheerleader didn’t mean that I wanted to be a bad one.

“Let’s hear it for the Lions…” I executed a back handspring. It felt somehow sacrilegious to be doing any kind of flipping that didn’t fall under the heading of martial arts. “Make some noise, you Bayport fans! Goooooooo Bayport!”

Finally, the cheer was over. I hadn’t messed it up. I hadn’t drawn any more attention to myself than was mandated by the fact that we were front and center and screaming our lungs out (or, more accurately, yelling from our diaphragms). Best of all, I hadn’t made eye contact with Jack once.

“Your form on the handspring was crap,” Chloe told me under her breath, smile still plastered to her face.

“Bite me, Chloe.”

“Let’s hear a round of applause for the heart of Bayport, the Bayport High Varsity Spirit Squad!” Mr. Jacobson had the microphone. He was absolutely brimming with pep. “Thank you, girls.”

Bah. I wasn’t talking to Mr. J. Was detention really so much to ask for?

While I was pondering this all-important question, a scowl settling slowly over my face, Tara came up beside me. “Smile,” she said, guiding me to our seats at the very front of the bleachers.

“The cheer’s over,” I reminded her.

“Your job’s not.”

I plastered a big, cheesy smile on my face. “Happy?” I asked her.

“Ecstatic.” Then she leaned forward. “If it’s any consolation, it took Chloe years to learn how to tumble. She’s just bitter that you can do a standing back tuck.”

I hadn’t even done a standing back tuck during our routine, and Chloe was punishing me for the fact that years of martial arts training had given me the ability to do one? Have I mentioned yet that she sucks?

“Cheer politics,” Tara said lightly. “It happens.”

“And now, please welcome this year’s football captain, Chip Warner!”

The student body went crazy, except for me. I clapped, like the good little undercover agent that I was, but mentally, I replayed the many occasions upon which I’d threatened Chip with bodily harm. Good times.

“Hey, guys.” Chip waited for the last hoots and hollers to settle down, and then he continued, a smile on his perfectly sculpted (and perfectly nauseating) face. “First off, I just want to thank the ladies of the varsity squad for all of their support. We love you, girls!”

“Awwwwwww.”

Apparently, I’d missed the part of my cheerleading training that involved synchronized awwwwwwing. Given that pesky gag reflex of mine, this was probably a good thing.

“Next, I just want to say that the Hillside Bobcats are going DOWN!” With those words of wisdom, Chip raised both hands in the air in a V, and the crowd went crazy.

This time, I didn’t clap. No one noticed, except for the only other person in the room not clapping.

Jack.

He was sitting next to the seat Chip had vacated, and having read every bit of intelligence the Squad had managed to gather on Jack, I knew quite well that he and Chip were cocaptains, and that the only reason that Chip was giving the speech was that Jack was jaded enough not to want to. He covered it well.

He glanced up and saw me looking at him. I swore under my breath, and he smiled and then smirked and then smiled again.

“Hello, Ev,” he mouthed. It was his name for me, short for Everybody-Knows-Toby, which was how the girls had introduced me to him my first day as the new and “improved” Toby Klein.

I glared back at him, refusing to give in to my lips’ traitorous urge to smile.

His eyes still on mine, Jack just grinned, that slow, lazy kind of grin that made me feel like I was flirting with him instead of the other way around.

Out of the corner of one eye, I saw Chloe and noticed that she, too, was looking at Jack. Chloe was one of Jack’s exes. Brooke was the other. Besides me, they were the only two people who might have realized that Jack’s uncle was one of the Big Guys. Coincidence? I thought not. Both of them had dated him to gain access to his father’s law firm, our biggest…
enemy
wasn’t quite the right word, but close enough. After the second breakup, Jack had developed Conditioned Cheerleading Aversion (Zee’s diagnosis, not mine), and the only reason he’d shown interest in me was that I wasn’t like the other girls.

For instance, none of the other girls had ever tried their darnedest to avoid him altogether. None of them rolled their eyes when he went into A-list guy mode. None of them gave as good as they got.

None of them had kissed him, punched him in the stomach, and run away.

“Thank you, Chip.” Mr. J was back at the microphone. “And let me take this opportunity to say, Goooooooooo Lions!” He cleared his throat. “And, of course, Lionesses.”

Bayport was politically correct to a fault.

“I’d now like to welcome Joanne McCall, president of the Bayport High School PTA, who will read out the nominations for this year’s homecoming court.”

Blah, blah, blah, blah…wait a second. I elbowed Tara. “Check it out,” I said softly. “It’s the nauseatingly reminiscent mom from the mall.”

My very first day on the Squad, Tara had taken me to the mall to practice my spy skills, and some random mom had practically stalked us, chattering away about how exciting it was to be young and a cheerleader. Apparently, brownnosing parents weren’t all that unusual, and I’d forgotten about it (or at least tried to cleanse my mind of the way the woman had violated my personal space).

It just figured that the nauseatingly reminiscent mom was the president of the PTA.

“I cannot tell you all how pleased I am to be here,” the NRM said. “These high school years are some of the most exciting and precious years of your lives, and I’m happy to have the chance to share them with you. As I’m sure most of you already know, the homecoming court consists of the queen and king, their junior and senior attendants, and the underclassman homecoming princess and sophomore attendant.”

Raise your hand if you’re surprised that Bayport is the kind of school that has a homecoming princess. Anyone? Anyone?

“Each year, four seniors, three juniors, and two underclassmen are nominated by the students and faculty to run for the honor of being the homecoming queen.”

Did this have to take so freaking long? Who cared about the details of the process? Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone to just fall down and worship Brooke now?

“The girl with the most votes will be named queen at the official homecoming game, and the remaining junior and senior nominees will be named her attendants. Additionally, the sophomore with the most number of votes will be named the homecoming princess.”

Being a logical person, I could see the flaw in this system. As a nominee for queen, if the “princess” got enough votes, she could actually beat a senior out for that coveted spot, in which case I could only assume that the runner-up underclassman would get the princess title. It would have made a lot more sense if they stipulated that the queen be a senior, but this didn’t seem to strike anyone else as off—either because the student body knew as well as I did that the race for queen was as good as over and Brooke had as good as won, or because I was the only person at this school afflicted with homecoming-related logic.

I braved a glance at Jack, expecting him to look every bit as tortured as I felt, but instead, he was smiling. Broadly.

“The senior nominees for homecoming queen are…” Mrs. McCall paused dramatically, as if there was anyone in the room who hadn’t figured out exactly whose names would be on that ballot. “Brooke Camden, Chloe Larson, Zee Kim, and Bubbles Lane.”

The four senior members of the Squad. Color me shocked.

Across the room, Jack’s grin grew bigger and wickeder by the second. Without a word, he simply pointed in my general direction. I turned around and glanced over my shoulder. Nothing.

“The junior nominees are Tara Leery, Lucy Wheeler, and Tiffany and Brittany Sheffield.”

Okay, was I the only one in the entire school who realized that Tiffany and Brittany were actually two separate people and that, therefore, there were four junior girls nominated for homecoming court and not just three? Sometimes, the mental math at this place was depressing.

“The underclassmen nominees are…”

Across the room, Jack’s grin had settled down to a smirk, and he pointed again. A second too late, I realized that he wasn’t pointing behind me.

He was pointing at me.

“April Manning and Toby Klein.”

Not to sound like an acronym-loving cheerleader/spy, but OMG with a side of WTF.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered under my breath. Now Jack’s smile made sense. He knew this was going to happen. Everyone but me had realized it. I’d said it myself—there wasn’t anyone in this room who didn’t know whose names were going to be on those ballots. The varsity cheerleaders were called the God Squad for a reason. And yet, somehow, it hadn’t occurred to me that there were exactly two sophomores on the Squad and exactly two sophomore nominees for homecoming queen.

Now whose mental math was depressing?

“I hate my life.”

Tara and Chloe both elbowed me in the stomach at the same time.

“Ouch,” I hissed. “I still hate my…”

This time, I saw the blows coming and dodged them. Oblivious to the violence amongst the cheerleaders, the rest of the school listened as the nominees for homecoming king—Chip, Jack, and a handful of other football players—were read off. It didn’t take me long to figure out that there was no such thing as a homecoming prince.

Thank God.

“Good luck, boys and girls, and remember, this is a very special time in your lives.”

Yeah, I thought, a very special time for my life to suck. I’d come to terms with the cheerleader thing. Scratch that, I’d
almost
come to terms with the cheerleader thing, but I most certainly did not sign on for homecoming princess. I had a healthy disdain for things like dances and popularity. I hated dresses and tiaras, and I wasn’t even ready to accept the fact that people at this school even knew my name, let alone that it would be plastered on hundreds of ballots.

Life as I knew it was over. Again. And this time, things were going to get ugly.

CHAPTER 6

Code Word: Hottie

“We’re strong! We’re tough! Bayport Lions—stand up, up!”

We were closing out the pep rally with another cheer, and as the student body rose to their feet at our command, I couldn’t help but note the fact that I was
this
close to upupchucking all over my Asics cheer shoes.

“We’re strong! We’re tough! Bayport Lions—stand up, up!”

Technically, this was a chant, not a cheer, which meant that we repeated the words and motions indefinitely until Brooke called last time. I was starting to doubt that Brooke would ever put me out of my misery, when she finally yelled those two, wonderful words.

“Last time!”

I hit the final pose, my arms in a high V and my mind in overdrive. In approximately thirty-five seconds, this pep rally would be over, and students would start pouring out every available exit. My mission was clear: I had to get out of Dodge before Dodge’s Most Eligible Bachelor could so much as smirk the words
homecoming princess
at me, or ask me to the dance. After I managed to finagle my way out of the gym unnoticed, I was going to sneak down to the Quad, drown my sorrows in whatever fruity juice-like beverage lived in the fridge, and wait for Tara to come and tell me it was time to do something that didn’t involve cheering or homecoming or pretending that Jack and I had never kissed.

At this point, a little espionage sounded like heaven.

Ultimately, however, things did not go exactly as planned. The moment the assembly officially ended, people rushed the gym floor, including three individuals who, for one reason or another, felt that they just had to talk to me.

The first of the three was Noah. “To-by, To-by, To-by.”

My brother was an idiot. Unfortunately, he was also extraordinarily loud, and his voice carried. I spent one moment vehemently hoping that his chant wouldn’t catch on, and the next plotting his immediate and violent demise.

“My sister, the homecoming princess.” Noah batted his eyelashes at me. “Our little girl, all grown-up and…”

I took a step forward, and Noah, smart boy that he was, took a step back.

“Shutting mouth now,” he volunteered.

I gave him a look that simultaneously commended his mouth-shutting decision and warned him that I wasn’t in the mood to be teased.

“Hi Noah!” two voices chorused at once.

I turned to glare the twins into oblivion, but somewhere between Noah’s “helllllloooooooo, ladies” and the twins’ giggled response, I was waylaid by a woman with no respect for personal space and a huge smile on her Botox-ed face.

“Toby. It
is
Toby, isn’t it?” Mrs. McCall, PTA president and nauseatingly reminiscent mom, came up and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Yup.” I stuck to one-word answers, hoping she’d get the drift.

“I just wanted to congratulate you. Homecoming court—how exciting! Of course, it can’t be that much of a surprise…”

If she only knew.

“You girls are just so lucky.” She squeezed my shoulder. “These are such—”

“Precious times,” I finished. “Yeah, I know, but right now, I’ve really got to—”

I didn’t escape then, because in a move too smooth and quick for the human mind to follow or comprehend it, the NRM had been replaced with a JVB—a junior-varsity beeyotch.

“You must think you’re pretty great.” Hayley Hoffman was smiling, but she was not happy. “You think that just because you’re varsity, it’s okay to walk all over the rest of us.”

Coming from her, the accusation was laughable. Hayley was a lifelong cheerleader and a supremely hideous person. She preyed on the weak, drank tears for breakfast, and would have sacrificed her own child on the altar of popularity. The fact that she hadn’t made the varsity squad had a little to do with her lack of loyalty, and a lot to do with the fact that I’d convinced the others to vote in April instead.

Hayley still hadn’t forgiven me for making the God Squad. From her perspective, I’d stolen her spot and everything that came with it, including a nomination for homecoming queen.

“Do you honestly think you deserve to be nominated?” Hayley asked. “Do you think that’s fair?”

“No,” I said, looking her directly in the eyes. “It’s not fair.”

If life were fair, the word
makeover
would never have been invented, I wouldn’t have had the world’s biggest spankie pants wedgie, and the words
hacker
and
homecoming princess
would have had no logical connection whatsoever. Life wasn’t fair. It was twisted.

“You don’t belong on varsity,” Hayley said, “and you sure as hell don’t belong on the homecoming court.” The
and I will make you pay
went unspoken, but I was very good at reading between the mean-girl lines.

After one last glare, Hayley turned and flounced back to her sidekicks. Once upon a time, April had been one of them, but now that April had made the Squad, she and Hayley were hanging out less and less, and Hayley had already found a handful of suitable replacements—mostly other JV cheerleaders and sophomore populars who hadn’t made the varsity cut that fall.

By the time I’d dealt with (read: tried to ignore) the tri-fecta of horror that was the Noah–NRM–Hayley onslaught, the entire student body was standing in between me and the exit, and there was no way out.

“Fancy meeting you here.” Jack spoke into the back of my head, but I knew it was him.

Darn Noah. Darn the PTA president. Darn Hayley Hoffman.

“Aren’t you going to say something, Ev?”

I muttered an expletive under my breath, and Jack smiled.

“That’s my girl.”

“I’m not your girl,” I said sharply.

He stepped closer, until the rest of the crowd felt miles away by comparison. “You could be.”

There were times when I almost couldn’t restrain myself around him, times when I wanted to kiss him again so badly that my lips literally hurt. This wasn’t one of them. He was being suave and smooth, and I wasn’t falling for it.

“Yeah,” I said, “and I could also tattoo an anorexic pterodactyl on my navel, but I’m not planning to do that, either.”

“Anorexic pterodactyl.” He repeated my words, and the self-assured smirk on his face was replaced with repressed amusement. “Sounds more like a butt tattoo to me.”

It was comments like that one that did me in. He could wax poetic about me being his girl or how beautiful I was or whatever from now until graduation, and it wouldn’t inspire anything in me other than the desire to spell out for him just how much of a tool I thought he was. But the moment he started snarking or quipping or admiring my snarky quippiness, I was a goner.

“I’ll make you a deal, Ev. You go to homecoming with me, and I’ll save you from having to go to the God Squad after-party.”

He knew how to sweet-talk a girl. He
really
knew how to sweet-talk a girl.

I glanced past his shoulder, trying to look away from the half grin on his lips, and I made eye contact with Tara. If I’d seen any of the other cheerleaders, it would have been different. Brooke and Chloe were a tad too possessive, and the rest of the girls were way too gung ho on the Jack/Toby relationship. As a general rule, Tara tried to remain more neutral. Her face was clear of any obvious expression, but for some reason, I knew what she was thinking.

Squad-wise, I should say yes. If there really was something big going down in Bayport, Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray, nefarious law firm that it was, probably had a hand in it. For whatever reason, the Big Guys either didn’t know about the familial connection within their ranks (unlikely, given the fact that they were
the Big Guys
), or they couldn’t/wouldn’t utilize it. As a result, the only way our operation could gain access to Peyton was through Jack.

“No.” My mouth made the decision before my head did, but I didn’t regret it. I didn’t want to like Jack, but even if I’d actually wanted to accept his offer, how could I? I had little to no tolerance for BS, and I wasn’t going to use him to get to his father again, not if there were real feelings involved.

Which, I still maintained, there weren’t.

“Okay, allow me to rephrase that.” Jack’s half grin turned into a full smirk. “If you go to homecoming with me, I will refrain from endorsing your candidacy for homecoming queen.”

I stared at him.

“Think about it, Ev. All it takes is one word from me, and you could end up as the first underclassman homecoming queen in Bayport’s history. At the very least, you’d be guaranteed princess, but if the seniors split enough votes, you could win the whole shebang. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

Oh, he was good. He was very, very good.

There was no way to get my name off that ballot, and I could only hope that April’s well-established popularity would guarantee that she got more votes than me and therefore won the princess title. But if Jack was serious, and he started telling people to vote for me…

Not good. So not good.

“You wouldn’t,” I said.

Jack leaned forward, until our foreheads were almost touching. “Wouldn’t I?”

Damn it, I thought. He totally would.

“Won’t the senior members of the squad be thrilled if you win?”

Okay, now he was just gloating. If I somehow managed to defy tradition and win queen as a sophomore, I was a dead girl. Brooke and Chloe would beat me to a pulp with their bare hands, and who knew what kind of psychological torture Zee could heap upon me if she really tried? His plan was evil, and it was genius, and given his background, neither one of those things should have surprised me.

“I hate you.” I glared at Jack.

He moved forward again, until there was virtually no space between his lips and mine. “Right back at ya, Ev.”

For a split second, I was terrified that he would kiss me right there, in front of everyone, but at the last instant (and right before I either grabbed him, flipped him, and hurled him to the ground or pinned him to the wall and kissed him so hard it hurt), he pulled back.

“It’s a date.” He smiled again, and then walked away, leaving me in his wake trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.

Less than an hour ago, all I’d wanted was detention. Now, I was nominated for homecoming court and going to the big dance with the hottest guy in school. Somewhere out there, God was laughing at me. I was sure of it.