Killer Spirit

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  “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.

  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 a
ll 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.”