“I said what I came here to say.” Amelia raised the gun again and backed toward my window. “You know the rules. Tonight, you tell no one. Tomorrow, Walford Park, three o’clock, winner takes all. You can do all the recon you want, but move in on the target before three, and you can consider your cover blown.”
And then, with stealth that would have made Bubbles proud, she disappeared out the window and into the night.
CHAPTER 28
Code Word: Liberty
“I’m in, but I am NOT wearing one of those stupid skirts.” I knew even as I said the words that I would, in fact, be wearing many a stupid skirt, and that something about this whole scenario wasn’t quite right. I didn’t have time to ponder it, though, because the next order of business was filling the last open slot on the Squad.
I listened and talked and made quips about Bitch Quotients, but even as my mouth moved, I knew that I couldn’t be here again. I’d already done this. Today wasn’t my first day on the Squad, and we’d already chosen April.
Hadn’t we?
Kiki McCall. April Manning. Hayley Hoffman.
The names were flung back and forth and the other girls debated in slow motion. It was all “legacy this” and “aptitude for climbing” that. And just as we were getting ready to vote April in, I realized what was wrong with this whole situation—other than the obvious.
I wasn’t wearing any clothes.
“Dance with me, Toby.”
Jack? What was Jack doing in the Quad? He couldn’t be here. If he knew about us, we’d been exposed—permanently. More importantly, he couldn’t be here—I WAS NAKED.
“Come on, Ev. Just one little dance.”
DOES NO ONE BUT ME REALIZE HOW BAD THIS IS?
“Dance with him, Toby,” the twins ordered, and then they were dancing—with my brother.
“Hey, Tobe,” Noah said. “Looks like you’re naked, huh?”
I tried to cover myself—I grabbed at papers and books and tried to position my hands to cover the worst of it, but there was no hope.
“Dance with me.”
“Dance with him.”
“Dance with him.”
I DON’T WANT TO FRIGGING DANCE WITH ANYBODY! I WANT TO WEAR CLOTHES!
“Here,” Lucy whispered. “Put this on.”
Gratefully, I grabbed the clothes she shoved at me, but they disintegrated in my hands until all I was holding was a tiny silver tiara.
And then we weren’t in the Quad anymore, and I was wearing clothes and Jack and I were dancing.
“What’s that on your head?” he asked.
I reached up and tore the tiara out of my hair. I threw it to the ground, and when it hit, it burst into a million microscopic pieces, and all of a sudden, the pieces were crawling and moving and growing smaller by the second until they were invisible to the naked eye.
I could feel them on my skin, then, burrowing in.
My lungs stopped working. I lost all feeling in my legs. And for some godforsaken reason, Brooke’s mother was making out with Mr. J in the corner, and Paris Hilton was standing there, watching.
My body was giving out, my face was contorting, and the last thing I heard before darkness seeped over my mind was a lisping “That’s hot.”
I bolted straight up and, my mind still all cloudy with unwanted images, I tried to assess the situation. I was lying in bed, fully clothed, it was pitch-black outside, and my necklace had gotten tangled up in my hair as I’d slept. It took me a few seconds to remember why I was sleeping in my clothes. I’d been so busy following the “rules” and NOT calling in my encounter with Amelia Juarez that I hadn’t bothered with pajamas, and in the midst of my ceiling staring, I must have fallen asleep.
I blinked several times, trying to get the image of Brooke’s mom and Mr. J out of my head. This was one of those times when I was severely glad that my dreams weren’t prophetic, because ew. And also, the whole naked dreams thing was really starting to get to me. And Jack in the Quad? Hopefully, my subconscious wasn’t trying to tell me anything with that one. I was also somewhat disturbed by the fact that in the past two days, Ryan Seacrest and Paris Hilton had both made cameos in my dreams. Before I’d joined the Squad, I hadn’t even known who either of them was, and I would have preferred to wipe their existence on this planet from my consciousness altogether.
Groggily, I stumbled out of bed and across the room to my computer. I hit a few keys to wake it up, and then typed in my log-on password, wondering if anyone had discovered my previous night’s hacking yet.
I had my answer soon enough. My remote access to the Squad mainframe had timed out, and all of that information was gone, but the files I’d gotten from the Big Guys’ computers were still there, exactly where I’d left them. Slowly and as meticulously as I could, given the fact that it was the middle of the night and I was still half-asleep, I deleted the files from my hard drive one by one, erasing any evidence that they’d ever been here.
I’d hacked into the Big Guys’ database to find Amelia Juarez, and instead, she’d found me. I didn’t need their files. I didn’t need their help. All I needed was the rest of the Squad with me at Walford Park by three o’clock today. Together, the ten of us were a match for anyone. Amelia Juarez wanted competition?
We’d give her competition.
I shut down my computer, careful to disconnect it from the internet first. If the Big Guys hadn’t realized I’d hacked them and hadn’t hacked into my system to see what I knew, I wasn’t going to give them the excuse or opportunity to do so from here on out.
I looked at my watch and then back at my bed and groaned. Five-thirty in the morning was going to come really early. And yet, with the way my throat was burning with secrets I couldn’t tell until morning, there was a good chance that it just wouldn’t come early enough. I climbed back into bed, and as I closed my eyes and pulled my pillow to the side, I spent a few seconds hoping that my subconscious didn’t have anything else in store for me, and then I floated back off into a peaceful, dreamless sleep.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
Unlike most mornings, I didn’t bother cursing or slapping at my alarm. I picked it up and threw it against my wall. Hard. I smiled sadistically when it broke into three large pieces and several tinier ones.
Feeling somewhat vindicated, I climbed out of bed and headed directly for the shower. Most of the time, I showered at night, but I could tell already that this morning, coffee wasn’t going to be enough to wake me up and prepare me for the day. Somehow, I didn’t think Brooke was going to take everything I had to tell her very well.
I stripped off my clothes and stepped into the shower. I turned on the water and basked in the heat and steam and wonderfulness of it for a few minutes before my mind came fully online and I started making a game plan for today.
I needed to tell the others everything Amelia had told me. I needed to tell them about Anthony’s plans, and about the fact that none of the TCIs were responsible for killing Jacob Kann. I needed to tell them about Amelia’s challenge and the fact that our entire program was riding on our ability to win. More importantly, I needed to convince them to play by Amelia’s rules, because they hadn’t seen her the night before; I had, and I was one hundred percent positive that she wasn’t bluffing. If we told the Big Guys what was going on, if we didn’t show up this afternoon or if we brought any kind of backup with us when we did, she would expose us to Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray, and the Squad as we knew it would be over.
I could not imagine this discussion going particularly well. As I tried to figure out the best way of framing my proposition for the others, I finished scrubbing up, and noticed—with no little amount of annoyance—that there was still blue glitter on my chest. I attacked it with a nearby bottle of shower gel, and every time I thought I’d gotten it all, I’d shift positions, and light would dance off my skin in a new way.
Darn the twins and their stupid G.A.
After a few minutes, I gave up and turned off the water. I towel-dried
off and absentmindedly scratched at my left shoulder, which was itching like crazy. I made a mental note to ask the twins what exactly they put in my Squad-issued shower gel. As a general rule, I tried to avoid using it and usually managed to shower using my own contraband bar soap, which I’d hidden before the twins’ last visit so that they couldn’t confiscate it, but this morning, I’d been too busy thinking—about my theory and about the glitter—to pay attention to the fact that I was using the gel.
“Okay,” I muttered. “Time to wake up.”
I wrapped a towel around my body and stumbled back to my room and into some clothing—a pair of low-rise designer jeans with rhinestones on the butt and legs, and a blue silk camisole top. I looked at my shoes and spent a few moments mourning the loss of any and all pairs of comfortable shoes I had once owned, save for the combat boots I’d managed to save from the wrath of Britt and Tiff.
I stared longingly at my old boots, but ultimately decided that today was not the day to start reclaiming my former identity. Today was about credibility. It was about convincing the others to do what I said. It was about breaking the rules for the right reasons, instead of the wrong ones. It was about the ten of us doing what had to be done.
With a wince, I threw on a pair of blue knee-length boots that matched the camisole, and then I grabbed my papers and began to stuff them into my schoolbag. Deciding that leaving sensitive information in with my math and English books probably wasn’t a good idea, I rummaged around my room, found the Squad history book that I’d been meaning to give back to Lucy since she’d given it to me, and stuffed the papers inside, before sticking the book in my bag and heading out the door.
I was halfway to practice before I realized I’d forgotten my coffee. This did not bode well for my future. At all.
“You’re late.” Brooke greeted me with two words the second I walked into the gym. She was a creature of repetition.
“Sorry.” This time, I actually offered up a response, but Brooke seemed to sense the fact that I wasn’t apologizing for being late so much as I was for the fact that I’d been part of that awful exchange with her mother the day before. Being Brooke, she didn’t exactly welcome my sympathy.
“And what are you wearing?” She sounded so aghast that I glanced down, terrified for a split second that somehow, I’d forgotten to get dressed that morning and was not, in fact, wearing anything at all.
I breathed a literal sigh of relief when I saw the top of the camisole. “What’s wrong with my clothes?” I asked. The one time I’d actually tried to be relatively fashionable and make a good cheer impression, I’d somehow violated an unwritten mandate of matching?
I really needed my coffee.
“You’re not dressed,” Brooke informed me, her lips pursed. “For practice.”
She said the words like they were two separate sentences, and it took me a while to realize that they weren’t, and another second or two after that to process what she was saying.
Everyone else in the gym was dressed in their regular practice clothes—cheer shorts and sports bras and the occasional tank top. How was it that I’d worn cheer clothes the past two days, and we hadn’t said so much as a Go Lions, but today, I got dressed for school, and all of a sudden it was bona fide practice time?
“Go change,” Brooke ordered.
I had to remind myself that she didn’t know what I knew, and that there were so many issues behind her captain complex that I couldn’t really hold it against her, but her tone still rubbed me the wrong way.
“Listen,” I started to say, and then I cut myself off and decided to opt for gestures instead. I tossed my hair over each shoulder and then tucked it behind my ears.
We need to go down to the Quad, I thought. I willed her to understand.
“No.” She understood, and she wasn’t buying.
“I like found some stuff out last night,” I said, pitching my voice into a slight lilt and doing my best to speak in a ditz code she’d understand.
“Practice first,” Brooke said. “Stuff later.”
And right then, I almost had a meltdown, full-on Toby temper tantrum. I’d spent hours hacking and going through files, trying to come up with a way for her to save face, a way for us, as a Squad, to get the job done and do something right, and then I’d spent a good fifteen minutes with a gun in my face, and she wasn’t even going to let me explain.
I felt a hand squeeze my shoulder gently, and I noticed Tara standing next to me. “Practice first,” she said softly. “Unless it absolutely can’t wait.”
I thought about the fact that Amelia had made it quite clear that we weren’t allowed to move in until this afternoon, and the fact that taking orders from a known hostile was just crazy enough that Brooke wouldn’t need much of an excuse to dismiss it out of hand.
“Fine,” I said evenly. “Practice first.”
Brooke stalked over to her bag and tossed me a pair of blue shorts and a navy sports bra. “Go change.”
I did as I was told. My shoes and socks were still in my locker, and I managed to pull off a pretty quick change, especially considering the fact that the atrocious boots on my feet weren’t exactly easy to take off.
When I got back into the gym, the others were in formation for our newest cheer—the one we’d be debuting at the homecoming game on Friday. It was a simple triangle shape, with Brooke on point, the twins behind her, Chloe, Lucy, and Bubbles in the row behind them, and the rest of us in the back row. I was conveniently tucked away in the back row middle, where any mistakes I made would likely go unnoticed.
Under Brooke’s sharp commands, we practiced our formation changes, going from our opening formation to spreading out in two lines of five, and finally, to our ending formation. This cheer was the first one they’d ever taught me that included stunting. I was just happy that I’d been relegated to the relatively benign position of “front spot,” which basically meant that while the “bases” lifted the “flyer” up into the air, and the “back spot” held everything together and watched out for the flyer’s safety—I just kind of stood there and looked pretty, adding in whatever extra balance I could.
The stunt itself was called a liberty. Originally, the plan had been to go for a “scorpion-liberty-heel-stretch, double full down,” but ultimately, they’d scaled it back for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that even as a front spot, I could still send the whole thing crashing down. As much as my cheer skills had improved the past couple of weeks, when it came to life or death maneuvers on the field, no one trusted me farther than they could throw me, which, coincidentally, I’d found out the week before was surprisingly far. Don’t ask.
We ran through the cheer again and again and again, sticking the stunts at the end each time, but there was always something about our performance that wasn’t quite good enough for Brooke. There was nothing uglier than a cheerleader on the warpath.
An hour later, I was drenched in sweat, my voice was hoarse, and my armpits were killing me. At the end of my rope, I stepped forward, just as Brooke yelled, “Again!”
I met her gaze. I flipped my hair over each shoulder and then tucked it behind my ears, and I stared. This time, there wasn’t any pity in my eyes. It was all determination. Our routine was flawless. We’d been working on it for weeks, and until the past couple of days, the spy end of our operation had been limited to training, which we did primarily in the afternoons. We’d practiced enough.
It was time to get down to business.
Brooke narrowed her eyes, and I could practically feel her need to impress her authority upon me, but a second later, Chloe, of all people, came to stand beside me. I could see the question in her eye.
You found something, didn’t you? She asked silently.
I nodded, and then Chloe did something that surprised me. She took her hair out of its ponytail, and then flipped it—first over her right shoulder and then over her left, before nodding at Brooke and tucking her hair behind her ears. As a general rule,
it was code for using the back stairs to get down to the Quad.
In this case, it was Chloe telling Brooke that she thought we should go.
I expected the gesture to cause a major catfight. Brooke and Chloe were both really territorial, but whatever they’d talked about on the phone the night before must have temporarily softened the competition between them, because Brooke just sighed and inclined her head slightly.
“Water break,” she said. “Back in ten minutes.”
I read between the lines. We were going to the Quad, and I had exactly ten minutes to make my case.
CHAPTER 29
Code Word: Itchy
“So you think that based on the recommendation of a hostile TCI, who is, by the way, the lead suspect in yesterday’s theft, that we should…what?” Brooke just stared at me. “Go to the park? Take down Connors-Wright? It’s not like we have jurisdiction here. Not anymore.”
“And besides,” Tara said beside me, ever the voice of reason, “I’m sure our superiors are still keeping track of the remaining TCIs.”
“Like they kept track of Amelia so well that she ended up in my bedroom?”
“You should have incapacitated her.” Brooke’s tone was stony.
I gave her my best innocent look. “This operation was a Do Not Engage.”
“There is no operation!” Brooke was coming close to yelling, and even though the cheer-tone was still present in her voice, the veins in her forehead were starting to pop out, just a little.
“There should be an operation.” I was implacable, or at least as implacable as I could be after the stunting torture I’d just been through. “There has to be one. You’re acting like Amelia just passed me this information, no strings attached. That’s not what happened. You keep talking about her ‘recommendation,’ but that’s not what we’re dealing with here. This is blackmail.”
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