Perfect Cover

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  It was all I could do to keep myself from rolling my eyes. I was sitting down, and she had run into me. Cheerleaders: they thought they owned the air the student body breathed.

  “I guess some people are just perpetually in the way, you know?” Hayley’s words broke into my thoughts. I debated giving her a reason to get another nose job, but decided against it. I was a third-degree black belt; she was a junior-varsity cheerleader. Where was the fun in that?

  Instead, I stood up, ready to go back to my normal life of beating up football players and hacking into the school’s database to change my grades and Mr. Corkin’s middle name. And that’s when I saw another note. It must have been in my lap, because it fell to the ground when I stood. Hayley’s eyes lit up, and she dove for it, but another manicured hand beat her there.

  “I believe this is yours.” Tara Leery was a British exchange student and, as far as I’d been able to tell, the cheerleader most likely to have a functional cerebrum.

  Tara handed the note to me, brushing her fingertips against the back of mine. She held my hand for a moment and then turned, and without another word, she followed Chloe “Out-of-My-Way” Larson out of the room.

  I watched them leave and then looked back down at the note.

  “Maybe someone’s finally sending you the memo on combat boots,” Hayley said, and then, in a confidential whisper, she added, “For the record: so over.”

  “Oh,” I said thoughtfully. “I got that memo. I filed it away with your boyfriend’s petition for a brain and the lost-and-found ad for your virginity.”

  I admit it. I’m not the nicest person. I have been known, on occasion, to use my sharp wit and clever puns for evil, rather than good. I don’t smile at people just because they smiled at me first, and if I have something to say to someone, I say it to their face. I am, in other words, the anti-cheerleader.

  Hayley recovered from my below-the-belt comment about her none-too-secret loss of virginity to a delusional football player who had also slept with her best friend and somehow thought that neither girl would figure it out. Hayley made her best attempt at glaring me into oblivion, flipped her hair over her shoulder, and flounced off, four JV cheerleaders following in her wake.

  “Was it something I said?”

  As soon as she was out of sight, I decided to make one last concession to my curiosity, after which I would never even think the word cheerleader again.

  I opened the note in my hand, half expecting another encoded message. No such luck. The paper was blank.

  CHAPTER 3

  Code Word: Perky

  “What was it like? What were they wearing? Did they happen to mention—”

  “How a dweeby little freshman could win their undying affection?” I finished Noah’s sentence for him. “No.”

  My brother wasn’t the least bit deterred. “Did you talk to Brooke at all?”

  I groaned inwardly. He had to have a thing for Brooke Camden. Why couldn’t he crush on someone his own age? Or better yet, someone from his home world, Planet Goofball.

  “Well?” Noah prompted.

  I scratched the back of my hand absentmindedly. “I went,” I told him. “I watched. I wasn’t impressed.”

  Noah wouldn’t let the issue go. “Did you at least get a couple of phone numbers?”

  “Noah, for the last time, if you’re not careful, you’re going to get yourself killed, and one of these days, I’m not going to be there to save you.”

  Most younger brothers would have been offended at the very thought of being “saved” by their five-foot-three-inch sister. Noah was not most brothers.

  “Where else are you gonna be?” he asked. “Cheerleading practice?”

  “In your dreams, Noah.” I scratched the back of my hand a little harder and wondered if I was having an allergic reaction to something (probably Hayley Hoffman).

  “You do realize that it looks like you have some kind of bizarre scratching tic, right?”

  I ignored Noah’s comment and turned my attention to my hand. What in the world was wrong with it?

  “Maybe it’s a psychosomatic response to your guilt for not getting me phone numbers.”

  I gave Noah a look and then used the aforementioned itchy hand to thwap him under the chin.

  “Oh, come on, Toby. You know you love me.” Noah grinned, and even though I didn’t find him the least bit charming, I smiled back before flicking him again and heading for the sink. I stuck my hand under the faucet and turned the water on, and the instant the water touched my skin, my entire hand changed color.

  “Teal?” Noah, who’d followed me into the kitchen, asked. “Doesn’t really seem like your style, Tobe.”

  “Noah,” I said calmly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Run.”

  He was smart enough to vacate the kitchen, leaving me staring at my own bright blue hand. I soaped up and scrubbed it, but the color stayed. Ready to seriously pummel something, I grabbed a handful of paper towels and tried to rub off the color. Nothing came off on the towels, but when I looked back at my hand, the color was gone.

  “Wha…?”

  After a half second of deliberation, I turned the faucet back on and let a few droplets of water drip onto my knuckles, and as they wet the skin, the color reappeared. Carefully, I continued letting water drizzle onto my hand until the vast majority of it was again a bright, perky teal.

  Wait a second, I thought. Perky…

  I shook my head to clear it of ridiculous thoughts. The cheerleaders had not dyed my hand teal.

  Or had they?

  I ran the day’s events over in my mind until I came to the part where Tara handed me the note, her fingers gripping mine for the smallest fraction of a second.

  “I suppose she could have done this,” I said under my breath, “but why?”

  Of all of the God Squad, Tara seemed the least likely to torture an antiestablishment social reject such as myself. Then again, maybe I just had to accept the fact that this whole day had been one giant plot to get me to that meeting, dye my hand teal, and…

  And what? Why go to all the trouble? We were talking about the prettiest, most popular, ditziest girls in school. I wasn’t even sure they were capable of encoding notes, let alone using invisible dye to…

  Notes.

  The realization hit me, and slowly, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the blank sheet of paper from before. Someone had folded it like a note and somehow gotten it into my lap. When I’d dropped it, Tara had given it back to me before Hayley could open it. Tara, who had also possibly turned my hand an invisible teal.

  I unfolded the paper and spread it out on the counter. It was still blank, but looking at my hand, I had to wonder. Was it really blank?

  I folded a paper towel in half and wet a corner. Feeling a little bit ridiculous, I gingerly rubbed the cloth over the note, leaving a dampened streak in its wake. The moment water touched the paper, bright teal letters leapt to life. Again and again, I wet the paper towel and dragged it gently across the note, until the entire message was revealed in ink the color of my wet hand.

  Practice gym, 5:30, tomorrow morning. Be there.

  What, no “Go Lions!” or sis-boom-bah crap? Apparently, cheery cheerleader-speak was only for visible ink. Seriously, though, what was up with the cheerleading squad writing me coded notes and dyeing my hands with invisible ink? Was it the whole squad? I had always thought of them as being one massively popular person split into many bouncy parts, but Tara was the only one who’d actually been involved in this whole debacle, so…

  Something else occurred to me then, and I backtracked. Tara had picked the note up and handed it to me, had coated my hands with whatever it was they were using for ink, but she hadn’t handed me the note. She’d been on the other side of the room when it had appeared out of nowhere. The only one near me was Chloe. Chloe, who had crashed into my chair instead of giving it a berth the size of Montana, a more typical course of action.

  “This is ridi
culous.” I tried to snap myself out of it, but couldn’t deny the teal hand or the invisible message or the encoded notes in my locker. Something strange was going on here, and all evidence suggested that it had something to do with the cheerleaders.

  I could only think of one surefire way to find out what was going on: be at the practice gym at five-thirty the next morning. Sure, it was obscenely early, but really, what was the worst that could happen?

  CHAPTER 4

  Code Word: Tumbling

  “Cheerleading practice? You guys woke me up at this ungodly hour for cheerleading practice?”

  I am not a morning person, especially when I’m expecting a revelation of some kind and instead get eight cheerleaders telling me to stretch out so we can tumble.

  What the hell was tumbling anyway?

  “We always practice before school,” Bubbles said solemnly.

  Why was I even talking to a person named Bubbles? Why? From the moment I’d gotten here, they’d all acted like my presence was nothing out of the norm. No one had said a word about why I was there. They’d just told me to stretch and gone back to stretching themselves, like I was supposed to read their warped little ponytailed minds.

  “Can anyone here explain to me why I’m at cheerleading practice right now?” I asked, my voice dangerously pleasant. All seven of the other cheerleaders turned to their captain, and I awaited with bated breath the wisdom she was sure to impart.

  “If you can’t cut the hours,” Brooke said, “don’t join the squad.”

  “I’m not joining the squad,” I said. “Why would I join the squad? I don’t even like…”

  I searched for something to go in the blank. People? This school? Any of you? More like (d) all of the above.

  “I don’t like…cheers,” I finished, trying to be diplomatic. After all, they outnumbered me eight to one.

  “Oh, really?” Brittany-or-Tiffany (it was impossible to tell the twins apart) asked, like I was trying to put one over on them. “If you don’t like cheers, then why are you here?”

  Because you told me to be here, I said silently, but I wouldn’t admit that out loud. They’d ordered me here, and I’d dragged myself out of bed to come, under the delusion that I might actually figure out why they were messing with me in the first place.

  “Don’t be such a grumpy bear, grumpy bear,” Lucy said in a voice so bright that the sound of it made my teeth ache.

  “It’s not that early, girly!”

  My left eye twitched at the rhyme, and when she flashed me a big, toothy smile, I lost it.

  “No,” I told her in a firm tone I usually reserved for household pets that were chewing on my boots. “I don’t do perky before nine.”

  The entire squad frowned at me in one synchronized motion.

  “So are you in or aren’t you?” Chloe’s tone was more command than question.

  In for what?

  “I’ll teach you to do a herkie!” Lucy, completely unaffected by my “no” voice, bounced into the air and did some kind of funky cheerleading jump. “Now you try.”

  “In for what?” I asked Chloe, ignoring Lucy and trying to strike the memory of this moment from my mind forever.

  “In for what?”

  I was getting really sick of asking.

  Bubbles was the one who answered, her voice a reverent whisper. “The Squad.”

  This was just too much. Don’t ask me what I’d expected, but it wasn’t this. Invisible ink, encoded messages, and the night before, I could have sworn I’d seen someone in a cheerleading skirt standing on my front lawn, surveying the house, and now…

  “You want me to be a cheerleader?”

  “Give the girl a cookie,” Brooke drawled. “She finally figured it out.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Brooke cut me off. “Most sophomores would die for this chance,” she said. “Are you in or are you out?”

  “Out.” This had to be some kind of sick prank. Me on the God Squad? No way. This was just part of a time-honored tradition of high school cruelties: confuse the asocial bottom-dweller, convince her she’s on the squad, and then dump her. Only this time, they’d picked the wrong bottom-dweller. I wasn’t jumping for joy at their invitation; I was dangerously close to losing my infamous temper.

  “Stop sending me letters,” I said in a low voice. “Stop messing with my hands, and stop coming by my house late at night.”

  Eight pairs of eyes stared back at me, duly shocked.

  “Toby,” Brittany-or-Tiffany (the other one this time) said. “Why would we do a thing like that?”

  I looked at each of them in turn, one suntanned teen queen after another. The twins appeared identically bewildered at the very suggestion of harassment. Bubbles’s bottom lip was sticking out in an exaggerated pout (who does that?), and bouncy Lucy was still very conscientiously instructing me on the finer points of the herkie. Brooke, every inch the head cheerleader, and Chloe, every inch her clone, stared me down. Meanwhile, Zee, who I knew only as the school’s resident Asian party girl, inspected her nails, and quiet Tara offered me a weak half smile.

  There wasn’t enough brainpower in this room to dye Easter eggs, let alone my hand.

  “You’re right,” I said, hands in my pockets. “You’re cheerleaders, and I’m nuts.”

  Brooke nodded. “That’s right,” she said proudly. “We date football players and cheer for games and win all the spots on the homecoming court. We are the pride of the Lions….”

  “Lionesses,” someone else murmured.

  “The pride of the Lions/Lionesses,” Brooke said. “We couldn’t do the kinds of things you’re talking about.” As she spoke, the others circled around me in a way that was decidedly creepy, until all nine of us were standing at the very center of the gym, directly over the Bayport emblem on the floor. “After all, we’re just cheerleaders.”

  With those seemingly innocuous words and a flick of her wrist, Brooke produced a cell phone and proceeded to dial a seven-digit number. I had just enough time to think one sarcastic thought (Who’s she calling, the Spirit Police?) before the code she’d entered somehow triggered the emblem beneath us to fall from underneath our feet, a trapdoor of spirit built into the floor for reasons I couldn’t begin to comprehend.

  As I fell and the gym floor righted itself above my head, Brooke’s words repeated themselves over and over again in my mind.

  We couldn’t do the kinds of things you’re talking about. After all, we’re just cheerleaders.

  Yeah freaking right.

  CHAPTER 5

  Code Word: Herkie

  I won’t repeat the words I screamed as I fell, but suffice to say, they weren’t “Go Big Gold.” I kept cursing when I hit the ground, but shut up the second I started bouncing.

  “A trampoline?” I stared up at the ceiling and, for lack of a better audience, addressed God. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  All around me, cheerleaders landed on their feet on the trampoline and bounced off to solid ground. Lucy herkied her way down, and the twins executed synchronized front flips.

  “Why?”

  “Why not?” This was Brooke, who, as far as I could tell, believed that she single-handedly put the god in God Squad. The cheerleading captain flipped to stand next to me, and I scrambled to my feet. Unlike the cheerleaders, I hadn’t been expecting to fall, and I hadn’t prepared a choreographed dismount. Instead, I’d more or less belly flopped, which, by the way, was totally going to leave a mark.

  As I got my footing, Brooke appraised my movement. “You’re fast.”

  “And you’re crazy,” I said. “What is this? I tell you I don’t want to be on your stupid little squad and you literally knock me off my feet and drop me onto a giant trampoline? What is wrong with you people?”

  Brooke lashed out with her right leg, and only a life’s worth of training had me moving quickly enough to dodge the kick. I ducked, and her foot whizzed by my head.

  “Like I said…” Brooke smiled again, that same
toothless smile, as she threw a hard punch at my left side. “…fast.”

  I moved quickly, and her hand caught air. “Like I said…” I countered with my own punch. “Crazy.”

  My hand connected with her stomach, but she absorbed the hit, grabbed my hand, and sent me flying. I flipped, landed on my feet, and let my instincts take over. Kick after kick, punch after punch, we sparred. I was faster and stronger, but I also wasn’t used to fighting on a trampoline. She was.

  She leapt at me, her leg extended, and it caught me on the shoulder. I rolled backward, pushing off the tramp and back onto my feet just as she came again, her foot whipping into a high-velocity roundhouse.

  All I could think in the fraction of a second I had to move was that she didn’t know who she was messing with. That was my move.

  I rolled to the side, and her roundhouse missed me. Before she landed, my foot snaked out and kicked her legs out from underneath her. She turned 360 degrees sideways in the air, tucked herself into a ball, and somehow managed to land on her feet. That gave me just enough time to survey my surroundings and begin forcing her toward the edge of the massive trampoline.

  Left, right, left…I threw punch after punch at her, and Brooke dodged, her glossy ponytail flying back and forth with the movement. I advanced and she backed up until she was a single step away from firm ground.

  Taking advantage of the trampoline under my feet, I bounced once, twice, three times, and sailed over her, landing in ready stance between two of the others, who didn’t seem the least bit interested in the fact that their fearless leader and I were engaged in some hard-core hand-to-hand.

  I crooked my finger at Brooke. “Enough with the trampoline,” I said. “Let’s play my way.”

  Brooke effortlessly flipped off the trampoline and looked down at her nails. “Nah,” she said. “I’m tired of playing.” She turned to the others. “You guys see what you needed to see?”