“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 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.”