“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.