“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.”
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.”
The four senior members of the Squad. Color me shocked.
Across the room, Jack’s grin grew bigger and wickeder by the second. Without a word, he simply pointed in my general direction. I turned around and glanced over my shoulder. Nothing.