Tomorrow: the world.
“So,” I said, “are we ready to move out?”
Chloe rolled her eyes, like she didn’t use jargon like “move out” all the time. “No,” she said. “We’re ready to go upstairs and hang out with everyone else in the cafeteria before first period. We have to make up for the fact that we’re going to be missing half of the school day. Appearance is everything, and making appearances is key.”
“Besides,” Tara said, “somebody’s going to have to explain to the vice-principal why Brooke and Zee won’t be at school today, and why the rest of us are skipping our first four classes.”
“Like that’s going to be hard,” Bubbles said, rolling her eyes and bringing her feet into the chair next to her so that she could hook her elbows under her knees.
“Spirit conference, do you think?” Tara asked, arching one eyebrow.
“Nah,” Chloe said. “We used that one last time. Mental health day?”
“Didn’t we use that for the, like, thing with the thing?” Bubbles asked.
Chloe and Tara nodded contemplatively. Apparently, they weren’t having any of my difficulties understanding Bubbles’s meaning.
Chloe smiled then. “I know,” she said. “I’ll tell him it’s initiation, and that you guys have to, like…sign the spirit book and take the spirit oath and receive your Bayport Code training.”
Spirit book? Oaths and training?
“You actually think Mr. J is going to buy that?” I asked. “Are we talking about the same guy here? Vice-principal? Loves handing out detention so much that he does it with a smile on his face?”
I had nothing against Mr. J—after all, he’d gotten me out of Corkin’s detention the day before, but still, the guy was the high school’s disciplinarian. It was what he did for a living. There was no way he was going to buy “cheerleader initiation” as an excuse for missing class.
“Mr. J,” Tara said, her voice quite serious, “would buy anything, so long as a varsity cheerleader says it.”
“Totally,” Bubbles agreed. “He loves us!”
I thought of the fact that Mr. J had excused me from detention just so that I could attend a cheerleading meeting.
“Seriously?” I asked.
“Seriously,” the others said, all in one voice.
“Okay,” Chloe said, back in vice-captain or cocaptain or whatever mode. “I’ll go make nice with the administration. The rest of you guys put in an appearance at the cafeteria. Come down here as soon as first period starts. Hopefully, by then, Lucy and the twins will be ready to go for the hack, and we can move out.” Chloe paused, just slightly, when none of us moved. “Dismissed.”
She actually said it that way, like she was some army colonel and we were her soldiers. For the first time, I found myself grateful that Brooke was the cheerleading captain.
“You ready for this?” Tara asked me as we made our way out of the Quad.
“Toby?” Tara nudged me.
“I’m ready,” I said, even though secretly, I wasn’t so sure. Yesterday, I’d been dealing with hot guys and Victoria’s Secret, and today, I was dealing with secured databases and freelance agents known to be deadly.
Talk about a baptism by fire.
CHAPTER 22
Code Word: A-list
On the way to the cafeteria, we stopped in the locker room to give ourselves a once-over in the mirror. Or, at least, Tara, April, Bubbles, and Chloe gave themselves once-overs. Since the twins were busy preparing outfits for Brooke and Zee’s mission, I took the opportunity to tug on the end of my skirt, forcing it to cover at least a small portion of my upper thigh, and I meticulously plucked the rhinestones off my tank top.
Tara watched me. “Ten-to-one odds it’s back in your closet, re-jeweled, tomorrow,” she said.
I frowned.
“And double or nothing says that next time, the jewels are pink,” Tara added.
I continued de-jeweling my shirt. I would have ditched the necklace, too, but even I had to admit the sonar thing was cool. “You seem to be feeling better,” I told Tara. She turned her face away from me slightly. I kept going. I’d had too many years of practice resisting subtle snubs to be put off by something as benign as a head turn. “The people in Al Jawf, they’re not your parents, are they?”
If Tara was surprised that I knew about her parents being foreign operatives, she didn’t show it. “I don’t know, actually,” she said, her accent crisper than I’d heard it in a while. “Their contact information is classified—even from me, but my mother’s very fair-skinned, and my father doesn’t speak any of the relevant languages terribly well.”
That was as close as Tara would come to saying that the chances that either of her parents was stationed in Al Jawf were slim to none.
“Are they the reason that you do this?” I asked, gesturing to the locker room and its contents (a half-dozen cheerleaders, plus me). “Did you join the Squad because you’re a legacy?”
Tara turned back to look at me. “I’m not a legacy,” she said, her mouth pulling into a half smile at the thought. “I’m just an intelligence brat.”
“There’s a difference?” I asked.
Tara lowered her voice. “Brooke is a legacy,” she said, the other half of her mouth completing the smile. “Her mom was on one of the original Squads. There’s a big, big difference.” Then she pressed her lips together, and I knew as well as if she’d told me that I wasn’t going to get another piece of information out of her.
“HWAs, anyone?” Bubbles popped out of nowhere to stand by my side. Tara reached past me to grab some papers from the tiny, peppy one, who then turned to me. “Here are yours,” she said. “History, math, chemistry, Spanish, and computer science.” She paused. “Didn’t you do any homework last night?” she asked.
It was freaky—Bubbles Lane, two parts contortionist, one part professional airhead, sounded bizarrely like my mother.
“I was busy,” I replied, pulling the last rhinestone off my shirt with my free hand. Then I thumbed through the papers she’d handed me. “Number three’s wrong,” I said, scanning over my math homework. “And how in the world did they match my handwriting so well?” Even the chicken scratch in the margins was identical to my own.
“You have a ninety-seven in math,” Tara said (did everyone on the Squad know my GPA?), and then she nodded toward the papers in my hand. “Number three is wrong because if you get number three wrong, you’ll get a ninety-seven on that assignment.”