I held out the clipboard. “You can sign up for cookies here,” I said. “The Sis-Boom-Baked Chocolate Chip are my favorite.”
“But the Go, Fight, Cinnamon are also really good,” Brooke put in.
The fact that we were even managing to do this with a straight face was remarkable.
“Or you could buy a pin,” I said, holding one up for his inspection. He took it, turned it over, and then handed it back to me.
“So you girls are cheerleaders,” he said.
We nodded.
“You cheer?”
We nodded again.
“Prove it.”
Man, this guy really was paranoid. Then again, he was also right, but that was completely beside the point.
“Prove it?” I repeated dubiously.
Brooke wasn’t nearly as thrown as I was. “Clap your hands,” she said, and then she went into major cheer mode. “Ready? Okay!”
My response to those two words was purely instinctual. It had been drilled into me over and over again, and I knew exactly what to do.
“Clap your hands, everybody! Everybody, clap your hands!”
We threw ourselves into the cheer, and I managed to keep up with Brooke, move for move, head bob for head bob.
“Goooooooooo Lions!”
Cheering without the entire Squad felt slightly sacrilegious, but it was far preferable to being shot by Flopsy or Mopsy, and Brooke and I finished with bright smiles on our faces.
“They’re cheerleaders,” Flopsy grunted. “Can’t fake that.”
“So, do you guys like want some cookies, or what?” I threw an extralikein there, just for good measure. “The guys downstairs bought like a ton.”
“Let me see that,” Ross said, taking the order form. “You guys want anything?” he asked the bodyguards. “I think I’m going to get a couple boxes of Rah-Rah Rum Raisin.”
Do not laugh, I ordered myself silently. Do not laugh.
“That last jump made my tummy all rumbly,” I said instead, sticking out my lower lip and feeling like the idiot I was pretending to be. “Is there a bathroom in here?”
Ross amiably pointed me toward the bathroom, all suspicion he might have once harbored toward me flying out the door. I was young, I was a cheerleader, and—as every single member of the Squad had pointed out—I had the world’s flattest chest, which, for some reason, meant that I was the exact type of person that Ross instinctually saw as unthreatening and trustworthy.
He must have had some bad experiences with big boobs in the past.
I made my way to the bathroom, aware as I walked thatFlopsy had slipped away from the group to follow me. I opened the bathroom door, stepped inside, and locked it. I crouched and listened, until I could see Flopsy’s feet right outside the door.
Now I just had to undo the vent and climb into the air-conditioning ducts without making any noise that might tip my good friend off to the fact that I was dealing with more than a rumbly tummy.
Luckily, I was good at improvising.
I put the toilet seat down and stood on top of it to reach the vent. I took a bobby pin out of my hair and began to unscrew the screws holding the vent in place, and to cover the noise, I did something that no other member of the Squad would have thought to do.
I pressed my lips against my arm and blew, making an incredibly loud and disturbingly realistic fart sound. There were some pluses to having grown up with a little brother, and this talent, nay, thisgiftwas one of them.
I took another screw out and let out another juicy noise. Outside the door, I could see the bottom of Flopsy’s feet as he took a cautionary step away from the bathroom.
