“Which one was what?”
“Toby, a cheerleader just came within a hundred yards of my person, and I didn’t notice until it was too late. This is a very serious matter.” It was hard to take Noah seriously when he had that goofy, puppy dog smile on his face.
“It was April,” I said, “and she’s not interested.”
Noah rolled his eyes. “That’s what you always say.”
I thumped him in the shoulder. “It’s always true.” I walked past him and opened the driver’s side door. “Get in the car.”
By the time we got home, Noah had actually managed to distract me from thoughts of our failed mission, the weapon that Peyton would probably sell to the highest bidder if the Big Guys didn’t stop them first, and the conversation I’d just had with April in the car.
The only thing I couldn’t stop thinking about was Brooke’s mother, and as soon as we got home, I went to join my own in the kitchen.
“Want to help make the salad?” my mom asked, not commenting on the fact that I was home early for the second time this week.
I shrugged. “Sure.”
She handed me a knife, and I began chopping up lettuce.
“You’re thinking about something,” my mom said. It was a simple comment, and she left it up to me if I wanted to share what I was thinking. No pressure, no wheedling. That was my mother.
“I went over to our captain’s house today after school,” I said. “Her mom was a little …” I decided to go with Zee’s word of choice. “Intense.”
“An intense cheerleading mom?” my mom feigned shock. “Never.”
“You’re not surprised,” I concluded.
“When you were little,” my mom said, handing me some carrots and peppers to go in with the lettuce, “there was a big scandal about this mother in Texas whose daughter hadn’tmade the cheerleading squad. She was so upset about it that she took matters into her own hands.”
“Complained to the school board?” I guessed.
“No,” my mom said, sliding the salad dressing down the counter. “She hired a hit man to take out one of the other girls.”
“Seriously?”
My mom nodded. “Seriously. It made national news. So if your friend’s mom is a little intense, well … it’s an intense sport, Toby.”
The fact that she’d called it a sport didn’t go unnoticed. I thought about the fact that we were going to be actually practicing tomorrow morning, and that instead of finishing up a case and safeguarding the world, we’d be flipping and flying and doing all kinds of motions that would inevitably make my armpits hurt.
That was the thing about cheerleading. The jumps were torture on your leg muscles, and the conditioning could be hell, but at the end of the day, your armpits were always sore. Or maybe that was just me.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks for not being a crazy cheer mom.”
“No problem.” My mother paused. “Though in fairness to all of those mothers out there who are only partially crazy, I did enroll you in martial arts classes when you were really young, and that world can be just as competitive.”
My mom was a karate instructor, and she was right—I’d been kicking butt for as long as I’d been walking.
“But you weren’t … intense about it,” I said, choosing my words carefully again. She’d never forced me into competitions. She’d never looked at me and said “Oh, Toby” in that put-upon way.
More importantly, she didn’t give a rat’s bum about homecoming. Thinking of homecoming reminded me of something.
“By the way,” I said conversationally, “I should probably tell you that if Noah stages one more publicity stunt on my behalf, I am going to hurt him.”
“What did he do?” my mother asked.
