“Great,” Chloe said, and she turned back to Brooke. “You think you can get Jack to take you to Peyton?” It sounded more like a challenge than a question.
Brooke returned Chloe’s smile. “Do you think you can?” she asked sweetly.
Whoa. I might not have been cheerliterate, but I could read between the lines. Somewhere along the way, this Jack guy had dated both Brooke and Chloe. What a player. And, for that matter, what an idiot. You couldn’t pay me enough money to spend time alone with either one of them, and some guy had actually voluntarily dated them both? Clearly, this Jack character had emotional, if notmental,problems.
“Guys, this is serious.” Tara’s voice was louder this time, and sharp enough to cut the silence between Chloe and Brooke. “We don’t have time for some infantile spitting contest.”
Wow. Chalk another one up for the British girl.
In one motion, Brooke and Chloe turned to glare at Tara.
“You know as well as I do that Jack doesn’t like cheerleaders,” Tara said, her voice nice and calm again, despite the fact that I could still actually see the tension in her neck. “He won’t take either of you to Peyton.”
“Classic operant conditioning,” Zee piped up. “He associates cheerleaders with pain and heartache and physical discomfort. He views us as an ontological kind and extends properties freely from one exemplar to another.”
Hmmm. Maybe Jack wasn’t as dumb as I’d thought. We seemed to have the same kinds of beliefs about cheerleaders as a species.
“In short, he hates all of us equally.” Zee defused the tension between Chloe and Brooke with a single flip of her hair. “I don’t think he can even tell most of us apart.”
I couldn’t help but wonder exactly why Zee kept glancing at me as she spoke.
“If he hates us so much, why does he hang out with us?” Bubbles asked, knotting up her pretty little forehead in what appeared to be genuine and profound confusion.
“Status quo,” Zee said. “Jack was born to rule. It’s been ingrained in him since childhood, and at Bayport, we, my friends, are the ruling class.”
“So he’ll hang out with us, but he won’t date us?” one of the twins asked. “That is like so totally wrong.”
“He has textbook Conditioned Cheerleader Aversion,” Zee said.
He and I both.
And that’s when I got why Zee kept looking at me. Feeling paranoid, I glanced around the room. Brooke and Chloe were looking at Zee looking at me. Tara had her eyes fixed on mine. One by one, the rest of the girls followed suit.
“He likes you,” Zee said frankly. “He thinks you’re different.”
“Yeah,” Brittany said, “if bydifferentyou mean bizarre and freakish.”
“Zee’s right.” Brooke spoke slowly. “Jack’s been so anti lately, but today at lunch, he actually talked to Toby.”
Today at lunch? I played the whole ordeal over in my head: Noah’s celebration, Hayley’s threats, Lucy saving me, Brooke instructing me to flirt with Chip, me resolving to get some blackmail material on the arrogant guy with dark hair …
It occurred to me then that April had referred to Jack Peyton as Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Good-Looking. As much as I hated to admit it, Smirky Boy had been tall. He’d had dark hair. He’d known that he was good-looking.
“That’sJack Peyton?” I asked. I’d fully intended to cutsmarmy smirk boy down to size and wipe the cocky expression off his perfectly symmetrical face. And now a bunch of cheerleaders were telling me I was supposed to suck up to the guy? Make him like me? Have him take me back to Daddy Dearest’s office so I could plant some kind of cheer bug there?
“No way,” I said. “I hate that guy.”
“That’s why you’re perfect,” Zee said, highly satisfied with her analysis of the situation. “Everyone else thinks he’s good-looking; you couldn’t care less. Everyone else would like their lips plastered to his; you’d just as soon kick him in the crotch.”
I had to admit it—Miss PhD Zee was right on target, about the crotch-kicking, at least.
“You are exactly what Jack is looking for. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
I tried to imagine myself seducing Jack, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I was genuinely concerned that the very thought might make me throw up in my own mouth.
“Toby.” It was Tara, her eyes still on mine. “Please.”
I’d wondered earlier in the day what the real Tara was like, who she was when the cheerleading cover went away and her guard came down. Now she was looking at me, and for the first time, she didn’t seem poised. She didn’t seem sophisticated.
