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 manyyears 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 computerscience.” 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.
