Unfortunately, Chloe had other plans. Without my realizing it, she had managed to lift the laptop from the backseat. All that lovely encryption was now in her possession, not mine.
Double unfortunately, however, what with the sizeable drive to and from Infotech, the amount of time it had taken the twins to pull off the Doublemint, the time I’d spent hacking, and the half hour that I had been informed it would take to redo my nails, it didn’t look like I was going to be getting much rest in before lunch.
I half expected the others to go their separate ways when we got back, but instead, Bubbles and Lucy followed me tothe twins’ salon, chattering happily away about some topic of conversation that I couldn’t quite follow. Chloe didn’t join us—she was too busy orchestrating a drop-off of the information on the laptop and coordinating our afternoon mission, which Lucy randomly decided to name “Operation Playboy.”
“Why is it that evil guys are always so hot?” Tiffany wondered out loud as she focused on the index finger on my right hand.
“Tell me about it,” Brittany said, buffing one of the nails on my left hand. “Heath Shannon? Hot. That guy we had to take out who’d stolen that nuclear laser thing? So hot.”
“And Jack Peyton?” Tiffany continued.
“Hot.” I surprised myself by finishing Tiffany’s train of thought. Had I really just said that out loud? More importantly, since when had I become the type of girl who gossiped about the hotness of boys?
And was Jack Peyton, he of the ironically detached smirk, reallyevil?
“Jack isn’t evil per se,” Tara said, coming into the room just in time to answer my unasked question, and save me from the mortification of the others commenting on my slip of tongue. “He can hardly help who his father is.”
“Okay,” Brittany agreed affably. “So maybe he isn’t evil, but he could be evil someday. And heishot. Even Toby thinks so.”
And that was my cue to leave. Except, unfortunately, each twin had me by one hand, and neither of them was done with the buff, polish, repair routine they had their hearts set on.
I had no choice but to change the subject—and fast. “How goes the party planning?” I asked April and Tara. It wasn’t exactly a deep question, but it worked.
“We managed to get Rocksha to DJ, and April found a great caterer,” Tara said.
“Caterer? DJ?”
April shrugged. “Major party.”
“So no cheap beer in sketchy kegs?” I asked.
Tara leaned over and tweaked my ponytail. “Toby, it’s a high school party. There’s always beer in sketchy kegs. It will probably just be very expensive beer.”
Lucy wrinkled her nose.
“Not a fan of beer?” I asked her.
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t ignite as well as vodka.”
It didn’t surprise me that when Lucy thought about alcohol, her main concern was flammability. For some reason, I couldn’t see her as much of a drinker of anything stronger than orange soda.
“Done!”
“Done!”
The twins finished one after another, and finally, my hands were my own again.
“Lunch?” Tara asked, looking at her watch.
I nodded. “Lunch.”
“Lunch!” the others chorused in unison. I rolled my eyes, but somehow, a smile found its way onto my face. It was amazing what a high-stakes hacking adventure with other people could do for team bonding. On principle, I refused to give any of the credit to our girl talk in the salon.
The moment we walked into the cafeteria, I was treated to three sights. The first was almost an exact replica of what had happened when we’d walked into the caf that morning. Alleyes swung our way, and the sea of people parted for the seven of us. The second thing I noticed was that Jack Peyton was already sitting at the central table, his eyes locked on mine.
The third thing I noticed was that my younger brother had just sat down with a bunch of senior girls, all of whom were staring at him like he was some kind of alien species.
Maybe they were right.
