Killer Spirit
Page 53

I thought of Hayley’s words to me the day before. “If you’re still a part of the God Squad,” she’d sniffed. “I wouldn’t want to be.”
It was official. If Hayley Hoffman got my spot on the Squad, I was going rogue. I had some secret-agent skills now, and I’d use them to do something drastic.
That cheerful thought in my mind, I resigned myself to the fact that while the others were out determining whether or not I even had a future, I was stuck here painting banners. I thought about painting them down in the Quad, where I could at least keep tabs on how the mission was going, but thought of the way Chloe had reamed me that afternoon and decided against it.
I might have been going down, but strangely enough, the last thing I wanted was to bring the rest of the girls with me.
The practice gym was eerily quiet as I unrolled the banner paper and filled two tins with paint. Blue and gold, the colors of Bayport. Unsure what to do next, I stared at the blank paper. Zee had been pretty explicit about what not to write, but no one had actually versed me on the finer points of making banners. I vaguely remembered holding one up for the boys to run through at our last game, but the task of actually making it had fallen to one of the girls whose bubble letters were far superior to my own.
Needless to say, girly script was not my forte.
“Oh, well,” I muttered. “Here goes nothing.”
I dipped my foam brush into the blue paint, and set about writing GO LIONS! on one banner and GO BIG GOLD! on the other. The whole process was strangely soothing, though I wouldn’t have admitted my lack of enmity for it under threat of death.
“Toby?”
I jumped at Mr. J’s voice. Something about thinking the phrase threat of death and then having someone call out my name when I’d thought I was alone put me a little on edge.
“Oh, hey, Mr. J,” I said.
“Why aren’t you at the Spirit Lunch?” he asked.
“The whatsit?”
“The Spirit Lunch, honoring the state’s most esteemed cheerleaders,” Mr. J said. “I believe that’s where Brooke said she and the seniors were going this afternoon, and the rest of the girls appear to have gone as well.”
Personally, I thought my Seventeen magazine excuse had more oomph, but I wasn’t going to quibble with the vice-principal.
“Someone had to stay and paint the banners,” I said simply.
“Oh,” he replied. “Good girl.” Then he paused and turned back over his shoulder. “She’s in here, Joanne,” he called. “I’ll let you tell her the exciting news yourself.”
Joanne. My mind took in the name and recognized the reference. Joanne McCall. The PTA president. The nauseatingly reminiscent mom.
“Exciting news?” I asked.
Mrs. McCall came into the room, her smile proving that as Botox-ed as her face was, she still had control over at least a few of her facial muscles. “The homecoming game is going to be televised,” she said. “Including your halftime routine and the coronation ceremony. Isn’t that wonderful news?”
Wonderful wasn’t the word I would have chosen myself, even with my newfound insight into my feelings about my cheer identity. Cheerdentity. Whatever.
“If you girls will excuse me,” Mr. J said, “I have a student in my office. Something about Abraham Lincoln and streaking.”
Mr. J left, and I looked down at the banner, hoping the NRM would get the hint and leave, but she didn’t. Instead, she came further into the gym, blathering on about the “excitement” as she did.
“It’s the Game of the Week, you know,” she said. “For the entire state. There’s a chance that the feed may even be picked up nationwide. It’s such an exciting opportunity for you girls!”
Blah, blah, blah…
“It’s so unfortunate that you won’t be there to enjoy it.”
The tone of her voice never changed, but my body reacted as if it had. Even before my mind processed her words, a chill ran up my spine, and I made my way to my feet.
“What did you just say?” I asked her.
She pursed her lips. “I said it’s unfortunate that you won’t be there,” she repeated. “These are such precious and wonderful times. It really is a shame that I have to do this. I didn’t want to, you know, but you girls make these things so difficult.”
I stared at her, and comprehension dawned on me. “You?” asked. “Seriously?”
Mrs. McCall came closer. “I know, I know,” she said. “Nobody ever suspects the soccer mom.”
It was when she said the word mom that my brain connected the dots and I thought about Kiki McCall and the fact that more than anything, she wanted to make varsity. There was something else, too. Something from my dream the night before, or maybe something from my first day on the Squad. Or maybe both.
“When you went to see Karen, I thought you’d figure it out,” Mrs. McCall continued.
“Karen?”
“Karen Madden. Oh, I suppose her last name is Camden now. It’s so hard to keep these things straight.”
The PTA president was planning to take me out, and here she was talking about Brooke’s mom? And then I remembered the last piece of information about Kiki. She wasn’t a very good cheerleader, and she clearly wasn’t cut out for espionage, but the reason she’d been strongly considered for the Squad was that she, like Brooke, was a legacy.
And that meant that once upon a time, her mother had been on a Squad.
That morning, I’d tried to convince the others that a rogue agent had tagged me, that the very same rogue agent had planted the bomb in Kann’s car and stolen the biotechnological weapon right out from underneath us at Ross’s office.
“You’re the rogue operative,” I said. “You’re the one who planted the chip on me.” I’d always thought that this woman had no respect for personal space, but really, she’d had ulterior motives. “You stole the nanobots and blew up the car.”
“I was trying to make things easy,” she replied. “At first, I thought I could scare you off, but the bomb didn’t seem to bother you much once you regained consciousness. I thought that when I crashed your retrieval mission, the other girls would realize they’d made a mistake and that you were never cut out for any of this.” She sighed. “And I thought for sure that when they discovered that you’d been tagged, they’d report it and you’d be gone, but no. They didn’t, did they? If they had, you wouldn’t be in school today.” She blew a wisp of hair out of her face. “It’s the darnedest thing.”
Half of me thought I should just take her out then and there. She might have been trained as an operative back in the day, but she was old and I was young, and I was willing to bet a lot of money that she couldn’t move like I could. There weren’t very many people who could.
“Nuh-uh-uh,” Joanne McCall said, making a tsking sound with her tongue. She pulled something out of her pocket, and I recognized the silver box in her hands. “You take so much as a single step toward me, and I’ll let these little darlings do their thing. I had a piece of your hair on file, you know. All that lovely DNA. So very convenient. I was so glad I’d gotten a hold of a sample that first day, when I saw you in the mall.”
“How can you…I thought…Anthony…”
“The TCI?” The fact that she used the acronym freaked me out. “I needed a diversion, and he was more than willing to buy a decoy. That boy is a bit slow. I knew he was bugged, and I figured you girls were listening, and that orders or no orders, you wouldn’t be able to resist saving the day.” She sighed nostalgically. “We never were.”
This was just freaking unbelievable. The president of the PTA was a former agent who’d been stalking me for weeks. She’d duped Anthony into believing he had the actual weapon, assuming that we’d be listening, but instead, she’d tricked Amelia, who must have replaced our bug with one of her own. If Amelia hadn’t come to me, hadn’t issued her little challenge, Mrs. McCall’s decoy wouldn’t have worked, and I wouldn’t be here now, by myself, with a mad-woman.