Perfect Cover
Page 12

“So,” I said, eyeing the knife nervously. “Have you always been into weapons?”
“Me?” Lucy asked, and then she laughed loudly. Given the insanely broad smile on her face and the extra-large knife in her hand, it was borderline freaky. “Gosh, no. A couple of years ago, I’d never even seen a slingshot. I just wanted to make the varsity squad, you know? I’d been cheerleading for like ever, and making varsity seemed to be like this huge challenge and stuff. It was just something I did, and I wanted to do it well, you know? Cheerleading and student council and school and riding classes and…well, you get the drift. Anyway, when they brought me onto the Squad, I had like no specialty whatsoever. I wasn’t a transfer like you. I was just a regular old recruit, like April, but I wanted to be good at something, and their weapons person had just graduated…”
“Hold on there, Skippy…errr…Lucy, what do you mean ‘a transfer’ like me?”
Lucy shrugged. “Some of us are Bayport natives,” she said. “We grew up here, and when we were old enough, we started cheerleading. It’s just what people do here, you know?”
I didn’t interrupt her, but did concentrate on using my nonexistent mind-control powers to compel her to get to the point.
“When I was in fifth grade, everyone wanted to be a cheerleader. I mean, I think every single girl in our class tried out. They picked forty of us that year, and then the next year, it was thirty-five, and they kept getting rid of people. Tryouts kept getting more and more competitive. By the time I made JV, there were only twelve of us.”
Lucy’s voice took on a new tone as she talked about the lengths she’d gone to in her pursuit of making varsity.
“Lucy,” I told her. “Transfer.”
“Oh yeah,” Lucy said. “Well, the way it works is like this. The Bayport Cheerleading Association runs the tryouts for JV and under, and they’re like, a bunch of overinvolved parents and all of the coaches. And I guess maybe some of the coaches are government people or something, because by the time we reach JV, they have all kinds of reports on us. And every year, the Squad captain gets profiles on all the current members of JV, and any other ‘people of interest’ in the sophomore class, and the members do a little digging around. We read through the files we’ve been given, and we do a bunch of prescreening and whoever the current Zee is runs all her psycho-whatsits on them, and then if there are any open spots, we make our recommendations to the Boss Guys.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“No idea who the Boss Guys are,” Lucy said. “That’s why I just call them the Boss Guys. Or maybe you were wondering about the whole ‘current Zee’ thing? Because obviously, there’s only one Zee, but I meant, you know, whoever has Zee’s job. Because picking the new Squad is part of the current Squad’s duty, and the current Squad is always changing and stuff, so…”
“Lucy?”
“Yeah?”
“Transfer.” I tell you, keeping the Queen of Babbling on task was a full-time job.
“Oh yeah,” Lucy said. “Well, you know how I said we fill in any extra spots with girls from JV?”
I nodded.
“Well, sometimes we don’t have that many extra spots, because ever since the Squad went from being a training thingy to an action thingy, the Boss Guys have been bringing people in from outside the system.”
“The system?”
Lucy nodded. “As in the school system,” she said. “If they find someone they want on the Squad, they fix it so that they’re transferred to Bayport. That’s how we got you. They transferred your dad, and you moved here.”
I tried to digest this information. I’d hacked into the Pentagon, and a month later, my dad had been transferred to Bayport. I’d never made the connection before, but now, it was undeniable. “Are you telling me that I moved to Bayport because somebody wanted me to eventually be Squad Girl?”
Lucy gave me a very meek smile. “Would that be a bad thing?”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t like the idea of the government playing puppet-master with my life, but it made me realize, maybe for the first time, that the Squad was very real, and that the Big Guys Upstairs, whoever they were, were very, very powerful.
“How many other transfers are there?” I asked.
Lucy, sensing that I wasn’t going to maim the messenger, smiled broadly. “Most of the time, the Squad’s about fifty-fifty. Half of us have been cheerleaders forever, and just happen to have an aptitude for the spy thing, and half of us are special skills peeps who are transferred in.”
“Which half is which?” I asked.
“You, Chloe, Tara, and Zee were transfers,” Lucy said happily. “Did you know that Zee has a PhD?”
“She has a what?”
“A PhD. In forensic psychology and stuff. She might have another one or something, but I’m not really sure.”
“Lucy,” I said patiently. “Zee’s a senior in high school. And her claim to fame is the fact that she can tie a cherry stem in a knot with her tongue. Unless PhD stands for Pretty Hot Diva, I don’t think—”
“She was a transfer,” Lucy said stubbornly, like that explained it.
“So she got a PhD, and then a bunch of government guys said, ‘Hey, want to become a high school cheerleader?’ And she just said yes?”
Lucy nodded. “Pretty much,” she said. “I guess the first time around, she graduated high school when she was like eight or nine, so it was pretty much no fun at all.”
My mind was spinning. The government had transferred my parents to Bayport so that I would become a Bayport High varsity cheerleader, aka Double-0-Toby. These same government guys plucked Zee straight out of grad school and convinced her that high school would be more fun the second time around.
“And Tara and Chloe?” I asked.
“Tara’s an exchange student,” Lucy said. “You’ve probably noticed the British accent. It’s real. She grew up in England, mostly, but traveled a lot. Her parents were really gung ho on the Squad thing. And Chloe got some patent thingy when she was like ten, and they got her here the next year.”
“And the rest of you guys?” I asked. “One day, you were just cheerleaders, and the next—boom—you’re secret agents?”
I could almost understand the idea behind using a cheerleading squad as a cover-up—after all, if you stick a girl in a cheerleading skirt, no one takes her seriously—but the idea that half of us had been handpicked by the government for our “special skills” and that the other half had been chosen from the current supply of cheerleaders was still a little mind-boggling.
“Cheerleaders and secret agents have more in common than you might think, Toby,” Lucy said.
I think the word incredulous would probably be something of an understatement for the expression that came over my face at that pronouncement.
Lucy rolled her eyes. “Oh, Toby,” she said, like we’d been friends for a million years and she just couldn’t get over how very silly I was in the most endearing of ways. “Here,” she said, picking a notebook up off the counter. “Read this. It’s this Squad history thing that Brooke got somewhere. It’s got all of the stuff I told you in it, but it probably explains it better.”
I seriously doubted there was anything in that book that could make me believe that high school cheerleaders were somehow predisposed to being brilliant government operatives, but it would have taken someone with a far harder heart than my own to tell that to Lucy Wheeler.
“So,” she said brightly. “We still have like twenty minutes before you have to report to the salon. Wanna blow stuff up?”
All things considered, that was the nicest thing anyone had said to me all day.
CHAPTER 10
Code Word: Makeover
Unfortunately, happy explosives time couldn’t last forever, and sooner than later, I’d bid goodbye to Lucy’s lab and said hello to the twins’.
“Copper frost for the skin?”
Brittany pursed her lips at her twin’s question. “Only if we go dirrrrrrty blond on top.”