Killer Spirit
Page 50
I hadn’t spent much time thinking about how I’d gotten tagged, or who might have tagged me, but really, there weren’t that many options. I went to school, I went to practice, and I went home. Since I was pretty sure I could rule out Noah and my parents, and since the other girls had no reason to tag me, that left either school or some random interaction I’d had in transit.
And if someone at school had tagged me…
The thought ate at me, chewed at my skin and my stomach, and crawled up the back of my spine until I thought I was literally going to puke up all of the coffee I hadn’t drunk that morning. Except for the Squad, Bayport High wasn’t exactly a cesspool of secret identities. There was only one other person at this school who could have possibly had access to the kind of technology that Tara had cut from my skin that morning.
Jack.
I’d thought it myself. Of everyone at our school, he was the one person most likely to figure out our secret, and he was the one whose discovery would devastate our operation the most.
I just hadn’t realized how much it would devastate me.
“Thinking about me, Ev?”
For a second, I thought I was imagining his voice, but then his hands were on my neck, and he was leaning in for the kiss.
I don’t exactly remember what happened next. It’s all a little fuzzy, but the next thing I knew, Jack was on his back halfway down the hall, and my blood was pumping the way it only did after a fight. Most guys probably would have reacted poorly to that kind of violence, but Jack wasn’t most guys. He just climbed to his feet and held up his hands. “I come in peace,” he said, “and I swear to you, it wasn’t my idea.”
That was less than comforting. He’d used me. He’d pretended…The things he’d said! The way he’d made me…And the whole time he was…
I couldn’t seem to put a whole sentence together, even in the sanctity of my own mind. It didn’t occur to me—even for a second—that when we’d first met, our positions had been reversed. I’d been the one using him. The first time we’d kissed had been in his father’s office, on the tail end of my part in our first mission of the season.
“It wasn’t your idea,” I repeated dumbly. “So whose was it? Your father’s?”
I was vaguely aware of the fact that we had an ever-growing audience. It’s funny how quickly you can get used to that given the right circumstances.
“My father’s?” Jack repeated incredulously. “No offense, Ev, but I don’t think dear old dad really cares whether you win homecoming queen or not.”
Homecoming queen?
The incredible sense of betrayal in my gut faltered, but I had to remind myself that this guy was a player. He’d made a life out of being on top, and you didn’t get there—guy or girl—without knowing the rules of pretense as well as every girl on the Squad did. Jack had explained some of them to me himself.
He was pretending. He had to be.
“If you want to permanently injure someone,” Jack said, still keeping a safe distance, “I’d suggest venting your anger on Noah. This whole thing was his doing, not mine. He didn’t exactly ask for my permission first.”
Noah? Homecoming and Noah? The wheels in my head were turning slowly.
“What did Noah do?” I asked.
“You’re going to make me actually say it?” Jack asked. “Come on, Toby. Have a heart. You already kicked my ass.”
I had to admire the fact that he could admit it so freely.
Wait, I thought. No. I did not have to admire that! I didn’t have to admire ANYTHING about Jack Peyton. Not now. Not when I wasn’t at all convinced that he hadn’t used me to get to the Squad.
“If I come closer, are you going to go all kung fu on me again?” Jack asked slowly.
My eyes narrowing into teeny-tiny slits, I shrugged. I wasn’t about to make any promises.
“Guess I’ll have to take my chances then,” he said, and then he was by my side again, whispering into my ear. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re really cute when you’re proving yourself strangely deadly?”
I bristled at the word cute and the way he said it. He was taunting me. I’d thrown him clear across the hallway, and now, he was taunting me. He was either very brave or very stupid.
Or maybe, he was perfect.
I tried to keep the sappy thoughts out of my head. I tried not to be affected by how close the two of us were standing. Batting 0-for-2, I tried to remember that nothing he’d said was a guarantee that my original assumption about his guilt was wrong.
About that time, my brother came sauntering down the hall, his arms full of what appeared to be life-sized cutouts.
I looked from Noah to Jack and then back again, just as Noah deposited one of the cutouts in front of the classroom across the hall. It was Jack, in all of his A-list glory, and Noah had pasted a sign into his cutout hand. JACK PEYTON IS HOT. TOBY KLEIN IS HOTTER. VOTE TOBY AND JACK FOR HOMECOMING COURT.
Noah went merrily on his way down the hall, ignoring me, the look in my eyes, and the fact that Jack had started laughing. The bell rang then, and our audience groaned. Unlike the two of us, the others might actually get into trouble for being late for class. I turned to go to my geometry classroom, but Jack pulled me back toward him.
“For the record,” he said, no hint of a smile on his otherwise perfect face, “I still think Mr. Corkin is the hottest.”
“For the record,” I said, “if I find out you had anything to do with those cutouts, I’m going to kick your ass. Again.”
“So noted.”
And that was that.
CHAPTER 32
Code Word: Girl Talk
By lunchtime, I had concluded that, contrary to my previous belief, that was not that. I felt like Jack was being real with me, but the logical part of my mind kept telling me that I was being an idiotic, emotional, pathetic girly-girl who wanted everything to be flowers and puppy dogs in Crushville. I couldn’t ignore the facts. Jack did have access to technology like the tracking chip, and there was no denying the fact that I’d had more physical interaction with him the past few days than I’d had with pretty much anyone my whole life. Amelia couldn’t have planted the chip on me. Besides Jack, I just couldn’t see who that left as far as suspects went.
I couldn’t just waltz into the cafeteria and sit down at our table and play the popularity game with Jack, Chip and the Chiplings, Lucy, Tara, April, and Bubbles. I may have managed to increase my stealth factor significantly the past few weeks, but I still wasn’t that smooth, and more to the point, I just wasn’t sure I could take it.
So instead, I opted out of lunch and headed for the gym. I doubled back twice to make sure no one was following me, and then I went into the girls’ locker room, and after jumping through eight million security hoops, I made my way down to the Quad.
It was quiet, more so than I’d ever seen it. Our flat-screen was turned off, and I couldn’t even hear the ghosts of conversations we’d had about training, missions, or who liked who.
“Please tell me you weren’t stupid enough to come down here during the day.”
I turned and found Chloe giving me one of those patented Chloe Larson looks that made me feel so loved and so special and like everything was right with the world.
I snorted. I couldn’t even think that last bit with a straight face.
“Seriously,” Chloe said. “Do you have any idea how idiotic it is to just waltz into the Quad in the middle of the day when you know that your cover has been broken? I mean, are you trying to send out engraved invitations to our secret underground lair, or has your brain just stopped working altogether?”
When she put it that way, she actually had a point.
“I think I know who tagged me,” I said. “And he’s occupied.”
Jack was eating lunch with the others, probably wondering where I was and why I’d abandoned him to suffer through the inanity of an A-list lunch on his own.
“Shouldn’t you be worrying about Amelia?” I asked, trying to distract Chloe from her dogged criticism by mentioning the reason she was in the Quad during school hours—laying the groundwork for the massive mission she was coordinating that afternoon.
And if someone at school had tagged me…
The thought ate at me, chewed at my skin and my stomach, and crawled up the back of my spine until I thought I was literally going to puke up all of the coffee I hadn’t drunk that morning. Except for the Squad, Bayport High wasn’t exactly a cesspool of secret identities. There was only one other person at this school who could have possibly had access to the kind of technology that Tara had cut from my skin that morning.
Jack.
I’d thought it myself. Of everyone at our school, he was the one person most likely to figure out our secret, and he was the one whose discovery would devastate our operation the most.
I just hadn’t realized how much it would devastate me.
“Thinking about me, Ev?”
For a second, I thought I was imagining his voice, but then his hands were on my neck, and he was leaning in for the kiss.
I don’t exactly remember what happened next. It’s all a little fuzzy, but the next thing I knew, Jack was on his back halfway down the hall, and my blood was pumping the way it only did after a fight. Most guys probably would have reacted poorly to that kind of violence, but Jack wasn’t most guys. He just climbed to his feet and held up his hands. “I come in peace,” he said, “and I swear to you, it wasn’t my idea.”
That was less than comforting. He’d used me. He’d pretended…The things he’d said! The way he’d made me…And the whole time he was…
I couldn’t seem to put a whole sentence together, even in the sanctity of my own mind. It didn’t occur to me—even for a second—that when we’d first met, our positions had been reversed. I’d been the one using him. The first time we’d kissed had been in his father’s office, on the tail end of my part in our first mission of the season.
“It wasn’t your idea,” I repeated dumbly. “So whose was it? Your father’s?”
I was vaguely aware of the fact that we had an ever-growing audience. It’s funny how quickly you can get used to that given the right circumstances.
“My father’s?” Jack repeated incredulously. “No offense, Ev, but I don’t think dear old dad really cares whether you win homecoming queen or not.”
Homecoming queen?
The incredible sense of betrayal in my gut faltered, but I had to remind myself that this guy was a player. He’d made a life out of being on top, and you didn’t get there—guy or girl—without knowing the rules of pretense as well as every girl on the Squad did. Jack had explained some of them to me himself.
He was pretending. He had to be.
“If you want to permanently injure someone,” Jack said, still keeping a safe distance, “I’d suggest venting your anger on Noah. This whole thing was his doing, not mine. He didn’t exactly ask for my permission first.”
Noah? Homecoming and Noah? The wheels in my head were turning slowly.
“What did Noah do?” I asked.
“You’re going to make me actually say it?” Jack asked. “Come on, Toby. Have a heart. You already kicked my ass.”
I had to admire the fact that he could admit it so freely.
Wait, I thought. No. I did not have to admire that! I didn’t have to admire ANYTHING about Jack Peyton. Not now. Not when I wasn’t at all convinced that he hadn’t used me to get to the Squad.
“If I come closer, are you going to go all kung fu on me again?” Jack asked slowly.
My eyes narrowing into teeny-tiny slits, I shrugged. I wasn’t about to make any promises.
“Guess I’ll have to take my chances then,” he said, and then he was by my side again, whispering into my ear. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re really cute when you’re proving yourself strangely deadly?”
I bristled at the word cute and the way he said it. He was taunting me. I’d thrown him clear across the hallway, and now, he was taunting me. He was either very brave or very stupid.
Or maybe, he was perfect.
I tried to keep the sappy thoughts out of my head. I tried not to be affected by how close the two of us were standing. Batting 0-for-2, I tried to remember that nothing he’d said was a guarantee that my original assumption about his guilt was wrong.
About that time, my brother came sauntering down the hall, his arms full of what appeared to be life-sized cutouts.
I looked from Noah to Jack and then back again, just as Noah deposited one of the cutouts in front of the classroom across the hall. It was Jack, in all of his A-list glory, and Noah had pasted a sign into his cutout hand. JACK PEYTON IS HOT. TOBY KLEIN IS HOTTER. VOTE TOBY AND JACK FOR HOMECOMING COURT.
Noah went merrily on his way down the hall, ignoring me, the look in my eyes, and the fact that Jack had started laughing. The bell rang then, and our audience groaned. Unlike the two of us, the others might actually get into trouble for being late for class. I turned to go to my geometry classroom, but Jack pulled me back toward him.
“For the record,” he said, no hint of a smile on his otherwise perfect face, “I still think Mr. Corkin is the hottest.”
“For the record,” I said, “if I find out you had anything to do with those cutouts, I’m going to kick your ass. Again.”
“So noted.”
And that was that.
CHAPTER 32
Code Word: Girl Talk
By lunchtime, I had concluded that, contrary to my previous belief, that was not that. I felt like Jack was being real with me, but the logical part of my mind kept telling me that I was being an idiotic, emotional, pathetic girly-girl who wanted everything to be flowers and puppy dogs in Crushville. I couldn’t ignore the facts. Jack did have access to technology like the tracking chip, and there was no denying the fact that I’d had more physical interaction with him the past few days than I’d had with pretty much anyone my whole life. Amelia couldn’t have planted the chip on me. Besides Jack, I just couldn’t see who that left as far as suspects went.
I couldn’t just waltz into the cafeteria and sit down at our table and play the popularity game with Jack, Chip and the Chiplings, Lucy, Tara, April, and Bubbles. I may have managed to increase my stealth factor significantly the past few weeks, but I still wasn’t that smooth, and more to the point, I just wasn’t sure I could take it.
So instead, I opted out of lunch and headed for the gym. I doubled back twice to make sure no one was following me, and then I went into the girls’ locker room, and after jumping through eight million security hoops, I made my way down to the Quad.
It was quiet, more so than I’d ever seen it. Our flat-screen was turned off, and I couldn’t even hear the ghosts of conversations we’d had about training, missions, or who liked who.
“Please tell me you weren’t stupid enough to come down here during the day.”
I turned and found Chloe giving me one of those patented Chloe Larson looks that made me feel so loved and so special and like everything was right with the world.
I snorted. I couldn’t even think that last bit with a straight face.
“Seriously,” Chloe said. “Do you have any idea how idiotic it is to just waltz into the Quad in the middle of the day when you know that your cover has been broken? I mean, are you trying to send out engraved invitations to our secret underground lair, or has your brain just stopped working altogether?”
When she put it that way, she actually had a point.
“I think I know who tagged me,” I said. “And he’s occupied.”
Jack was eating lunch with the others, probably wondering where I was and why I’d abandoned him to suffer through the inanity of an A-list lunch on his own.
“Shouldn’t you be worrying about Amelia?” I asked, trying to distract Chloe from her dogged criticism by mentioning the reason she was in the Quad during school hours—laying the groundwork for the massive mission she was coordinating that afternoon.
