Killer Spirit
Page 8
Hayley still hadn’t forgiven me for making the God Squad. From her perspective, I’d stolen her spot and everything that came with it, including a nomination for homecoming queen.
“Do you honestly think you deserve to be nominated?” Hayley asked. “Do you think that’s fair?”
“No,” I said, looking her directly in the eyes. “It’s not fair.”
If life were fair, the word makeover would never have been invented, I wouldn’t have had the world’s biggest spankie pants wedgie, and the words hacker and homecoming princess would have had no logical connection whatsoever. Life wasn’t fair. It was twisted.
“You don’t belong on varsity,” Hayley said, “and you sure as hell don’t belong on the homecoming court.” The and I will make you pay went unspoken, but I was very good at reading between the mean-girl lines.
After one last glare, Hayley turned and flounced back to her sidekicks. Once upon a time, April had been one of them, but now that April had made the Squad, she and Hayley were hanging out less and less, and Hayley had already found a handful of suitable replacements—mostly other JV cheerleaders and sophomore populars who hadn’t made the varsity cut that fall.
By the time I’d dealt with (read: tried to ignore) the tri-fecta of horror that was the Noah–NRM–Hayley onslaught, the entire student body was standing in between me and the exit, and there was no way out.
“Fancy meeting you here.” Jack spoke into the back of my head, but I knew it was him.
Darn Noah. Darn the PTA president. Darn Hayley Hoffman.
“Aren’t you going to say something, Ev?”
I muttered an expletive under my breath, and Jack smiled.
“That’s my girl.”
“I’m not your girl,” I said sharply.
He stepped closer, until the rest of the crowd felt miles away by comparison. “You could be.”
There were times when I almost couldn’t restrain myself around him, times when I wanted to kiss him again so badly that my lips literally hurt. This wasn’t one of them. He was being suave and smooth, and I wasn’t falling for it.
“Yeah,” I said, “and I could also tattoo an anorexic pterodactyl on my navel, but I’m not planning to do that, either.”
“Anorexic pterodactyl.” He repeated my words, and the self-assured smirk on his face was replaced with repressed amusement. “Sounds more like a butt tattoo to me.”
It was comments like that one that did me in. He could wax poetic about me being his girl or how beautiful I was or whatever from now until graduation, and it wouldn’t inspire anything in me other than the desire to spell out for him just how much of a tool I thought he was. But the moment he started snarking or quipping or admiring my snarky quippiness, I was a goner.
“I’ll make you a deal, Ev. You go to homecoming with me, and I’ll save you from having to go to the God Squad after-party.”
He knew how to sweet-talk a girl. He really knew how to sweet-talk a girl.
I glanced past his shoulder, trying to look away from the half grin on his lips, and I made eye contact with Tara. If I’d seen any of the other cheerleaders, it would have been different. Brooke and Chloe were a tad too possessive, and the rest of the girls were way too gung ho on the Jack/Toby relationship. As a general rule, Tara tried to remain more neutral. Her face was clear of any obvious expression, but for some reason, I knew what she was thinking.
Squad-wise, I should say yes. If there really was something big going down in Bayport, Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray, nefarious law firm that it was, probably had a hand in it. For whatever reason, the Big Guys either didn’t know about the familial connection within their ranks (unlikely, given the fact that they were the Big Guys), or they couldn’t/wouldn’t utilize it. As a result, the only way our operation could gain access to Peyton was through Jack.
“No.” My mouth made the decision before my head did, but I didn’t regret it. I didn’t want to like Jack, but even if I’d actually wanted to accept his offer, how could I? I had little to no tolerance for BS, and I wasn’t going to use him to get to his father again, not if there were real feelings involved.
Which, I still maintained, there weren’t.
“Okay, allow me to rephrase that.” Jack’s half grin turned into a full smirk. “If you go to homecoming with me, I will refrain from endorsing your candidacy for homecoming queen.”
I stared at him.
“Think about it, Ev. All it takes is one word from me, and you could end up as the first underclassman homecoming queen in Bayport’s history. At the very least, you’d be guaranteed princess, but if the seniors split enough votes, you could win the whole shebang. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
Oh, he was good. He was very, very good.
There was no way to get my name off that ballot, and I could only hope that April’s well-established popularity would guarantee that she got more votes than me and therefore won the princess title. But if Jack was serious, and he started telling people to vote for me…
Not good. So not good.
“You wouldn’t,” I said.
Jack leaned forward, until our foreheads were almost touching. “Wouldn’t I?”
Damn it, I thought. He totally would.
“Won’t the senior members of the squad be thrilled if you win?”
Okay, now he was just gloating. If I somehow managed to defy tradition and win queen as a sophomore, I was a dead girl. Brooke and Chloe would beat me to a pulp with their bare hands, and who knew what kind of psychological torture Zee could heap upon me if she really tried? His plan was evil, and it was genius, and given his background, neither one of those things should have surprised me.
“I hate you.” I glared at Jack.
He moved forward again, until there was virtually no space between his lips and mine. “Right back at ya, Ev.”
For a split second, I was terrified that he would kiss me right there, in front of everyone, but at the last instant (and right before I either grabbed him, flipped him, and hurled him to the ground or pinned him to the wall and kissed him so hard it hurt), he pulled back.
“It’s a date.” He smiled again, and then walked away, leaving me in his wake trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.
Less than an hour ago, all I’d wanted was detention. Now, I was nominated for homecoming court and going to the big dance with the hottest guy in school. Somewhere out there, God was laughing at me. I was sure of it.
CHAPTER 7
Code Word: Smile
“Go ahead,” I told Tara. “Ask me what happened.”
She arched one perfectly plucked eyebrow at me. “What happened?”
There was something in the tone of her voice, some trick to the words that made me narrow my eyes. “You already know.”
She smiled slightly and merged onto the highway. I’d finally made it out of the gym, and now the two of us were on our way to the Marymount Hotel, where our mark, Jacob Kann, had checked in earlier that week. We’d picked up bugs and tracking chips from the guidepost, our loading center, and then—thankfully—the two of us had hightailed it out of there before any of the others had a chance to ask a single question about my interaction with Jack.
About that time, I realized how strange it was that none of the others had managed to get a question in. These were girls who were trained to get information out of people. Plus they single-handedly ran our school’s rumor mill. So why hadn’t they asked about Jack?
The answer was simple. “The others already know, too, don’t they?”
How was that even possible? The gym had been crowded and noisy, and even Tara had been too far away to hear our exchange. Jack and I had kept our voices low. And yet…
“There’s a slight chance that I read lips,” Tara admitted.
Well, that answered that question.
“And the others?” Somehow, I couldn’t imagine Tara ratting me out.
Tara sighed. “I’m not entirely sure, but if I had to venture a guess, I’d say there’s a very good chance it has something to do with your body language and Zee’s ability to read people.”
And there you had it. Between a linguistics expert and a profiler who could read people like one of those See Spot Run books, I had no hope for keeping any aspect of my personal life private.
“Do you honestly think you deserve to be nominated?” Hayley asked. “Do you think that’s fair?”
“No,” I said, looking her directly in the eyes. “It’s not fair.”
If life were fair, the word makeover would never have been invented, I wouldn’t have had the world’s biggest spankie pants wedgie, and the words hacker and homecoming princess would have had no logical connection whatsoever. Life wasn’t fair. It was twisted.
“You don’t belong on varsity,” Hayley said, “and you sure as hell don’t belong on the homecoming court.” The and I will make you pay went unspoken, but I was very good at reading between the mean-girl lines.
After one last glare, Hayley turned and flounced back to her sidekicks. Once upon a time, April had been one of them, but now that April had made the Squad, she and Hayley were hanging out less and less, and Hayley had already found a handful of suitable replacements—mostly other JV cheerleaders and sophomore populars who hadn’t made the varsity cut that fall.
By the time I’d dealt with (read: tried to ignore) the tri-fecta of horror that was the Noah–NRM–Hayley onslaught, the entire student body was standing in between me and the exit, and there was no way out.
“Fancy meeting you here.” Jack spoke into the back of my head, but I knew it was him.
Darn Noah. Darn the PTA president. Darn Hayley Hoffman.
“Aren’t you going to say something, Ev?”
I muttered an expletive under my breath, and Jack smiled.
“That’s my girl.”
“I’m not your girl,” I said sharply.
He stepped closer, until the rest of the crowd felt miles away by comparison. “You could be.”
There were times when I almost couldn’t restrain myself around him, times when I wanted to kiss him again so badly that my lips literally hurt. This wasn’t one of them. He was being suave and smooth, and I wasn’t falling for it.
“Yeah,” I said, “and I could also tattoo an anorexic pterodactyl on my navel, but I’m not planning to do that, either.”
“Anorexic pterodactyl.” He repeated my words, and the self-assured smirk on his face was replaced with repressed amusement. “Sounds more like a butt tattoo to me.”
It was comments like that one that did me in. He could wax poetic about me being his girl or how beautiful I was or whatever from now until graduation, and it wouldn’t inspire anything in me other than the desire to spell out for him just how much of a tool I thought he was. But the moment he started snarking or quipping or admiring my snarky quippiness, I was a goner.
“I’ll make you a deal, Ev. You go to homecoming with me, and I’ll save you from having to go to the God Squad after-party.”
He knew how to sweet-talk a girl. He really knew how to sweet-talk a girl.
I glanced past his shoulder, trying to look away from the half grin on his lips, and I made eye contact with Tara. If I’d seen any of the other cheerleaders, it would have been different. Brooke and Chloe were a tad too possessive, and the rest of the girls were way too gung ho on the Jack/Toby relationship. As a general rule, Tara tried to remain more neutral. Her face was clear of any obvious expression, but for some reason, I knew what she was thinking.
Squad-wise, I should say yes. If there really was something big going down in Bayport, Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray, nefarious law firm that it was, probably had a hand in it. For whatever reason, the Big Guys either didn’t know about the familial connection within their ranks (unlikely, given the fact that they were the Big Guys), or they couldn’t/wouldn’t utilize it. As a result, the only way our operation could gain access to Peyton was through Jack.
“No.” My mouth made the decision before my head did, but I didn’t regret it. I didn’t want to like Jack, but even if I’d actually wanted to accept his offer, how could I? I had little to no tolerance for BS, and I wasn’t going to use him to get to his father again, not if there were real feelings involved.
Which, I still maintained, there weren’t.
“Okay, allow me to rephrase that.” Jack’s half grin turned into a full smirk. “If you go to homecoming with me, I will refrain from endorsing your candidacy for homecoming queen.”
I stared at him.
“Think about it, Ev. All it takes is one word from me, and you could end up as the first underclassman homecoming queen in Bayport’s history. At the very least, you’d be guaranteed princess, but if the seniors split enough votes, you could win the whole shebang. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
Oh, he was good. He was very, very good.
There was no way to get my name off that ballot, and I could only hope that April’s well-established popularity would guarantee that she got more votes than me and therefore won the princess title. But if Jack was serious, and he started telling people to vote for me…
Not good. So not good.
“You wouldn’t,” I said.
Jack leaned forward, until our foreheads were almost touching. “Wouldn’t I?”
Damn it, I thought. He totally would.
“Won’t the senior members of the squad be thrilled if you win?”
Okay, now he was just gloating. If I somehow managed to defy tradition and win queen as a sophomore, I was a dead girl. Brooke and Chloe would beat me to a pulp with their bare hands, and who knew what kind of psychological torture Zee could heap upon me if she really tried? His plan was evil, and it was genius, and given his background, neither one of those things should have surprised me.
“I hate you.” I glared at Jack.
He moved forward again, until there was virtually no space between his lips and mine. “Right back at ya, Ev.”
For a split second, I was terrified that he would kiss me right there, in front of everyone, but at the last instant (and right before I either grabbed him, flipped him, and hurled him to the ground or pinned him to the wall and kissed him so hard it hurt), he pulled back.
“It’s a date.” He smiled again, and then walked away, leaving me in his wake trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.
Less than an hour ago, all I’d wanted was detention. Now, I was nominated for homecoming court and going to the big dance with the hottest guy in school. Somewhere out there, God was laughing at me. I was sure of it.
CHAPTER 7
Code Word: Smile
“Go ahead,” I told Tara. “Ask me what happened.”
She arched one perfectly plucked eyebrow at me. “What happened?”
There was something in the tone of her voice, some trick to the words that made me narrow my eyes. “You already know.”
She smiled slightly and merged onto the highway. I’d finally made it out of the gym, and now the two of us were on our way to the Marymount Hotel, where our mark, Jacob Kann, had checked in earlier that week. We’d picked up bugs and tracking chips from the guidepost, our loading center, and then—thankfully—the two of us had hightailed it out of there before any of the others had a chance to ask a single question about my interaction with Jack.
About that time, I realized how strange it was that none of the others had managed to get a question in. These were girls who were trained to get information out of people. Plus they single-handedly ran our school’s rumor mill. So why hadn’t they asked about Jack?
The answer was simple. “The others already know, too, don’t they?”
How was that even possible? The gym had been crowded and noisy, and even Tara had been too far away to hear our exchange. Jack and I had kept our voices low. And yet…
“There’s a slight chance that I read lips,” Tara admitted.
Well, that answered that question.
“And the others?” Somehow, I couldn’t imagine Tara ratting me out.
Tara sighed. “I’m not entirely sure, but if I had to venture a guess, I’d say there’s a very good chance it has something to do with your body language and Zee’s ability to read people.”
And there you had it. Between a linguistics expert and a profiler who could read people like one of those See Spot Run books, I had no hope for keeping any aspect of my personal life private.
