“A makeunder?” April repeated the term. It was times like these that I was grateful that I wasn’t the only new member of the Squad.

“We need to blend.” Brooke elucidated the situation. “If we go out in groups of four looking like this, we’re going to attract a lot of attention, and since the TCIs aren’t supposed to even know we’re there, that’s not exactly a good thing the way it would be if we were planning to interact with them, but didn’t want to be seen as a threat.”

“A B3 makeunder is constructed with that goal in mind,” Tiffany said, her tone absolutely, deathly serious. “Although we can’t disguise our more striking features, we will be downplaying them. Some people call it ‘the natural look.’ We’ve spent a lot of time designing outfits and makeup/hair schema that will serve a dual purpose. To the casual observer, we’ll look average.”

Brittany took over where Tiffany left off. “But if we happen to run into anyone from school, we need to look nice enough that they won’t get suspicious. These outfits aren’t about being unfashionable; they’re about being subtle. The perfect B3 will allow its wearer to blend in, but on closer focus, she’ll stand out because of the ensemble’s simplicity.”

“A B3 says, ‘I’m pretty without trying to be,’” Tiffany continued. “It says, ‘I’m not wearing makeup,’ even though you will be. It says, ‘Don’t look at me, don’t remember me, but if you know me, be impressed with my effortlessness.’”

I think the twins might have gone on indefinitely if Brooke hadn’t sped them along. Instead, they multitasked, punctuating my makeunder with theoretical explanations I paid no attention to whatsoever. By the time they finished with me and moved on to the next person, I wasn’t sure what to expect. What was the logical result of spending a great deal of time and effort attempting to look natural?

A quick examination in the mirror revealed my answer. I didn’t look like the old me, but I wasn’t exactly Cheer Toby, either. I was a Neutrogena commercial, clean and cute. I didn’t look average, but I did look generic. Because of my height and the way the twins had styled my hair, I also looked about thirteen.

Makeunder complete.

CHAPTER 18

Code Word: Girl Talk

Brooke and I got ice cream at a shop down the street from the firm and then set up camp on a bench outside the shopping center. Along the way, we also stopped at a few stores, just for good measure, and our packages were spread out on the ground near our feet.

“So what now?” I asked Brooke.

She pulled her feet up and folded them gracefully under her body. “Now we talk.” She took in my skeptical look. “Trust me. It’s something girls do.”

So that was our cover. We weren’t cheerleaders. We were just girls. I maneuvered to get myself comfortable, until I was sitting cross-legged on the bench, my ice cream balanced precariously on one knee. “And what do girls talk about?” I asked.

“Boys. Other girls. World domination.”

I was about eighty percent sure she was kidding on that last one, but this was Brooke, who dominated our high school world with seemingly little effort, so I wasn’t willing to completely discount the possibility that she might be serious.

“Which other girls?” That one seemed the safest.

“Whichever ones are pissing us off.” Brooke didn’t sugarcoat it.

“And if no one is?”

Brooke rolled her eyes. “Then you’re lying.”

“Are you trying to say I’m an angry person?”

“Well, yes. But it wouldn’t matter if you weren’t. This is high school. Everybody’s mad at somebody.”

“So who are you mad at?” I asked.

Brooke shrugged. “Chloe for being a brat. Zee for analyzing what’s none of her business. You for almost getting blown up.”

“So, as girls, we’re supposed to sit here talking about how you don’t like me?”

Brooke rolled her eyes. “Technically, we’re supposed to talk about the people who aren’t here.”

Brooke’s phone beeped, and she flipped it open to read a text message. Then she dug into her purse and pulled out an iPod. I stared at it warily, unsure whether this was the communicator iPod that Chloe had given us, or the one that doubled as a high-voltage Taser.

Brooke put one of the earpieces in her ear, and I came to the conclusion that as painful as sitting here with me obviously was for her, she probably wasn’t frustrated enough to resort to Tasering herself. Yet.

“What’s up?” I asked her.

“Just a song I like,” she said lightly, and I got the message. She was coordinating the tails on the TCIs, but she wasn’t going to give any verbal indication of what she was doing—not even to me. Considering we were only twenty yards away from the institution our Squad was designed to combat, I couldn’t chalk that one up to anything but common sense, as much as I would have liked to blame it on Brooke’s more PMSy tendencies.

Her fingers flew across the keypad of her cell phone at high speed, and I wondered what kind of orders she was dishing out. Given an infinite amount of time and all of the technology in Chloe’s lab, I might have been able to figure it out, the same way that a hundred monkeys could eventually produce the works of Shakespeare, but I didn’t have that kind of time, or the technology, or the monkeys, so I settled for taking another bite of ice cream and watching the parking garage across the street. Trying to appear as though I were gazing vacuously off into space, I zeroed in on a car that was preparing to turn into the Peyton parking garage.

I brought my free hand up to the simple chain at my neck and fiddled with the charm. An almost inaudible click told me that my necklace, which was actually a high-definition digital camera, had taken a picture that might have been of my collarbone, but that I hoped was of the car across the street. I glanced over at Brooke and saw that her dark hair was tucked behind her left ear, clearing the way for a clean shot by the video camera installed in her earrings.

Between the two of us, we were wearing more or less an entire Radio Shack, and thanks to Lucy, I had a puppy sticker in my pocket that, if applied to a person’s bare skin, would render them unconscious in less than a second.

“Come on, Toby. There must be someone you don’t like.” Brooke was back to making conversation. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world coming from her, like she didn’t normally roll her eyes at me eight million times a day. And that was when I realized something.

Brooke and I weren’t hanging out. Brooke’s cover was hanging out with my cover. We were supposed to be friends, just two girls chilling on a bench, eating ice cream and talking about boys and shopping and the girls on our metaphorical hit lists. So that’s what Brooke was doing, and she was doing it well.

Two could play that game.

“Hayley Hoffman,” I said. “Her JV mafia. Chip. Mr. Corkin.” I decided to stop listing people, lest I appear to be the angry girl she already viewed me as.

“Hayley’s not that bad,” Brooke said.

“If by ‘not that bad,’ you mean ‘unholy spawn of evil,’ then, yeah.”

“I mean, yes, she’s kind of a bitch, but there are worse things to be. She wants things, and she goes after them. People follow her.”

“So tell me. Are we talking about you or Hayley?”

Brooke snorted. “You’ve been spending way too much time with Zee. And we’re talking about Hayley. If we were talking about me, we’d be using words like fabulous.”

Even as we talked, Brooke’s fingers raced across her keypad. She had an uncanny ability to text without looking, and to carry on a conversation with me, whilst listening to reports from the other four teams, issuing orders, and keeping an eye on Peyton, all at once.

Personally, I was struggling with eating ice cream and watching the building across the street.

“Get your phone.”

It took me a second to realize that Brooke was talking to me, even though there wasn’t anyone else around. I dug my phone out of my purse.

“You know that guy you like?” she prodded.