“I just needed a ride,” I said. “April’s coming to pick me up.”

“Good,” Zee replied. “You two haven’t spent much time together.”

She sounded like some kind of twisted matchmaker. I was about to hang up, but just as April’s car pulled into view, I remembered that there was one thing about the conversation with Brooke’s mom that was still bothering me.

“Zee? What’s Brooke’s deal with guns?”

Zee didn’t answer, which caught me off guard. Zee always had an answer.

“Zee?”

“You don’t want to know,” she said, “and if you do, look it up yourself. There’s an information superhighway out there, and you’re the web equivalent of a biker babe.”

I just loved crappy metaphors.

“Tell April hi for me,” Zee chirped, and then she hung up.

I climbed into April’s car, and at that moment, all I wanted was to be at home.

“Where to?” April asked.

“The school. I need to pick up my car.”

April nodded and flipped on her stereo. I listened to the music for a few minutes and nodded my approval.

“Not bad,” I said. It wasn’t exactly good music, but compared to the crap the rest of the girls listened to, it wasn’t horrible.

God, how could I even think about music right now? What was wrong with me that I could do what I’d just done and know what I knew and just sit here, in April’s car, like this was normal? Maybe, after a while, you get so used to living a double life (or in my case, given the whole popularity thing, maybe a triple one) that it just comes naturally to shut off one part of the brain and boot up another.

“That’s the thing about me,” April said lightly, unaware of the serious turn my thoughts had taken. “I’m really not that bad. I’m not a bad person. I’m a good cheerleader, and even if I’m not as good at the secret-agent thing yet, I’m picking it up.”

Apparently, the story about my bombed mission hadn’t circulated yet, because April thought I was good at this.

“I know you think it’s kind of weird that I just ditched Hayley once I made varsity,” April said. “And I know that you and I were never friends before all of this.”

Understatement.

“But the thing is, Hayley and I weren’t really friends, either. I didn’t ditch her. I transcended her, and the only thing she misses is having someone to boss around.”

“She has someone to boss around,” I said. “Kiki…” I searched for Kiki’s last name, reminding myself that she was the PTA president’s daughter.

“McCall,” April provided. The light turned green, and April accelerated.

After that, I expected the conversation to go somewhere. April certainly seemed on the verge of spilling her Poor Little Rich Girl heart, but she didn’t. Instead, she just said, “I don’t mind not having friends, but I like having you guys. Does that make sense?”

Oddly enough, it did. Especially now.

Ten minutes later, when April pulled up to the school, I realized that I didn’t find her company totally abhorrent, which was probably a good thing. Barring any deadly explosions, the two of us were going to be around each other pretty much constantly for the next three years. Eventually, I was going to have to see her as someone other than Hayley’s former sidekick.

“Thanks for the ride.” Things weren’t exactly getting less awkward as time went on, but at least they weren’t getting any worse.

“Anytime,” April replied. “Have to get in plenty of practice before I turn sixteen.”

Her sense of logic was a beautiful thing.

“Hey, April,” I called as I got out of the car. “Do me a favor?”

“Depends on the favor.”

At least she was honest.

“You know that whole homecoming princess thing?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Please win it.”

She grinned. “Done.”

I walked toward my car and was surprised to see Noah sitting on the hood.

“Wasn’t someone supposed to give you a ride home?” I asked. Noah ignored the question.

“Which one was that?”

“Which one was what?”

“Toby, a cheerleader just came within a hundred yards of my person, and I didn’t notice until it was too late. This is a very serious matter.” It was hard to take Noah seriously when he had that goofy, puppy dog smile on his face.

“It was April,” I said, “and she’s not interested.”

Noah rolled his eyes. “That’s what you always say.”

I thumped him in the shoulder. “It’s always true.” I walked past him and opened the driver’s side door. “Get in the car.”

By the time we got home, Noah had actually managed to distract me from thoughts of our failed mission, the weapon that Peyton would probably sell to the highest bidder if the Big Guys didn’t stop them first, and the conversation I’d just had with April in the car.

The only thing I couldn’t stop thinking about was Brooke’s mother, and as soon as we got home, I went to join my own in the kitchen.

“Want to help make the salad?” my mom asked, not commenting on the fact that I was home early for the second time this week.

I shrugged. “Sure.”

She handed me a knife, and I began chopping up lettuce.

“You’re thinking about something,” my mom said. It was a simple comment, and she left it up to me if I wanted to share what I was thinking. No pressure, no wheedling. That was my mother.

“I went over to our captain’s house today after school,” I said. “Her mom was a little…” I decided to go with Zee’s word of choice. “Intense.”

“An intense cheerleading mom?” my mom feigned shock. “Never.”

“You’re not surprised,” I concluded.

“When you were little,” my mom said, handing me some carrots and peppers to go in with the lettuce, “there was a big scandal about this mother in Texas whose daughter hadn’t made the cheerleading squad. She was so upset about it that she took matters into her own hands.”

“Complained to the school board?” I guessed.

“No,” my mom said, sliding the salad dressing down the counter. “She hired a hit man to take out one of the other girls.”

“Seriously?”

My mom nodded. “Seriously. It made national news. So if your friend’s mom is a little intense, well…it’s an intense sport, Toby.”

The fact that she’d called it a sport didn’t go unnoticed. I thought about the fact that we were going to be actually practicing tomorrow morning, and that instead of finishing up a case and safeguarding the world, we’d be flipping and flying and doing all kinds of motions that would inevitably make my armpits hurt.

That was the thing about cheerleading. The jumps were torture on your leg muscles, and the conditioning could be hell, but at the end of the day, your armpits were always sore. Or maybe that was just me.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks for not being a crazy cheer mom.”

“No problem.” My mother paused. “Though in fairness to all of those mothers out there who are only partially crazy, I did enroll you in martial arts classes when you were really young, and that world can be just as competitive.”

My mom was a karate instructor, and she was right—I’d been kicking butt for as long as I’d been walking.

“But you weren’t…intense about it,” I said, choosing my words carefully again. She’d never forced me into competitions. She’d never looked at me and said “Oh, Toby” in that put-upon way.

More importantly, she didn’t give a rat’s bum about homecoming. Thinking of homecoming reminded me of something.

“By the way,” I said conversationally, “I should probably tell you that if Noah stages one more publicity stunt on my behalf, I am going to hurt him.”

“What did he do?” my mother asked.

I gave her the grand total for the past couple of days.