DOES NO ONE BUT ME REALIZE HOW BAD THIS IS?

“Dance with him, Toby,” the twins ordered, and then they were dancing—with my brother.

“Hey, Tobe,” Noah said. “Looks like you’re naked, huh?”

I tried to cover myself—I grabbed at papers and books and tried to position my hands to cover the worst of it, but there was no hope.

“Dance with me.”

“Dance with him.”

“Dance with him.”

I DON’T WANT TO FRIGGING DANCE WITH ANYBODY! I WANT TO WEAR CLOTHES!

“Here,” Lucy whispered. “Put this on.”

Gratefully, I grabbed the clothes she shoved at me, but they disintegrated in my hands until all I was holding was a tiny silver tiara.

And then we weren’t in the Quad anymore, and I was wearing clothes and Jack and I were dancing.

“What’s that on your head?” he asked.

I reached up and tore the tiara out of my hair. I threw it to the ground, and when it hit, it burst into a million microscopic pieces, and all of a sudden, the pieces were crawling and moving and growing smaller by the second until they were invisible to the naked eye.

I could feel them on my skin, then, burrowing in.

My lungs stopped working. I lost all feeling in my legs. And for some godforsaken reason, Brooke’s mother was making out with Mr. J in the corner, and Paris Hilton was standing there, watching.

My body was giving out, my face was contorting, and the last thing I heard before darkness seeped over my mind was a lisping “That’s hot.”

I bolted straight up and, my mind still all cloudy with unwanted images, I tried to assess the situation. I was lying in bed, fully clothed, it was pitch-black outside, and my necklace had gotten tangled up in my hair as I’d slept. It took me a few seconds to remember why I was sleeping in my clothes. I’d been so busy following the “rules” and NOT calling in my encounter with Amelia Juarez that I hadn’t bothered with pajamas, and in the midst of my ceiling staring, I must have fallen asleep.

I blinked several times, trying to get the image of Brooke’s mom and Mr. J out of my head. This was one of those times when I was severely glad that my dreams weren’t prophetic, because ew. And also, the whole naked dreams thing was really starting to get to me. And Jack in the Quad? Hopefully, my subconscious wasn’t trying to tell me anything with that one. I was also somewhat disturbed by the fact that in the past two days, Ryan Seacrest and Paris Hilton had both made cameos in my dreams. Before I’d joined the Squad, I hadn’t even known who either of them was, and I would have preferred to wipe their existence on this planet from my consciousness altogether.

Groggily, I stumbled out of bed and across the room to my computer. I hit a few keys to wake it up, and then typed in my log-on password, wondering if anyone had discovered my previous night’s hacking yet.

I had my answer soon enough. My remote access to the Squad mainframe had timed out, and all of that information was gone, but the files I’d gotten from the Big Guys’ computers were still there, exactly where I’d left them. Slowly and as meticulously as I could, given the fact that it was the middle of the night and I was still half-asleep, I deleted the files from my hard drive one by one, erasing any evidence that they’d ever been here.

I’d hacked into the Big Guys’ database to find Amelia Juarez, and instead, she’d found me. I didn’t need their files. I didn’t need their help. All I needed was the rest of the Squad with me at Walford Park by three o’clock today. Together, the ten of us were a match for anyone. Amelia Juarez wanted competition?

We’d give her competition.

I shut down my computer, careful to disconnect it from the internet first. If the Big Guys hadn’t realized I’d hacked them and hadn’t hacked into my system to see what I knew, I wasn’t going to give them the excuse or opportunity to do so from here on out.

I looked at my watch and then back at my bed and groaned. Five-thirty in the morning was going to come really early. And yet, with the way my throat was burning with secrets I couldn’t tell until morning, there was a good chance that it just wouldn’t come early enough. I climbed back into bed, and as I closed my eyes and pulled my pillow to the side, I spent a few seconds hoping that my subconscious didn’t have anything else in store for me, and then I floated back off into a peaceful, dreamless sleep.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

Unlike most mornings, I didn’t bother cursing or slapping at my alarm. I picked it up and threw it against my wall. Hard. I smiled sadistically when it broke into three large pieces and several tinier ones.

Feeling somewhat vindicated, I climbed out of bed and headed directly for the shower. Most of the time, I showered at night, but I could tell already that this morning, coffee wasn’t going to be enough to wake me up and prepare me for the day. Somehow, I didn’t think Brooke was going to take everything I had to tell her very well.

I stripped off my clothes and stepped into the shower. I turned on the water and basked in the heat and steam and wonderfulness of it for a few minutes before my mind came fully online and I started making a game plan for today.

I needed to tell the others everything Amelia had told me. I needed to tell them about Anthony’s plans, and about the fact that none of the TCIs were responsible for killing Jacob Kann. I needed to tell them about Amelia’s challenge and the fact that our entire program was riding on our ability to win. More importantly, I needed to convince them to play by Amelia’s rules, because they hadn’t seen her the night before; I had, and I was one hundred percent positive that she wasn’t bluffing. If we told the Big Guys what was going on, if we didn’t show up this afternoon or if we brought any kind of backup with us when we did, she would expose us to Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray, and the Squad as we knew it would be over.

I could not imagine this discussion going particularly well. As I tried to figure out the best way of framing my proposition for the others, I finished scrubbing up, and noticed—with no little amount of annoyance—that there was still blue glitter on my chest. I attacked it with a nearby bottle of shower gel, and every time I thought I’d gotten it all, I’d shift positions, and light would dance off my skin in a new way.

Darn the twins and their stupid G.A.

After a few minutes, I gave up and turned off the water. I towel-dried off and absentmindedly scratched at my left shoulder, which was itching like crazy. I made a mental note to ask the twins what exactly they put in my Squad-issued shower gel. As a general rule, I tried to avoid using it and usually managed to shower using my own contraband bar soap, which I’d hidden before the twins’ last visit so that they couldn’t confiscate it, but this morning, I’d been too busy thinking—about my theory and about the glitter—to pay attention to the fact that I was using the gel.

“Okay,” I muttered. “Time to wake up.”

I wrapped a towel around my body and stumbled back to my room and into some clothing—a pair of low-rise designer jeans with rhinestones on the butt and legs, and a blue silk camisole top. I looked at my shoes and spent a few moments mourning the loss of any and all pairs of comfortable shoes I had once owned, save for the combat boots I’d managed to save from the wrath of Britt and Tiff.

I stared longingly at my old boots, but ultimately decided that today was not the day to start reclaiming my former identity. Today was about credibility. It was about convincing the others to do what I said. It was about breaking the rules for the right reasons, instead of the wrong ones. It was about the ten of us doing what had to be done.

With a wince, I threw on a pair of blue knee-length boots that matched the camisole, and then I grabbed my papers and began to stuff them into my schoolbag. Deciding that leaving sensitive information in with my math and English books probably wasn’t a good idea, I rummaged around my room, found the Squad history book that I’d been meaning to give back to Lucy since she’d given it to me, and stuffed the papers inside, before sticking the book in my bag and heading out the door.

I was halfway to practice before I realized I’d forgotten my coffee. This did not bode well for my future. At all.

“You’re late.” Brooke greeted me with two words the second I walked into the gym. She was a creature of repetition.