“That is like so fab.” The girl didn’t pause a second before plowing on. “So is it true that Jack Peyton is going to ask you to homecoming during the pep rally?”

“WHAT?” I’m not sure whether my response was a yelp or a yell, but whatever it was, it was loud.

“Miss Klein!” Mr. Corkin was not pleased, but I wasn’t exactly in a state of mind to care.

“Would you mind terribly,” he said tartly, “if I asked you to save your conversations, as stimulating as I’m sure they must be, for after class?”

“Not at all,” I said through gritted teeth. I had bigger problems than Corkin, like the fact that the words Jack and homecoming had just been used in the same sentence. I wasn’t going to homecoming, and I certainly wasn’t going with Jack.

No way. No how.

Completely oblivious to the nature of the thoughts beating against the inside of my skull, Mr. Corkin smirked, pleased that I’d backed down for the second time in one day. And just like that, something inside of me snapped. I needed out of this class and away from the rumor mill. Most of all, I needed to wipe the cocky expression right off his history teacher face.

“Mr. Corkin?” I said, pitching my voice to mimic his exactly. “Would you mind terribly if I asked you to KISS MY—”

“Miss Klein!”

Fifteen seconds later, the smirk had been firmly wiped off of Corkin’s face, I was on my way to the vice-principal’s office, and the rumor mill was effectively five thousand miles away.

All in all, I was pleased.

CHAPTER 4

Code Word: Detention

The vice-principal was not nearly as pleased with my performance in history class as I was.

“You’ve been doing so well,” he told me. “I really thought the other girls were rubbing off on you. None of your teachers have complained, and you’ve only been sent to my office a handful of times.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell Mr. Jacobson that the fact that I’d stayed out of trouble had less to do with the way that I’d changed and more to do with the fact that the way people treated me had changed. In the P.S. (pre-Squad) period, I’d primarily gotten into trouble for mouthing off and for beating up football players who richly deserved it, including, but not limited to, those who threatened the life of my little brother. Now the football players didn’t mess with me. It was funny, they’d never been scared of the fact that I could take any of them at any time, but now that I was one of those girls, all it took was a warning look, and they left Noah alone.

I had to wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that being beat up by the loner girl wasn’t anywhere near as humiliating as being beat up by a cheerleader. In all likelihood, it was probably more closely related to the fact that the collective feminine wiles of the Squad kept the boys at this school firmly under our (and I include myself in this group loosely) thumbs.

As for mouthing off, maybe I had changed. Not for the reasons that Mr. J thought, but maybe I’d stopped being quite so openly rebellious once I’d started to learn to keep my real thoughts and feelings (and, in some cases, my real identity) hidden behind whatever cover I was assigned.

I frowned. The idea was, to say the least, disturbing.

“I haven’t changed,” I told Mr. J. If I had, I certainly hadn’t meant to.

“Toby, you cannot tell a teacher to…ahem”—Mr. J consulted the slip of paper Corkin had sent with me to the office—“kiss your posterior region. I expect you to show all of your teachers, even the ones you don’t like, a certain amount of respect.”

Given that this was high school, no one concerned themselves with whether or not Mr. Corkin gave me the same courtesy. Even if I’d arrived to class on time and kept my mouth shut, he would have found something to say to me. He’d hated me at first glance, judged the proverbial book by the cover, and despite the fact that the cover had since changed, his attitude toward me hadn’t. He restrained himself from being too openly nasty, lest he incur the wrath of the administration, the PTA, and whoever else the Squad had in its pocket, but he still hated me.

And I had no respect for him.

I opened my mouth to explain this, perhaps explicitly, but Mr. J cut me off.

“I know,” he said, “and believe me when I say that I don’t think you’re entirely to blame for this situation, but we still need to do something about it.”

The poor guy looked so torn. I blame the cheerleading uniform. He just couldn’t give detention to a girl who had BHS emblazoned across her chest.

“I should give you detention,” he said, sounding for all the world like a kid faced with eating the most dreaded of vegetables, “but I know how hard you girls have been working lately to get ready for the big game against Hillside this weekend, and I can only imagine how much stress you’ve been under.”

The sad thing was, Mr. J didn’t know about the true nature of the Squad. He really thought we were just cheerleaders, and this was the way he treated us. I can only conclude that he had some kind of mental illness or childhood trauma that gave him an incredible soft spot for all things cheerleadery. I made a mental note to ask Zee about it, and the moment I did, I started to wonder if the government had anything to do with the fact that the vice-principal at Bayport High had a weakness for cheerleaders. It would be just like the Guys Upstairs to handpick a vice-principal guaranteed to allow us to do whatever we wanted, or, more to the point, needed to do.

“If this happens again, Toby, we’ll have to have a very serious talk.”

He couldn’t even bring himself to really properly threaten me, and this from a guy who’d never had trouble chewing me up and spitting me out before I’d ascended to the top of the social echelon.

“Just give me detention,” I grumbled. I’d hated the favoritism at this school before I’d been a cheerleader, and I wasn’t all that fond of it now.

“Toby, I would never ask you to skip the pep rally this afternoon over something as mild as a disagreement with a teacher.” Mr. J looked shocked at the mere suggestion, as if he hadn’t told me how serious my behavior was moments before.

“The pep rally,” I repeated, and then the image of Jack watching as I jumped up and down and cheered my butt off popped into my head, followed directly by the words that had driven me here in the first place.

So is it true that Jack Peyton is going to ask you to homecoming during the pep rally?

“Go ahead,” I told Mr. J. “Ask me to skip the pep rally. Please.”

It would solve almost all of my problems. I wouldn’t have to take the final step in my transformation to cheerleaderdom, I could successfully avoid Jack and any questions he may or may not have been planning to ask me that afternoon, and being in detention might even make me feel a little more like my old self. It didn’t resolve the body glitter situation, but all things considered, that was probably hoping for too much.

“Toby, Friday is homecoming. It’s a big game, and a big dance, and this pep rally is the start of it all. The nominations for homecoming court will be announced. I can’t let you miss that.”

“Sure you can,” I encouraged, trying to keep the hopeful expression off my face. “I did a very bad thing. I deserve to be punished. No pep rally for me.”

“No,” Mr. J argued. “You didn’t do anything. Not really, Toby. We both know how Mr. Corkin can be. I’ll be sure to talk to him about his attitude toward you.”

I’d seriously had dreams like this before. Corkin sending me to the office only to get his butt chewed out? It was priceless. It was not, however, necessary, and avoiding the pep rally was. There was no way I could just play hooky. The Squad didn’t work like that, and neither did I. But if Mr. J told me I couldn’t go…

“It really wasn’t Mr. Corkin’s fault.” I practically choked on the words, but I said them. “I have an attitude problem. I have no respect for authority.”

I could tell just by looking at him that Mr. J wasn’t buying it. He’d somehow rewritten history so that I was the victim here, and nothing I could say or do would convince him otherwise.