“Ix-nay on the ane-Bay,” twin-on-the-left said. I got the feeling that this was as close to speaking in code as she could come. “Split ends much?”

“Tiffany,” Brooke said, her voice surprisingly patient, “we can’t rule out a candidate because of split ends.”

Immediately, twin-on-the-right (who my advanced powers of deduction told me was Brittany) jumped to her sister’s defense. “We already have to deal with her.” Brittany jerked her head toward me. “If we take another neg-soc on, people are going to start getting suspicious.”

“Neg-soc?”

Zee had the decency to look slightly embarrassed. “Despite your special skills,” she said delicately, “you have what we refer to as a…uhhh…a negative social index.”

All things considered, that was probably putting it mildly.

“Okay,” Brooke said. “Bane is out.”

If Brooke’s “we save lives” spiel was to be taken seriously, we were deciding in whose hands we should place the fate of the free world, and a candidate had just been eliminated because of split ends.

“I think we should kick out Hayley Hoffman,” I said, taking a stand. The others looked at me, and I improvised.

“Her bitquo is too high, and we’re already at capacity.”

“Bitquo?” Tara might have been fighting back a smile as she spoke. It was hard to tell.

I looked at Brittany (also known as Miss We-Already-Have-to-Deal-with-Toby-the-Social-Reject) as I answered. “Bitch quotient.”

Needless to say, that comment did not go over terribly well.

“Hayley’s a strong applicant,” Chloe informed me tersely.

“Her social index is in our ideal range, she’s a solid athlete, a leader, and she lies outstandingly well.”

“So Hoffman stays on the list,” Brooke said, not even giving me time to come up with another clever retort.

“What about Courtney Apex?”

She zoomed in on Courtney’s picture, and I recognized her as Bayport High’s own pseudoprominent cosmetics model.

“She’s afraid of fire,” Lucy said, wrinkling her nose. Apparently, to the too-cheerful (no pun intended) explosives expert, that was a cardinal sin.

“And she may be somewhat recognizable from that toothpaste ad,” Tara added.

“I like her,” Brittany said firmly. “Good bone structure.”

Bubbles shook her head. “Too tall,” she said. “I mean, can you imagine having to toss her over a security wall?”

“Apex is out.” Brooke made the decision, and no one questioned it. “What about Kiki McCall and April Manning?”

For the first time in my life, I found myself cheering for April Manning, Hayley’s second-in-command. Anyone (or, for that matter, anything) was better than Hayley Hoffman.

“April is solid,” Zee said, slipping back into profiler mode. “She’s not as aggressive as Hayley and often lets her take the reins, but doesn’t show any signs of allowing herself to be manipulated. As far as I can tell, she doesn’t have any kind of inferiority complex….”

Like that was a problem among the pretty and popular.

“Her body language is very controlled, and most of her actions seem highly strategic. She’s ambitious, but doesn’t have anything to prove.” Zee grinned. “Plus her dad’s totally loaded, even by Bayport standards, and she throws killer parties.”

“And Kiki?” Chloe asked.

“Obedient,” Zee replied immediately. “She’s the only child of an overinvolved mother and a somewhat distant father, leaving her desperate to please on both accounts. We may be able to use the obedience to our advantage if we can coerce her into aligning her loyalties with us, but I can’t guarantee it.”

Brooke frowned. “She is a legacy.”

Legacy? Did that mean what I thought it meant?

The others were silent for a long stretch of time, and then Chloe spoke. “Kiki’s out,” she said. “She’s got to be. Are we really willing to risk a people pleaser just because her mom was on a Squad back in the day?” Chloe’s voice hardened. “She’s only passably coordinated, she’s had private lessons out the wazoo and she still can’t tumble, and, correct me if I’m wrong, despite the fact that she was practically raised for it, she has no special skills whatsoever.”

Brooke held Chloe’s gaze for an uncomfortably long time. I might not have been the profiler here, but I was sensing some tension between the captain and Number Two.

Chloe looked away first, and then and only then did Brooke continue. “Zee?”

“I’d say out, Brooke,” Zee said, almost apologetically.

“Out,” Tara echoed.

“Out,” Brittany and Tiffany said in one voice.

Bubbles and Lucy shrugged.

“Out,” Brooke said finally. “So we’re down to April or Hayley.”

I was about to raise my bitquo argument again when Tara spoke. “Special skills?”

Brooke tapped the arm of her chair, and the girls’ files appeared on the screen behind her. “Both have been in the program since the sixth grade,” she said. “Both are exceptional cheerleaders. Our screenings suggest that Hayley has some aptitude for mountaineering…”

Hayley Hoffman? Mountaineering? Where did they get this stuff?

“…and April is surprisingly good at picking locks.”

“Lock picking,” I said loudly. “Well, that settles it. April’s our girl.”

Anyone but Hayley.

“We haven’t had a climber in a while,” Chloe said slowly.

Climber. Mountains. Hayley.

“This may have escaped your notice,” I said in the calmest voice I could muster, “but Hayley is evil.” The others stared at me. “I know, I know—evil and cheerleading kind of go hand in hand….”

I was getting off track here, and I wasn’t winning any friends.

“But we’re talking about saving the world here, and a person like Hayley? All she cares about is saving herself.” I paused. “Plus she hates me, and as much as that doesn’t hurt my feelings…” I scoffed at the very idea! “…it just wouldn’t be good for Squad morale.”

Silence.

“Uhhh…go team?”

Brooke rolled her eyes, but then she shrugged. “April?” she asked the others.

One by one, they agreed, except for Chloe, who probably wanted to pad the Squad with a few more people who shared her thirst for my blood.

“April’s in,” Brooke said, not sparing Chloe a second glance. “I’ll pass our official recommendation on to my superior, and with any luck, we’ll be cleared to extend April an invitation to join the Squad this afternoon.”

Upon hearing this, I was both surprised and incredibly relieved. The surprise came because I never thought I’d live to see the day when Queen Brooke referred to anyone as her superior. And the relief? That came because if Brooke had superiors who had to approve her recommendations for Squad acceptance, that meant that the fate of the free world wasn’t entirely in the hands of my high school’s varsity cheerleaders.

Brooke cleared her throat and tossed her ponytail over her other shoulder. “Next order of business,” she said. “The president called. There’s been another leak.”

CHAPTER 7

Code Word: Thong

“Three minutes until our holos expire. That means T-minus eighteen until showtime, people.”

I stared at Brooke. It was funny—she said these things like I was supposed to have some earthly idea what she was talking about, which I most definitely did not. Between the whole “holo” thing and the half hour I’d just spent listening to a rundown on what appeared to be an information leak from the Pentagon/CIA (not me, I swear), I was more clueless than Alicia Silverstone in the title role.

“Can you do anything with her in eighteen minutes?” Brooke’s question was directed at the twins, and it was all too clear to me that I was the “her” in question.

Please God, I thought, let the answer to that question be no.