chapter 6
On the way to school, I debated about asking Leona to take me back home, but ultimately, I knew I’d have to face judgment. And honestly, I thought I could turn it all around. Like a basketball-game comeback! Those were so inspiring!
Unfortunately, Blaze Harmon had been right. The school was less than thrilled when we showed. Even with my adorable crutches and decorated cast (sparkles really did cheer anything up) our peers were not friendly. None of them even asked about my ankle.
In fact, in the halls, I got called the B word, the D word, and even the C word. One person used a p-word, but I think it was in Spanish.
“Oh, thank God,” Kira said, running up as Leona, Izzie, and I stepped into the school hallway. Her eye makeup had been wiped clean, leaving her eyes naked and red. It made me uneasy seeing her so disheveled. It reminded me of the way she looked when she was the copy-Kitten. Kira met my eyes. “We’re getting slaughtered, Tess. Someone even trashed my locker.”
I gasped. “Vandalism?” Those were repercussions I hadn’t anticipated. It might be best if we took the bus for the next few weeks so that our cars didn’t get keyed.
“Cheerleading spies,” someone said, and I turned to see Stuart French sneering at us from across the lockers. “Who knew they were smart enough to use a camera?” He and his buddies laughed, but I straightened my posture.
“I’ll have you know,” I pointed a finger at him, “that I am an A student and member of the honor society.”
“Ooh …” he mocked.
I narrowed my eyes. Leona stepped up in front of me. “Well,” she said to him, “we were smart enough to figure out that when you were trying to date Magdalena Garza, you were stuffing a sock into your tighty whities so she’d think you were well-endowed. But just between us”—Leona shrugged—“I think she was disappointed. Because after you guys hooked up, she totally researched the internet for how to increase a man’s size. Hope she gave you some good tips.” She smiled and grabbed my arm, helping me crutch down the hall.
“Normally, I would scold you for that,” I started to say. “But right now, I think we need your moxy.”
“We sure as hell do.”
“Nice cast, by the way,” Kira said offhandedly as she fell into step next to us. I looked sideways at her.
“Thanks.”
“Whatever.”
Just then Chris Townsend walked around the corner, nearly crashing into us. Since breaking up with Leona last night, he looked a bit under the weather. His button-down shirt was wrinkled; his blond hair was messy. I was sure he was nursing a broken heart.
“Bitch,” he spit at Leona as he stomped past. I gasped.
“Pig!” she called back, barely able to control her rage.
Okay, so maybe his heart wasn’t that broken. Glad I didn’t mention it out loud.
Once Chris was out of sight, Leona cleared her throat and then moved forward, busting us into the girls’ bathroom. Izzie promptly shut and locked the door. “It’s a catastrophe,” Leona said, not bringing up the altercation with her ex. “This is a level-one alert. We might need to call someone in to help us.”
“Mary Rudick?” Izzie asked, and I felt my entire body tense. I dug my nails into the wood of my crutch.
Leona glanced over at me. “Um, no. That’s not a great idea. But I’ll look into other options. Maybe there’s a PR firm that helps out people with ruined reps or something.”
Kira laughed.
“What?” Leona asked.
Kira walked toward the sinks. She shook her head and then went through her purse as she studied her reflection. “No one can help us at this point,” she said. “We’re ten feet under.”
“Six feet under,” I corrected. She caught my gaze in the mirror.
“We’re buried way deeper than that.”
Good point. I turned to Leona. “So how widespread is the damage?”
“Facebook,” Leona started, clicking through her phone. “Twitter, MySpace, and I suspect we’ll hear from the main office any second now.”
Kira exhaled and patted under her eyes with concealer. Then she applied lip gloss before putting her purse aside and resting her palms on the side of the porcelain sink. “Even when I was in charge, nothing like this got out.” She looked over at me, her face finally registering how scared she was. “How did they find out?”
“Maybe the football players found out from an ex-client?” Izzie offered.
“No,” I said. “We’ve been there before. Our clients don’t know our true identities. This had to be an inside job.”
“Ahem,” Leona said, nodding her chin at Kira before getting out her small notebook and flipping through the pages.
“Don’t blame me,” Kira snapped, spinning to face her.
“Oh, yeah. Because you sabotaging us would be so out of the ordinary.”
“I was trying to help!” Kira shouted. “And it would have worked if—”
I held up my hands. “Stop. We don’t have time for this.” I wasn’t going to argue again. Kira and I had been going back and forth via e-mail for weeks. She refused to see the error of her ways (secretly restarting an organization filled with vengeance), and I refused to admit that I stole her boyfriend. (Because I didn’t. They were broken up for almost two weeks before Joel and I admitted that we liked each other. That wasn’t stealing. Really.)
“Now,” I continued. “I don’t think it was a Kitten. This stunt has ruined us all.” I tapped my finger on my bottom lip. “Leona, who is on the suspect list, so far?”
She licked her index finger and flipped through her pages. “Okay, first up is Aiden.”
“Interesting,” Kira said immediately.
I clenched my jaw but didn’t say anything. I looked over to see Izzie supportively smile at me. I appreciated that. “Next.”
“Chloe.”
“Ah, of course.” Kira snorted.
“What?”
“Nothing, Tess. It’s just that anytime something is even slightly wrong, you blame Chloe.”
“She hit me—”
“—in the head with an alarm clock,” Kira finished with a smirk. “We know. But it doesn’t mean she would destroy the entire squad. Not everyone is after you.”
Leona laughed. “Except for maybe you.”
“Shut up. I told you I’m over that. Tessa and I have an understanding. We—”
“Hold up,” Leona said, picking up the SOS phone and scrolling through a message. “This may sound crazy, but we just got a cheater request.”
“Is it from the hockey team this time?” Kira rolled her eyes.
“No. It’s from Janet Springer. She thinks Garrett Bash is cheating on her.”
“Really?” I shifted on my crutches. Although I should be surprised that anyone would ask for our services right now, I immediately slipped back into spy mode. “Any suspects? I know he’s best friends with Stacy Sadera.”
“Best friends. Right.” Kira burst out laughing. “We’re not in fifth grade anymore, Tess. Boys and girls don’t stay best friends for two years and travel together for a band unless they’re hooking up. They are totally sneak-dating.”
“No way,” Leona scoffed. “Stacy said he’s like a brother to her.”
“Ew, only if she makes out with her brother regularly behind the band-room Dumpster! I’ve heard rumors.”
“Gross,” Leona, Izzie, and I said at the same time.
“That’s awful,” Izzie continued, pulling her red hair into her hands, tugging on it absentmindedly. “Why pretend that they’re best friends?”
Kira scrunched her nose as if she weren’t comfortable thinking about it. “I’m guessing he wants to keep the relationship quiet. Maybe to not hurt Janet, or maybe because he’s got lots of friends.”
“I buy it,” I said. “Our Naughty List tips have never been wrong, have they?”
“Well,” Leona interjected, “unless you count the fake out with Blaze Harmon.”
Hm. “I don’t think that should tally into our results. All real inquiries have been one hundred percent. Sort of.” Unless you counted Aiden, but again, he was a setup.
“So …” Izzie dropped her hands, looking confused. “Does that mean we’re still spying?”
We all paused and looked at her, sort of unsure how to answer the question. I mean, we were outed now. It would be a lot more difficult to sneak around.
“I think we need a temporary hold,” Leona said. “We’ve got a lot of damage to assess.”
“But what about Janet?” Izzie squeaked. “She needs our help! What if Garrett is a cheating jerk face!” I thought she might cry.
“Izzie, not everyone can be helped,” Kira said, walking to put her arm around her. “Cheerleaders can’t save the world.”
I watched them murmur disappointed statements to each other, looking beat. Looking defeated. But all I could see were some pumped-up unicorns.
“We won’t fail the brokenhearted of Washington High,” I said, my captain’s voice stern and strong, despite the throbbing in my ankle. “The boys may have ruined our cheerleading reputations, but they can’t tarnish SOS. Not when we’ve caught their cheating rears more times than I can count.” Adrenaline began to pump through my veins as I got more involved with our cause. Our sense of justice.
“SOS was never created to make us popular. Or well-liked. We had a mission: to save the tenderhearted girls from their underhanded, cheating boyfriends. And that is exactly what we’ve done for the past three years. Have we broken the law a few times? Sure. But was it with good intentions? Yes. And that’s why it wasn’t illegal.”
The girls nodded at me, determination on their faces.
“And I refuse to give up on our school just because a couple of jocks have decided that us calling them out on their dastardly deeds jeopardizes their cheating ways. We’re here for the innocents. And I say … we fight.”
“Fight,” Leona repeated, a smile perched on her red lips.
“It won’t be easy. Our undercover work is now at ninja status. People know who we are; they’ll be watching for us.” I grinned. “But they’ve never seen a Kitten on the prowl. We can be pretty stealthy when we want.”
“Like that time I hid in Kona Birch’s kitchen cabinet? He was so busted.” Kira beamed.
“Exactly.” I pointed to her and felt all the girls get on board my cheater-catching train. “We are cheerleaders. We are spies. It’s who we are. If we give up on womankind just because some boys are intimidating us, they win. And we don’t give up that easily.”
“I’m texting Janet right now,” Leona said. “We’re going to catch that wormy bastard in the act. He won’t know what hit him.”
“Language,” I murmured.
“Oops. Sorry. I’ve just been listening to so much cussing on my voice mail it’s, like, second nature.”
“Yeah. But we should—”
There was a crackling noise above us, and we looked toward the speaker in the corner. “Can I have your attention please?”
I gulped. It was Principal Pelli.
“I need to see the cheerleading squad in my office. Now. Thank you and sorry for the interruption.”
“Uh-oh,” Izzie muttered. “I’d better use the bathroom first.”
We were French toast.
“Spying?” The principal stood up at his desk while we crowded around it. Leona, Kira, Izzie, and I took the available seats while the rest of the girls sat cross-legged on the floor. We were going to get royally scolded.
“Sir—”
“Save it, Miss Crimson. Coach Taylor wants you off his field, and I’m inclined to agree.”
“You can’t!” I sat up straighter, and my crutch fell forward, smacking against his desk. “This school needs its spirit, Mr. Pelli. Don’t punish the entire student body for our mistake.”
“This wasn’t a small mistake. This was a felony!”
Izzie squeaked from the chair at the end of his desk. “I don’t want to go to jail,” she murmured, looking at me with frightened eyes.
“And what about ESPN?” I asked the principal, glancing back at him. “Who’s going to fill the stadium?”
He laughed as if I’d made a joke. “And what? Do you think the students will come to see you? I’ve already gotten seven threats on my voice mail this morning. People are threatening to sue! They want reparations for the pain and suffering you’ve inflicted. Stuart French is asking for two million dollars!”
“I can’t pay that,” Izzie whined. “I’ll have to sell my car!” I held up my hand, telling her to calm down. There had to be a way out of this.
“Sir, there has to be something you can do. ESPN will bring in great PR for the school, and besides that, some of us were looking to get an athletic scholarship to college.” I paused at this statement. Izzie would have had a scholarship in soccer if she hadn’t gotten cut from the team. Suddenly, keeping the Kittens together became more important. A cheerleading scholarship could be her last chance.
Principal Pelli slammed his hand down on his desk. “You broke into school property, Ms. Crimson!”
“Is there proof?” Leona asked calmly, picking at her fingernails and looking cool as a cucumber salad. I looked sideways at her, alarmed by her question.
“Proof?” The principal’s red face looked as if it were about to explode. In fact, he was turning an unpleasant shade of purple.
“Yes,” Leona continued, looking up at him. “As you know, my father is an attorney, and it all comes down to the burden of proof. What do you have?”
“Witnesses for starters!”
“Really.” She nodded, unimpressed. I felt the twitch of a smile. Leona was going to make a fabulous defense attorney one of these days. “You have … who? Blaze and Rhett. After all, sir, they were in the field house after hours, too. So … I’m not sure they count as credible. Oh, and there is the small fact that Tessa broke her ankle.” Leona paused for effect. “On school property.”
The principal’s eyes widened. “Are you threatening me?”
“You?” Leona shook her head, looking offended. “You’re taking this awfully personally, sir. Maybe you’re too close to the case.”
“Case?”
Kira snickered on the other side of Leona. I could feel the girls around me begin to untense. Leona was totally saving our hides!
Principal Pelli sat down with a thump in his leather chair. Kira laughed again. “This can’t go unpunished,” he said defiantly, looking around at all of us. Izzie nodded at the end of the desk.
“What do you propose?” Leona asked, leaning forward.
“Three-day suspension.”
“One.” Swedish fish! This girl was good. I’d have to take her to all of my disciplinary meetings.
The principal narrowed his eyes and leaned closer. “Two. Final offer.”
Leona tilted her head from side to side before looking over at me. To be honest, I’d come in her half expecting to be expelled. In the grand scheme, two days wasn’t too bad. I nodded with complete relief and heard everyone sigh.
“Deal. But nothing goes in our file. I’m going to Harvard in the fall.”
“I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to have you,” the principal said sarcastically and scribbled something on a piece of paper. “Fine. Now get out of my office, and just so you know, I’ll be watching you.”
“Uh, creepy,” Kira responded. I laughed.
“Get out!”
We scrambled up (well, I hobbled really) and exited the office, waving to Peggy at the receptionist desk on our way out. I wasn’t sure, but I thought she looked almost proud. Like maybe she understood why we’d done the spying. I liked to think that most of the girls would.
The squad and I gathered in the empty hall outside the office. “Two days,” I said to myself before looking up at them. “That was an amazing feat, Leona. Thank you.”
“No problem. I’m just glad I didn’t have to break out the sexual harassment defense.”
“Me, too,” Izzie added, gasping for breath. “I’m so not feeling sexual right now.”
We stared at her a minute before turning back to each other. “How about the rest of you?” I asked, looking around. “You girls okay?”
Most nodded. A few sniffled. As a whole, the Smitten Kittens were not used to being scolded. We were among the finest students in Washington High! But now, we were delinquents. I was certainly glad this wouldn’t go on our permanent records.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Leona said. “I’m going to find the son of a biscuit that did this to us. Our lives are completely compromised because of some vengeful jerk! Whoever it is, they’ll pay.”
“Okay, Rambo,” Kira said. “Relax a little. We need to do this right.”
“Isn’t Rambo the governor of California?” Melanie, one of the Kittens, asked from the back. She was the exception to the honor-student rule.
“That’s the Terminator,” I said. “And Kira’s right. We need to do this right. If we just go about this wildly, we’ll get ourselves in more trouble. And we don’t want that.”
“I like trouble,” Leona said, her voice tight with anger. Then she exhaled. “But you’re probably right. Sorry, I refuse to say that Kira is right. The words are just unnatural.”
“Shut up,” Kira snapped.
“Squash it, ladies,” I said, adjusting myself on my crutches. “Let’s finish up tryouts and select our new members. We also need to focus on our remaining clients. Are we all in agreement that SOS is still functional?”
I looked around, and all of the girls nodded—some more emphatically than others. Some could barely lift their eyes out of suspension shame.
“Good,” I said. “First things first, now that we’re suspended, we’ll have to move tryouts to my backyard.”
“How about mine? I have more room,” Leona suggested. She was right. Her house was on nearly an acre with a beautifully manicured lawn. Way better than the hillside that I had.
“That’ll be perfect. Now, Izzie,”—I looked at her—“can you contact the candidates and give them the address?”
“Sure.”
“Am I invited?” Kira asked, trying to look as if she didn’t care, but I knew that face. She was feeling left out.
I sighed. Under normal circumstances, I’d freeze Kira out. Let her serve her punishment. But this was certainly not normal, and the fact was, we needed her. “Kira,” I said, carefully putting one crutch after the other to get closer to her. “Will you rejoin the squad and help us?”
Leona gasped, but I heard a few girls in the back clap. Shock crossed Kira’s face, and a smile pulled up the corner of her mouth.
“That would be … lovely,” she said, suddenly realizing that she was still mad at me. “Glad you’ve come to your senses.”
“Uh, hello, Tessa,” Leona said from behind me. “Love how we got to vote on it?”
She may have been right, but I didn’t have time for squad politics. Decisions needed to be made. Captains needed to be strong.
“These are desperate times. We need her,” I said.
“Like a hole in the head,” Leona retorted.
Kira scoffed. “Why would anyone need a hole in their head, idiot?”
Leona looked at me, a told-you-so expression on her face. I shrugged.
“Well, then,” Kira said, stepping in front of me to face the squad. “Since I’m back on the squad, I’d like to propose that we stop tryouts and go straight to a vote.”
The knife was just plunged into my back. She’d been on the squad 2.1 seconds, and she was already taking charge.
“No,” I said, but Kira turned to smile sweetly at me.
“Desperate times,” she answered and then swiveled her head back to the squad. “All in favor of inducting Chloe Ferril as the only new Smitten Kitten?”
It was straight out of a nightmare. Kira had filled my shoes (cast or not) and swooped in on my leadership. Every squad member (except me) raised her hand. I nearly blew a gasket.
“It’s settled,” Kira said, spinning back around. “Chloe is our newest member. Izzie, deliver the good news to her and make sure she’s at practice. We have a killer cheer to prep for ESPN.”
Kira started to walk away but paused, her mouth near my ear. “They’re all yours, Tess,” she whispered. I stood frozen as she strolled down the hall, clearly proud at how easily she had circumvented me. I glanced at the squad. They were watching me, waiting to be dismissed. At least, I still had the final say.
“So we’ll meet up at Leona’s in a few and get another practice under our Gucci belts,” I began, a bit unsteady. “After that, we’ll plan out the next mission. If Garrett Bash is cheating, he is so busted. We are in crisis mode, ladies. It’s time for true commitment. All Kittens on deck. Understood?”
They nodded enthusiastically. I appreciated their support. In fact, I needed it.
When I stole a sidelong glance at Leona, she pressed her lips together tightly and swallowed with a click. I remembered how brave she seemed when she faced Chris in the hall. And I knew that whoever turned us in was going to feel her wrath. Catching a traitor splintered the squad last time. I wasn’t sure we could survive it again.
Just then Izzie broke away and jogged down the hall after Kira.
Witch’s brew! We were all in a heap of trouble.
SOS
INTENT TO INVESTIGATE
CASE: 068
CLIENT: Janet Springer
SUBJECT: Garrett Bash
This is the SOS official notice of intent to investigate Garrett Bash. The client has accused Mr. Bash of spending more time with his band as a cover for a cheat. We suspect that the subject has been playing more than the guitar.
If you wish to cancel this investigation, please text a stop-work order to 555-0101. Stop orders must be placed within 24 hours of this written notification.
Thank you for thinking of SOS, and we truly hope that our investigation ends with positive results. Have a great day.
Keep smiling,
SOS : )
SOS
Text: 555-0101 * Exposing Cheaters for Over Three Years