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“Jack Peyton is HOT!” someone from the audience yelled.
“Toby Klein is HOTTER,” a male voice argued, and I almost went into an epileptic fit of disgust at both the words and the tone.
“Now, now,” Jack said, raising his hands. “Don’t be ridiculous. Mr. Corkin is clearly the hottest.”
Corkin turned bright, bright red, and I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
Jack Peyton was everything I shouldn’t want in a guy—including, given his background, potentially evil—but I had to admire someone who could make Mr. Corkin turn a nice shade of fuchsia without ever even suggesting that a posterior-kissing might be in order.
Jack wrapped his arm around me. I forced myself to shrug it off, but as the two of us walked through the crowd, he put it back and bent down so that his mouth was right next to my ear.
“See, Ev?” he said. “By lunchtime, no one will be talking about any death threats you may have allegedly issued toward your younger brother. Everyone will be talking about what just happened between the two of us.”
He sounded vaguely like a lawyer, and I remembered all of the reasons that I didn’t want the rest of the school talking about him and me any more than I wanted them talking about the fact that my little brother could provoke even the sanest of cheerleaders to homicide.
“Let me guess,” Jack said, taking in my silence. “You don’t want them talking about us, either.”
“Give the man a prize.”
He fixed his eyes on mine, and for a moment, he looked almost sad. “They’ll always talk, Toby.”
My real name, for a rare moment of real seriousness between the two of us.
“That’s the life. People watch you, and they talk about you, and they expect you to act a certain way until no matter what you do, they see it as part of whatever it is that you’re supposed to be.”
Now he wasn’t talking like a lawyer. He was talking like someone who knew way too much about my life, way too much about the Squad and the reason it worked. Or maybe he was just talking like someone who’d lived the high life for way too long.
“It sucks,” I said.
Jack shrugged. “You get used to it,” he said. “And it’s not all bad.” His eyes lingered on mine.
At that exact moment, four scrawny guys ran by wearing nothing but ski masks, boxers, and paint on their chests. As they passed us, I tried to make out the writing on their chests and realized that each guy bore one letter.
T. O. B.
“Y.” Jack completed the sequence for me. “I have to hand it to your brother. He’s inventive. And brave.”
And, I thought, so incredibly dead.
Obviously, no combination of mystery and intrigue was going to be enough to gear me up for this day. I even had doubts that coffee would do the trick. My first class hadn’t even started yet, and I’d already publicly threatened to exact physical revenge upon the creature formerly known as my little brother, engaged in some serious PDA with someone I wasn’t supposed to have actual feelings for, and watched the aforementioned brother-creature and his friends streak by wearing nothing but boxers and my name painted on their chests. Not to mention the part of the equation where I’d gotten an operative assignment so dangerous it had been designated “Do Not Engage.”
Tomorrow, I was going for at least three cups of coffee, just to be on the safe side.
The bell rang, and without a word, Jack and I went our separate ways, and I found myself thinking disturbingly girly thoughts along the vein of “how can he like me if he doesn’t really know me?” and “does he really like me, or is it just that I’m the only girl who’s ever turned him down?”
Forget the coffee, I thought, wanting to ram my head into something quite hard to discourage my subconscious from any more probing thoughts. Tomorrow morning, I’m going with cyanide.
CHAPTER 15
Code Word: Boyfriend
“It was like the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“And then this teacher was all ‘get a room,’ and I was all ‘yeah, please do.’”
“I hear they’re going to be on Survivor: Couples’ Edition.”
“Really? I heard they’d already accepted an offer from Real World: Bayport.”
“I soooooo wish I was Toby Klein.”
By lunchtime, Jack and I were the primary topic of conversation in the cafeteria, and bits and pieces of conversations assaulted my ears as I made my way toward the central table. I was beginning to feel like I couldn’t sneeze without making front-page news: God Squad Member Toby Klein Sneezes; Allergies Are IN!
Of course, some of the whispers were less than flattering. Jack was the number-one hottie at our school, and Chloe (Jack ex number two) wasn’t the only one whose hackles were up at the thought of a Toby/Jack pairing.
“She is such a slut.”
Yup. Jack was the only guy I’d ever kissed, and we hadn’t done anything but, so clearly, I was Slut Girl. Of course, given the fact that the person who was slinging the s-word around was in fact much “friendlier” toward the opposite sex than I was, the insult didn’t carry much of a punch.
“And her technique is total crap.”
At first, I thought they were talking about my kissing technique—WHAT WAS WRONG WITH MY KISSING TECHNIQUE?—but then I realized that when junior varsity cheerleaders say “technique,” they mean one and only one thing.
“I mean, did you see that back handspring?”
Insults were one thing coming from Chloe; whether or not we were friends, we were teammates, and that meant something, but these JV girls didn’t know me, and I was getting damn tired of people picking on my handsprings.
“You know,” I said, sauntering up to their group and inserting myself into their conversation. “Maybe you’re right. The other girls on varsity think my standing back tuck is much cleaner than my back handspring, and even my back handspring back tuck has a little more oomph, so maybe I just shouldn’t bother with the easier stuff at all.” I paused and looked at each of the JV cheerleaders in turn. “This morning, Bubbles was teaching me how to do a layout. Maybe next year, we’ll start requiring more advanced tumbling skills for new recruits.”
The girls shut their mouths one by one. As jealous as they were, and as much as they hated me, I’d just reminded them that I held their futures in my hands. There were four seniors on varsity this year, which meant that we’d have four open slots on the Squad next year, and as far as these girls knew, the remaining members simply voted in new ones on whims. None of these girls had made varsity as sophomores, but they were still pretending that they stood a chance junior year, and some of them might have.
