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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.
“Sorry.” This time, I actually offered up a response, but Brooke seemed to sense the fact that I wasn’t apologizing for being late so much as I was for the fact that I’d been part of that awful exchange with her mother the day before. Being Brooke, she didn’t exactly welcome my sympathy.
“And what are you wearing?” She sounded so aghast that I glanced down, terrified for a split second that somehow, I’d forgotten to get dressed that morning and was not, in fact, wearing anything at all.
I breathed a literal sigh of relief when I saw the top of the camisole. “What’s wrong with my clothes?” I asked. The one time I’d actually tried to be relatively fashionable and make a good cheer impression, I’d somehow violated an unwritten mandate of matching?
I really needed my coffee.
“You’re not dressed,” Brooke informed me, her lips pursed. “For practice.”
She said the words like they were two separate sentences, and it took me a while to realize that they weren’t, and another second or two after that to process what she was saying.
Everyone else in the gym was dressed in their regular practice clothes—cheer shorts and sports bras and the occasional tank top. How was it that I’d worn cheer clothes the past two days, and we hadn’t said so much as a Go Lions, but today, I got dressed for school, and all of a sudden it was bona fide practice time?
“Go change,” Brooke ordered.
I had to remind myself that she didn’t know what I knew, and that there were so many issues behind her captain complex that I couldn’t really hold it against her, but her tone still rubbed me the wrong way.
“Listen,” I started to say, and then I cut myself off and decided to opt for gestures instead. I tossed my hair over each shoulder and then tucked it behind my ears.
We need to go down to the Quad, I thought. I willed her to understand.
“No.” She understood, and she wasn’t buying.
“I like found some stuff out last night,” I said, pitching my voice into a slight lilt and doing my best to speak in a ditz code she’d understand.
