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Brooke dangled the chance of action in front of me like a carrot.
“Besides, I don’t trust you to stick to orders. If I sent you to tail one of the TCIs, you’d probably manage to get yourself killed.”
“I would not!”
“Get yourself killed or go against orders and engage your mark?”
She had me there. “The first one.”
“Says the girl who almost got blown up yesterday.” Brooke waved away any further objections on my part with a flick of her wrist. “Brittany, Tiffany, go prep the salon. Given the nature of our mission, all teams will be going with a B3 cover.”
Brittany nodded, and Tiffany—for reasons that eluded me—sighed. “We’ll be ready in five.” With that, the twins headed off to their torture chamber (or, as they preferred to think of it, their “beauty lab”).
“Chloe—”
“Cameras, video cameras, binoculars, communicators, and standard bug sets are ready to go.” Chloe didn’t give Brooke a chance to finish her order. “They’re already camouflaged to go with a B3.”
Brooke smiled in a way specifically designed to convey the fact that she was annoyed, but wasn’t going to say anything about it. “Great. Luce?”
“Yeah huh?” Lucy didn’t have quite the siblingesque rivalry with Brooke that Chloe did, and she docilely awaited her orders accordingly.
“I want Tasers and knockout patches, plus bulletproof push-up bras all around. We’re not engaging the enemy, but we’re not going to take any chances, either.”
“Awesome,” Lucy said. “I redid some of the knockout patches to look like stickers.” She turned her toothy grin on me. “You can have the puppy, Toby.”
Sometimes, it was really hard to tell when Lucy was being serious and when she was teasing, because she used the same earnest tone and expression for both.
Paying no heed to the puppy comment, Brooke continued dishing out orders. “Lucy, Chloe, get things set up in the guidepost, and then report to the salon. Everybody else, let’s get a move on. The TCIs aren’t going to tail themselves.”
There’s not much you can do to mentally prepare yourself for a makeover, especially a makeover of the scale and caliber the twins routinely pulled off. They’d pretty much single-handedly turned me from the slacker no one noticed to the reluctant teen goddess I was today. Since my initial transformation, I’d avoided their lab at all costs, but today, there was no way to avoid a B3. Whatever a B3 was.
“Care to explain?” I asked Tara. “About the B3 thing?”
“You’ll see.” Tara was less than forthcoming.
I knew that the twins’ job description included designing costuming for each mission that would play up whatever attributes would offer us the most advantages, but this was the first time I’d gone on a mission as anything other than my cheerleader self. The Squad worked because we hid in plain sight. Nine times out of ten, the stereotype was the only cover we needed.
Apparently, today’s mission was the tenth. I knew that it was ridiculous that car bombs didn’t scare me, and teenage fashion dictators did, but no amount of mental pep talking could convince me that giving the twins carte blanche to alter our appearances was anything less than bone-chilling.
“I’m not sure I’m ready for another makeover,” I muttered as we entered the twins’ lab. “I almost didn’t survive the first one.”
“Makeover?” Brittany said, wrinkling her nose. “Who said anything about a makeover?”
“Brooke did,” I replied. “You know, a B3.”
Tiffany joined her twin in giving me a blank look.
“You guys live for makeovers.” I stated the obvious. “It’s practically your middle name!”
“Silly Toby.” This was from Bubbles. As in, the girl who thought that puppies got to vote for homecoming queen. “A B3 isn’t a makeover. It’s a makeunder.”
“A makeunder?” April repeated the term. It was times like these that I was grateful that I wasn’t the only new member of the Squad.
“We need to blend.” Brooke elucidated the situation. “If we go out in groups of four looking like this, we’re going to attract a lot of attention, and since the TCIs aren’t supposed to even know we’re there, that’s not exactly a good thing the way it would be if we were planning to interact with them, but didn’t want to be seen as a threat.”
“A B3 makeunder is constructed with that goal in mind,” Tiffany said, her tone absolutely, deathly serious. “Although we can’t disguise our more striking features, we will be downplaying them. Some people call it ‘the natural look.’ We’ve spent a lot of time designing outfits and makeup/hair schema that will serve a dual purpose. To the casual observer, we’ll look average.”
Brittany took over where Tiffany left off. “But if we happen to run into anyone from school, we need to look nice enough that they won’t get suspicious. These outfits aren’t about being unfashionable; they’re about being subtle. The perfect B3 will allow its wearer to blend in, but on closer focus, she’ll stand out because of the ensemble’s simplicity.”
“A B3 says, ‘I’m pretty without trying to be,’” Tiffany continued. “It says, ‘I’m not wearing makeup,’ even though you will be. It says, ‘Don’t look at me, don’t remember me, but if you know me, be impressed with my effortlessness.’”
I think the twins might have gone on indefinitely if Brooke hadn’t sped them along. Instead, they multitasked, punctuating my makeunder with theoretical explanations I paid no attention to whatsoever. By the time they finished with me and moved on to the next person, I wasn’t sure what to expect. What was the logical result of spending a great deal of time and effort attempting to look natural?
A quick examination in the mirror revealed my answer. I didn’t look like the old me, but I wasn’t exactly Cheer Toby, either. I was a Neutrogena commercial, clean and cute. I didn’t look average, but I did look generic. Because of my height and the way the twins had styled my hair, I also looked about thirteen.
Makeunder complete.
CHAPTER 18
Code Word: Girl Talk
Brooke and I got ice cream at a shop down the street from the firm and then set up camp on a bench outside the shopping center. Along the way, we also stopped at a few stores, just for good measure, and our packages were spread out on the ground near our feet.
