“Crystal,” Noah replied. Then he raised his voice.

“Okay, guys. We have a no-go. That’s a no-go on the posters, buttons, and boards.”

I released him, and as he scurried down the hallway, I heard him yell one last thing.

“Proceed to Plan B.”

“Death wish,” Jack said, coming up beside me. “Clearly.”

About that time, I realized that due to the volume of the threats I’d issued to my brother, everyone had heard me sounding about as dangerous as I get. This type of behavior didn’t exactly qualify as flying under the radar and taking advantage of the cheerleader stereotype to convince people that I couldn’t possibly be anything more than I seemed.

The Squad would not approve.

“Uhhh…Go Lions,” I added. My audience let out a collective shrug and dissolved.

“How long until that hits the rumor mill?” I asked Jack below my breath.

“Seven-point-eight seconds,” Jack answered solemnly.

“But don’t worry, Zee’ll come up with something more interesting for people to talk about. She always does.”

He was right. That was part of Zee’s job, orchestrating gossip that served our purposes and stomping out rumors that hurt them. Sometimes, Jack was so perceptive that it truly freaked me out. The only thing I was sure about when it came to Jack’s family was that Jack didn’t know what his uncle did, or, for that matter, what I did. Whether or not he knew the full extent of what his father’s firm did was up in the air. Of all the people who could potentially discover our secret, Jack was the candidate whose discovery would devastate our operation the most, and he was the one person most likely to actually sort things out.

And he was my homecoming date.

“I don’t know if Zee will be able to do anything about it,” I said, trying not to let him see that his comment had really rocked me. “It doesn’t get much juicier than a cheerleader-issued death threat.”

“Oh, come on, CDTs happen all the time,” Jack said solemnly. “Usually it’s over stuff like two girls wearing the same outfit, or someone telling someone else that a third person said they were a slut, but still, cheerleader death threats are old news.”

He was trying to make me feel better, and there was a chance he was right, but those stupid VOTE TOBY posters were still plastered all over the walls, and it was hard for me to be optimistic about anything with my own face staring back at me, reminding me that the world hated me and wanted me to suffer.

“But you know, Ev, if you really want them talking about something else, I could probably help you out.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Right.”

He took my words as a challenge, pressed me to a wall, and kissed me so long and hard that even once I knew we had an audience, I couldn’t pull away.

This was wrong. There was a conflict of interest here, and besides which, he was at the top of a hierarchy I hated. Forget that I was on top, too. I wasn’t the kind of girl to go weak at the knees just because someone was…

The most incredible kisser. Ever.

His hands moved from the side of my face down my neck and to my waist.

I hated him. I hated being a cheerleader.

I hated that I didn’t actually hate him or being a cheerleader. But most of all, I hated it when we stopped kissing.

“Miss Klein! Mr. Peyton! Perhaps the two of you should invest in a room?” Mr. Corkin pushed to the front of the crowd that had gathered around the two of us while I’d been lost in my own thoughts and Jack’s lips.

“I don’t suppose you’d know where we might get one?” Jack inquired, his face a mask of civility, his tone overly polite.

Mr. Corkin sputtered.

“No?” Jack said. “In that case,” he flicked his eyes over to mine, “maybe the two of us should go to class?”

“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.”