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CHAPTER 1CodeWord: Pom-pomIf you

d told me atthe beginning ofsophomore year that Iwas going to end up agovernment operative, Iwould have thought youwere crazy, but if you


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d told me I was destinedto become acheerleader, I wouldhave had youcommitted, noquestions asked. At that

point in time, therewere three things in lifethat I knew forcertain:

(1) I was a girl who


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d never met a site shecouldn

t hack or a code shecouldn

t break, (2) I hada roundhouse that could put a grown man in

the hospital, and (3) Iwould without question


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chop off my own hands before I

d come within five feetof a pom-pom.I liked tofly below the radar. I

was the girl slouched inthe back of yourgeometry class, not the

one shaking my booty on the field. In


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fact, in the year andahalf since we

d moved to Bayport, I

d spent more time in

detention than at peprallies and consideredmyself lucky; unless

school spirit referred toa school-board-


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sanctioned wine, I hadno intention of

buying.And then, oneday out of the blue, thenote appeared in mylocker.Toby Klein

You are cordiallyinvited to an

information session onthe Bayport


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High VarsitySpiritSquad today at four inroom 117. Go Lions(and Lionesses)!Theyear before, a bunch ofangry feminist mothershad sued the district forhaving a male mascot,so now we were

officially the Bayport


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Lion(esse)s. I kidyounot. That

s just one of the manyreasons I couldn

t fathom the idea ofactually supporting theschool in any way,

shape, or form. Thatand the fact that I


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d had to forciblyremove a football

player

s hand from my brother

s arm three times inthe lastmonth.

Emphasis on the wordforcibly. If they touched


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Noah again, someonewas going to lose anarm. Go Lions!I turnedthe note over inmy hand. Wow, Ithought, the God Squadmust really

bescratching bottom ifthey


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re recruiting me. Maybethey just couldn

t stand it that there wereactually a fewsophomore and junior

girls who weren

t willing to sell their

souls for cheerleadingimmortality. There was


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a reason the varsitycheerleaders werecollectively referred toas the God Squad,and it wasn

t because they werereligious; it was because at Bayport

High, they were gods:the ultimate


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socialpower. Most people did everythingshort of bowing downto worship them on aregular basis.I was notmost people.Slammingmy locker shut, I movedto throw the note away,

but decided to save itfor

ammunition in caseanyone in my carpool


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got too rowdy. As Imoved to jam theinviteinto my pocket, lightcaught the letters, andfor just a second, a fewof them jumped out atme.

Stupid glitter pens,


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I muttered, butautomatically, my mind

began cataloging theletters I

d noticed. I stuffed the

note into my jeans, tookfour steps down thehallway, and then

stopped. My brain doestricky things with letters


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and numbers: scramblesthem and unscramblesthem, analyzes theircombinations, looks for

patterns. When I waslittle, I loved

palindromes andanagrams and anysecret languagemore

complicated than PigLatin. Standing there in


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the hallway, my letter-savvymind did its thing,and I pulled theinvitation back out ofmy pocket.After a quickglance around the hallto make sure no onewas watching, I held thesmall white card in the

light again and, one byone, picked out


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the letters that appearedslightly more sparklythan theircounterparts.TobyKlein

You are cordiallyinvited to aninformation session on

the BayportHigh VarsitySpirit


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Squad today at four inroom 117. Go Lions(and Lionesses)!Thereit was in black andwhite, or, morespecifically, in hot pinkglitter pen.COMEALONE.After that, Ireally did throw the

note away, becausethere was no way it had


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been written by anactual cheerleader.Most of them probablycouldn

t even spell cordially,

let alone embed secretinstructions in an inviteto one of their oh-so-

special meetings.Someone was definitely


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playing a trick on me,and I h

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