Perfect Cover (The Squad #1)(18)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“It’s Tara, isn’t it?” A woman my mother’s age with a too-tight face, wearing too-tight pants and an obviously fake smile, approached us.

Tara whispered something in my ear and giggled. I forced a giggle, too, and pretended that she’d said something about a boy instead of telling me to proceed with the tag as planned.

Ever obedient (I can’t even say that with a straight face), I turned to leave the awkward “my daughter goes to your school” interaction that was already under way, but the woman’s voice stopped me.

“And who is your little friend?”

Little friend? I bristled at the term.

“This is Toby,” Tara said with all the poise in the world.

“She’s a sophomore.”

I nodded, trying to appear as if this whole conversation wasn’t nauseating. I have deep and abiding suspicions that my attempt was a failure.

“A sophomore at Bayport High,” the mother said, as if that was some kind of phenomenal accomplishment. “Are you on the squad, too, Toby?”

And the conversation went from nauseating to shocking, just like that. The Squad? She knew about the Squad?

“What squad?” I asked, trying to put a vacant look in my eyes. Come on, I told myself silently, if Bubbles the contortionist can play clueless, you can, too. Though of course, in Bubbles’s case, it wasn’t exactly a brilliant facade.

Tara rolled her eyes. “The cheerleading squad,” she told me in what I can only describe as a faux indulgent voice. “Toby just still can’t believe it.”

“Just can’t believe it,” I echoed, trying to suck a little less at not blowing our entire operation.

The woman patted me on the shoulder and then moved to squeeze me into a full-on hug. “These years are so precious,” she said.

Personal space, I thought, I’d like you to meet Nauseatingly Reminiscent Mom. NRM, this is my personal space. Please stop violating it.

“Well, you girls have fun.” With one final squeeze, she was off and shopping. “And do let me know when you have another one of those bake sales.”

I so didn’t sign on for bake sales and touchy-feely, Botox-ed über-moms.

“Happens all the time,” Tara said calmly as soon as the woman was out of hearing range. “It’s like every football parent or every mother of a freshman girl who wants to be a cheerleader acts like they know and love each and every one of us.”

“I feel violated,” I said darkly.

Tara half grinned. “You’ll get over it.” She prodded me gently in the side and I got the message. I had a stick of gum and it had to go in the hot salesboy’s back pocket. Such is the glorious life of a sixteen-year-old secret agent.

The way I saw it, I had a couple of options. I could do as Tara had suggested and flirt with him. I could try a drive-by approach in which I ran by, rammed the gum into his pocket, and left in a blur of honeysuckle highlights, but somehow, I thought that forcibly ramming gum into said mark’s pocket was not what the Squad had in mind. I could somehow get him to remove his pants….

“I’m going to have to flirt with him, aren’t I?” I said, less than overjoyed at the prospect.

“It’s not you flirting,” Tara told me. “It’s the cheerleader.”

Right. My cover. Malibu Toby, varsity cheerleader.

I knew then that I had exactly two choices: barf all over Tara in a fit of self-loathing, or suck it up and take one for the team. I gracefully opted for option B and wondered how exactly one went about flirting. I knew it involved teasing and giggling and a lot of hair tossing, but beyond that, the only picture that jumped into my head was one of Hayley Hoffman pulling her evil girl mojo on some unsuspecting senior jock.

I briefly considered the barfing option one more time, but that would have been like accepting that Hayley Hoffman should have made the Squad instead of me. I am Toby, I thought. Fear my wrath.

I wasn’t going down without a fight, and even though I was completely lost in the alternate dimension that was Abercrombie & Fitch, I decided to play to my strengths. Flirting might not have been one of them (understatement), but I don’t think I’m bragging when I say that mocking the flirtations of the Hayley Hoffmans of the world was more than one of my strong points. It was a calling.

So that’s what I did. I sashayed up to the salesguy and thrust out my chest in an Oscar-worthy parody of the flirt styles of the bitch and famous. “Do you have this in blue?” I asked, holding up a microscopic miniskirt. I pressed it against my body and posed. “Black is soooooo depressing.”

I batted my eyelashes at him at a ridiculously high velocity. And he fell for it. It was completely and utterly disgusting, and yet…strangely empowering.

“I…uhhh…uhhh…”

Two seconds, and I had reduced him to a bumbling fool. Was it wrong that I liked this? All this time I’d been knocking guys out, when I could have just made them grovel at my girly feet. Who knew?

“Blue?” He finally managed a coherent word. I almost felt sorry for him, but I was in superspy femme fatale mode. Take no prisoners!

I reached my hand toward his jeans. “Blue,” I repeated, and even though the Toby inside was wishing we’d opted for tossing our cookies before stooping so low, I forced myself to let my hand graze over his belt loops. “Like maybe the color of your jeans.”

“You mean a jean skirt?” the guy asked, coming back to his senses. “Sure, we have those.”

And just like that, my spell was broken. Was the inner Toby showing in my face? Were my eyelash bats too slow? Were my boobs too small? That was it, wasn’t it? My boobs were too small. I knew there was a reason I pummeled guys instead of flirting with them.

As the guy turned to show me the jean skirts, I lost my patience. Okay, okay, maybe I never had my patience. Long story short, I slipped the gum in his pocket, and when he turned around to look at me, I slapped him on the butt. There you have it. I’m not proud of it, but hey, it worked.

He turned a bright shade of pink, and I could feel my face turning much the same color.

“Sorry,” I said, completely straight-faced. “There was a fly.”

And then I did what any self-respecting pseudogirl would have done. I turned on my heels and walked as fast as I could out of the store. For Tara’s benefit, I even put a little shake in my hips.

She caught up with me halfway to the food court.

“I cannot believe you just did that,” she said quietly.