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CHAPTER 1

Code Word: Pom-pom

If you’d toldto end up a governht you were crazy, but if you’d told me I was destined to become a cheerleader, I would have had you committed, no questions asked At that point in tis in life that I knew for certain: (1) I was a girl who’d never met a site she couldn’t hack or a code she couldn’t break, (2) I had a roundhouse that could put a grown man in the hospital, and (3) I would without question chop off my own hands before I’d come within five feet of a pom-pom

I liked to fly below the radar I was the girl slouched in the back of your geo my booty on the field In fact, in the year and a half since we’d moved to Bayport, I’d spent more time in detention than at pep rallies and considered myself lucky; unless school spirit referred to a school-board-sanctioned wine, I had no intention of buying

And then, one day out of the blue, the note appeared in my locker

Toby Klein—

You are cordially invited to an inforh Varsity Spirit Squad today at four in room 117 Go Lions (and Lionesses)!

The year before, a bunch of angry fe a male mascot, so noere officially the Bayport Lion(esse)s I kid you not That’s just one of thethe school in any way, shape, or form That and the fact that I’d had to forcibly remove a football player’s hand from my brother’s arm three times in the last ain, so to lose an arm Go Lions!

I turned the note over in ht, the God Squadme Maybe they just couldn’t stand it that there were actually a few sopho to sell their souls for cheerleading immortality There was a reason the varsity cheerleaders were collectively referred to as the God Squad, and it wasn’t because they were religious; it was because at Bayport High, they were gods: the ulti down to worship theular basis

I was not most people

Sla my locker shut, I moved to throw the note away, but decided to save it for aot too rowdy As I ht the letters, and for just a second, a few of them jumped out at me

“Stupid glitter pens,” Ithe letters I’d noticed I stuffed the note into my jeans, took four steps down the hallway, and then stopped My brain does tricky things with letters and numbers: scrambles them and unscrambles them, analyzes their combinations, looks for patterns When I was little, I loved palindroethere in the hallway, , and I pulled the invitation back out of my pocket

After a quick glance around the hall to , I held the sain and, one by one, picked out the letters that appeared slightly more sparkly than their counterparts

Toby Klein—

You are cordially invited to an inforh Varsity Spirit Squad today at four in room 117 Go Lions (and Lionesses)!

There it was in black and white, or, litter pen COME ALONE

After that, I really did throw the note away, because there was no way it had been written by an actual cheerleader Most of them probably couldn’t even spell cordially, let alone embed secret instructions in an invite to one of their oh-so-speciala trick on ood idea who that so to do about it