Текст книги "The Cheerleaders of Doom"

Автор книги: Michael Buckley

Соавторы: Ethen Beavers
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

Matilda and Agent Brand sat outside the YMCA in Arlington, Virginia. A steady stream of pretty girls stepped through a set of double doors for the tryouts for Team Strikeforce, the elite Junior East Coast Division cheerleading squad that the NERDS believed Gerdie had joined. A thousand girls like Matilda had come from all over the country for what was rumored to be nine vacant spots. Unlike Matilda, they were full of pep and smiles. She wanted to punch them all in the face. She hated her skirt flapping on her legs. She hated the hour it had taken to do her hair and makeup. She hated the pains in her cheeks from smiling. If she was going undercover, it should have been as a bullfighter or a luchador! It didn’t help that these girls went through the doors to the auditorium happy and high-spirited, only to come out sobbing into their hands. It made Matilda nervous. Not about failing or even looking foolish—she sort of expected that. No, she was worried about feeding one of her fists to the judges. Whatever they were saying to the hopefuls was brutal. She hadn’t seen so much blubbering since the time she challenged the men of the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity to a punch fight.

Mr. Brand seemed even more nervous than Matilda. Most of the time the former spy was unflappable. Matilda had heard he once fought off a dozen assassins with only his fists and a bottle of champagne. But today he kept tapping the heel of his right shoe on the marble floor like a jackhammer. Perhaps he was just uncomfortable out of his tuxedo. Today, to keep a low profile, he was dressed in linen pants and a white shirt.

“Why isn’t the Hyena here to give me pointers?” Matilda said, hoping to distract the spy from his tapping. “You weren’t a cheerleader, were you?”

Mr. Brand shook his head. “The Hyena has other responsibilities.”

“Yeah? What are those, exactly?”

Brand stiffened. “Sorry, but you don’t have security clearance for that kind of information.”

Wheezer was stunned. “I have the highest security clearance in the country. I have higher security clearance than the president!”

Brand’s face told her not to press the issue. The Hyena’s mission was a secret for another day.

“Ms. Holiday cheered in college. Why didn’t she come?”

“Ms. Holiday was transferred to the team just days before the Mathlete’s mom moved them to Ohio. They spent very little time together, but if Gerdie were to recognize Lisa, our plan would fail,” Brand said.

“Oh, she’s Lisa, now?”

Brand blushed. “Ms. Holiday and I have become … friends.”

“Friends that kiss and hug?”

Matilda could tell the man was uncomfortable. He kept tugging at his collar as if it were strangling him.

“Ms. Holiday sent along a list of tips and a cookie,” he said, shoving them into her hands.

Matilda quickly put the cookie aside. Ms. Holiday was a wonderful lady, but her baking bordered on dangerous. The cookie was as hard as a manhole cover. She opened the letter. “‘Dear Matilda, Here is my best advice for your tryout. First, you have to be positive. No one wants to see a grouchy cheerleader.’”

“She told me to practice smiling with you,” Brand said. “Flash me your best smile.”

Matilda smiled.

Agent Brand cringed.

“What?”

“You’re supposed to look happy when you smile.”

“Well, give me something to smile about.”

“Think about ponies. Girls love ponies, right?”

Matilda frowned. “I don’t.”

“Ribbons?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Doll babies?”

“I’m almost twelve!”

“Then what do you like?”

“Hmm … demolitions, explosions, bonfires,” Matilda said. “I like to watch barroom brawls. I love sports that involve an ax and pretty much anything to do with pro wrestling!”

“I see,” Brand said. “Imagine you and one of these pro wrestlers went to the park. What a beautiful day it is. The sun is shining. There isn’t a cloud in the—”

“And we found some bullies and gave them all head butts! While they were dazed, I climbed up in a tree and leaped onto their heads for a superatomic dog. Then, when they were down, we smashed a steel chair across their backs!”

“Why was there a steel chair in the park?” Brand asked. Then he sighed. “It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you are smiling, but you might want to work on it. I suspect they don’t want a cheerleader who looks like she’s an escaped mental patient.”

Matilda glared and then returned to Ms. Holiday’s list. “‘Second, make eye contact with the judges. They want to feel like you are cheering right to them.’”

“Eye contact, right,” Brand said. “Remember what we taught you in your spy training. Looking someone in the eye can elicit a sense of trust and welcoming.”

“Really? ’Cause I’ve been using it to intimidate people. You should see how it works on dogs! They run off like they’ve seen the devil.”

“Keep reading.”

“‘The third thing is play up your strengths,’” Matilda read. “What are my strengths?”

She could tell Brand wasn’t comfortable with giving compliments. “You are a gifted athlete. Use your acrobatic skills. Also, try to turn some of that happy energy you have when you knock out someone’s teeth into a positive expression of hope and joy. If that doesn’t help, I had the brains at the Playground build you something.”

He pulled a briefcase from beneath their seat. Inside were four brand-new asthma inhalers and a leather belt with tiny slots to hold them.

“What are these?” Matilda asked, gazing at them with wonder.

“Specialty inhalers.”

Matilda strapped the belt around her waist. “And a utility belt! I’m like an asthmatic Batman!”

“These might come in handy on this mission. The blue set acts as an underwater breathing apparatus. There’s enough concentrated air in them to keep you alive for six hours. You never know when something like that might come in handy. The green set is what we hope will help you today. One squeeze of the plunger and it’ll lift you off the ground.”

“Um … I have a set that does that already.”

“Not like these. These are stealth inhalers. No explosions. No rocket flames. They’re whisper-quiet. You will be able to jump, backflip, and somersault higher than any of the other girls. Gluestick says that a long pump could allow you to reach the observation platform of the Empire State Building, not that you’ll need that today.”

“Very cool, but it does feel like we’re cheating, Mr. Brand,” Matilda said.

“All is fair in love and national security. What else is in the letter?”

Matilda turned her attention back to Ms. Holiday’s notes. “It says, ‘No wooing’?”

“Lisa—I mean, Ms. Holiday—says it’s sort of a nervous reaction some girls do when they are out on the floor. They start ‘wooing.’”

“That’s silly. I can promise you that I will not ‘woo’!”

“See that you don’t. She says it’s very annoying.”

The door opened and a pretty red-haired girl poked her head out into the hall. Her face was one big smile and her eyes were bright with excitement. She reminded Matilda of Flinch the time he ate three Cookiepuss ice cream cakes in one sitting. They couldn’t get him off the ceiling for an hour. “Matilda Choi? Are you ready to BRING IT?”

Matilda nodded and stood up. She turned to Agent Brand. “Well, I guess I have to go ‘bring it’ now.”

“How about one more attempt at a smile?” the spy said.

Matilda forced one on to her face. “How is this?”

“You look like you’ve just been stung by a wasp,” Mr. Brand said. “It looked better when you were daydreaming about braining someone. Think steel chairs!”

Matilda walked through the door into the darkly lit gymnasium. In the center of the room was a spotlight and beyond that a stage where seven shadowy figures sat at a table. When she stepped into the spotlight, she was unable to see her judges at all. It was probably just as well. If she had to look at seven more grinning idiots, she might never get through her audition. The only drawback was that she couldn’t start searching for Gerdie Baker. If she caught Mathlete right away, she could avoid the whole mission entirely. It had only been a couple days, but she was growing weary of exfoliating her pores.

“Name!” a girl shouted.

“Matilda Choi.”

“Matilda is not a good name for a cheerleader. We’ll call you Maddie.”

The rest of the girls murmured in agreement, then turned their attention back to Matilda.

“OK, Maddie, cheer for us. And try not to waste our time,” a voice demanded.

Matilda nodded and took a quick shot of her medicinal inhaler.

“Today!” another judge snapped.

Ironically, it was her judges who provided Matilda with a smile, courtesy of a daydream in which she kicked them all in the face. “Ready? OK!” she shouted, and then she clapped her hands, imagining slamming a judge’s head. “We’ve got spirit. Yes we do! We’ve got spirit. How about you?”

She did three backflips and a back handspring before running forward into a one-handed cartwheel. She then flipped end over end three times before landing perfectly on her feet. Each time she jumped she used her new inhalers for an extra couple of feet of lift. On her next run, two more super front-end handsprings became a complete one-hundred-and-eighty-degree flip, a jump she could never have done on her own. She ended her routine in a perfect split.

She sat with her hands on her hips, grinning as best she could and staring up at her seven shadowed judges. Were they impressed? They just sat there without a word. They could probably tell she was a fake—the cheers, makeup, and clothes weren’t fooling anyone! She had failed the mission.

Then her mouth opened and she did something she thought she would never do.

“Wooooooooooooooo!”

“You’re in, Choi,” one of the judges said. “Welcome to Team Strikeforce.”

“What? Really?” Matilda couldn’t believe how happy she felt. In fact, it made her angry that she could get so much pleasure from being accepted by these strangers. If she hadn’t been on a mission, she would have been more than thrilled to tell them where they could shove their acceptance. But she nodded, thanked the judges, and left the gymnasium without punching a single person.

Mr. Brand was waiting outside the door where she had left him. He looked fidgety, cracking his knuckles and tapping his foot. “What happened? I heard wooing!”

OK, AT THE ADVICE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT, I WILL BE IN ANOTHER ROOM WHILE YOU TAKE THE REST OF THIS TEST. YOU’VE GOT AN INK PEN IN YOUR HAND, WHICH COULD EASILY BE USED AS A WEAPON, SO …

ON A SCALE FROM 1 TO 10, RATE YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT THE FOLLOWING LIST OF CRIMES—1 BEING “A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY” AND 10 BEING “A TINY CRIME.” WRITE DOWN YOUR ANSWERS ON A PIECE OF PAPER.

1. DRIVING A CAR INTO AN ORPHANAGE

___

2. TAKING THE WORLD HOSTAGE

___

3. KIDNAPPING SOMEONE’S PET

___

4. TOPPLING A GOVERNMENT

___

5. CREATING HUMAN/ANIMAL HYBRIDS BENT ON WORLD DOMINATION

___

6. BETRAYING THE HUMAN RACE TO ALIEN OVERLORDS

___

7. TRYING TO OPEN A DIMENSIONAL DOOR TO A DEMON DIMENSION

___

8. BUILDING A GIANT ROBOT TO CRUSH THE CITY

___

9. BLOWING UP THE MOON

___

10. MAKING YOUR MOTHER CRY

___

11. LAUGHING WHILE YOUR MOTHER CRIES

___

OK, LET’S TALLY THOSE NUMBERS.

IT’S TROUBLING HOW HIGH THIS NUMBER IS. ALL OF THESE CRIMES ARE REALLY, REALLY BAD.

YOU ARE A SICK LITTLE MONKEY.

Heathcliff—or rather, Choppers, I mean, Simon … no, Screwball, or whatever his name was—hated the Arlington Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He hated the doctors and the nurses. He hated the security guards. He hated the dull gray paint on every wall and the bland meals served with plastic utensils. He hated the dingy fluorescent lights and the patch of dying grass they called the yard. He swore to himself that when he ruled the world the first thing he would do was destroy the hospital—with a big wrecking ball, or maybe explosives—no, a rocket! In fact, imagining the building in flames helped him pass the endless hours with a smile on his face.

But there was one thing he thoroughly enjoyed about being locked up in the loony bin: arts and crafts class. Twice a week the patients were herded into the art room and encouraged to explore their feelings using clay, paint, papier-mâché, and ribbons. On this day, Screwball was working with glue, dried corn, peas, and other vegetables. It was then that he discovered a new passion. If the whole “taking over the world” thing didn’t pan out, he might have a lucrative career as a street artist.

“OK, everyone,” Dr. Sontag said. “I’m happy to see so many of you working on your projects with so much focus. It’s time to share what you have created. Why don’t we start with Bob?”

Heathcliff sneered. Bob was a serial kidnapper. He also had no eye for color or line. When the stumbling fool raised his canvas, it took all of Screwball’s self-control not to rip it into shreds and laugh in the stupid man’s face. A rowboat on a little river? That’s what Bob called art?

“A lovely day on the water,” Dr. Sontag said. “Why don’t you tell us how this makes you feel?”

“My dad used to take me to this river when I was little—before I started to hear the voices,” Bob blubbered.

Screwball rolled his eyes.

“It looks like it meant a lot to you, Bob. Let’s move on to Chucky,” the doctor said. “Let’s see your masterpiece.”

Chucky Swiller was a slack-jawed idiot with a face like an orangutan. He also had the artistic talent of one. Paint was everywhere—and mostly on his dopey freckled face.

“I made a house,” Chucky said.

“And it’s on fire,” Dr. Sontag said with a little worried frown on her face. Chucky was in the hospital because he liked to play with matches and gasoline.

“Oh, is that what you made?” Screwball said. “’Cause what it looks like is you drank your paints then barfed them all over the canvas!”

Dr. Sontag frowned. “Heathcliff! This is not a place of judgment. However Chucky chooses to create his art is valid. Apologize to him!”

Screwball sighed. “Chucky, I’m sorry. Sorry that you are clearly colorblind and don’t know the first thing about perspective or three-dimensional drafting. I’m sorry your work is bad, but mostly I feel sorry for me, as I’m the only one who cares enough about you to tell you that you are terrible and should stop painting. You should go back to being a pyromaniac and stop victimizing the world with your art.”

Dr. Sontag’s face puckered with impatience. She took a deep breath and appeared to be mouthing numbers to calm herself. When she finished, she turned to Screwball.

“OK, Heathcliff. Show us what you have made.”

“Dr. Sontag, I have asked you to call me Screwball.”

Sontag sighed with exhaustion. “Screwball, show us what you created.”

Screwball held his work out proudly. It was a triptych—a three-paneled painting—featuring images of great destruction made from dried vegetables. The panel on the left showed little snow-pea people running and screaming as a giant turnip robot stomped down the street after them. The panel on the right featured a sea of green-bean prisoners marching across a field of flames with armed guards eyeing their every step. In the center panel there was a baby carrot and pearl onion depiction of Heathcliff himself, sitting upon a gigantic throne that was crushing planet Earth.

Dr. Sontag sighed again. “Everyone, how does this make you feel?”

Dr. Trouble slowly raised his hand and Dr. Sontag called on him. “Yes, Dr. Trouble? Does Heathcliff … I mean, Screwball’s work make you feel anything?”

“Sad … scared.”

“It made me wet my pants,” Chucky said.

Screwball smiled proudly. “See, Chucky, good art creates emotional responses in the audience. I wanted you to wet yourself and you did! And now I’d like to tell you how it makes me feel. This work is important because it is more than a piece made from dried produce; it’s a glimpse of your unavoidable future. You’ll notice I used lentils to indicate despair on the faces of my victims. And my self-portrait looks good enough to eat. Bow before my artistic genius!”

“Everyone, I think we can call it a day,” Dr. Sontag said. “I need to talk to my boss about being reassigned, anyway.”

The doors to the room opened and several huge guards entered. Screwball ignored them and carefully set aside his masterpiece. Peas and carrots were very delicate and he wanted to preserve the triptych. Someday, when he was running things, the masses would want to see his early work as an artist.

“Pssss,” he heard. Screwball turned to one of the guards and snarled. Then he realized the man was not another one of the muscle-bound fools that tormented him daily but, instead, his very own goon!

“Old friend! How did you get in here?” he whispered back.

“I knocked out the guard and took his uniform. He’s sleeping in the Dumpster, safe and sound. I wanted to give you an update. Mathlete has built her machine. She’s opening rifts everywhere she goes.”

“Are there side effects?” Heathcliff said.

The goon nodded. “The government is trying to keep it quiet, but an alligator as big as a dump truck was captured in Topeka, Kansas. Plus they’re missing a few cement mixers in Minneapolis and an entire library disappeared in St. Louis.”

“That’s excellent news,” Screwball said.

“Even better news,” the goon said. “I can get you out of here.”

“No need, my friend,” Screwball said.

The goon was visibly surprised. “Have they finally made you lose your mind? Why do you want to stay?”

“Because it will be so much more satisfying when my bitterest enemies come and release me! They will have no choice but to unlock the doors and let me out.”

“Your enemies?”

Screwball nodded, then practiced his evil laugh. “Yes, NERDS will be pounding on the door of this hospital to free me before you know it.”

Matilda hefted her duffel bag and climbed aboard the bus to cheerleading camp. Inside, she faced a gang of dazzlingly pretty girls with the most sour, pouty looks she had ever seen. They eyed her up and down the way someone might look at a public toilet.

“Hold it right there,” one girl said. She was blonde and blue-eyed and would have been pretty if not for her expression of disgust. “Don’t think that just ’cause you’re on Team Strikeforce that you are on Team Strikeforce. You’re not actually one of us until I say you are, and right now I’m saying you’re not.”

“Yeah,” the others chimed.

Matilda laughed. She knew these girls, or at least their type. They were bullies. Nathan Hale Elementary was full of them. Luckily, after putting up with their torment for years, she knew exactly how to handle bullies.

“What’s your name?”

“Tiffany,” the blonde girl said, scowling.

“So, you’re in charge, huh? I can tell by the way these brainless morons worship you.”

The other girls bristled.

“That’s not true at all!” a pretty redhead snapped as she texted furiously on her phone. “I’m so posting how rude you are!”

Tiffany flashed the redhead an ugly look. “Actually, that’s exactly how it is! Shut up, McKenna!” She turned back to Matilda, but before she could say anything a horrible sneeze flew out of Matilda’s nose.

“Wheezer, can you hear me?” Brand blared through Matilda’s comlink. His voice was so loud it rattled her brain. She wished she could shut it off, but no amount of squeezing her nose could stop her shaking eardrums.

“Turn it down a notch!” she cried.

After a second she realized everyone on the bus was looking at her as if she had lost her mind. Tiffany laughed, and the others echoed her.

“She’s already snapping under the pressure, girls!” Tiffany crowed. “I suggest you get off the bus and go home, ’cause it isn’t going to get any easier.”

“I’m staying,” Matilda said.

“I am not sitting with the crazy girl,” McKenna declared as the girls settled into the farthest reaches of the bus, leaving Matilda alone at the front.

“What do you want?” she mumbled.

Brand’s voice crackled to life. “Wheezer, I’ve been waiting for a report. I thought you might be in trouble.”

“A little busy being bullied by the other girls on the bus, boss,” Matilda said. “None of them look like Gerdie Baker. If she’s here, she’s had a lot of plastic surgery. Listen, I’ll check in when I get a moment to myself. There’s not a lot of room on this bus.”

“Understood,” Brand said.

The bus pulled into a sprawling campground surrounded by acres and acres of dense woods. There was a pond with a dock, a half-dozen wooden cabins, a small administrative building, and a handful of picnic tables around a big green practice yard. When they got off the bus, Matilda and the girls met representatives of the NCA, much older but just as peppy as the rest of the cheerleaders. They assigned everyone a cabin and told the girls when to expect breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They also told the girls there were only two rules at the camp: one, don’t wander around in the woods, and two, have a “cheer-tastic time.”

Matilda circled until she found her cabin, but since she was the last one through the door, she was left with the worst bunk—a moth-eaten mattress with a paper-thin pillow.

Tiffany and McKenna sneered at her as she dumped her duffel bag on the bed.

“I can’t believe they stuck her in here with us!” McKenna grumbled to Tiffany. Then they ran off, leaving Matilda alone.

Matilda shrugged it off and crammed her bag under her cot. Then she reached up to unfasten the lock on the window near her bed.

“Do yourself a favor and don’t open that window. The portable toilets are right outside.”

Matilda turned and found a girl standing in the doorway of the cabin. She was as pretty as the others, but something in her face gave her a kind expression.

“Ugh,” Matilda said as she refastened the lock.

“I heard you got stuck in Tiffany’s cabin. I thought it would be nice to come by and make sure you were still alive,” the girl said, laughing.

“Next time you might want to check on her, not me,” Matilda said.

“Don’t let Tiffany bother you,” the girl said. “She’s been cheering since she was in diapers, or so she says. None of us really know each other that well, but somehow on the first day she became the boss. I’ve seen her type before. I think she likes it when you fight back.”

Matilda nodded. “Then she’s going to love my right hook.”

“I’m Kylie,” the girl said.

“I’m Matilda,” she replied, remembering to practice her smile. Kylie gave one back, then offered to help her unpack. While they worked, she filled Matilda in on the other girls on the team: McKenna spent most of her day texting and updating her many online profiles; Pammy and Lilly were called “the makeup twins” and hogged every available mirror; the striking Asian girl with purple eye shadow was named Jeannie; the two African-American girls were Toni and Shauna. Including Matilda, there were nine more new girls, but Kylie hadn’t had a chance to meet them yet. Matilda did the math. All in all, she had sixteen suspects, but she was relieved to be able to cut three from her list. Eliminating Jeannie, Toni, and Shauna would make things easier. No matter how much plastic surgery Gerdie might have gotten, she couldn’t change her race. Still, that left thirteen girls.

Suddenly, McKenna returned to the cabin. “Hey, what are you two talking about?”

“You,” Kylie said.

Matilda could almost smell McKenna’s insecurity. It quickly turned to anger. “New roommates are losers!” she said as her fingers typed furiously on her phone. “Watch your step or I’ll post something a lot worse next time.”

The girls watched McKenna storm out of the cabin.

“Well, I guess we’re not going to be friends with her,” Kylie said with a laugh. “Anyway, it’s dinnertime. They’re serving meatloaf surprise. The surprise is that ten percent of the people who eat it actually survive.”

“I’ll catch up with you,” Matilda said.

When Kylie was gone, Matilda fell onto her bunk and jotted down what she had learned about the rest of the squad into a notebook. Since the girls looked and dressed so much alike, she was going to have to work extra-hard to keep track of them.

She joined the other girls at dinner, studying each of their faces. She’d seen hundreds of photos of the old Gerdie, but none of these girls resembled her in the least. It was frustrating, but not nearly as much as their endless excited chatter about how they were going to “bring it” and “show those wannabes why Team Strikeforce is the best.” Matilda feared she would leap onto the table and strangle one of them if they didn’t shut up, so she excused herself to go back to her bunk and get some rest. Tiffany gave her a nasty smile as she stood up.

“Get your beauty sleep, loser,” she said. “You need all you can get.”

Exhausted, Matilda made a quick report to Agent Brand and fell sound asleep.

At five in the morning Matilda discovered exactly what Tiffany had meant about needing her sleep. She was shaken roughly and told to get into her practice uniform. She got dressed as quickly as possible and rushed out for what would be a twelve-hour ordeal.

Matilda did her best to keep up, but the practice was more grueling than her spy training, which often included barbed wire, an obstacle course, and robots shooting lasers at her. Learning the routines was simple enough, but Tiffany insisted on perfection. She wanted the squad to act like it was of one mind, with each clap, kick, and cheer performed at the exact same moment. Over the course of the day she cut two of the nine new cheerleaders they had chosen from Matilda’s tryouts. The next day three more were gone. Shauna told Kylie and Matilda that Tiffany had accepted more girls than the team needed for the sole purpose of weeding them out.

“You mean I’m still trying out?” Matilda asked.

Kylie nodded. “Tiffany has already let McKenna, Pammy, Shauna, Toni, Lilly, Jeannie, and me know that we made the final squad.”

“How many spots are left?” Matilda asked.

“One.”

Matilda looked to the other three girls. It was important that she got that last spot.

When the second day of practice was over, she staggered into her cabin with complaining muscles and a head clogged with dance moves. She didn’t even bother to eat, just climbed into her bunk and fell fast asleep. She planned to wake in the night and search the other girls’ belongings for any clues that might point her to Gerdie, but exhaustion overwhelmed her. She slept until five a.m., only to be awoken to repeat the previous day.

Kylie smiled at her when they met on the practice field.

“Tiffany is the devil,” Matilda groaned.

“Yes. Yes, she is,” Kylie said.

“Quiet! Today we’re going to learn a move called ‘Shoot the Rocket,’” Tiffany said.

The girls gasped. Even the girls who’d already made the squad seemed shocked.

“What’s the Rocket?” Matilda whispered to Kylie.

“It’s an aerial stunt—very dangerous,” she said. “Most high schools have banned it. Even pro cheerleaders get hurt doing it. It’s superadvanced.”

“Pyramid!” Tiffany barked, and Kylie and the other girls quickly assembled into a human pyramid, six bodies stacked on top of one another. Tiffany climbed to the top. She stood on McKenna and Pammy’s backs and looked down at Matilda and the other three girls.

“Now listen up, ’cause I’m only saying this once. The Rocket is usually done with the help of a spotter who hoists the girl onto his hands at chest-level. Then you jump upward, do a corkscrew twirl, and land on your feet at the top of a pyramid. I say ‘usually’ because we do it differently.” She grinned. “We cut out the spotter. Watch carefully.”

Tiffany bent her knees and then leaped backward into the air. She did a corkscrew turn and then landed squarely on McKenna’s and Pammy’s backs. The girls let out a painful groan. Matilda could hardly believe what she had seen. It was an incredible move—like something only a highly trained secret agent might be able to do. Could Tiffany be the Mathlete?

“I think I’m going to be sick,” one of the other new girls said. She and another of the new girls ran off the field and were never seen again. Matilda and one other girl were left for the last spot.

“Maddie, let’s see what you can do,” Tiffany said, climbing down off the pyramid to watch from the side.

“Just let me check my inhalers—I get a little asthmatic and—”

“No one cares about your stupid disease,” McKenna said. “Are you going to do this stunt or not? I have text messages to respond to!”

Matilda climbed the pyramid slowly. When she got to the top, she could hardly stand up straight. It was clear McKenna and Pammy were trying to knock her off. She dug her shoes into their backs and they yelped in pain. Matilda smiled sheepishly at them and bent her knees. Leaping backward as hard as she could, she tapped her stealth inhalers and blasted into the air with a whisper-quiet thrust. She did the corkscrew spin during the flip and landed cleanly, making extra sure to plant her feet on McKenna’s and Pammy’s heads.

There was silence. Tiffany looked stunned, and Matilda’s sole remaining competition dropped her head and walked out.

McKenna turned to look up at Matilda angrily. “This isn’t over,” she said, then rocked hard. The human pyramid began to sway and buckle. Then it collapsed. If Matilda fell from that height, she’d hurt herself badly, so she fired the inhaler once more and up she went, spiraling and forward-flipping gracefully until she landed right in front of Tiffany. The team leader eyed her closely.

“Welcome to Team Strikeforce,” Tiffany said, red-faced and angry.

Once the pile of cheerleaders untangled themselves, Kylie found Matilda. “That was awesome,” Kylie whispered to Matilda.

“Thanks,” Matilda whispered back as she watched Tiffany storm off the field. “But I’m worried it was a little too awesome.”

When the girls finished practicing “Shoot the Rocket,” they headed to the kitchen for some dinner. Matilda snatched a banana and a peanut butter sandwich then raced back to the silence of the cabin. She had only a few opportunities to be alone and check in with the NERDS team. Once she closed the door, she squeezed her nose to activate her comlink.

“Congratulations are in order, Wheezer,” Mr. Brand said. “I hear you are an official member of the squad.”

“Don’t tease me. This is so silly.”

“Well, the world appreciates your sacrifice. Do you have any suspects?”

“Maybe Tiffany. She’s got moves a normal kid doesn’t usually have,” Matilda said. “Everyone seems to think she’s been cheering since she was in diapers, but you know as well as I do how a back story can be invented. I’m keeping an eye on her. If you could have someone activate the comlink around three in the morning to wake me up, I’ll search her stuff. But I don’t know where she would hide that machine. If it’s as big as Gluestick thinks it is, there’s no place for it in this cabin. I’ll have to search the other buildings.”