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.”