Read Online Perfect Cover by Jennifer Lynn Barnes - Free Book Online Page B

you stick a girl in a cheerleading skirt, no one takes her seriously—but the idea that half of us had been handpicked by the government for our “special skills” and that the other half had been chosen from the current supply of cheerleaders was still a little mind-boggling.
    “Cheerleaders and secret agents have more in common than you might think, Toby,” Lucy said.
    I think the word
incredulous
would probably be something of an understatement for the expression that came over my face at that pronouncement.
    Lucy rolled her eyes. “Oh, Toby,” she said, like we’d been friends for a million years and she just couldn’t get over how very silly I was in the most endearing of ways. “Here,” she said, picking a notebook up off the counter. “Read this. It’s this Squad history thing that Brooke got somewhere. It’s got all of the stuff I told you in it, but it probably explains it better.”
    I seriously doubted there was anything in that book that could make me believe that high school cheerleaders were somehow predisposed to being brilliant government operatives, but it would have taken someone with a far harder heart than my own to tell that to Lucy Wheeler.
    “So,” she said brightly. “We still have like twenty minutes before you have to report to the salon. Wanna blow stuff up?”
    All things considered, that was the nicest thing anyone had said to me all day.

CHAPTER 10
    Code Word: Makeover
    Unfortunately, happy explosives time couldn’t last forever, and sooner than later, I’d bid goodbye to Lucy’s lab and said hello to the twins’.
    “Copper frost for the skin?”
    Brittany pursed her lips at her twin’s question. “Only if we go dirrrrrrty blond on top.”
    That’s the way she said it, too. Like it was from some idiotic Christina Aguilera song that was cool when we were younger.
    “If we go blond, we may need to change the eyes, too.”
    “Crystal clear?”
    “Here’s an idea,” I said from my seat between them.
    “How ’bout we leave my hair, skin tone, and eyes the same?”
    “Brown, taupe, and brown? Puh-lease.”
    “My skin’s not taupe.”
    Brittany and Tiffany remained suspiciously quiet.
    “Hyperdye for the hair,” Brittany said suddenly. “It’s totally brill. Like who’s gonna believe that she became Hollywood blond overnight? Nobody. But if we hyperdye her, and she changes her hair color like all the time…”
    “People will think she’s just releasing her inner cool,” Tiffany completed her twin’s thought. “People are so dumb.”
    “Hyperdye?” I asked, trying not to let them push me past the breaking point.
    “It’s this totally cool stuff Chloe made for us,” Tiff said.
    “It like changes colors when you do this thing to it with another one of Chloe’s gadgetmathingies.”
    I groaned inwardly, because obviously that incomprehensible (not to mention ungrammatical) sentence cleared everything up. Like, totally.
    “So my hair could be blue one day and red the next?” If I was going to have to dye my hair anyway, a punk look was the most I could hope for.
    “Blue?”
    “Red?”
    The twins spoke with identical, horrified tones.
    “Toby, you’re a cheerleader. Cheerleaders do not have blue hair.”
    “You hyperdye it. I’ll pick the colors.” I wasn’t entirely sure how hyperdye worked, but it seemed like a good compromise to me.
    “Maybe hyperdye isn’t such a great idea,” Brittany said slowly, still twitching in horror at the idea of a varsity cheerleader sporting bright blue hair. “Chloe gets kind of mad when we use it recreationally.”
    A six-syllable word. Impressive from a twin.
    “Can’t we just leave my hair brown?” I asked. “It’s either that or bright red. Your choice.”
    For a moment, the twins stared at me, homicide in their little cheerleader eyes, but then, the twin on the left perked up a bit.
    “Chocolate brown?” she suggested.
    “Or maybe mahogany?”
    “Honeysuckle!”
    “Ohhh…or we could do mahogany