The Dead Girls Detective Agency (20 page)

I gawked in her wake.

“Cool,” David said out loud.

Cool? Cool? He never said “cool.” Especially not about attending a social event that could feature as the climax of a John Hughes movie. If I didn’t know better I’d think David, instead of Four, Five, and Kaitlynnn, had been possessed.

David turned and walked down the corridor in the direction of the library. Much as I didn’t want to admit it, he didn’t look like a man whose soul mate had just died.

As he rounded the corner, I swear I saw him do a little skip.

Chapter 18

“
KAITLYNNN! WHAT ON THIS PLANET IS WRONG
with you today?” Kristen flipped her long blond hair over her left shoulder and swung around to face her squad mate confrontationally. “You have been off ever since we got here. Either go inside, read a guidance pamphlet on whatever pointless teen turmoil you are currently going through and get over it, or
FOCUS
on the matter at hand.”

Kristen spun around dramatically on the heel of her pristine white sneakers and took a few strides away from the squad so she could appraise her team from a distance. As head cheerleader, if there was so much as a glob of lip gloss out of place, it reflected badly on her. And anything less than perfection was not something Kristen tolerated. She wrinkled her nose as she looked them over. As if on cue, the sixteen girls in front of her straightened up, pointed their left legs forward and swiveled their bodies ever so slightly, like they were posing for a paparazzi camera no one could see.

Actually, only thirteen of the girls struck an insta-pose. Three of them were two beats behind everyone else. Because three of the squad were possessed by my dead friends.

“Okay, let’s go for the pyramid!” Kristen shouted, clapping her hands loudly.

This was going to be interesting.

“Oh gawwwd,” Blonde Four (Lorna) mouthed at Blonde Five (Nancy). She looked like she was rooted to the spot with cold hard fear. Which was so not a Goooo Team! stance.

Looking at the sports field, I was happy to be away from the action—for now at least. It was much better to be standing on the sidelines (well, over by the bleachers) while Nancy, Lorna, and Tess were forced to take part in cheer practice. In the name of the investigation, of course.

But while Lorna looked like she was about as up for being part of a teen girl pyramid as she was for wearing man-made fibers, from the way Five was bounding over to the rest of the squad like an overexcited Labrador puppy, Nancy was loving this part of the Plan.

“Guys, places, please. You may have all day, but I, quite frankly, have a life, so do not test me,” Kristen said.

I scanned the sea of yellow-and-blue uniforms—the “cute” (if your style role models were the girls of the Playboy mansion) pleated micro-skirts and navel-skimming vests. I was so teasing Her Geekiness about the fact she’d actually enjoyed this the second she unpossessed Five. Still, it seemed that Nancy wasn’t the only cheerfan. A few other kids had come out to watch the show too, including Alanna, the gel pen dropper, Photo Club Mina, and Brian, this kinda unpopular kid, who I’d actually dated for about thirty seconds in fourth grade. Back when I thought mud and worms were an acceptable
eau de boy
. Which, past the age of eleven, they are so not.

I focused my attention back on the sports field. Even if no one but their mothers could tell the Blondes apart, knowing who was currently possessing them, it was easy to figure who was who. Five was hanging off Kristen’s every word as she explained in detail exactly how the stunts were going to play out today, while Four was looking in disgust at the cheerleader next to her who had just had the gall to accidentally step on her sneaker leaving a dirty black mark.

That was those two accounted for, but where had Tess taken Kaitlynnn’s body? Surely she hadn’t run straight back to the locker room as soon as she heard the
pyramid
word? And, much as I was getting more over him by the second, I really hoped she’d not run to the library in the hope of finding David again.

Kristen clapped again to signal the end of her briefing—and the squad spread out, ready to start their routine. Kristen motioned for her über-clique—Jamie, Kaitlynnn, and the Blondes—to stand to the side until they were needed. The other girls got into four groups of three, shimmied a little, then simultaneously dipped down, putting their hands together to make four human springboards for the stars of the show to bounce up on.

That meant Tess, Lorna, and Nancy—along with Jamie—were going to have to get their Living bodies up on top of the ’mid. Uh-oh. As enthusiastic as Nancy was in the locker room, I knew she had no acrobatic experience. Lorna would never have joined in any physical activity that could have involved her sweating when she was alive. And Tess? I did not for a second think she was the athletic type. This could so end in tears. Or broken bones. Maybe both.

Just go with it
, I silently said to them.
Follow the Living and it’ll all be okay
.

And if it’s not, in the future, we will think a bit more carefully about the consequences before we possess people.

There was a flash of blue as Jamie ran forward to take her place. She went to her group of three helpers, and lifted up her right foot. She stood on the girls’ hands, as they crouched to get more power, then raised their arms, throwing her into the air. She popped up, straightened, and smiled at Kristen. Jamie was up. The first part of the ’mid was in place. Only three more of the top level to go.

Nancy looked at Lorna and smiled. And before I could even hide my eyes, she had mimicked Jamie’s movements perfectly, making Five’s body run onto the field and—
ping!—
with the other cheerleaders’ help there she was, up in the air, being held in place by the three girls below her who were holding on to her feet.

She beamed. “That. Was. The. Coolest! Come on, Lorna, this is so much fun! I can’t believe we didn’t try this months ago!”

“Lorna? Who’s
Lorna
?” Kristen asked.

Lorna had no choice but to go. She looked at me, grimaced, then followed Nancy’s lead. I thought she’d panic at the last minute, or refuse to go through with it, but she kept right on moving. Within seconds, she’d jumped and been pushed up there too. Okay, so she wasn’t smiling—I didn’t get the impression Lorna was loving three strange girls holding on to her feet—even if they weren’t actually
her
feet—but she stood tall. I felt Mom-at-sports-day proud.

Only Tess to go. Once she was up there, the Agency would have totally infiltrated the squad—and the major part of Nancy’s Plan could really begin. Once they were in, they could start asking questions about me without any of the girls thinking it was superweird—and see if any of them reacted strangely. If the Dead Girls could do that and keep their balance, that is.

“Kaitlynnn, where are you?” Kristen shouted from her position in front of the triangle of gently swaying girls. Being the captain didn’t seem so bad. You got to shout orders and look good, but without doing the tricky stunts. Well, that was how Kristen ran things anyway. “You need to get on top
NOW
! If this was a competition and it had taken us this long to form the pyramid we would so be getting penalty points.”

Even from my position a few meters away, I saw a couple of the squad shudder at the thought. To my right on the benches, Alanna nodded in agreement, as if she were the five boroughs’ only judge. Even Brian shook his shaggy-dog head.

Unfortunately Kristen had no idea that the final piece of her pyramid had authority issues and was seriously not impressed that she was being told what to do. Tess walked Kaitlynnn’s body over to the others as slowly as she could. So slowly that some of the girls at the base of the ’mid started to sweat. Major squad sin. Suddenly Blonde Four swayed dangerously—any second Lorna was going to cause a cheeralanche—but the girls below her tightened their grip on Four’s legs as Nancy held her hand. She stopped wobbling. Phew.

“Kaitlynnn, come onnnnn!” Kristen fumed. “Honestly, I’ve had relationships that have lasted less time than this.”

Kaitlynnn/Tess smirked and took her place. She put her left foot on the human hand trampoline and bounced it up and down, testing how sturdy it was.

“
OMFG
, Kaitlynnn,” Kristen screamed. “Will you just push yourself up here? Jamie and the others will grab your hands and pull you up. If you do not move in the next three seconds, I am replacing you with that fat kid sitting on the benches”—she pointed straight at poor Brian—“because compared to you, he’s as fast as Lance Armstrong
avec
bike.”

Tess looked at me and shrugged. She took a big step, bounced unenthusiastically, and launched Kaitlynnn’s body into the air.

Just not quite hard enough.

Instead of landing up on the same level as Jamie and the Blondes, Kaitlynnn’s body side bounced. Head-butting Jamie right in the ass.

“Wahhhhhh!” Jamie screamed, as three years of hard-practiced cheerleading poise failed her. She wobbled, heroically tried to grab Four to steady herself, then toppled, taking the whole ’mid down with her.

The resulting pileup of blond hair, blue shirts, and toned thighs looked like an explosion in a Barbie factory.

“Mess up much, Kaitlynnn?” Jamie said from somewhere under the heap. “And BTW, if whoever has her foot in my chest does not get off me in the next three seconds, I swear to God this squad will be running one member down.”

Kristen looked on, her expression a mix of horror and superiority. One by one, the girls pulled themselves out. Not one helped another up.

“That was
intense
,” a tiny brunette who I recognized from my literature class said. “We haven’t had a fall like that for, like, days.”

“Still, I, um, bet that didn’t hurt as badly as it did when Charlotte Feldman went under the F train,” Five said, totally out of nowhere.

Subtle, Nancy. A million miles away from subtle.

A couple of the girls nervously giggled, not sure how to respond.

“I heard she hit the track so hard, it took them two
hours
to clean things up,” Jamie said, grimacing.

Okay, less with the gnarly details. Been there, got the tombstone …

“Ladies?” Kristen came over and pulled herself up to her full five foot seven and a half. “You have just performed the worst pyramid I have ever witnessed in five years of cheering and what are you doing—are you running to do it over, this time properly? Are you apologizing for wasting my precious time with your total lame-ility? Or are you standing around, talking about some dead girl that nobody cared about until a week ago?”

Kristen put her hands on her hips, then turned to Four and pulled a piece of grass out of her hair. Whoa, Lorna must be in a state not to have taken care of that by herself.

“We were just—” she started.

“Just what?” Kristen asked.

“What she means is that we were just talking about Charlotte because it’s really heartbreaking what happened to her and she’s only been dead for a few days, so we’re completely entitled to talk about her if we want,” Blonde Five said, desperately trying to bait Kristen.

Watch it, Nancy, I thought. I’m not sure Five would use that many words of more than one syllable in a sentence.

“Yeah, I thought Charlotte was cool actually,” said lit class brunette. “Her eyes were pretty and she always had the straightest eyeliner ever. And one time, she helped me with a Shakespeare assignment, because I’d just finished reading Harry Potter and I kept getting confused between Hamlet and Hagrid and it was completely messing up my essay on why he had issues.”

Sweet. Unfathomably stupid, but still sweet.

Kristen looked around at her squad, balling up her freshly pressed skirt in her right hand. I got the impression that she was imagining it was one of their pretty heads. Was she actually about to … blow?

“Charlotte? Will somebody please tell me what is the sudden big obsession with
Charlotte
?” Kristen ranted. “Ever since that idiot girl tripped, I seem to hear her name, like, thirty times a day. First from David, then the teachers, and now you guys? What is with the dead-girl mania? She didn’t disturb our practices when she was alive, so why are we talking about her now that she’s dead?”

“Because she was smoking hot,” a gruff voice next to me said. I turned to see it had come from …
Brian
? “I’m sorry I never got to spend enough time with her lately to tell her that.”

Well at least someone got what David saw in me. Even if it was my ill-advised fourth grade boyfriend. Mina grabbed her red Amoeba tote bag and scurried away.

Tess sat Kaitlynnn’s body on the grass and put her head between her hands. Much as she was not my favorite person, I had to agree with what her body language was saying. This was getting us nowhere. Whoever my murderer might be, she wasn’t going to confess just because someone provoked her.

But that didn’t stop Nancy.

“That’s quite a strong reaction, Kristen.” Nancy had clearly watched too many
Columbo
reruns and was taking a page out of his detecting book. “I don’t think any of us are
obsessed
with Charlotte. It sounds more like you are.”

Kristen narrowed her blue eyes. “Me? Obsessed with
her
? Hello, as if! What is up with you?” She spun around. “In fact, what is up with all of you? Standing around here aimlessly after
that
performance. My housekeeper’s ironing board could have put on a better show. It was pathetic. About as pathetic as Charlotte Feldman. Honestly, if you don’t improve soon, I’ll push you all onto the nearest subway track.”

What?

Nancy and Lorna swung the Blondes’ bodies around to me as if to say,
See! See!

That wasn’t a confession, was it? If it was, something didn’t feel quite right.

“No one said Charlotte was
pushed
, Kristen. Everyone says she tripped. So where did that come from?” Lorna made Four say. “I think you need to be careful when you’re talking about the dead.” Lorna nudged Five in the ribs. “Because if you have wronged them, you never know when they’re going to come back and call you out on it.”