The Cheerleaders of Doom by Michael Buckley
“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
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.”
“Happy hunting,” Brand said.
“Wheezer, out.”
Before she knew it, she was fast asleep and having terrible dreams about monstrous pom-poms chasing her through the woods. She was pulled out of the nightmare by a rougher-than-usual shaking. She leaped out of bed and swung wildly, her secret-agent training taking over. Her fist connected with someone’s mouth.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Jeannie shouted when the lights
It was then that Matilda noticed that Jeannie was on the floor, clutching her cheek. She frowned and helped the girl to her feet. “I’m sorry. I can get a little jumpy. Are you OK?”
“Nothing a surgeon can’t fix,” the girl said angrily. “It’s time to suit up.”
Matilda glanced out the window. It was still pitch-black out—too early for practice. “Now? It’s the middle of the night.”
“Less talk, more action,” Lilly snapped.
Matilda slipped into her clothes and stepped out of the cabin and into the night.
The moon was high in the sky over the practice field. The squad headed straight across it to the woods, and Matilda followed.
“Listen up, Maddie,” Tiffany said.
“It’s Matilda.”
“It’s what I say it is!” she roared. When she calmed, she continued. “The squad wants to invite you to take part in a little job.”
“What kind of job?”
“Not so much a job—more like a shopping trip,” McKenna said.
“Shop Op!” Shauna and Toni said together, then gave each other a high five.
“Sounds … fun. You do realize it’s the middle of the night? What store is even open?” Matilda asked.
“It’s not a store and it’s not really shopping,” McKenna said.
“But there is going to be some shoplifting,” Jeannie added.
“Shoplifting?” Matilda said. Kylie stood nearby. From her expression, she was as unhappy about the plan as Matilda.
Tiffany bristled. “Cheerleading is an expensive sport. The uniforms, meals—hey, do you think this camp is free? Team Strikeforce doesn’t have sponsors and the prize money is peanuts. The competition fee for the finals alone is more than my allowance until the end of time.”
“So we’ve found a way to pay for it,” Lilly said.
“By stealing?” Matilda asked.
Everyone nodded.
Matilda had never stolen anything in her life, but she knew she had to play along. “No arguments here. I’ve lifted a few tubes of lipstick and a purse. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Well, listen to public enemy number one,” Pammy said, laughing.