Suddenly, though, right outside the classroom door, Tina showed up and took me under her wing (so to speak).

  “Hi,” she said with a smile. “Lien Hua said you might have some trouble with Mr. Grady, so I thought I’d drop by and lend a hand.”

  I was a little surprised to see her there. “Don’t you ever go to class?” I asked. Actually, she wouldn’t be the first person. Have you ever noticed that in any school, there are always two or three people, usually eighth graders, who wander around the halls, and it seems like they never go to class at all? I always wondered how they got away with stuff like that. Tina, for example, seemed to be able to get away with doing whatever she wanted all the time.

  She didn’t answer me, by the way. She just threw back her head and laughed, as the light caught her gray eyes. “Oh, Jendra!” she said with a smile. Tossing her hair, she made a cute little fist and knocked on Mr. Grady’s door.

  When he opened it, Tina breezed in like a spring zephyr and dragged me through the door behind her. “Hey, Mr. Grady,” she said, popping her gum. When I do that, it sounds really gross, but Tina did it with a kind of compelling charm. “Sorry we’re late,” she continued. “My dear friend Jendra and I were just bonding in the bathroom.” She winked at him coyly. “You know—girl stuff? So is it okay if she just drops into your class now?”

  Mr. Grady laughed, and let me assure you, that is extremely unusual. “Of course, of course,” he said, smiling at me. I was getting so sick of seeing smiling faces. Fortunately, in that class I sit next to Leah, so I finally got a frown. A big frown.

  “Why do you keep hanging out with Tina Sheperd?” she whined at me as soon as Tina slipped out of the classroom.

  “She’s my friend,” I said. “I know you don’t like her, Leah, but she’s actually really cool once you get to know her.”

  “Chrystal got to know her,” Leah said melodramatically, “and now she’s dead.”

  I thought that was a little theatrical. “Chrystal’s not dead,” I said. “She moved to Australia.”

  Leah arched an eyebrow at me and asked, “Was that before or after she moved to Finland?”

  I decided to change the subject. “Leah,” I said, “do you believe in ESP?”

  “You mean like mind reading?” she said. “Sure, I guess. Hey! Can you guess what color I’m thinking of? Or, no, wait! I’ll guess you? Orange?”

  “No,” I said, “I—” She wouldn’t let me finish, though.

  “Pink?”

  “No, but, Leah—”

  “Green? Blue? Red?”

  “Leah!” I exclaimed. “For Pete’s sake, will you shut up about that! I’m not even thinking of a color. I just asked because I had the feeling earlier today that someone was reading my mind.”

  “Who?” she asked saucily. “Tina Sheperd?”

  “No,” I replied. “Just somebody else. Just somebody you don’t know.” I sighed. I was getting fed up with Leah, once again, so I decided to turn around and pay attention to our assignment—except I didn’t know what our assignment was, and Leah was mad, so she wouldn’t tell me.

  I stuck my hand up in the air and waved it around for about half the period, until I finally gave up and just started surfing the Net instead. I’m not one to fret over missed classroom assignments. Besides, I was too busy fretting over my initiation at Jamey Fitzhughston’s house that afternoon.

  10

  The Initiation

  “Purple?”

  That took me completely off guard. I pulled my head out of my locker and saw Leah standing next to me expectantly.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” she said triumphantly. “You were thinking of purple, weren’t you?”

  I was sick of her bugging me, so I just said, “Yeah, that’s it. Purple. Wow.” And then finally she went home for the afternoon and shut up about it.

  Meanwhile, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I figured just jumping on the bus wouldn’t be a good idea since I was supposed to go to that initiation thing. And besides that, I don’t ride the bus. But I’ve always wondered what would happen if I just did one day. I know they say that you can’t ride unless you start at the beginning of the year, but if I showed up at the bus door screaming and crying and whining, would they really turn me away?

  I was thinking about that when I happened to run right into Jamey Fitzhughston, who was really not the person I wanted to see.

  “Oh, Jendra, good,” she said, sounding like she wanted to puke all over me.

  “Hi,” I said shakily. “Is it time for the initiation?” I was a little nervous about that. I could still remember my sixth-grade volleyball initiation, which involved stuffing lime Jell-O in my bra, and taping ostrich feathers to my face and Coke cans to my butt. And the people in charge of that little romp had actually liked me. I shuddered to think what someone who hated me as much as Jamey Fitzhughston did would make me do.

  Actually, though, she didn’t seem to want to make me do anything. In fact, she didn’t want to have anything to do with me. In fact, even though she said my name, I’m not even sure she recognized me right away. As soon as she did, she got this disgusted look all over her face and left, so I was just standing there all by myself in the hall.

  Until Tina showed up with a ready stick of gum. “Just ignore Jamey,” she said, popping the gum into my mouth. It was spearmint this time.

  “I think she hates me,” I said.

  “She does,” Tina assured me.

  “Well, that’s comforting!” I exclaimed with a snort.

  “Jendra,” said Tina, rolling her eyes, “don’t snort, for heaven’s sake. It’s so porcine.”

  “It’s what?” I croaked.

  She didn’t answer me. “And don’t worry about Jamey, either. She may look fierce, but her powers are relatively weak.”

  “What?” I thought that was kind of an odd thing to say, but Tina stopped talking then and led me off down the hall.

  “Where are we going?” I asked her after a few minutes of walking.

  “Back to the bike rack,” she said with a smile. “But first we’ll stop by the vending machines to pick up some diet sodas.”

  “And some chocolate from the snack machines?” I hoped.

  “Jendra,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Fattening?”

  “Okay,” I said glumly.

  Before long we were at the bike rack in back of the school. I felt a little bit out of place because everybody had a bike but me. Since we lived so close, I usually walked to school. Or sometimes Leah’s mom gave me a ride, when it rained and stuff.

  “You can ride with me,” Lien Hua volunteered. “Unless you’d rather run along beside us.”

  Call me crazy, but that suggestion didn’t sound too fun.

  “My dog likes to do it,” Lien Hua reasoned as she continued to smile. “But it’s probably better if you get on the bike. You can sit on my handlebars.”

  “Are you sure?” I squeaked. That didn’t seem like such a great idea to me. I mean, Lien Hua is pretty short, and my butt is pretty big, and frankly, I thought that if I sat on her handlebars, she wouldn’t be able to see anything at all. But we didn’t exactly have time to think of a better plan because the next time I looked up, I saw that the other girls were all pedaling away.

  “Come on,” Lien Hua urged with that smile of hers. “Hop on.”

  I hopped on, and the bike fell over.

  “Okay,” said Lien Hua with a giggle, “we can try again.”

  By the time we actually got to the wall around Jamey Fitzhughston’s house, we’d been on Lien Hua’s bike for about an hour, and we’d fallen over twice and run over a discarded pizza box, after narrowly missing a low-flying pigeon.

  “Well, here you two finally are,” said Tina, sounding exasperated. “Hurry up, Lien Hua. Everybody else is already inside.” She rolled her eyes at me. “Jendra,” she said. “We are going to have to get you a bike.”

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to walk straight. My butt was really sore from the handlebars. “That sounds like a good idea to me. So, when does my initiation start?”

  “As soon as we get inside,” she said. I expected her to stroll up the front walk, but instead, she jumped over the wall. I suddenly glanced up at the house and noticed that something about it was strange. It didn’t look lived in. The grass in the front yard was really overgrown, and vines covered the house and the wall.

  “I thought you said this was Jamey Fitzhughston’s house,” I said, scrambling over the wall after Tina. I’m not much of a scrambler, and by the time I got to the other side, I felt a lot like scrambled eggs. Between riding the bike and scaling the wall, I was feeling pretty worn out. But, unfortunately, I still had a full afternoon ahead of me.

  “Technically, it’s an abandoned house,” Tina explained. “But Jamey’s the one who found it, so we say it’s hers. We use it as our official off-campus headquarters. Once we get enough money, we’re going to buy the place.”

  “Where are you going to get enough money to buy a house?” I asked.

  Tina shrugged. “Why do you think we do all of those bake sales?” she asked.

  That shut me up for a while. Tina led me around to the back of the house, to an old wooden door painted black. She stuck a diet soda tab in the lock and fiddled around with it until the door opened.

  Inside, I expected to find an abandoned, messy old dump, but to my surprise the place was completely furnished—and furnished really well, I might add. Beautiful, intricately woven oriental carpets covered the polished hardwood floors, and the walls were painted metallic gold. From the shine you would have thought it was real gold. There were crystal chandeliers and a bunch of busts and statues and sculptures all over the place.

  “Wow!” I said. “This is really beautiful. Where did you get all the money to decorate this? More bake sales?”

  Tina only laughed. “Follow me,” she said. “Oh, and, by the way, Jendra, take off your shoes.”

  I slipped off my black sneakers and stepped lightly across the elaborate rugs, following Tina into the kitchen. She suddenly stopped at the oven.

  “Well?” I prompted. “Where to now?”

  To my surprise, Tina opened the oven door and ordered, “Get in!”

  “What!” I shrieked, jumping back a few feet. I mean, literally, a few feet. I sort of crashed into the sink, which hurt my butt even more, I might add. What was this? The old Hansel and Gretel treatment? “Okay,” I said, “I’ve heard of weird initiation rites before, but do you really—”

  “Jendra,” Tina said shortly. “It’s not what you think. Just get in.”

  I still felt shaky about the whole thing, but Tina slid in first, so I sort of had to follow her. To my surprise, the oven didn’t have a back. Instead, it had a huge opening, that led to a spiral staircase.

  “Whoa!” I said, carefully following her down the stairs. “This is really weird.”

  “Just wait,” Tina said with a grin. “You’re not going to believe your eyes once we get to the bottom.”

  11

  Beyond the Secret Door

  When the staircase finally stopped, I found myself standing in a tiny little room, barely big enough to turn around in. The air was sort of heavy like in a dungeon or a swamp. And it was very, very dark inside.

  “So what now?” I asked, feeling really overwhelmed. “Where to?”

  “The canal,” Tina said, and I suddenly realized that the black, ripply place in front of us was running water, not a wall.

  “Oh, my gosh!” I exclaimed. I jumped as a raft floated by. There wasn’t much room for jumping around in that space, so, leave it to me, I jumped all over Tina.

  “Watch it, Jendra,” she said. “We’ll work on your cheerleading moves later. Just get on the raft.”

  We both climbed aboard, and Tina picked up a long, wooden pole and started to push us forward.

  “This is really weird,” I said. “It’s like something you would see in a creepy old horror movie.”

  Suddenly Tina stopped poling and knelt down at the side of the raft. She dipped her hand into the water, and then stood up and sprinkled a few drops of it on my head. “Do you swear silence and secrecy?”

  “To what?” I squeaked, ruining her solemn ceremony. My voice was sounding ultra high for some reason. Maybe because I was nervous.

  Tina sounded exasperated with me again. “Just say yes, Jendra!” she exclaimed with a sigh. “It isn’t that hard!”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling dumb. “Yes.”

  “If you betray our secret, Death will seize your soul!” she finished spookily.

  “Hey!” I yelped. “That’s severe. You didn’t tell me a threat like that was coming, or I might not have said yes.”

  “Just shut up and everything will be fine,” Tina assured me shortly.

  We ran out of water just about then, so Tina pulled our raft over to the bank, and we got out on a tiny piece of ground. There wasn’t much room to stand again, and it was still really dark. In fact, all I could see was a big green door, at least three times as tall as I was, with big brass bolts all over it. I didn’t know what was beyond the door, but something must have been pretty hot in there because steam was spraying out all along the sides.

  I cocked an eyebrow suspiciously. “What is this?” I demanded. “The door to Hell or something?”

  “Close,” said Tina, which wasn’t very reassuring.

  “What’s making all that steam?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” Tina told me. With much less effort than I would have expected, she tapped on the door three times in the middle and it opened up.

  Suddenly I was met with the shock of my life.

  All the cheerleaders were in there, sitting on the ground in a circle, eating Pop Rox. That was a big enough shock by itself because I hadn’t seen anybody eating Pop Rox in at least five years, and I was just pretty darn sure that they didn’t even make them anymore. But that was nothing compared to the real surprise.

  In the middle of the room, there was this huge—and I mean huge—glass case. It was at least nine feet tall, maybe taller, and it was extremely shiny. In the center, on a golden shelf, sat a single green and black pompon.

  “Uh, not to be rude,” I blurted out uncomfortably, staring at the pompon. “But what’s that?”

  Tina’s gray eyes flashed brightly. With a slow smile that gradually got bigger and bigger, she announced theatrically, “The sacred pompon!”

  “The sacred pompon?” I squeaked.

  Lien Hua stood up and came over to me. “You know, the sacred pompon! We worship it!”

  “Wicked, huh?” said Jamey Fitzhughston, who seemed glad that I appeared to be so horrified.

  “Actually, I was thinking more of evil,” I said uncomfortably.

  Tina burst out laughing. “Evil?” she said with a giggle. “Oh, Jendra, don’t be silly. The pompon is a thing of goodness. It protects us from the evils that attack.”

  “Evils?” I repeated suspiciously. “What kind of evils?”

  “Jendra,” said Tina. “Please, please don’t be so naive. You may not believe this, but there are dozens of groups at school that are hostile to cheerleaders. Their most intense desire is to destroy us. But thanks to the pompons, they can’t do that. And that is why we’ve built the pompons a sacred shrine.”

  They all smiled, and I wanted to run away. My parents are pretty conservative, okay? They’re so strict they wouldn’t let me pierce my ears until I turned twelve, so I only shudder to think how they would react to sacred pompons. I knew I definitely had to get out of there and fast. I tried to think up some excuse.

  “Uh, excuse me,” I blurted out instantly. “But I think I have appendicitis!”

  Tina grabbed me by the arm. “Nice try, Jendra,” she said. “But don’t be scared. There’s no reason for you to run away. The ceremony hasn’t even started yet.”

  “Ceremony?” I repeated flatly.

  “Your initiation,” Jamey Fitzhughston reminded me, and I felt my stomach sink.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said faintly. “That. Great.” I walked around nervously for a minute before somebody finally pulled me down so I could sit with the rest of them.

  “It’s kind of hot in here,” I said. “Is anybody else hot?”

  “The pompon generates heat when we gather for a ceremony,” Tina told me solemnly.

  That explained the steam around the door, but I still had a lot of unanswered questions. I just kept staring up at the pompon in the glass case. It was really pretty in a way.

  “Gorgeous isn’t it?” said Tina. “You know, it has given us great wisdom. The pompon can give you wisdom, too, Jendra, if you’ll only join us.”

  That sounded kind of ominous to me. I tried to remember the techniques for resisting peer pressure they had taught us in our D.A.R.E. program, but I was drawing a complete blank. After all, there’s a big difference between a police officer pretending to try to sell you drugs and a cheerleader really trying to get you to worship a pompon. Although, come to think of it, I guess both scenarios are pretty strange. But the point is, I had no clue how to escape.

  “You worship this pompon?” I asked in disbelief. My mouth had fallen open so wide it must have looked like I had some kind of freaky degenerative disorder. “So,” I said slowly, “this is like—a cult?”

  “No,” Tina assured me smoothly with a big grin. She must have noticed how freaked out I looked. I couldn’t hide it. “No, Jendra, think of it more like a club.”

  “Like the baby-sitters’ club,” added Lien Hua helpfully.

  “Exactly,” said Tina, “like the baby-sitters’ club—but . . . not.” She smiled brightly. “Understand?”

  “Not really,” I said. “It still seems an awful lot like a cult to me. So, what do you guys do here?”

  “Pray to the pompon and ask for her wisdom,” Tina replied.

  Oh, no! This wasn’t a cult! Where could I have gotten such a silly idea?

  “Her wisdom?” I repeated, arching an eyebrow. “Are you trying to tell me that this is a female pompon?”

  “Of course,” Tina told me. “Why do you think pompons always travel in pairs? They definitely have genders. This pompon is named Athena, to honor the Greek goddess Athena, patroness of wisdom, the olive, defensive warfare, and cheerleaders.”

 

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