Project Gemini (Mission 2 Page 2

  “Garmond. Shoes. Now.” Coach Van Buren, standing in the doorway, face flushed, eyes like PoP lasers ready to fire. He was ticked off. Great.

  I rolled my body toward my backpack and grabbed my shoes. Beside me, Dan sat on top of his sleeping bag, looking half dead.

  “What’s up?” I whispered.

  “Coach busted some of the guys for being in one of the girls’ rooms. But no one will confess, so he’s making us all run.”

  Those idiots.

  “Move it,” Coach yelled. “To the gym. Now!”

  The guys scrambled out the door. I was still sitting on top of my sleeping bag, holding my shoes in my lap.

  “Today, Garmond,” Coach said.

  I groaned and pushed to standing, still dizzy with sleep. I set one shoe on the floor and stepped into it, then stumbled to the door, stomping my bare foot into the thing, the laces trailing. I hugged the other shoe. “I was sleeping, Coach. I didn’t—”

  “Don’t want to hear it, Garmond. Gym. Move.”

  One shoe on, one off, I jogged down the dark hallway and into the gymnasium. It was dark too, with only three lights buzzing overhead. I stepped into my other shoe and crouched to tie my laces. I shivered and rubbed the goosebumps on my arms, wishing I’d grabbed a shirt.

  We lined up along the base line.

  Coach strode into the gym, pacing back and forth in front of us at the free throw line, his eyes angry and glaring. “I am appalled. We represent a Christian school, for Pete’s sake! And we’re here to play ball, not screw around with cheerleaders. Killers. Go.”

  Killers: Coach’s favorite torture device. I began to run. To the free throw line and back to the baseline.

  “Cheerleaders are here to cheer for you,” Coach said. “To encourage the crowd to cheer for you. Which should help you play better. Frankly, I could care less if they’re here or not. And once Principal McKaffey gets wind of this, they might not be here ever again. You’re lucky I don’t make you all sleep in the parking lot. Is that clear?”

  The gym was silent but for the sound of sneakers plodding and squeaking over the floor. Baseline to half court and back, then out to the far free throw line and back.

  “Is. That. Clear?” Coach yelled.

  “Yes, Coach,” we replied, a monotone dirge.

  “I don’t know whose bright idea it was to pretend to attack some poor girl, but I’ll tell you this: Rape is not funny. It’s not something to pretend or threaten or joke about. It’s a crime, and only lowlife scum mess around with it. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Coach,” the guys said.

  My eyes bulged as I headed to the opposite baseline. I glanced at Kip’s back, in front on my left. What had those morons done?

  “If I ever hear one of you say the word rape again, you’re off the team. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Coach.”

  “And I don’t want to see any of you so much as look at a cheerleader for the rest of this trip. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Coach.”

  When I finished my killer, I ran into the mats that were hanging on the baseline wall. My side ached. I panted, walking it off in little circles while the rest of the team finished. As usual, we were waiting for Desh. By the time the slowest runner who ever lived crossed the baseline, my heart rate had slowed. I glanced at Kip again, wondering what had happened, knowing he’d tell me later.

  “Let’s go again,” Coach said, pointing to the other end of the gym.

  I stifled a groan and jogged out to the free throw line.

  Coach made us run for a half hour. Desh fell over long before that, and Coach let him sit. Kip wanted to shower when we were done, but Coach said he may as well smell like scum if he was going to act like scum. Touché. I’d never seen the man so angry. Not even when Mike made that lay-up on the wrong end of the court to win the game for Culver City Christian last week.

  No one talked about what had happened—not then, not in the morning when we got ready to play, not when we lost our other games, and not when I didn’t get a trophy because the guys were all too tired to catch my passes. But on the bus ride home that night, it all came out. Coach segregated us: Cheerleaders and the girls’ basketball team in the front of the bus, guys in the back, coaches in the middle. Chaz and Desh were in the back right seat, Mike and Wyatt were in front of them. Kip and Dan had the left back seat, and I had a seat to myself in front of Kip.

  “We were playing spin the lotion bottle,” Chaz said when I asked for the whole story. He was a pretty-boy surfer with bleached hair, who was so tan he looked Polynesian.

  “Wow. How very junior high of you,” I said.

  “You’re just jealous,” Desh said. “It was worth the killers.”

  “Like you can talk, fool,” Kip said. “You only ran two before you passed out.”

  “I have a low metabolism.” Desh. A guy more suited for heavyweight wrestling than basketball, a guy with no neck who shaved his head bald on purpose and had a face that looked like he’d gotten hit by a bus. That was Desh.

  “Anyway …” Chaz glared at Desh then turned back to me, his feet in the aisle. “It was Desh’s turn, but the bottle pointed to this girl who wasn’t playing. I don’t know her name.”

  “Cute little freshman thing,” Kip said. “I think she’s from Pilot Point High.”

  “Wait. The PPH cheerleaders were there?” I asked. “I thought it was just girls from our school.”

  “We were all in the PPH cheerleaders’ room,” Kip said. “Megan’s cousin invited everyone.”

  Jasmine. The girl Kip and Megan kept trying to set me up with even though she already had a boyfriend.

  “Get back to the story,” Chaz said.

  “Okay, so this girl was reading a Bible with a flashlight.” Desh honked his obnoxious laugh.

  “There’s nothing wrong with reading a Bible,” Dan said, glaring at Desh.

  “Shut up,” Desh said, standing up in the seat he shared with Chaz.

  Chaz pushed him back. “So the girls say to spin again.”

  Desh slapped the top of Mike’s seat. “But I said, ‘No way. The lotion bottle has spoken.’” His eyes were wild and borderline psychotic as he relived the moment in his mind.

  I wrinkled my nose. Desh was a freak.

  “And the moron went over and told her she had to kiss him,” Kip said. “And she told him to get lost, of course, because he’s a creeper.”

  “She was breaking the rules of the game,” Desh said.

  “Then the creeper grabbed her,” Kip said.

  Desh lifted his hands. “I was just joking.”

  “He was,” Kip said, “but it freaked her out, so she kicked him in the—”

  “Nailed him!” Chaz said.

  “I saw red, man.” Desh shook his head in slow motion. “So I thought I’d give her a little scare, you know? Payback for dissing the Desh in public.”

  I glanced at Dan, not sure I wanted to hear the rest.

  “Chaz ran over and started to chant,” Kip said. “You know, the now-forbidden word.”

  “I didn’t say it,” Chaz said. “It was Mike. Then a bunch of us joined in.”

  “And some of the girls flipped and went and got their coaches,” Kip said.

  “It was a joke!” Desh said again. “We were just messing around.”

  Wow. “You guys are sick,” I said. “Keep it up and they’ll reopen Alcatraz just for you people.”

  Desh guffawed as if I’d meant that as a compliment. I shook my head and enjoyed a moment of silent appreciation for the poor cheerleader who’d been brave enough to take on Desh. And I wondered yet again why I was hanging around with these morons.

  ● ● ●

  Monday, as Gabe and I made our way through the lunch line, I couldn’t help thinking about how life was ticking me off lately. Here was why:

  1. The torture dream with Anya. But I didn’t really want to think about that.

  2. The whole thing with my mom. I’d managed to learn her real name�
��Lisa Wright, which meant my real name was Jonas Wright—but I still couldn’t figure out what had really happened when she’d been killed.

  3. I’d struck out big time when I’d tried to kiss Beth. Now she hated me. And she’d practically cheated to beat me in our finals match at the Regional LCT—League Combat Training—event. So now I despised her right back, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Stupid brain, anyway.

  4. Kip and Megan had taken their relationship to the schmoopie level, adding nauseating baby talk to their endless bouts of PDA. Which made my having struck out with Beth all the more painful.

  5. Gabe had picked me to be his sympathetic listener as he went on and on about how he’d lost Isabel to Nick, a task for which I was totally unqualified. Besides, I knew Isabel was on a surveillance mission to follow Nick. So her “dating” him was a total sham. But I wasn’t supposed to know, so I couldn’t tell Gabe. And there you have the hardest part of being a spy: keeping your big mouth shut.

  6. I’d risked my life to set a trap for Gardener—one of my former bodyguards—who turned out to be working for the baddies. But the traitor wasn’t talking, and Prière kept threatening to relocate me, give me a new name and fake parents to keep me safe. But I didn’t want to move. I wanted to stay here and play basketball and earn a college scholarship. Witness protection programs were not going to help that dream become a reality. Besides, Kimbal and Sasquatch were still following me around everywhere, though I did ask Sasquatch to stop tailing me into the bathrooms. I mean, come on.

  7. In three weeks we’d be playing basketball regionals, and we truly had a shot at making it to state. But my team was constantly risking our success with their stupidity. I mean, couldn’t they wait until the season ended to break the law? I could.

  8. And to make it all worse, today’s lunch was the Pilot Point Christian School cafeteria’s version of beef stroganoff. So nasty.

  Gabe and I were the first to arrive at the table formally designated for the basketball team. About this time last year the churchers I’d met in the Mission League had invaded our territory, completely destroying PPCS lunch table hierarchy. But Gabe still looked out of place. I mean, at six foot four, I was by far the tallest guy on the team. The other guys were big too—except Chaz, who was only five ten. Gabe was maybe five eight. He had short, ringlet curls, braces, and wore black Buddy Holly glasses.

  “There they are,” Gabe said, his head turning slowly to follow pretty boy Nick Muren and the goddess Isabel Rodriguez as they headed for one of the cozy round tables on the perimeter of the cafeteria where couples liked to sit and not eat. The only reason Kip and Megan didn’t sit over there was because Kip liked to brag.

  “Get over it,” I said, choking down a glob of grisly fake-steak. Smooth, I know. But I had my own problems.

  Gabe released a sigh that could fill a balloon. “I’m trying.”

  And he was. The guy was practically a saint. Gabe’s intense jealousy over Isabel “dating” Nick was a new phase in his life: self-indulgence. I couldn’t blame him. I’d once worshipped the Cuban goddess Ee-sabel myself, but I’d backed off when I’d realized that Gabe had a thing for her.

  “It won’t last,” I said. “Nick can’t hide his true self forever. She’ll see his dark side eventually.” Or the mission would end. As long as Nick was destroyed, either worked for me.

  Kip and Megan arrived then. Kip held both their trays, which allowed Megan to keep her hand in his back pocket. I know, I know. TMI.

  “Dude, why haven’t you signed up for camp yet?” Kip asked me, shaking his hair out of his eyes. “Coach said you’re the only one who hasn’t. What’s the deal?”

  Basketball camp. Add that to my list of drama. The deal was: I couldn’t go. Not if I was going to Japan with The Mission League. Worlds were colliding in a big way. Again. And I hadn’t broken it to the team yet. Or Coach. I just didn’t know how.

  “Is basketball camp this summer?” Gabe asked.

  “All summer,” Kip said. “Why?”

  “Did you see the Lakers game yesterday?” I asked in a desperate attempt to change the subject before Gabe spilled the beans.

  But Kip was on to me. He held his hand in front of my face. “Gabe?”

  Gabe picked at his braces. “Spencer is going to Japan.”

  “Japan?” Kip dropped his hand to the table, slapping the surface. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said to Gabe, then shoveled a forkful of fake-steak into my mouth.

  “Dude, Coach is going to flip,” Kip said.

  I wanted to say, “Tell me about it,” but I just gnawed on the fake steak and avoided Kip’s glare.

  “I’ll still see you this summer, right?” Megan asked Kip.

  Her pouty tone distracted my best friend from me. He looked at her, and his eyes lost focus. “Every night, girl.”

  “Oh, baby.” She grabbed Kip’s ears and pulled his lips to hers as if he was on today’s lunch menu and not the stroganoff.

  Gag. I pried my eyes from the PDA. Why were there never any teachers around when Kip and Megan got going?

  Arianna Sloan arrived then, smelling of herbal tea and wearing a floor-length navy blue skirt that looked like a feather duster. She was the only girl in school who got away with a modified school uniform because Principal McKaffey had given her special permission when she’d protested the immodesty of the knee-length skirt.

  True story.

  Her unibrow sank as she frowned at Kip and Megan, who were still making out. “How are you today, Megan?” she asked, arranging her lunch on the table.

  Megan ran her hands up into Kip’s hair and grabbed two fistfuls, somehow seeming to pull him closer to her, though it already looked like she was eating his face.

  Arianna tried again. “Megan, did you get all the notes down in Mr. Olson’s class?”

  Megan emitted a soft hum.

  “Hey, Spencer,” Gabe said, “my sister started basketball.”

  I was glad for a reason to look away from the Kip-Megan creature. Gabe’s sisters were in middle school, if I remembered right. Mary was the athlete. “She any good?”

  “I don’t know. I guess. She plays a lot.”

  “What position?”

  Gabe winced. “Uh … she dribbles the ball down the court like you.”

  “She’s point guard?” Mary’s stock rose a few points in my mind.

  “Spencer, you should volunteer to ref or coach an elementary school team,” Arianna said. “It would be the perfect way for you to serve the community.”

  “Mary’s in seventh grade,” Gabe told Arianna. “And this is the regular school season.”

  “I know,” Arianna said. “But the elementary schools need volunteers for their Little Dribblers program.”

  “I don’t have time to volunteer for squat,” I said. “Do you know how busy I am?” Between LCT and basketball practices, my own personal workouts, and my investigation into my mom’s death, I could just about pass for a zombie on The Walking Dead.

  “You need to rely on others more, Spencer,” Arianna said. “My word for this year is ‘listen.’ And you inspired it.”

  “Is that a fact?” I didn’t want to hear how I’d inspired such a thing, but I knew Arianna would tell me anyway.

  “You said I nagged people, so I’m trying to listen this year, and not talk so much, so I can hear the needs of those around me. What I’m hearing from you is that you’re exhausted.”

  “Amazing deduction, Sherlock. And you think coaching a kids’ basketball team will help me relax?”

  “Forget I said it.” Arianna removed an apple from her lunch bag and polished it on her skirt. “I’m just saying, we’re your friends. Let us help. You can’t do everything on your own. The Bible says two are better than one. Pity anyone who falls and has no one to help him.”

  “I’m not going to fall,” I said, then I threw a quote back at Arianna. “‘The weak die out and the strong survive.’” I’d heard it in English class.
I couldn’t remember what from, but it was true. I was a survivor. And it felt good to one-up her quote too.

  “‘Arrogance does not see itself,’” Gabe said, sounding like his dad.

  Clearly I was outmatched. “Why are you people picking on me? Basketball is almost over, then we’ll be off to Japan where I won’t have basketball or LCT practice.”

  “So you’re really going to Japan with the missionaries instead of summer camp and conditioning. Again?” Kip asked.

  I turned to face him. “I’m sorry, are you speaking to me? I hadn’t realized you’d come up for air.”

  Kip smirked. “Jealous much?”

  Totally. Desperately. Painfully. “Puh-lease.”

  REPORT NUMBER: 2

  REPORT TITLE: I Get a Warning, a Kiss, and a Punch in the Face

  SUBMITTED BY: Agent-in-Training Spencer Garmond

  LOCATION: Pilot Point Christian School, Pilot Point, California, USA

  DATE AND TIME: Monday, March 9, 5:06 p.m.

  DESH’S WHOLE “ATTACK THE CHEERLEADER” incident had me worried that hanging with the guys just might get me arrested. I’d been arrested twice before in middle school. It wasn’t fun. And getting arrested now would kill the rest of my basketball season and maybe ruin my chance at a college scholarship.

  I couldn’t risk that until the season was over, so I decided to spend some time with Gabe. Grandma would be so pleased.

  Practice was early this week and ended about the same time as afternoon Mission League. I had LCT at six, so when basketball practice was over, I didn’t bother changing out of my workout clothes. I just put on my old Lakers cap and headed outside to meet Gabe and his mom in front of the school. Sasquatch, as always, was right behind me.

  I had bodyguards because of some old prophecy. International had this mysterious “profile match” narrowed down to me and fourteen other guys around the world. But because of Anya Vseveloda’s odd interest in me in Moscow, Prière was convinced I was the match.

  Too bad no one would tell me what this match was supposed to do.

  Kimbal’s sedan was idling out front, right behind the Stopplecamps’ silver Honda minivan.