Pep Squad

For Emma, Chris, Ben
and especially Mattie

MERCIER PRESS

3B Oak House, Bessboro Rd

Blackrock, Cork, Ireland.

www.mercierpress.ie

http://twitter.com/IrishPublisher

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© Eileen O'Hely, 2014

ISBN: 978 1 78117 195 0

Epub ISBN: 978 1 78117 263 6

Mobi ISBN: 978 1 78117 264 3

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Contents

1 Proposal

2 simulation

3 orientation

4 aptitude

5 fitness

6 drama

7 roach

8 abseiling

9 assault

10 break-up

11 audition

12 horsepower

13 duneboarding

14 maze

15 musical

16 skydiving

17 briefing

18 snow

19 plan b

20 cavalry

epilogue

‘Jess! You look fantastic!' said Saoirse as Jess stepped out of the changing room.

Jess looked uncertainly at her reflection in the mirror. Apart from her school uniform, she never wore skirts, and as far as she was concerned the mini skirt Saoirse had talked her into trying on showed way too much leg. Not that Jess had bad legs. As a runner and gymnast her legs were perfectly toned, and as she was half Egyptian her skin had a year-round tan. The simple fact was that, although Jess had great legs, she just felt more comfortable with a pair of tracksuit trousers covering them.

Saoirse stood behind Jess and gathered her dark hair into a ponytail. ‘Even better,' she said. ‘You really should dress like this, you know – it suits you.'

Jess's fringe fell below her eyebrows. If it wasn't so late in the term, the school would be sending a note home to her parents advising them to get it cut.

Saoirse's eyes dropped to her wrist. She gasped and let go of Jess's hair.

‘What's wrong?' asked Jess, turning to her friend.

‘The CSPE exam starts in fifteen minutes!'

‘What?' exclaimed Jess, grabbing her friend's wrist and looking at the watch herself.

‘I don't have a spare helmet, but I can give you a ride,' offered Saoirse.

‘I've got a better idea,' said Jess, ‘race you!'

Two minutes later, Jess was back in her school uniform, sprinting towards the front exit of the shopping centre while Saoirse headed for the car park.

As a gaggle of pensioners with walking frames emerged from a café, Jess swerved to avoid them, tweed skirts billowing in her wake. Dead ahead a toddler was crouched in the middle of the concourse, struggling to open a red plastic packet. When Jess was three feet away the bag exploded, little brown spheres scattering in all directions.

‘
Maltesers!
' gasped Jess as her foot landed on a clump of them and skidded out from underneath her. Jess threw her weight forward and managed to regain her balance, surfing one-legged on the Maltesers rolling beneath her school shoe until they crumbled away to a malty, chocolatey mess.

She sprinted down the ramp to the exit, her feet taking on a mind of their own, pumping one in front of the other at a pace that was almost out of control. When she was only metres from the exit, a shop boy lost control of a train of trolleys and got them jammed in the doorway.

Jess was running too fast to stop and the trolleys were completely blocking the exit. She had no choice but to jump, doing a perfect swan dive across the trolleys and landing in a forward roll on the pavement outside.

Not even pausing for breath, she darted along the footpath, dodging prams and little old ladies' shopping carts (what was it with old women and kids today?) and leapfrogging over postboxes and rubbish bins.

Her biggest hurdle came when she got to the bus stop. The footpath was packed with people looking at their watches and stamping their feet. A bus hadn't come for some time and they were clearly annoyed about it. Pushing through them would be impossible.

Jess considered detouring around the bus stop on the road side, but there was too much traffic to make that an option. The only way left was to go over it.

She leapt on top of the rubbish bin next to the bus shelter and grasped the edge of the toughened glass. Hoisting herself up onto the roof, she ran across the top of the shelter, acutely aware that the people below could see right up her skirt. When she got to the other side she jumped, somersaulting over the heads of the remaining people and landing four feet away. As she hit the ground, Jess heard a familiar whine and glanced over her shoulder. Saoirse's baby-blue Vespa was heading towards her, weaving in and out of the traffic. Jess put on a fresh burst of speed.

As she ran hard to keep ahead of the Vespa, her heart was pounding and her muscles complaining about being jolted into action without a proper warm-up. But she had one advantage. While the Vespa had to stick to the roads, Jess could go cross country.

Coming up on the left was a children's playground. Jess hurdled the boundary fence with ease, scaled the ladder of the slippery dip, then surfed down the slide on her heels. She leapt directly from the slide to the see-saw, running up the slope and keeping her balance easily as she got to the centre and her weight made it flip in the other direction. She slid down the other side and bounced on the very end of the see-saw. The rebound gave her the extra spring she needed to clear the fence on the opposite side of the playground.

Only one more road to cross and she'd be there.

The lights were red and the carriageway was clear, but cars were parked bumper to bumper along the verge. Jess did a sideways roll across the bonnet of an Aston Martin and ran through the gates of Kilmaire College just as the blue Vespa caught up with her.

Jess smoothed down her skirt and straightened her tie while Saoirse parked the Vespa and took off her helmet.

‘Plenty of time,' said Saoirse, shaking out her hair.

‘Wanna bet?' said Jess, heading at a run towards the hall, where a man with a crew-cut was pulling the doors closed.

‘Wait!' yelled Jess as she and Saoirse ran across the schoolyard.

The man's steely blue eyes bored into them.

‘Miss Leclair and Miss Ahearn, presumably,' he said flatly.

‘Are we too late?' panted Jess.

‘Almost,' continued the man, whose haircut and physique suggested he belonged in the army rather than supervising Junior Certificate exams at a private girls' school. Jess had tried to blot out the sound of his heels clicking up and down between the rows of desks all week as she sat papers in English, Irish and Mathematics, and, to tell the truth, she found him a little scary. ‘Let's get a move on.'

Jess took a few minutes to settle into her Civic, Social and Political Education exam, but she got so involved in writing her essay in the final section that she didn't realise the rest of the class had left early.

‘Time's up, Miss Leclair,' said the exam supervisor, standing directly in front of her desk.

‘Oh, sorry, Mr … um …' began Jess.

‘Parry,' said the supervisor, adding Jess's exam paper to the pile he was holding. ‘I was wondering if I could have a word?'

‘I guess,' said Jess, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms.

‘How do you like school?' asked Mr Parry.

Jess was expecting to be grilled about her late arrival, so the question surprised her and she wondered where this was going. ‘It's not my favourite place to be, but it's OK,' she admitted.

‘You're doing very well academically. Straight As for everything, champion for your age group in gymnastics and cross-country – you're even top of your class at the community Arabic school you attend on Saturday mornings. And glancing over your Junior Cert papers, I've yet to see a wrong answer.'

‘Hang on – how on earth do you know all that?' asked Jess, wondering whether exam supervisors were really permitted to look over Junior Cert exam papers – let alone determine whether the answers were correct – and, even if they were, how he could know all that other stuff about her.

Rather than answering her, Mr Parry pulled a brochure out of his suit pocket and handed it to Jess.

‘What's this?' asked Jess, glancing at the flyer for what looked like a posh high school called Theruse Abbey. It was filled with pictures of smiling teenagers in immaculate school uniforms looking studious in class, playing instruments and doing various sporting activities in equally immaculate sports gear.

‘False advertising,' said Mr Parry.

‘What? You mean the students at this school don't actually smile the whole time?' replied Jess, flicking through the brochure.

‘No, what I mean is that the school is a cover.'

‘A cover for what?' asked Jess.

‘A training academy for secret agents.'

Jess looked up at Mr Parry. ‘Funny. Seriously, why are you showing me this?' She set the brochure on the table in front of her.

‘I am serious,' said Mr Parry. ‘That's the brochure we give to parents of prospective students.
This
is the brochure we give to the students,' he continued, handing a sceptical Jess a second brochure.

The photos were of the same teenagers, but this time they were dressed in camouflage gear of different colours. As well as sitting in classrooms and science labs, they were abseiling down cliffs, practising martial arts and doing target practice with what looked like real guns.

‘OK,' said Jess slowly. ‘What has this got to do with me?'

‘Let me start from the beginning,' said Mr Parry, pulling the chair out from under the desk in front of Jess and sitting down. ‘Theruse Abbey is a training academy for exceptional students like yourself who go on to work for P.E.P. Squad after graduation.'

‘P.E.P. Squad?'

‘Planet Earth Protection Squad. The most secret spy network in the world,' explained Mr Parry.

‘You're kidding me. The most secret spy network in the world couldn't come up with a better name than P.E.P. Squad?'

‘Admittedly the founder is a rather … unique individual,' said Mr Parry.

‘And how come I've never heard of it?' asked Jess.

Mr Parry laughed.

‘It's only the amateur government-run spy agencies like MI6 and the CIA that the public hears about. We're a
secret
organisation. We're the best in the world because we recruit the best and we recruit them young. This may surprise you, but the teenage mind is ideally suited to acquiring secret-agent skills. The brain is still developing and is far more adaptable to learning than an adult brain. The nucleus accumbens, the pleasure centre of the brain, develops quite early, while the prefrontal cortex – which, among other things, curbs dangerous behaviour – develops late, so teenagers are keen to indulge in thrill-seeking activities that many adults think are too risky. This makes you guys far easier to train in basic field-agent skills such as base jumping and high-octane sports – or even your free running,' said Mr Parry, looking at Jess pointedly.

‘How did you–' began Jess.

‘You came to our attention some months ago. As well as Junior Cert results, we monitor the results of national academic competitions, like mathematics competitions and the Young Scientist of the Year competition, and we look at the results from interschool athletic meets. When we find individuals like yourself who excel in that type of thing, we dig a little deeper.'

‘You mean you've been spying on
me
?' asked Jess.

Mr Parry spread his hands almost apologetically.

‘It's what we do best.'

Jess frowned, wondering exactly how much the man sitting opposite her knew about her. ‘And you're telling me I should consider going to this secret-agent school?'

‘I know a good candidate when I see one,' said Mr Parry, lacing his fingers behind his head and leaning back in his chair. ‘You have all the attributes we look for. Are you interested?'

Ignoring his question, Jess peered around the room suspiciously.

‘What are you doing?' asked Mr Parry.

‘Looking for hidden cameras. This can't be real,' said Jess.

‘I can assure you it is,' replied Mr Parry. ‘Don't tell me you're not interested.'

‘Oh, if it's real then I'm interested,' said Jess. ‘It sounds cool. But even if I believed you, my parents would never go for it.'

‘What if I told you they already have?' said Mr Parry.

‘What?' exclaimed Jess. ‘You're telling me that my ridiculously overprotective parents want to send me to a school for spies? No way. I'm going to be stuck at this place for the next three years. My dad's on the school board.'

‘Actually, your parents were surprisingly easy to persuade. After all, they think you're going there,' said Mr Parry, gesturing to the first brochure. ‘We arranged to interview them a while ago – letting them think they came to us, of course.'

‘How, exactly?' asked Jess.

‘We have very skilled recruiters. In your parents' case it was easy. Your father's a dentist, so we arranged to have a new client discuss the school with him.'

‘And he fell for that?'

‘It piqued his interest enough for him to google the school and talk to your mother about it. They were quite impressed with the tour.'

‘They've been to the school?' said Jess with surprise. ‘What did they say about the shooting range?'

‘It's a simple matter to disguise the shooting range and other speciality training equipment on parent tour days,' said Mr Parry. ‘As to what your parents thought, they were sufficiently impressed to submit the application forms for you.'

‘Without telling me?' said Jess sceptically.

‘They wouldn't be the first parents in the world to arrange a school transfer without telling their child about it until after the fact.'

Jess said nothing. The thought that her parents would do something like this behind her back had taken her totally by surprise.

‘Now I know this is a lot to take in,' said Mr Parry, standing up. ‘One of the problems we have in recruiting students of your calibre is convincing them that something seemingly so outlandish really exists. So I want you to go home, have a think about it and we'll discuss it again tomorrow. Any questions?'

Jess shook her head and started towards the door of the exam room, deep in thought.

‘Good,' said Mr Parry. ‘Oh, and Jess.' She turned back. ‘Try to be on time for your exam tomorrow.'