Chapter 37: Counterattack
The walk home from the school field had the comfortable, low-energy quality of people who had used their afternoon well and were ready to be done with it.
George was moving better than he had been — the moderate exercise was doing what moderate exercise did when you actually did it, which was make the next time slightly easier than the last. He wasn't going to admit this to anyone, but Mike had noticed the incremental improvement and filed it without comment.
Aaron had dropped three points of physical attributes over the course of the afternoon — the ambient output of someone operating at full competitive intensity — and Mike had absorbed them the way he absorbed everything: quietly, without breaking stride.
[Physique +3]
He was at 139. One point from his pre-Summer League target. He gave himself until Wednesday.
Missy walked beside him with a football tucked under her arm — one of the practice balls George had let her keep — and the specific posture of someone who had decided something and was committed to it.
"I'm going to be on the team someday," she announced.
"Girls' league starts at twelve," Georgie said, from ahead of them.
"I know that," Missy said. "I'm nine. I can do math."
"Just checking."
"George," she said, in the tone she used when she was invoking their father's authority against Georgie specifically, "tell him I can do math."
"Everyone can do math," George said, from the back of the group, still slightly winded. "Walk faster."
Across town, Cady left the George house in the particular daze of someone who had processed a significant amount of new information in a single afternoon and hadn't finished sorting it yet.
She walked to her car — her mom's, borrowed — and sat in it for a moment before starting the engine.
The notebook.
She'd been careful. She'd given Regina something harmless and taken away something real. The intelligence value of knowing that document existed, knowing its scope, knowing how Regina organized and sourced her information — that was worth the trade several times over.
She started the car.
The cheerleading piece was new and required thought. Joining the Plastics had apparently come with a sub-clause: the group maintained a presence on the cheerleading squad, which meant Cady was now expected to be on the cheerleading squad, which was a development she needed to report to Janis and Damian before they heard it from someone else.
She pulled out her phone and sent a single text to the group thread: Need to meet. Tomorrow morning. Damian's place.
Janis replied in under a minute: Already knew something happened. 9am.
Damian: I'll make breakfast. What do you want?
Cady: Whatever you're making.
Damian: Waffles it is. This feels like a waffle situation.
Damian's basement had evolved, over the course of their two-week friendship, into their default meeting space — partly because it was genuinely comfortable, with a couch and a coffee table and a small whiteboard Damian had mounted on the wall for reasons he'd never fully explained, and partly because Damian's mother was the kind of parent who provided food and then disappeared, which was the ideal combination.
Cady arrived at nine with the notebook information organized in her head the way she organized field observations: facts first, implications second, questions third.
Janis was already there, cross-legged on the couch with her sketchbook, eyeliner already done. Damian was upstairs finishing the waffles.
Cady sat down and told them everything.
The notebook. What it contained. The scope of it — seniors, faculty, staff, the sourcing structure that suggested Regina had been building it for at least two years. Janis's name. Damian's name. The principal's entry she hadn't read closely. Mike's entry and what it said.
Janis listened without interrupting, which meant she was taking it seriously.
When Cady finished, Janis was quiet for a moment.
Then: "We need to get that notebook."
"No," Cady said.
Janis looked at her.
"I thought about this last night," Cady said. "If that notebook goes public, it doesn't just hurt Regina — it hurts everyone in it. Teachers, students, people who have nothing to do with our situation." She held Janis's gaze. "That's not what we're doing."
Janis had the specific expression she got when her instinct and her judgment were arriving at different places and judgment was winning the argument. She'd been waiting a long time to have something real on Regina. The fact that the right play wasn't to use it immediately was genuinely frustrating.
"Fine," she said. "But we know it exists. That's not nothing."
"That's exactly what it is," Cady said. "For now. We know it exists, we know what's in it, and we know she's been building it for two years. That's information. We hold it."
Damian came downstairs with three plates of waffles and set them on the coffee table with the presentation instincts of someone who took breakfast seriously.
He looked between them. "We're strategizing, not burning anything down?"
"Strategizing," Cady confirmed.
"Good." He sat down. "I saw the whiteboard."
They all looked at the whiteboard, where Janis had already written two words in her angular block lettering:
FIGURE. INFLUENCE.
"Okay," Janis said, picking up her fork. "Here's the thing about Regina. Her position runs on two things — how she looks and who follows her. Those are the load-bearing walls." She tapped the whiteboard. "You take out one or both, the structure comes down."
"The following part I understand," Cady said. "The appearance piece — what are you thinking?"
Janis had clearly been thinking about this for longer than this morning. "Regina is meticulous about her skincare and her diet. It's basically a full-time job. She gets these specialty products — imported stuff, hard to find locally — and she talks about them constantly." She looked at Cady. "You're on the inside now. You could swap them."
Damian had paused mid-bite.
Cady set down her fork.
"Swap them for what?" she said.
"Inferior products. Drugstore versions of whatever she's using. Nothing that actually hurts her — just things that don't work as well." Janis's expression was the focused, controlled version of something with more heat underneath it. "Over time, her skin breaks out, her energy's off, she can't figure out why. Her confidence takes a hit. Her followers start to notice."
The table was quiet for a moment.
Cady looked at her waffle.
She understood where this was coming from. She'd read Janis's name in that notebook, had seen the single line beside it, had understood without being told what it referred to. Janis had been carrying this particular weight for two years and it was real weight, the kind that changed how you moved through a space.
But.
"I'm not going to do that," Cady said.
Janis looked at her.
"It's not about Regina deserving it," Cady said carefully. "It's about who we become if we do it that way. We're better than that." She paused. "Also, honestly? If it ever came out that we'd been messing with her products, we lose everything we've built. We'd be the villains."
Janis was quiet for a long moment.
Damian ate his waffle with the focused attention of someone staying out of the negotiation.
"Fine," Janis said finally. "But we need something. We can't just wait."
"We're not waiting," Cady said. "I'm inside. I'm learning the structure. And I found out today that the cheerleading piece matters more than I thought."
She told them about Amy's choreography session — the warm-up routine Amy had developed for the squad, the Summer League performance coming up.
"Regina runs the cheerleading squad," Cady said. "The Summer League performance is her moment. The whole school watches it. If that moment goes sideways—"
"—she loses the room," Janis finished.
"She loses the room," Cady confirmed.
Janis picked up her fork again. Something had shifted in her expression — the particular quality it got when an idea had been revised into something she could actually respect.
"What are you thinking?" she said.
"I'm thinking I learn the routine," Cady said. "And I pay attention to where the vulnerabilities are." She picked up her own fork. "Information first. Move second."
Damian pointed at her with his fork. "That's a good plan."
"It's the beginning of a plan," Cady said. "There's a difference."
Janis almost smiled.
"Okay," she said. "Information first."
Sunday evening found Mike on the Cooper's couch, which was where he'd been for the past two hours, and where he intended to stay for at least two more.
George had suggested the NFL broadcast with the energy of a man who had been looking for a legitimate reason to sit down since Saturday morning. Mary had looked at the schedule, confirmed it was a reasonable use of Sunday, and produced a bowl of pretzels without being asked.
The Cardinals and the Longhorns were in the third quarter, and the Longhorns were having a difficult afternoon.
George had the focused body language of a man watching something he cared about — leaning slightly forward, one hand on his knee, occasionally providing running commentary that was half coaching and half teaching.
"Okay," he said, as the Longhorns' offense lined up deep in their own territory. "What are they facing right now?"
Mike looked at the formation. "They're pinned inside their own ten. If they can't convert on the next possession, the Cardinals are in position for a safety."
George pointed at him. "How'd you know that?"
"You explained safeties last week." Mike watched the screen. "Defensive team scores two points when the offense is tackled or goes out of bounds in their own end zone. Cardinals are playing the field position correctly — they've been pushing them back all third quarter."
Georgie looked at Mike from the armchair with the expression of someone whose father had been explaining football to him for seventeen years and had only recently discovered that explaining it to someone else apparently worked better.
"See?" George said, to Georgie specifically. "That's how you watch a game."
"I know how to watch a game," Georgie said.
"You know how to watch the game," George said. "Mike's learning to understand it."
Georgie ate a pretzel.
On screen, the Longhorns' offense huddled on fourth down, deep in their own end zone, with the Cardinals' defense looking like a wall.
George leaned forward. "Come on. Don't be stubborn about it. Punt the ball."
"They're going to punt," Mike said.
"They better punt," George said.
"Dad's been yelling this at the TV for twenty years," Georgie said, to Mike. "The teams never listen."
"They usually should," Mike said.
The Longhorns' coach called timeout. The punt team came on.
George threw his hands up in vindicated satisfaction. "There it is! That's the move." He settled back. "Fourth quarter, anything can happen. You don't give up field position on ego."
Missy appeared from the kitchen with a bowl of popcorn she had made herself, which she had absolutely been told not to make herself, and positioned herself between Mike and the armrest with the practiced efficiency of someone who had been claiming this specific spot for years.
She offered Mike the popcorn.
He took some.
She looked at the TV. "Who's winning?"
"Cardinals," Georgie said.
"Are the Longhorns going to come back?"
"Maybe," George said. "That's why you watch the fourth quarter."
Missy nodded seriously, as though this were wisdom she was filing for later use.
The game went to commercial.
George looked at Mike. "Summer League's ten days out. I've been thinking about the lineup."
"I figured," Mike said.
"Aaron runs the offense. You're going in as the feature back." He said it the way he made most of his real coaching decisions — flat, factual, no performance around it. "You've earned it. I want you to know that going into the week."
Mike nodded.
George reached for a pretzel. "Don't make me regret saying it in front of my kids."
"Dad," Georgie said.
"I'm being encouraging," George said.
The game came back from commercial. The fourth quarter started.
They watched.
(End of Chapter 37)
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