Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover (8 page)

Bex
beamed. It didn't matter that the two of them had never met before. My aunt
didn't wait on introductions. Which was just as well—Bex never waited on
anything. "So how's your dad?"

"He's great," Bex said
with a grin.

Abby
winked. "Do me a favor and tell him Dubai at Christmas is no fun without
him,"

Beside
me, I could practically feel Bex's mind spinning out of control, wondering
about Dubai in December. But Abby didn't offer details; instead she just turned
to Liz.

"Oooh,"
Abby said as she examined the fresh cut on her chin. "Paper clip?"
she asked.

Liz's eyes got even wider. "How
did you know that?"

Abby shrugged. "I've seen
things."

I
thought back to Mr. Solomon's cabin. Whenever he and my mother spoke about the
things they'd seen and done, I wanted to hide from the details of their lives.
But as Abby spoke, we hung on every word.

"Does
Fibs still have that stash of the SkinAgain prototype in the lab?" my
aunt asked.

"Isn't
that a little"—Liz started—"strong?" (Which might have been a
bit of an understatement, since I know for a fact the Gallagher Academy
developed SkinAgain after an eighth grader fell into a vat of liquid nitrogen.)

Abby
shrugged. "Not if you mix it with a little aloe. Rub some of that on, and
no way that leaves a scar."

"Seriously?"
Bex and Liz asked at the exact same time.

Abby
leaned into the light. "Does this look like the face of a woman who
survived a knife fight in Buenos Aires?"

Every
girl in the foyer (by then there were quite a few) craned to look at her
flawless, porcelain skin.

"That's
not a good idea, Ms. McHenry," my aunt said, startling her admirers. I
turned and saw Macey reaching for the front doors, and realized Abby had sensed
her without even turning around. And just that quickly her skin stopped being
the most amazing thing about her.

"I
don't do breakfast," Macey said. (Which was a lie, but I didn't say so.)
"I'm going for a walk."

At
the sound of the word "breakfast," the girls in the foyer seemed to
remember that they'd spent an entire summer without access to our chef's
Belgian waffles. They filtered out, one by one, until it was just me, my three
best friends in the world, and the woman who had taught me how to use a jump
rope to temporarily paralyze a man when I was seven.

She
stepped closer to Macey. "The security division noted two helicopters in
the vicinity this morning— probably paparazzi looking for pictures of you—but
until we're sure…" She eased between her protectee and the door. "You
can't go outside. I'm sorry." She added that last part later, like an
afterthought.

"Isn't
that why
you're
here?" Macey reminded her and stepped toward the door again, but Abby
casually cut her off.

"Actually,
that's why I'm
here."
Abby pointed to her feet and leaned against the
door. It might have been a casual gesture from another person, in another
place. But as I looked from my aunt to Macey, I realized they were both strong.
Both smart. Both used to being the prettiest girl in the room. The last time
I'd had a feeling like that, it had involved Dr. Fibs's lab and two chemicals
that are both potent, and volatile, and don't really like being put together
under pressure.

"Rule
number one, ladies," my aunt said. "Get careless…get caught."

As
she walked away, Bex grabbed my arm and mouthed, "She's bloody
awesome!"

Then,
without turning around, Abby called, "I bloody know."

The rest of the morning was
something of a blur.

Macey
was in the junior level Countries of the World class, so she sat right beside
me as Mr. Smith talked for forty-five minutes about the pros and cons of
getting your cosmetic surgery at CIA-approved facilities. (Evidently, the work
is very high quality, but since they don't technically "exist," the
insurance paperwork is a nightmare!)

Madame
Dabney gave a nice, relaxing refresher course on the basics: i.e. identifying
every piece in a twenty-piece place setting (and the corresponding best methods
in which each utensil could be used as a weapon).

Things
seemed perfectly normal as we started down the

Grand
Staircase and Liz headed toward Dr. Fibs's lab in the basement.

"See
ya!" she called, which was okay. I'd gotten used to the idea that Liz was
destined for the research-and- operations track while Bex and I were training
for a life in the field.

It
wasn't until I heard Macey say, "See you at lunch," that I remembered
she was still behind the rest of us, academically.

As
she set off for the freshman-level encryption course taught by Mr. Mosckowitz,
Bex and I moved into the small passage beneath the Grand Staircase and stepped
before a gilt-framed mirror. A thin laser beam scanned our faces, reading our
retinal images. The eyes of the painting behind us flashed green, and a mirror
slid aside, revealing the elevator to the most secret classrooms of the most
secret school in the country.

But
I didn't feel a rush. I wasn't thinking about pop quizzes or how Mr. Solomon
looked that one time when we were doing wilderness reconnaissance exercises and
he rolled up his sleeves.

Instead
I just said, "Bex," and waited for my best friend's "Yeah."

"I'm worried about
Macey."

"Why?"
Bex asked, pressing her palm against the glass on the inside of the elevator.
"She seems fine to me."

I
placed my palm beside my best friend's. "That's what worries me."

Bex
is black and I'm white. She's beautiful and I'm plain. She grew up in London
and I spend my summers on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. She was born for
fight and I was born for flight. But the way she looked at me reminded me that
Bex and I are alike in all the ways that matter.

"I
know something that'll make you feel better," she

said.

"What?"
I asked as the elevator around us rumbled to a start. My palm burned hot and I
jerked my hand from the glass. An odd light unlike anything I'd ever seen
before filled the car around us, and through an eerie purple glow, my best
friend smiled.

"We're about to see Sublevel
Two."

When
you're the first Gallagher Girl since Gilly herself to find and use the
passageway behind the third-floor corridor that contained a million dollars
worth of confederate coins, you might start thinking that the Gallagher mansion
can't possibly surprise you anymore.

But you'd be wrong.

The
car stopped. I knew the doors were about to slide open and reveal the most
covert place we had ever seen. I held my breath, waiting. Then suddenly the car
jerked backward, throwing us against the doors.

"Cam,"
Bex said as we hurtled at least a hundred feet further underground. "Is
this supposed to be—" she started, but suddenly we were plunging downward
again.

We
halted. "PRESENT DNA, PLEASE," a mechanical voice rang through the
car. A narrow slot appeared in the stainless-steel shell. It was exactly
finger-size, so I reached out to touch it.

"Ouch!"
I cried. A small pin had pricked me. Then it disappeared, and a fresh needle
replaced it. A small drop of blood bubbled at the top of my finger.

"No
way," Bex said, shaking her head emphatically. (And that's how I learned
that the girl who once bragged she'd taken on an arms dealer in a sword fight
in Cairo one spring break was actually afraid of needles.)

"PRESENT
DNA, PLEASE," the voice demanded again, this time sounding slightly less
patient, so Bex put her finger in just as the car stopped.

The
doors slid open…and I knew that nothing about Sublevel One had prepared me for
Sublevel Two.

It had
been almost exactly a year since Bex and I had first laid eyes on Sublevel One.
There the walls were made of stainless steel and frosted glass. Our footsteps
had echoed. I'd always brought a sweater. Everything about it was cool and
modern, like stepping inside the future—our future. But stepping inside
Sublevel Two was…not.

Around
me, other elevator doors were sliding open; other girls with bleeding fingers
were stepping onto creaking, wide-planked oak floors.

The
ceiling was a jigsaw puzzle of thick stone and heavy beams, and as I reached
out to touch the rock walls, I realized there were no seams. No mortar. Just an
indeterminable amount of limestone and earth separating us from the outside
world.

My
classmates stirred and turned, too busy taking in the dimly lit space to notice
the man who stepped out of the shadows and said, "Welcome to Sublevel
Two." He turned and started down the gently sloping floors, leading us in
a steady spiral. "I'd highly recommend paying attention, ladies," Mr.
Solomon instructed. "First day is the last day you get a guide."

Corridors
branched away from the spiraling walkway in a maze of stone. We passed arching
doorways, and the incline grew steeper. One wide corridor was labeled, simply,
storage,
but the doors that lined the hall were marked with everything from
f, false flag
operations; h, hitler, attempted assassinations of.
I'd always
heard about secrets being locked in stone, but I'd never seen it with my own
eyes until then.

We
walked for what felt like five minutes. The air around us was damp and cool,
and yet something told me that even in the dead of winter or heat of summer the
temperature would never vary more than three degrees.

And
then finally Joe Solomon came to a stop. As we stepped onto a floor of solid
stone, I looked back up the spiraling walkway—at the corridors that branched
like a maze—and suddenly I pitied the enemy agent who was ever foolish enough
to try to penetrate this store of covert knowledge. And finally I smiled,
wondering what on earth (or beneath it) could possibly lay in store on Sublevel
Three.

"Covert
operations." Mr. Solomon walked through a set of large double doors into a
room twice as large as the library in the mansion above us. As in the library,
a second-story walkway circled the room, and old-fashioned wooden tables were
arranged in a U-like shape across the floor.

"The
clandestine service…" our teacher talked on as the entire junior CoveOps
class rushed to claim seats. "It's a life of being where you're not
supposed to be—of doing what you're not supposed to do." There was a
wooden chair at the front of the room, but instead of sitting, he gripped the
back of it with both hands. It was the first thing about Covert Operations that
felt familiar. "It means getting in, ladies." He searched the room.
"And most important, it means getting out."

I
thought about hotels and laundry chutes, and for a second my head hurt. I felt
a little dizzy as our teacher said, "Exfiltrations are defined by two
factors, Ms. Baxter. Name them."

"They take place in hostile
territory," Bex said.

"Correct,"
Mr. Solomon replied, taking a step. He wrote Bex's response on an ancient
rolling chalkboard at the front of the room. "That's one qualifier of an
exfiltration. Ms. Fetterman, what's two?"

As
we waited for Anna's response, I heard the chalk against the board. Everything
was louder here, especially the clear bright voice that said, "No one ever
knows about it."

Every
head turned. I've never seen anyone command a room more effortlessly than Aunt
Abby did when she said, "You rang, Joe?"

Oh. My. Gosh.

Maybe
it was the spy in me … or the girl in me … or the
niece
in me … but when Aunt Abby placed her hand on her hip, I could have sworn she
was doing something that I hadn't thought any Gallagher Girl would ever dare to
do: flirt with Joe Solomon!

"Agent
Cameron," Mr. Solomon said. "So glad you could join us. The junior
class…" He gestured toward us. Aunt Abby waved two fingers.

"Hi, girls."

"…and
I were just getting ready to discuss exfiltration operations." He dropped
the chalk into the tray and slapped his hands together twice. "Thought you
might lend a unique perspective to that topic."

"Oh,
Mr. Solomon," Abby said with a smile, "you do know how to show a girl
a good time."

She
walked around the U of desks, scanning the walls, the cases of books,
everything about Sublevel Two; and I realized that while I was seeing it for
the first time, my aunt was seeing it
again
after a long time. I wondered if
it might look different in the light of everything she'd learned since leaving.

"As
I was saying," Mr. Solomon went on, "exfiltrations are critical. And
they're hard—"