Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover (9 page)

"Especially
in Istanbul," Aunt Abby added softly, and our teacher laughed. It sounded
like an inside joke, except spies don't make inside jokes! There's too much
information "inside," and so that's where we keep it. But the
craziest thing wasn't that Aunt Abby had made a joke. … It wasn't even that she
was flirting. The craziest thing was that I was pretty sure that smiling and
laughing were Mr. Solomon's way of flirting back!

There
we were, in a cavern of stone and secrets, and yet it felt like my aunt had
brought the sun in with her, illuminating a side of my teacher that I had never
seen.

For
the first time in weeks, my head didn't hurt. Boston was just a city in
Massachusetts.

I
might have been content to sit like that all day—all week. All year. But then
the lights went out. At the back of the room an old-fashioned projector came to
life, and an image was slicing through the dark.

"I'm
sure you've all seen this before," Mr. Solomon said.

But
I hadn't seen it. A chill ran through me as I realized…I'd lived it.

The
entire class seemed to hold its breath while the film cut between different
angles, different cameras, different news crews. Parts of the footage had been
shown in an almost continual loop on every TV in the country for days, but as
with most things we Gallagher Girls do, there was a lot more to the story, and
that day we were seeing the uncensored version.

"What
I'm about to show you is a nearly textbook example of a daylight exfiltration
operation in an occupied area." I thought Mr. Solomon would look at me. I
expected my aunt to ask if I was okay. I wanted someone to acknowledge that it
wasn't a lesson—it was the hardest day of my life. But the only change in our
teacher's voice was a sudden pause before he added, "Lucky for us, it didn't
work."

And
then I knew that we weren't there to study what Macey and I had done right.
We
weren't
the seasoned professional operatives on the roof that day. We were just two
girls who got lucky, and luck's not a skill that anyone can learn.

Dust
kept dancing in the projector's light. At no point did anyone say, "If
this is too much for you, Cammie, you can leave" or "Ms. Morgan, what
were you thinking there?"

I
was just another girl in the room, not the girl on the roof. The sounds were
different there—just the buzz of my instructor's voice. The answering of
questions. The muffled shouts of the camera operators as they jockeyed for
position.

But
in my head I saw the whirl of circling blades. I heard the grunts and kicks,
the distant roar of the wind coming in off the harbor. In my mind, the film was
clearer and slower as Preston fell to safety. And then I watched a masked
figure ignore the son of a potential president, point to my best friend, and
say the two words I hadn't truly heard before.

The room was dark.

The walls around us were thick.

And
I'm pretty sure my aunt was the only person who heard me whisper, "Get
her."

There
are things spies often carry with them: pocket litter, fake IDs, the occasional
weapon-slash-camera-slash-hair accessory. But the heaviest things, I think, are
the secrets. They can drown you if they let them. As I sat inside Sublevel Two
that day, I knew the one I held was so heavy I might never see the surface
again.

When
class was over, the lights came on, and I listened as half of my classmates
scattered to explore their new surroundings. I watched Mick Morrison corner
Mr. Solomon with a dozen questions about the Marciano Theory and its proper use
in urban settings, but the rest of the class stood huddled around Aunt Abby,
who was doing a very dramatic reenactment of the time she'd had to sneak a
nuclear engineer out of Taiwan during the rainy season.

"So
then I told him, I know it's a rickshaw, but that doesn't mean it doesn't
float!" Abby said.

Tina
and Eva burst out laughing, but I knew Aunt Abby was watching out of the corner
of her eyes as I left the classroom and started up the long spiraling ramp that
led to the mansion above us. I knew she was listening as Bex fell into step
beside me and said, "Cam, slow down," as if it were possible for me
to outpace her. (Which it isn't.)

But
I just kept spiraling upward, remembering the words I had listened to but
hadn't
heard;
recalling the attackers' indifference when Preston fell to safety over the side
of the roof—the things I had watched but hadn't seen.

"I was an idiot!" I
snapped.

"You
were brilliant," Bex said, and from any other girl in any other school
those words might have sounded like lip service. But not this girl. Not this
school. From Bex, it was an undisputed fact, and she was willing to take on
anyone who said otherwise.

"Two
girls in this school could have done what you did," She cocked an eyebrow.
"And you're the other one."

As
we reached the elevators and stepped inside, I thought about how there are two
types of secrets: the kind you
want
to keep in, and the kind you
don't
dare
to let
out.

I
could have looked at Bex. I could have lowered my voice, and there, in that
tiny elevator a hundred feet beneath the ground, I could have been certain that
no one could possibly overhear.

But
my mother and Mr. Solomon were the two best spies I know, and they hadn't told
Macey. They hadn't told
me.

As
the elevator doors slid open, I heard the sound of girls coming down the stairs
above us. The smell of lunch drifted from the Grand Hall. Things move through
our mansion as fast as fire sometimes. And that's when I knew I had the second
type of secret.

I didn't dare to set it free.

Instead
I carried it into the Grand Hall and sat down at the juniors' table for lunch,
barely looking up until I heard Eva Alvarez announce, "Mail's here,"

She
dropped a postcard on the table in front of me, and immediately I recognized
the ruby slippers from the National Museum of American History and
The Wizard of Oz
and, most important, from the very place where Zach and I had first seen each
other for what we really were.

This
isn't
a
hallucination,
I told myself.
This
is real,
I thought as I turned it over and studied the handwriting that, last spring,
I'd watched wash away in the rain.

And I read the words "Be
careful."

I spent
the rest of that week trying to talk to Aunt Abby alone, but the problem was,
from that point on, my aunt was
never
alone.

"Um,
Aunt Abby, can we…talk?" I asked Monday night after supper, but Abby just
smiled and started for the door. Unfortunately, half the sophomore class
started with her.

"Sure,
squirt. I was just going to go to teach these guys this really cool move with a
garden hose. Wanna come?"

When
I saw her in the foyer Tuesday afternoon, I asked, "Hey, Aunt Abby, do you
maybe have some time to…catch up…tonight?"

"Ooh,
sorry, Camster," she told me as she started walking Macey to P&E.
"Fibs has asked me to help him whip up a batch of this superpowerful
coma-inducing cream I learned how to make in the Amazon. It could take all
night."

Everywhere
I turned I heard questions like, "Hey, Cammie, has Abby ever shown you
that thing she did in Portugal with a bobby pin?"

Or
"Well, I heard that five more senior operatives were begging to take
Macey's detail, but the deputy director of the CIA
himself
called and asked Abby to take the job."

By
Saturday, it was starting to feel like the one story Aunt Abby wouldn't tell
was the only one I wanted to hear.

And, by Sunday, it had started to
rain.

The
halls seemed dimmer than usual for that early in the semester as I walked
through the empty corridors on my way to my mother's office. When I passed the
window seat on the second floor, I couldn't resist pulling back the red velvet
curtains and peering through the wavy glass.

Heavy
gray clouds hung low in the sky, but the trees were lush and green in the
forest. Our walls were still tall and strong, and beyond them, not a single
news van sat. I thought for a second that maybe the worst of it was over, but
then a flash of lightning slashed through the sky, and I knew the storm was
just beginning.

"Cammie!"
Mom's voice called through the Hall of History, and I turned away from the
glass.

Walking
toward my mother's office, I couldn't help notice that she was smiling as if
this were exactly how the first Sunday night after summer vacation was supposed
to be—except this time it was definitely different. Because first, there was
music. Loud music. Fast music. Music that was definitely
not
of the
Culture and Assimilation variety!

And second, the food didn't smell
terrible. Sure, it didn't smell as good as the aromas drifting from the Grand
Hall, but it didn't look like the smoke (and/or hazardous materials) detectors
had gone off yet, and that was a very good sign.

But
as soon as I reached the door to my mother's office, I could see that what
really set this Sunday night apart was that, this time, my mother was not
alone.

"Hey,
squirt. I'm crashing." My aunt winked as she pulled a grape from a bowl of
fruit on the corner of my mother's desk. "Your mom and cooking," Abby
said, grabbing me by the hand and spinning me around to the music,
"this,
I
had to see."

"No
one is forcing you to eat anything," Mom chided, but Abby just kept
dancing, pulling me in and out until she whispered in my ear, "I've got an
antidote for ninety-nine percent of the food-borne illnesses known to man in my
purse, just in case."

And
then I couldn't help myself. I laughed. For a second, it seemed right. For a
second, it seemed safe. Everything was different…but familiar. The dancing. The
music. The sounds and smells of Mom making her famous (in a bad way) goulash.
It was as if I were having flashes of someone else's life. And then it hit me:
it was
my
life. With Dad.

Dad
used to listen to that music. Dad and I used to dance in our kitchen in D.C.

And suddenly I didn't feel like
dancing anymore.

Mom
watched me walk to the radio and turn down the volume.

"Oh,
Cam," my aunt said with a sigh. "Look at you. All grown up and
breaking hearts…" She raised her eyebrows. "And rules. Honestly, as
an aunt, I don't know which makes me prouder."

"Abigail," Mom warned
softly.

"Rachel,"
my aunt mimicked her sister's motherly tone.

"Perhaps
the United States Secret Service should not be encouraging
rule-breaking—especially at this particular school during this particular
year."

"Perhaps
the headmistress of the Gallagher Academy should try to remember that a spy's
life is, by definition, rules-optional," my aunt lectured back.

"And
while we're on the subject," Mom said, her voice rising, "perhaps the
United States Secret Service should consider that it might be unwise to tell
Madame Dabney's eighth graders how to make their own chloroform out of Kleenex
and lemon wedges?"

"Yeah,
I couldn't believe they hadn't figured out how to do that yet," Abby said,
as if the standards for her sisterhood had gone down considerably.

"That technique was banned
in 1982!"

"Hey, Joe said—"

"I
don't care what Joe says!" Mom snapped, and this time her voice carried
fire. "Abigail, rules exist for a reason. Rules exist because when people
don't follow them,
people get hurt."
The words lingered in the air.
My mom seemed to be shaking as she finished. "Or maybe you've
forgotten."

I've
known Aunt Abby my whole life, but I've never seen her look like she looked
then. She seemed torn between tears and fury while the storm raged outside and
the goulash congealed and I wondered whether any of us would ever feel like
dancing again.

"Rachel, I—"

"Get
her."

I
don't know why I said it. One minute I was standing there watching them argue,
and the next, the secret I'd carried with me all the way from Sublevel Two was
breaking free.

Mom
inched closer. Abby stepped away. And outside, the rain was falling against the
mansion walls like the tide.