Also Known As (17 page)

“Twenty-nine minutes. Don’t be late.”

I stuck my tongue out at the phone as I hung up. “So annoying,” I muttered, but I was smiling as I said it.

“Two minutes to spare!” I said as I leaped out of the car, dodging between the now-calmer raindrops. “I’m early! What do I win?”

Jesse looked up at his phone and tapped it. “Oh, no no no,” he said. “My phone says it’s been thirty minutes. You’re exactly on time.”

“Let me see that,” I said, but he held it out of reach over my head. “Your phone is biased and a liar. It looks shifty.”

“How dare you,” Jesse said, and when I went to grab for it again, I stumbled over my boots and half tripped, half tumbled into him. “Whoa, easy there.”

“It’s the rain,” I said. “I’m slipping on everything.” That wasn’t true, but I needed to say something to make up for the fact that I was starting to blush. “And hi.”

“Hi,” he said, smiling down at me. “Nice to see you again.”

“A pleasure, I’m sure.” I hung on to his sleeve while righting myself, and when I was steady, he handed me my coat. “I made sure that Max didn’t shed all over it,” he said. “You’re welcome.”

“Thanks. And tell Max thanks, too.” Jesse held it for me while I slipped my arms into the sleeves, then helped me pull my hair out from under the collar. “Good as new!” I said. “Where’s the coffee?”

“Are your eyes dilated?”

“I just really like coffee.”

“Do you think you may have a problem with caffeine addiction?”

“I only have a problem with caffeine when there
isn’t
any caffeine.” The line was already forming out the door and I craned to see how far away the cash register was.

“Look at you!” Jesse laughed. “You’re twitching!”

“Maybe we should get in line.”

“Maybe we should get you to a methadone clinic,” he replied, but let me drag him into line, anyway.

We left the coffee shop twenty minutes later, sweet coffee in hand, as I gave my driver the signal to stay where he was. “I couldn’t help but notice that you weren’t wearing your ring,” Jesse said.

I yelped and quickly moved to cover my hand. “It’s being resized at the jeweler’s!”

“I don’t want to make it weird or anything!” he said, even though we were both laughing by now. “I just couldn’t help but notice!”

“It was sending me into diabetic shock just by wearing it!” I cried. “I didn’t do it for me, I did it for
us
!”

He playfully shoved me, then grabbed my elbow and saved me from plowing into a bunch of women with handheld shopping carts. “Sorry,” I said to them. “It’s the caffeine, makes me all wobbly.”

They looked unamused, and Jesse and I turned the corner, heading toward absolutely nowhere. “So …,” I said, wiping some stray coffee off the lid with my thumb.

“Sooooo …,” Jesse said.

“So that happened.”

“What did?”

“We kissed.”

“We did? I’m kidding!” he said when he saw my face. “You looked like you were about to cry! I’m only kidding, I swear.”

“I wasn’t going to cry; I was going to murder you.”
Note to self: Hide emotions better
.

“Oh, well, that’s more like it. And yes, we kissed.” He shot a sidelong glance at me. “Are we still cool with that or …?”

“Oh, we’re cool. We’re very cool. No worries there, my friend. We are A-OOOOOO-KAY.”
Shut up, Maggie. Just stop talking right now. Right this very second. I mean it
.

“So, we’re not going into some weird friends zone?”

“What? No! I mean, unless you want to. Do you want to?”

“No. Do you?”

“No. Okay, wait.” I reached out and grabbed his arm, pulling us under an awning and out of the way of the rest of the pedestrians. “Why are you being weird?”

“I’m not being weird. I just wanted to make sure that you were cool with everything.”

“I don’t know how I can say this any more clearly: I’m really glad you kissed me last night.”

“Yeah, but then you didn’t call me back right away this morning and I was just worried …”

“You were worried because it took me fifteen minutes to call you back?”

“Um, maybe?” Jesse smiled, but his eyes were nervous and he kept running his hand through his hair, making it curlier with every swipe. It was kind of adorable, but he seemed agonized.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said. “A quick one?”

“Of course.”

“Which girl screwed you over?”

His eyes widened even as his shoulders relaxed. “So Roux told you.”

“Roux didn’t tell me anything, amazingly enough.”

“Wow, that’s cool of her.”

“
Names
. I want names.”

“Claire Thomason.” He took another deep breath. “Last year, right around Christmas. Messed me up pretty bad.”

So not only was his mom MIA, but he had been emotionally crippled by an ex-girlfriend. Leave it to me to be assigned to the most wounded bird in all of Manhattan. “Tell you what,” I said, looping my arm through his. “Let’s walk and talk about Claire.”

And that’s what we did for a good hour, winding our way up and down the streets of Nolita in downtown Manhattan. He had dated Claire for six months and was head over heels for her, but she always gave him mixed signals, wouldn’t return his calls, and so on. “It was like we’d make
out all night on Saturday and then on Sunday, nothing. No phone call, text, IM, nothing.”

“Which is why you’re trying to put me in the friend zone,” I said. “I’m not a therapist, but I think you might be transferring your feelings for Claire onto me.” I
definitely
wasn’t a therapist, just a kid who had spent way too many summers watching
Oprah
and
Dr. Phil
reruns.

“I know,” he said, rubbing his hand over his face and making a growly sound that was more cute than threatening. “You girls are confusing.”

“Well, guys are confusing, too. Look at Roux and her pothead Romeo. That looks like it was a huge disaster. Everyone sort of screws everything up all the time. It doesn’t mean they’re not trying their best.”

“Are you saying Claire was trying her best?” Jesse looked dubious.

“No, I’m saying that we should try
our
best. And that means talking about things like Claire and being honest with each other.” Even as I was saying the words, I could feel the lump forming in my throat. Here I was, talking about honesty while lying through my teeth. “Or, at least, as honest as we know how to be.”

He glanced down at me. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation like this with a girl in my life.”

“Well, if we’re going to be honest, then I should tell you that I’m just trying to get you to kiss me again.”

“Really?”

“I’m losing patience, too.”

He bent down and kissed me. Softer this time, not like
last night. “Thanks,” he whispered against my mouth. “I mean it.”

“Of course,” I whispered back, then kissed him again. “So, Claire,” I said after we separated a few minutes later. “Tell me about her. What does she look like? Where does she live? Does she have any fears? Phobias? Is she afraid of death?”

Jesse looped his arm around my neck and kissed the top of my head. “Sometimes you scare me.” He grinned. “It’s kind of hot.”

Chapter 17

On Monday morning, I woke up earlier than normal, which put my nerves on edge. And by the time I showered, dressed, and made my way into the kitchen, I realized that I was right to be edgy: both my parents were seated at the table. So was Angelo.

I hesitated in the doorway. “Let me guess,” I said. “You didn’t get together this early in the morning because there’s good news.”

My mom gestured toward an empty seat at the table. “Here, come sit down. We need to talk.”

This day was already off with a bang, I could tell.

After I poured myself some coffee and settled myself at the table across from them, Angelo threaded his fingers together, then rested his chin on top of them. “That flash drive,” he began, “definitely had some things on it.”

“Well, I hope so,” I said, then took a sip of coffee and immediately burned my tongue. “Ow!”

“Maggie,” my dad said. “You need to focus right now.”

“I
am
focused. I’m focused on the searing pain, ow.”

Angelo passed me an iPad. “This is what we found once we hacked the password.”

I took the tablet, almost scared of what I would see, but when I looked at the first images, I realized that they were baby photos of Jesse. Dressed up for Halloween as Batman; grinning on what looked like the first day of school; posed with a bat over his shoulder in a Little League uniform.

My first thought?
Oh shit, these aren’t the documents
.

My second thought?
How cute was Jesse when he was a little kid!

“This?” I said. “This is what was on there?”

My mom, dad, and Angelo all nodded silently. I could hear everything they weren’t saying:
You messed up. The information is still out there. The article will be run and our family will be exposed
.

“Well, I mean, it was hidden! It was in a
hidden
safe with a
hidden
key, and do you know what I went through to find it? It wasn’t easy! There was a party and a
ninja
and then this karao—!”

“Maggie.” My dad interrupted me again, but I interrupted him right back.

“Look,” I said. “You trained me to open safes. You didn’t train me to know what was in the safes before I opened them. I saw a safe, I opened it, there was a flash drive, and here we are.”

“We need to find the information,” my mother said. “If you don’t think you can do this, then—”

“But I thought I
did
do it!” I protested. But I knew I sounded childish, exactly what a spy isn’t supposed to be. Even I was annoyed with myself.

You know how sometimes you realize you’re doing or saying the wrong thing, but you just can’t stop yourself? You can literally hear the words coming out of your mouth and you just want to shove them back in because the real you, the
good
you, would never want to be this way, but you just keep going?

Yeah. That was me. Because instead of agreeing to try harder, be better, I got whiny.

“Is this a trial?” I asked.

“It’s not a trial,” my mom said. “It’s just—”

“Because it sure looks like a trial. I mean, you’re all lined up here and
looking
at me. The only thing missing is that clackety-clackety person. You know, the one where …” I mimed typing away on a tiny keyboard. “What do they call that?”

“Clackety-clackety person?” my dad said.

“Are you biting your nails again?” my mom asked.

“Stenographer,” Angelo answered.

“Stenographer, yes!” I said. “And yes, I’m also biting my nails again because that’s what I do when I’m stressed. My cuticles are just going to have to ride it out until this
trial
is done.”

Angelo laughed, though not unkindly. “I assure you, darling, this is not a trial. And if it were, we would be a very flawed jury, don’t you agree?”

It was a hard point to argue.

“Look,” I said. “None of you have ever made a mistake on a case before? Ever?”

“The point is not the mistake,” my mom reassured me. “And I know it looks like we’re ganging up on you, but that’s just the way we’re all sitting at the table. We need to get a round table.” She was trying to make me smile, but I didn’t take the bait, and that only made me feel worse.

“The point,” she continued, “is that this magazine article is probably going to name names.
Our
names.
Your
name.”

“I know,” I said, but hearing it out loud gave me a weird shiver down my back. “I’m trying. It’s not easy going to high school and trying to find time-sensitive documents, okay? It’s really hard. I’m probably going to fail my French quiz today.”

“
Comme si on pouvait apprendre le français à l’école
,” Angelo muttered, and now I was
really
sure I was going to fail my French quiz because I had no idea what he was saying.

“
Ridicule, non
?” my father started to stay, but my mom cut him off.

“We don’t have time to debate the merits of classroom education,” my mom told them. “Can we focus, please?”

“Yes,” I said. “Can we please focus on how I’m the worst spy in the world and I’m probably going to end up working the graveyard shift as a cashier at 7-Eleven?”

“See?” Angelo grinned. “You are very dramatic. The first sign of being a wonderful spy. Look at Emma Peel, James Bond. They were never subtle.” He patted my hand, which made me feel better.

“Okay.” I sighed. “I can find these documents. I will find them. I thought I did, but apparently that was just a dress rehearsal. I’ll get them, I promise.”

“It’s not a matter of saying,” my dad told me. “It’s a matter of doing.”

“Then I’ll do it,” I said. “I can. I will. I know how important this is and I won’t screw it up.” I didn’t mention that I had already made out with the target’s son. That probably wouldn’t have helped anyone’s confidence in me.

Least of all myself.

“I’ll get the documents,” I insisted when no one said anything. “Trust me, okay? I’ve got this.”

I had no idea what I was doing.

Chapter 18

The day just got suckier.

It was raining out, which means the school hallways were humid and dank. My hair felt like a too-big hat on my head, and I had gotten splashed by a cab on Jane Street, which meant that everything below my waist was now soaked in gutter water. I was cold, miserable, the worst spy in the world, and now my bangs were so big that they could probably be used as a cell phone tower for all of lower Manhattan.

I had never missed Iceland more in my life. I would rather have been in
Luxembourg
than where I was at that moment, that’s how cranky I felt.

And to make matters worse, I couldn’t seem to open my locker. The lock was stuck.

“I hate my life!” I wailed, then started to bang my forehead against the metal.

“Oh, please. Self-pity is so last year.”