Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover (12 page)

"Bleachers," I told her.

"Bex?" Zach guessed.

"Yeah," I answered.

"So
you've got backup?" It was a truly weird question in what was shaping up
to be a truly weird day, so for a second I just stood there, wondering if he
was asking me as a boy or if he was asking as a spy. "The girls are here?
And Solomon?"

"Of course they are."

But
then one of the hundreds of voices in my ear was saying "Alpha team,
there's movement under the bleachers," and in a flash I moved.

"Zach, there's someone
under—"

I
stopped. I realized
we
were the people under the
bleachers.

"You!"
one of the agents called. But as I spun to face him, his right hand, which had
been inching toward where his regulation sidearm was holstered, relaxed. He
almost smiled. And maybe for the first time ever I realized how totally
advantageous being a sixteen-year-old girl can be.

"Miss,"
the agent said, "this area is restricted. I'm going to have to ask you to
go back behind the barricades."

"Oh
my gosh," I said, sounding a tad bit ditzier than my IQ might suggest.
"I had to go to the bathroom
so bad, so
we—"

"We?"
the agent said, going on alert again. He scanned the area. Big men in dark
suits appeared out of nowhere. The earpiece was alive with chatter and
commands.

"I
was …" I started, the words coming harder now. And still I kept turning
and looking.

But Zach was already gone.

"Yeah,
we were looking for a bathroom." A voice came slicing through the
barricade of agents in dark suits that surrounded me. Even though Secret
Service agents are notoriously smart and incredibly well trained, everyone
around me seemed to cower at the sight of Macey McHenry.

I
watched my roommate turn to the agents and summon her inner Gallagher Girl (the
snobby kind). "Do you have a problem with that?"

And
that's how a chameleon was saved by a peacock.

"Thanks,
boys," Aunt Abby said, appearing at Macey's side. "I think we can
take it from here."

As
dark suits scattered, my aunt took me by the arm and led me out from under the
bleachers and into the sun of the main staging area while she softly sang,
"I'm gonna tell your
mother."

"I'm
sorry, Aunt Abby," I told her. "I just"—I thought about Zach…mysterious
Zach…suddenly disappearing

Zach—"saw something," I
said—not someone.

But
my aunt was shaking her head. "I don't even want to know how you got back
here," She stopped. "Wait, you'd better tell me how you got back
here."

After
I explained, she walked twenty feet to where a security detail stood around a
row of dark Suburbans.

"Emergency
extraction vehicles," I said, turning to Macey, who was too busy staring
at my feet to marvel at any of the totally cool surveillance things going on
around us.

"I'll
give you five hundred dollars if you trade me shoes," Macey said. I looked
down at the pumps her mother had no doubt forced her into, and I totally knew
she wasn't joking. But you can't put a price on comfort (as all pavement
artists know), so I pretended like I didn't hear her, which wasn't all that
hard considering that I absolutely had
other
things on my mind!

Zach had come to the rally! To
see
me?

"Macey, you're never going
to believe who I just—"

"Hey," a voice cut me
off. "I know you!"

I
recognized the voice, but more than that I recognized the look on Macey's face
as Preston came into view.

"Don't
you have a baby to kiss?" Macey said with a sigh.

"Cammie,
right?" Preston asked. "Macey didn't tell me you were coming."

"Yeah.
It's a great chance to see the political process up close and—"

"Seriously," Macey
snapped. "Go. Kiss. A baby."

"Can
you believe her?" Preston asked, cocking his head toward Macey.
"Every time she sees me, all she does is call me baby and talk about
kissing."

Macey
looked like she kind of wanted to kill him. But I kind of wanted to laugh.

Maybe it was just that I had boys
on the brain. Maybe it was the relief of knowing, for the time being, that
Macey was okay. But at that moment Preston seemed kind of…Hot?

No.
No way, I told myself. And then I looked at Macey, who hated being in
uncomfortable shoes and at her parents' disposal, and I thought that maybe
Preston Winters was the one person who might hate all those things as much as
she did. And as every spy knows, common enemies are how allies always begin.

"So hey," Preston said
softly.

A
gospel choir was singing in the distance. The Secret Service was getting ready
for the long walk back to the busses. But Preston didn't seem to notice; he
didn't seem to care. He seemed totally immune to those prying eyes and
listening ears as he leaned closer and said, "I'm really glad I saw
you."

Oh
my gosh, I thought. Is it possible that
two
boys are flirting with me within
ten minutes of each other?

But it wasn't flirting.

It was worse.

Totally,
infinitely, utterly worse, because while the gospel band stopped singing and
some military planes flew overhead, Preston looked at me as if he were really
seeing

me and said, "I wanted to
thank you … for Boston."

The
girl in me started to exhale just as the spy in me studied the change in his
breathing pattern and the dilatation of his eyes. I was seriously beginning to
panic as he said, "That was really…awesome of you."

"Oh, it was nothing!" I
blurted.

"Cammie's
always doing stuff like that," Macey said, hearing my unease. "She's
a total Girl Scout."

"Well,
whatever she is," he said, turning to Macey, "it looked like you were
one too."

As
Macey glanced at me, I knew that neither of us wanted to
imagine
what might happen if the
potential first son thought too hard or too long about what he'd seen on that
rooftop.

"I
was so freaked out," Preston said. "But you two, you were…
rational."

"So,
Macey," I said loudly, "I really enjoyed your speech."

"I
mean"—Preston went on as if I wasn't even standing there … as if he wasn't
standing there. Instead he stared into space as if the movie of what had
happened in Boston was playing in his mind—"there were, what? Ten guys
after us?"

"Two
men. One woman," Macey and I corrected him at exactly the same time.

"And
you guys were …" He looked at us as if he were seeing us for the first
time. "You're
girls!"
he blurted as if the fact had
totally eluded him until then.

"Thanks
for noticing," Macey said, grabbing my arm and pulling me away.

Preston
followed after. "But you held your own against like a dozen—"

"Three!" Macey and I
corrected him again.

"Men."
He stopped in front of us, blocking our path. Which meant that unless we wanted
to impress him with our unusual physical abilities even more, we were probably
going to have to wait him out.

Just
when I thought things couldn't get worse, he looked right at Macey. "How
much do you weigh?"

"Hey!"
I blurted, stepping between them. "It was nothing. Really! It was like
those women who lift trucks off their babies—that's how I felt." I tried
to sound like that moment was as exciting and adrenaline-filled and foreign to
me as it had been for him.

"Yeah," Macey added.

"But the moves…" he
started.

"My
mom made me take a self-defense class," I blurted. (Totally not a lie.)

"Wow." He nodded.
"Hope you got extra credit."

"I did," I said. (Also
not a lie.)

"Well
…" Preston ran his hand through his hair and straightened his tie.
"They must be teaching you something special in that school of
yours."

Macey
and I looked at each other as if we knew we
could
kill
him, but getting away might be way more difficult than usual.

And then he laughed.

And we breathed.

And
he looked at both of us with (if he hadn't been a politician's son and all) an
expression of genuine gratitude as he said, "I'm just glad I get to do
this with girls like you."

"Mr.
Winters!" one of the agents called. "We're moving."

A
team of agents surrounded him, ushering Preston away, but Macey lingered a
second longer.

"Well,
he seemed…nice ?" I finally found the strength to mutter.

But
Macey merely looked at me. "You're a spy, Cam. Don't you know that nothing
is ever as it seems?"

I
didn't get to mention Zach. I didn't get to tell her what I thought of her
speech. I didn't even get to ask Aunt Abby if she was really serious about
telling my mom that I'd been caught out-of-bounds.

Instead
I watched the Secret Service swarm around my roommate once again. A gate swung
open and Macey stepped toward her parents. Her father reached out for her hand,
but she was already waving, pulling in votes and smiles and handshakes.

And
there was already a voice in my earpiece telling me it was time to go home.

Do you
know how long it took to get back to school? One hundred and seventy-two
minutes. Do you know how long it took for things to return to normal? Well… I
guess I'm still kind of waiting.

As
soon as we got back, Mr. Solomon dragged us all the way down to Sublevel Two to
review surveillance tapes and take a pop quiz. (I scored a 98%.) By the time we
got upstairs to the foyer I heard the scraping of forks and the clanking of ice
in our second-best crystal, but I totally wasn't hungry, especially when I saw
Macey walking through the front door.

"Macey!" I yelled.

"Cam."
Bex and Liz ran behind me. "What's going on?"

It
was a normal night at a very abnormal school. But even by Gallagher Academy
standards I'd had a very exceptional day, so I raced through the entry hall and
climbed the stairs, still calling, "Macey!"

By the time I caught up to her
she had already taken off her jacket and was standing there in a silk blouse.
She was carrying a string of pearls and had crammed the scarf she'd been
wearing at the rally into her purse. With every step, Macey was shedding her
fake façade—her cover—one piece of pocket litter at a time.

"You're back," I said.

"Yeah,"
she said in the tone of the incredibly tired, "very observant. Hey, what
was up with you today?" She took another step, then shed another piece of
the clothing that only a mother can love. "When I saw you, you looked kind
of…freaked?"

"Wait," Bex said,
"you
saw
her?"

"Yeah,
I was going to tell you, but well … we haven't exactly had a moment…And it's
not exactly something you…And I just didn't know how…And—"

"Cammie."
Bex snapped me out of it. She crossed her arms, stared me down, and gave me
that "you've got some explaining to do" look that I've come to love.
And fear. (Well, mostly fear.) And I knew I couldn't keep my secret any longer.

"I
saw something!" I blurted. Then I had to correct myself as I said,
"Someone."

The
halls were quiet around us. Dark. The days were getting shorter. Summer was
finally gone. And maybe that was why I shivered as I said, "Zach."

Time it
took me to tell the whole story: twenty-two minutes and forty-seven seconds.

Time
it would have taken me to tell the story had I not been constantly interrupted:
two minutes and forty-six seconds.

Number of times Liz said,
"No way!": thirty-three.

Number
of times Bex gave me her "You could have brought me with you" look:
nine.

"But
what was he
doing
there?" Liz was asking again (time number seven, to be exact).

"I
don't know," I managed to mutter. "I mean, one minute I'm thinking
he's breaching security—well, technically, he
did
breach
security …" I trailed off. "And the next I'm flipping him to the
ground and—"