Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover (19 page)

"Hi,
Zach," she said, her right leg swinging as she sat with it crossed over
her left.

"Hey,
Macey," he said, as if he fell out of ceilings and into the private
chambers of the most highly protected girl in the country every day.
"Sorry to drop in," he said with a look that told me he thought he
was entirely too clever, "but Cammie just had to be alone with me. You
know how she gets."

I smacked his arm.

He
flinched. "You know, you're going to hurt me one of these days, and then
you're going to feel really bad about it."

"Yeah,"
I started, "well, maybe if you would be honest with me for one—"

"Um,
just so you know," Macey said, cutting me off as she leaned back, enjoying
the show, "Abby will be back in approximately two minutes, so you
lovebirds might want to make this quick."

I
totally expected the boy in front of me to recoil at the word
"lovebirds." But he didn't. Instead he grabbed the bag he'd been
carrying and turned to Macey. "Thanks." He placed his knee on the
bench and leaned toward the dark window, staring into the black as he said,
"This is my stop anyway."

Well,
from what I could tell, the train wasn't stopping. It wasn't even slowing down.

"Hey,
McHenry, you mind?" He gestured to the door then stepped back as Macey
opened it and checked the aisle.

"Oh,
officer," she called to the sentry stationed in the hall outside.
"Can I see your gun?"

As
the man turned his back on us, Zach dashed out into the hall and to the door at
the end of the car. I started to follow, but he stopped suddenly and turned to
me. "Hey, Gallagher Girl," he said, looking at me more deeply than he
ever had, "promise me something."

The
train was faster now. Night streamed through the windows. And Zach stepped even
closer.

"Be"—he
reached up and gently touched the place where my bruise had been as if it were
still fresh and swollen—"careful."

And
then Zach stepped to the end of the car and slid open the door. The noise was
overpowering for an instant. We were going over a great ravine, nothingness
streaming on both sides as Zach spread his arms out wide. He looked back at me
for one fleeting second.

And jumped into the night.

"So…"
the voice behind me was strong and even. I turned to see a very sorry-looking
Macey and a very impressed-looking Aunt Abby staring at me and the fading
parachute that was Zach. "I take it that's the man in your life."

When an
operative is compromised mid-mission, there are a lot of things that have to be
said. And done. For example, it's great if you have a legend or two you can
whip out to distract the catcher from the catchee's actual intentions. Also,
misdirection is always useful, so you can place blame on anyone but yourself.
Or you can retreat.

But we were on a moving train.

And I didn't have a parachute.

And Aunt Abby was staring right
at me.

I
expected her to smile like she'd done when she pulled me out from under her
bed, but instead she glared at me with a look that was equal parts fury and
fear, as Macey and I darted back into compartment fourteen.

"Sit,"
my aunt commanded, and we each sat on the lower berth while my aunt began to
pace. "Do you know what you've done?" she asked, but it wasn't really
a question. "Do you know what could have happened tonight?"

Her
voice shook. I feared for a second that the Secret Service might come through
the door again, but the train was loud and the rain was hard and we kept
barreling through the night. I glanced around the small space. It was no use.
I, Cammie the Chameleon, had absolutely no place to hide.

"Do
you have any idea how dangerous this all is? If the Secret Service caught you …
If a member of the media caught a glimpse of what you can do … If there are two
girls in the school—in the world—who should know better than to take chances
like this, it should be the two of you!"

"I
thought rules were made to be broken," I said, confused at first but
growing angry. "I thought being a spy was rules-optional," I said,
throwing her own words back at her.

"Being
a spy means you never have the luxury of being careless!" The train rocked
and the night grew darker as my aunt leaned closer and said, "Trust me,
Cameron. That is one lesson you don't want to learn the hard way."

Maybe
it was the sound of the rain, or the look in her eyes, but I couldn't stop
thinking about the way she'd changed in my mother's office, morphed from the
Abby I knew into a woman I had never seen before. And just that quickly I
realized the smiling, laughing, dancing woman who had walked into my life after
four and a half years was just another cover—a Gallagher Girl pretending to be
something that she's not.

"Where
were you, Aunt Abby?" I heard myself ask. "Dad died, and you weren't
there," I said, remembering a time in my life that I'd done everything to
forget. I heard my voice crack, felt my eyes blur. I told myself it was the
steady rocking of the train that made me feel unsteady, but I knew better as I
shouted, "He died and you didn't even come to the
funeral.
You didn't call. You didn't visit. Dad died, and
ever since
then
you've
been a ghost."

Abby
turned her back to me. She started for the door, but those words had been alive
in me for years, the doubts and questions stacked end to end, and I couldn't
stop them if I'd tried.

"We
needed you!" I thought about my mother, who still cried when she thought
no one could see her, and before I even realized it, I was crying too.
"Why weren't you there when we needed you?"

"Haven't
you learned yet, Cam?" Abby's voice was softer now, as if she were being
dragged back into a dream. "There are some things you don't want to
know."

I
could feel the train—or maybe just the world—slowing down as she stepped toward
the door and whispered, "Stay away from that boy, Cammie." It wasn't
an order this time, it was a plea.

"Zach?"
Macey asked, as if there could possibly be anyone else. "He's from
Blackthorne. We know him."

Then
Abby looked at me. For the first time, it seemed like she wanted to smile, but
there was no joy in her expression as she asked, "Do you?"

I love
the Gallagher Academy at night. There's beauty in the shadows—the only time
when the outside really reflects what's going on inside. Nothing is truly black
or white. The whole world in shades of gray.

And that night was no different.

"What
does
that
mean?" Liz asked, and Bex paced, but I just stood at the little
diamond-shaped window in our attic suite, looking out at the dark grounds,
letting the story I'd just told wash over me.

"Wait,
you mean Zach got to jump out of a moving train?" Bex asked, not even
trying to hide the envy in her voice.

I looked at Macey, who shrugged.

"I
still can't believe you left the mansion like that," she said, examining
my short skirt and tall shoes.

I tried to smile.
"Originally, there was also a wig."

I
expected her to laugh. I wanted her to roll her eyes or
say something about the world of
synthetic hair and people fashion-deprived enough to actually utilize it. I
wanted it to be funny. But it wasn't.

"So
Abby was really…" Liz started, then lowered her voice,
"mad?"

I
nodded. The word didn't do it justice, but at the moment, it was the only one I
had.

"You're
not going to get into trouble, Cam," Bex argued. "Abby's cool."

But
she hadn't seen the change in Abby on the train. She hadn't heard the tremor in
my aunt's voice or seen the look in her eyes as she strolled through the Hall
of History and into my mother's office and closed the door, leaving Macey and
me to make our way upstairs alone.

"What?"
Bex asked, proving that she knew me maybe better than I knew myself.

"He
…" I struggled with what I wanted to say, what I wanted to believe.
"He didn't kiss me."

Yes,
I'd just been severely reprimanded by a member of the United States Secret
Service. And yes, I'd been caught sneaking out and violating about a dozen
school rules. And yes, my elbow was totally swollen from where Zach and I had
landed on the floor of Macey's compartment.

And yet that was the thing that
worried me most.

"He
didn't flirt," I said finally. "He didn't tease me … I mean, once I
figured out I'd seen him in Boston—"

"Wait,"
Bex said, moving closer, completely ignoring the big pile of junk food that she
and Liz had smuggled back into the school after their road trip home. There was
something new in her eyes as she said, "Zach was in Boston?"

"I
kept
thinking
I
saw him there," I said again, calmer now. "But I thought that I was…you
know …"

Bex
and Liz looked at each other as if they totally didn't know.

"She
thought she was only seeing him because she
wanted
to see him," Macey
explained.

"Ooooh," Bex and Liz
sighed together.

"It's
a by-product of very dramatic kissing," Macey went on like a doctor
identifying a common side effect. "Go on."

"So
I didn't think anything about it. But today I saw him again. And he was in the
same disguise, and I knew it was him in Boston." I looked down at the pile
of candy wrappers and half-eaten bags of chips and thought about how, a year
ago, we'd huddled together in that very room, going through Josh's trash, but
there was a lot about boys and their dirty little secrets that we still had to
learn.

"So
he followed you before?" Liz asked. "So what? He's probably just
doing what
we're
doing—tracking Macey."

And then she stopped. And
realized.

"In
Boston, there was no reason to track Macey," I said, just because I needed
to say the words out loud. I looked back at the grounds that seemed darker than
usual. And colder. Somehow when I wasn't looking, fall had fallen, and I shivered
a little, still chilled from the rain.

"Maybe
he knew what was going to happen," Macey

said.

"Or
maybe he was one of the people doing it," Bex said, the old skepticism
coming back to her voice.

"Or"—Liz's
eyes were the only ones shining as she said—"he wanted to be near
Cammie!"

Macey
shrugged as if to say that our little blond friend had a point.

Whatever
the case, that didn't change the fact that a very cute, very mysterious spy boy
was either out to save us, or kidnap us, or date us.

And
I wasn't sure which one we were best equipped to handle.

I don't
know about normal girls, but for spy girls, there are few things as scary as a
closed door, a locked room, and a whispered conversation you can't quite hear.
Well, the next day my life was full of all three.

The
Hall of History remained dark. My mother's office doors remained closed (and,
unfortunately, soundproof). I thought about the passageway that led behind the
room, but then I shook the notion from my head. I didn't know what my aunt had
told her. I didn't know what kind of trouble I was in.

All
around me girls worried about tests and projects. People opened letters from
home and continued the debate about whether or not Mr. Smith's new face made
him as hot as Mr. Solomon. But I couldn't help but think about how the world is
just a web of secrets. I kept wondering if there was any way to break free.

That
Sunday night I walked toward my mother's office, thinking about Abby and Zach,
Philadelphia and Boston— all the questions no one ever answered, but as I
stepped foot inside the Hall of History, I found myself looking at Gilly's
sword.

I heard myself whisper,
"Someone knows."

As
I knocked on the door to my mother's office, I knew it wasn't going to be an
ordinary Sunday night supper…

Because Macey was already there.

I
looked from my mother, to my roommate, and finally to my aunt. I expected
yelling. But when my mother whispered, "Cammie," it was worse. Way
worse. The door closed behind me, and I saw Mr. Solomon standing there. I
didn't know what to expect anymore.

"Mom, I—"

"I
was told that Liz and Bex were out testing a prototype of a new piece of
equipment for Dr. Fibs during your little…
mission
last night?" Mom asked.