Gallagher Girls 5 - Out of Sight, Out of Time (4 page)

“H
ello, sleepyhead.”

I jolted awake in the dim room. My neck hurt and my eyes burned, and it took a moment for me to realize that whoever was speaking, she wasn’t talking to me.

“There are waffles for breakfast, Joe. Do you remember that little place outside Belfast? What was its name? The cook had a crush on you, and she’d make waffles every morning even though they weren’t on the menu.”

I watched my aunt Abby sink into the chair next to Mr. Solomon’s bed, reach for my teacher’s hand just like I’d done the night before.

“What was the name, Joe? Wake up and tell me it’s sloppy of me not to remember the name.”

She wasn’t asking—she was pleading. She sat for a second, waiting for an answer that never came. Then she leaned closer and straightened the blanket that covered his legs.

“Cam’s home, Joe,” she said. “She’s back. Of course, you know already know that, don’t you? Because even in here you know everything.” She gave a quick, easy laugh. “Well…that and because she’s sitting right behind me.”

The thing you need to know about Abigail Cameron is that not only is she an awesome operative, but also, when her hair is down and the light is right and she spins around like she did that morning, she kind of looks like the star of a shampoo commercial. Her eyes didn’t carry the shocked relief of my mother’s. Her face was totally missing the detached anger of my friends. There was nothing but pure happiness in her when she looked at me and shrugged.

“What? No
hello
for your favorite aunt?”

It sounded like she was teasing—she
looked
like she was teasing. But my homecoming so far had been so totally not tease-worthy, that I guess I just sat there feeling dumbstruck.

“So. .. were you ever going to say hello?” Abby asked with a pout. “I thought I wasn’t even going to see you until class.”

“Class?”

“Oh, yeah.” She smiled. “I’m your Covert Operations teacher, didn’t you hear? And I have to say I kind of rock at it. Of course”—she turned back to the bed, leaned close to Mr. Solomon—“I only agreed to fill in until this guy decides to go back to work.”

She was daring him, taunting him, challenging him to wake up and say otherwise, but it didn’t happen. Joe Solomon wasn’t going to be dared into doing anything, and Abby gave a sigh as if deep down she knew it.

“I didn’t know,” I told her. “I mean, if I had known, I would have come to see you, but I didn’t. I found this room last night when the doctors were finished with me, and then I saw Mr. Solomon and…I must have fallen asleep.”

“We knew where you were, Cam.” All the tease was gone from her voice. “From this point on, we will always know where you are.”

It was harder to look at her then, so I looked at Mr. Solomon.

“Is he…better?”

“He’s stable.” Abby smoothed his hair and pinched his cheek. “Isn’t he a cutie when he’s sleeping?” she asked, and leaned closer. “Get mad, Joe. Roll over and tell me to shut up. Do it.”

“Has he been here the whole time?”

Abby nodded. “We have everything we need to care for him. Dr. Fibs spent the whole summer developing a device that will keep his muscles from atrophying. Our medical staff is able to monitor his condition far more closely than a regular hospital would. And, of course, it’s significantly safer. Plus”—she smoothed the blankets—“everyone he loves is here.”

I thought of the way my mother had sat for days at his bedside, holding his bandaged hands.
Everyone he loves
.

“Who knows that he’s…”

“Not dead? Or not really a double agent working for the Circle of Cavan?” Abby guessed, but then she seemed to realize that the two questions would have the exact same answer. “As few people as possible. The academy faculty, of course. Bex’s parents. Agent Townsend—you know he had the nerve to send me a class syllabus?” She gave a short, mocking laugh. “
He
gave
me
notes for a proper course of study for young ladies in the clandestine services,” she said in a spot-on English accent.

It sounded just like the man I’d met last spring, and I had to laugh. Then, just that quickly, I had to stop. It felt wrong, there, in Joe Solomon’s hospital room, with my missing summer looming like a shadow in the back of my mind.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Abby. I’m sorry for…everything.”

“I’m not.” She reached for the dead flowers in the vase by the bed and threw them in the trash. “Oh, I could have killed you if I’d gotten my hands on you a week ago, but now…”

“You’re glad to see me?” I tried to guess, but my aunt gave a shake of her head.

“Now we’re just glad you’re home.”

Maybe it was the medicinal properties of a good night’s sleep, or the power radiating off of my aunt, but I felt stronger, surer. And I forgot all about my mother’s warning from the day before.

“Don’t worry, Abby. I’ll take all the tests and do all the exercises. I’ll do the work—I’ll do…anything. And I’ll remember. I’ll get my memory back and I’ll—”

“Don’t, Cammie.” Abby was turning, shaking her head. “Just don’t…push it.”

“I’m ready to push it. I’m ready to work and…What?” There was something in her expression, a sort of hopeful peace as she gripped my hands and searched my eyes.

“Don’t you see, Cammie? The Circle might have had you.”

I heard my voice crack. “I know.”

“So maybe
they got what they wanted
.”

For almost a year I’d lived with the knowledge that the Circle getting what they wanted was a bad thing. But right then Abby was looking at me as if she didn’t care about that.

“My mom said…” I choked and tried again. “Mom said I shouldn’t try to remember.”

“You shouldn’t,” Abby said.

“Why?”

“Cam, look at this.” She gently turned my hand so that I had no choice but to see the long bandages that covered the gashes on my arm. “Do you know what makes marks like this?”

I wanted to scream that that was the point, but I stayed speechless.

Abby let my arm fall. “Do you really
want
to know?”

I thought about the marks and the words and the terror in my mother’s eyes as she told me there are some things we don’t want to remember.

“Torture?” I said, but it wasn’t really a question. The answer was already there—in Abby’s eyes and on my skin. They thought I’d been tortured.

“Whatever it was, Cam. Whatever you lived through, it’s over. So maybe now the whole thing is over.”

“You mean maybe the Circle doesn’t want me anymore?”

Abby nodded slowly. She gripped my hands tighter. “Maybe now things can go back to normal.”

Normal. I liked the sound of that. Sure, as the daughter of two secret agents, a student at a top secret and highly dangerous school (not to mention someone who’d spent more than a year as the target of an ancient terrorist organization), I didn’t really know what normal meant, but that didn’t matter. Normal was my new mission. Normal was the goal within my sights.

Unfortunately, as soon as I reached the Grand Hall, I realized that normal was also a moving target.

“Hi,” Zach said, because, oh yeah, evidently Zach now had a regular place at our table in the Grand Hall. Then I looked up and down the crowded benches and realized that his new place was my old place.

“Hi,” I said back to him, because, honestly, what else can you say in that situation? You can’t really yell at your boyfriend for stealing your seat and your best friend. You also can’t yell at your best friend for stealing your boyfriend. Or…you can…but
Hi
seemed like a much easier way to start the morning.

“Welcome back, Cam,” Tina Walters said, after what seemed like forever.

“So what did you…” Eva Alvarez started, then stopped herself as if she’d already said the wrong thing. “I mean, did you have…Or…It’s good to see you,” she finally blurted.

“It’s good to see you too, Eva.” I forced a smile. “It’s good to be back,” I said, even though it totally felt like I had just left.

“Here.” Liz pressed closer to Macey. Together, the two of them were about as wide as a regular person, so I was able to squeeze onto the bench.

“Thanks,” I told her, pushing a few of her books aside, skimming over words like
neurosurgery
and
cognition
.

“Doing some light reading?” I asked.

Liz grabbed the books and shoved them into her backpack.

“You know, the brain is totally fascinating. Of course, it’s a myth that we only use ten percent of our brain function.”

“Of course
you
use more,” Zach and Bex said at the same time. They gave almost identical laughs, and I flashed back to what I’d heard the night before. I saw the way Bex and Zach sat together on the other side of the table, and my head hurt for reasons that had nothing to do with blunt force trauma.

“So where were you?” Macey asked, looking at me over the top of Liz’s head.

“Macey!” Liz hissed. “You know we’re not supposed to bother Cam with questions. Her memory will return if and when she’s ready.” She sounded like she was quoting someone or something verbatim.

“Last night,” Macey clarified, with a smirk in Liz’s direction. “Where were you
last night
?”

“Hospital,” I said, and risked a look at Zach and Bex—wondered what it would have been like to return to our suite after overhearing the two of them together. “I had to spend the night in a hospital room.” (Totally not a lie.)

“Are you…” Liz started.

“I’m fine,” I said, maybe too quickly. “Tests. They ran a bunch of tests.”

“Good,” Liz said with a decisive nod. “They did an MRI, didn’t they? What about an EEG? PET scan? We really need to get a baseline assessment. The Barnes theory says that memory is—”

“That’s enough, Liz,” Bex said softly, and for a second, no one had anything to say.

Well, no one but Tina Walters.

Tina seemed exactly like her old self as she pushed aside a bowl of strawberry jam, leaned on the table, and lowered her voice. “Well, I heard that while they were looking for you, they found someone else.”

She stopped and let the silence draw out. If she wanted someone to ask who it was, she was disappointed, but didn’t show it as she whispered,
“Joe Solomon.”

Sure, Joe Solomon was two flights of stairs away, but judging by the looks on the majority of faces at the table, no one besides my roommates, Zach, and I seemed to know it.

Tina gestured with a piece of extra-crispy bacon. “He’s alive and well and working for the Circle in South Africa.” She took a bite. “Maybe he’s the one who had you?” she asked, turning to me. “Or maybe the Circle kidnapped you, but Mr. Solomon is really a
triple
agent and he—”

“I don’t know who was holding me, Tina,” I said.

“Really,” Tina started, “wouldn’t that be something? Mr. Solomon out there. With you and—”

“I’ve heard enough.” Bex stood, shaking her head.

“Bex—” I started, but she wheeled on me.

“What?” she snapped. “What do you have to say?”

It was a really good question. And I’m sure I totally had answers, but right then my reasons for leaving, for running, for chasing the Circle halfway around the world were gone, lost, like the rest of my memories. So I just sat, looking at my best friend in the world, and the only words that came to mind were “I’m sorry.”

The look she gave me was one I’d never seen before. Was she mad or hurt, terrified or indignant? Bex is the most naturally gifted spy I know. Her eyes were impossible to read.

“Oh, Cameron, here you are!” Professor Buckingham’s voice sliced through the crowded hall.

“Yeah,” Bex said at last. “Here she is.”

When Bex turned and left, I wanted to go after her, but Buckingham was standing too close for me to follow. Besides, despite everything, there was really nothing left to say.

“Cameron, you are, of course, responsible for any and all work you missed during your absence—none of which is insignificant during the Gallagher Academy’s senior year.”

Professor Buckingham cut her eyes at me, expecting me to argue, I guess, but all I could think was
senior year
. I don’t know if it was the head trauma or the fatigue, but I hadn’t really thought about the fact that I was a senior. I looked around at the girls who filled the hall, and for the first time it occurred to me that none of them were older than us, more trained than us, more ready than us for the outside world.

Even without the Circle, that fact would have terrified me.

“Now, if you don’t feel up to the task quite yet—”

“No,” I blurted, reaching for the course schedule in Professor Buckingham’s hands. “I want to. I want to work—for things to get back to normal.”

And I meant it—I really did. But then Buckingham turned and strolled toward the doors, past my best friends, who didn’t know how to act around me, younger girls who were staring at me, and Zach—yes, Zach. Who was at my school. Who had spent the summer with my Bex. Who was sitting in the Grand Hall like he’d been there for years.

And I remembered “normal” might never be the same again.