Sealed with a Lie (2 page)

Cecily (I privately call her Madame de Pompadour, who was Top Ho to one of the ugly French king Louises) smirks at me as I peel off my damp, dirty
gi
, then shove it into my locker and slam the door. I quickly wrap a towel around my angular, boyish naked body and head for the showers.

As if she knows my insecurities, Cecily drops the towel from her own body, and I am treated to the sight of her curves as she steps into a pair of lacy silk electric-blue tap pants. I’m sorry to say that she is a natural redhead and has large, perfect breasts. She will stuff those into a matching electric-blue boob holster that’s slung casually
over her gym bag. No wonder Evan had a special friendship with her . . . one with benefits. Ugh.

I avert my eyes, but not quickly enough. She says something to her two sidekicks in French that I don’t understand, and they all laugh. I feel their eyes burning my backside as I scurry off, holding the towel tightly around myself.

Why is there a girl like Cecily in every school? I have escaped Lacey Carson, my old nemesis from Kennedy Prep, only to face an even worse version of her. At least Lacey didn’t prance around naked in front of me—she had the courtesy to wear a plaid miniskirt, part of our school uniform. And she was reassuringly American and therefore not all that mysterious.

Madame de Pompadour and her ladies-in-waiting are so Parisian that it’s painful. They’re not just garden-variety obnoxious. They’re chic and sophisticated about it. They ooze French from their pores.

I feel bland and uninteresting in comparison, like a human bowl of grits.

With a sudden pang, I miss my best friend Rita, with her fabulous wardrobe and full array of coordinating designer eyeglasses. I wonder what she’s up to, back in Washington, DC. I miss my other best friend Kale, too. I wonder if they’ve been allowed to see each other since we all got into so much trouble at the Agency?

I
really
miss my boyfriend, Luke. It’s been hard dating long-distance.

I almost hack up a hair ball thinking about it, but I even miss Lacey, his sister. At least she could give me
makeup tips, so that I could camouflage myself around Cecily.

I drape my towel on a hook near the shower, turn on the faucet, and step under the spray of hot water. Before I realize it, tears are running down my face, and I’m in full-on self-pity mode. This disgusts me, so paradoxically, I cry harder. My only comfort is that nobody can tell, since water is water, whether it comes out of an eye or a nozzle.

For the first time in my life, I feel like a total loser.

I’ve felt dumb before. I’ve felt awkward and occasionally unattractive. Who hasn’t? But I’ve never felt this dull ache, this hopelessness, this loneliness that rolls over me on the flip side of my anger at my parents, at Evan, at
everything
.

Distracted by my dark thoughts, I slip on the slick communal shower floor and almost wipe out. I look down and see that somebody’s squirted a good six-inch lake of conditioner or lotion right at my feet. It’s been done deliberately to make me fall. Cecily?

I hose it down the drain and kick the tiled wall, which hurts but makes me feel better.

I am
not
a loser.

Nobody here is going to make me feel this way. And I will learn French if it kills me . . . if only so that I can effectively insult all these Generation Interpol snots. They may never like me, but they
will
respect me.

Oh, joy. The only GI class I hate more than French is Tech 101. I can barely manage to xerox my own butt on a copy machine.

Why do I need to know how to dismantle and reassemble a cell phone? Much less create a scrambler for one? You tell me. But here I sit, surrounded by the parts of a cheap iPhone knockoff. It’s no mystery how to take out the SIM card—even I can do that—but now we have to become electrical engineers? Jeez!

Jean-Paul Olivier, the instructor, has a mop of graying dark hair and small, very pale blue eyes. He wears pants that are too big for him, a shirt with a slightly frayed collar, and a shabby blazer that reeks of BO. He carries a battered leather man-purse. At the moment, he’s jabbering away in incomprehensible French.

Ignoring the scattered plastic and metal parts in front
of me, I sneak my hand into my backpack and fish out my own cell phone. I text my karate buddy Kale.
Paris blows . . . everyone here sucks. How r u?

I wish I could text Rita, but after hacking into the Agency director’s laptop, she’s been banned from all technical devices for six months. It’s got to be killing her.

Kale himself can’t be too happy, since he’s been barred for an equal amount of time from any martial arts classes—punishment for helping me incapacitate several Agency employees.

I surreptitiously slide the phone back into its pocket and pretend to listen to the lecture.

Nobody seems to care that I don’t speak Frog. The attitude is that they will “immerse” me and I will eventually learn the language out of desperation. Would these people toss a toddler into the Seine without arm floaties? Tell the kid to sink or swim?

I can’t follow what the professor is saying, and unconsciously I zone out, following the movement of his Adam’s apple as it bobs up and down. He has missed a tiny patch of bristle under his chin while shaving. It looks goofy. Olivier’s teeth look like dejected prisoners jumbled together in a very small jail cell, straining to get out. I wonder if he’s ever seen a dentist.

My attention wanders from Olivier’s physical appearance to the parameters of the room we’re in. Generation Interpol is housed in an old, gray stone beaux arts building with soaring arches everywhere. It’s chilly, cluttered with neoclassical sculpture, and reminds me a lot of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

Frankly, it’s weird to be studying cutting-edge technology while surrounded by goddesses and scantily clad nymphs and half-naked warriors with spears. I’m checking out the winged sandals on a figure of Hermes and wishing I had a pair that would fly me away from here when Olivier notices me daydreaming.

“Kahrri? ’Allo? Kah-rrhhii!”
He barks my name, making the
r
sound like bile clawing its way up his throat.

I blink. “Uh, oui, Monsieur Olivier?”

“Blah blah blah blah le telephone!”

“Uh . . .” I have no idea what the man just said. It’s heavily accented gibberish.

“Vite, Kahrri, vite!”
That means “quickly.”

I open and close my mouth like a fish. I look down at the scattered phone parts on my desk. “Huh?”

Two desks ahead of mine, Cecily turns her head, murmurs something, and gives a delicate snort. Her cohorts sneer through their pale, understated lip gloss.

Olivier repeats whatever it is that he jabbered at me.

I stare helplessly at him.

“Mon Dieu,”
he exclaims, and rolls his eyes, the whites showing. He shakes his head and makes another mysterious Gallic pronouncement.

Why does it have to be Evan who comes to my rescue? “Kari, he wants you to slip the listening device into the phone and then reassemble it.
Comprends-tu?”

I’m torn between gratitude, embarrassment, and irritation. I nod my thanks at him before muttering, “You know this is dumb, right? There’s easily downloadable spyware
on the Internet that can monitor any cell phone.” I know this from Rita, the hacker and gadget expert. What I don’t know is how it works, exactly.

So Olivier, who evidently has ears like a bat, invites me to explain it to the entire class, of course. In French.

I glare at him, doubly handicapped.

He waves his hand magnanimously and gives me a charming smile.
“Karrhi? S’il vous plait.”

“It’s keystroke-monitoring software,” Evan announces. “Absolutely undetectable. Allows you to view your target’s contact list, outgoing and incoming calls, listen to what’s being said, and view texts, even deleted ones.”

“Vraiment?”
Olivier asks, feigning utter fascination.
“Formidable!”

A tight ball of dread has formed in my gut. I have a bad feeling I know what’s coming next.

“One can view texts?” Olivier marvels. “Ah . . . perhaps like zis?” He saunters over to the laptop on his podium, minimizes his PowerPoint presentation, and taps a few keys.

“ ‘Paris blows . . . ,’ ”
he announces, bringing my text to Kale up onto the screen in front of the class.
“ ‘Everyone here sucks.’ ”

Oh, dear God. As if this day hasn’t already been bad enough?
I slide down in my seat.

“ ‘How r u?’ ”
Olivier inquires sardonically.

My pulse is thundering in my ears. I can feel a hot red flush burning the skin of my face and neck.
Somebody just kill me now . . . please?

“Karrhhi?”

“I’m sorry,” I mutter.

“Pardon?”

I stare down at my desk. “I’m sorry.”

“En Francais, Karrhhi. En Francais!”

At this point, I’m wishing that Evan had choked me out for good this morning. To my horror, more tears are trying to fight their way into my eyes. I would sooner die than lose it in front of this shabby sadist, in front of the whole class. I bite down, hard, on my tongue and relish the pain.

“Karrhhi?”

“That’s enough,” Evan says. “Leave her alone.” He says it in French, but I put two and two together from the tone of his voice, the outraged response from Olivier at being given orders by a student, and the gestures both of them make at each other. Evan gets up from his chair, advances on the smaller man, and stares him down while the interchange escalates into a shouting match.

I want to crawl under my desk and dig a hole to China, but Tech 101 doesn’t provide the tools to do that. So I’m forced to watch as Evan is ordered from the room and sent to Generation Interpol’s version of the principal’s office . . . for my sake.

Check in the dictionary next to the word “misery,” and you will find my picture. Evan, who destroyed my pride and deprived me of oxygen just this morning, has now become my hero. But I don’t know what to do with that . . . and I’m envious that he’s escaped class while I’m still stuck here.

I inhale the stink of everyone’s hatred. My text hasn’t
helped things, and somehow they think it’s my fault that Evan’s in trouble—even though I didn’t ask him to stand up for me.

I wrestle with another truth. I don’t really despise Evan Kincaid.

I just wish I did.

It would be so much easier if I loathed him. Then I wouldn’t be confused, and I wouldn’t remember exactly how his body felt against mine when he had me in that choke hold. I wouldn’t have felt the vibrations of his voice so deeply in my own chest. I wouldn’t still remember the scent of him—laundry soap, a woodsy aftershave, and a hint of musk.

What is wrong with me? I am
totally
in love with my boyfriend. It’s just the long-distance thing that’s getting to me. I know that.

I fight the urge to pull out my cell phone again and stare at a picture of Luke. If I do that, Olivier will (no doubt) flash it up on the screen in front of the class and mock me until I spontaneously combust.

Oddly enough, Olivier seems to have taken Evan’s shouted orders under advisement, since he ignores my existence for the rest of the class. I do my best to understand what he’s saying, and I play monkey-see, monkey-do: watching and mimicking the kids around me as they reassemble the cell phone with the bug in it.

We then disassemble the phone once again and remove the bug. Then Olivier demonstrates the downloadable keystroke software that Evan explained. He also, thank God, shows us how to set the phones back to factory
settings and get rid of his horrible spyware. I’ve learned a painful lesson.

I guess Evan knew more about all of this because he’s been in the field longer than the rest of us. Evan’s been in Generation Interpol since he was thirteen. His parents are dead, not just disgraced like mine. I wonder what that’s like . . . the awful finality of it. The realization that he’s completely alone in the world.

I shiver. I’m so lucky that I have my brother, Charlie. And when this awful tech class ends, I’ll go pick him up and hug him tight. He’s the only good thing in my life, in Paris, and in Generation Interpol.

Charlie is a small miracle. I couldn’t survive without him.

Charlie sits with his tutor Clearance Matthis in a computer lab, two geeks on cloud nine.

Charlie looks like a miniature banker in his khakis, blue oxford-cloth button-down shirt, loafers, and horn-rims. Matthis, who’s my age, wears cobalt-blue metallic-framed glasses, a moth-eaten gray sweater, faded jeans, and neon-green track shoes. He’s super skinny, but he must have a tapeworm, because the boy eats like an ox—I have seen him inhale two lunches and a massive slab of cake within about eighty-five seconds.

At the moment, his chocolate-brown face glows eerily in the green light of twin computer screens. Charlie’s pale face, only inches away, looks ghostly. The two have the lights turned low in the lab so that they can see better. And oddly enough, they both have
identical pairs of sunglasses next to their keyboards.