Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover (2 page)

"Peacock
is moving," one of the agents whispered into his cuff as I followed Macey
through the Winters-McHenry temporary headquarters, past rows of laptop
computers and screaming interns wearing business suits and campaign buttons
and looking like they hadn't had a good night's sleep since New Hampshire. In
fact, I actually heard one guy say, "I haven't had a good night's sleep
since New Hampshire."

But
Macey's black hair was as glossy as ever, her blue eyes perfectly clear.
"Jeez, Chameleon, do you have any idea how hard you are to track
down?" She walked on, seemingly unaware that she was like a princess, and
the room was full of commoners who were there to make sure her father claimed
his throne. "I mean, first I tried the school, but have you ever tried to
get anything out of Professor Buckingham?" My roommate calmly rattled on
as if her face weren't being broadcast into every home in America at that very
moment. "Anyway, then I asked the Secret Service, and—"

"Wait,"
I interrupted. "The Secret Service gave you my grandparents' telephone
number?"

"Well,"
Macey admitted, "I asked the Secret Service for the number, but I ended up
getting it from more
covert
sources."

I lowered my voice when I asked,
"The agency?"

"Liz,"
she whispered back, and I
couldn't help smile as I thought about our tiniest/smartest roommate. "So,
have a good summer?" Macey asked as we left the war room and started down
another long hall.

"Yeah,"
I said, almost out of breath. Two months at my grandparents' ranch in Nebraska
hadn't made me completely out of shape, but life moved at a different pace
there, so it still felt like a struggle to keep up with Macey. "It was
good. Just…"

I
thought about our classmates, who seemed to scatter to the far corners of the
world whenever school wasn't in session. I thought about my mother, who had put
me on a plane the first day of summer break and hadn't sent so much as a
postcard since. And finally, I thought about two boys: one who I hadn't seen in
months and one who I seemed to be imagining everywhere, but whom I knew I might
never see again.

"Fine," I said finally.
"My summer was fine."

Macey
knew me pretty well by then, so she just smiled and said, "Mine too."

Our
footsteps were whisper-soft against the carpeting as we entered the tunnel that
passed under the street between the convention center and the hotel.

Secret
Service agents flanked the doors, and I heard one whisper into his sleeve,
"Peacock is arriving on the scene."

"So can I call you
Peacock?" I teased.

"That
depends: do you want to feel safe while you sleep at…" Macey started, but
then two elderly women wearing the biggest sunflowers I have ever seen passed
us, and Macey smiled at them—yes, actual
smileage
—and said, "Well, doesn't
the Kansas delegation look festive!"

The
shift in her had been effortless, as if her thousand- watt smile was attached
to a switch that the fates kept flipping off and on. Sure, I might have been
the CIA legacy, but right then it was obvious that Macey knew as much about
secret identities, hidden agendas, and covert alliances as anyone I'd ever
known.

"So," I started,
"what's new with you?"

She
pulled a neatly typed piece of paper from her pocket. "Six a.m.: appear on
national morning shows. Nine a.m.: get fitted for navy suits." Macey
leaned closer and added in a whisper, "Evidently, red makes me look
trampy." She resumed her usual posture and walked faster, the sloping ramp
leading us closer and closer to a pair of metal doors at the end of the tunnel.
"Eleven a.m.," she continued, "fun, family bonding with Mom and
Dad."

Macey
stopped. She rested her hands on the metal handles.

"So,
you know," she said as she pushed open the doors of the single largest
room I've ever seen, "the usual."

Chairs—thousands
of empty chairs—spread across the arena floor. Signs bearing the names of all
the states hung above them. We started out in Oregon, then walked through
Delaware and past Kentucky. Stands rose high before us. I craned my head
upward, scanning the skyboxes that circled the arena, boasting the logos of
every news outlet known to man.

Macey
and I stood there for a long moment, alone for the first time. Maybe that's why
she felt safe to whisper, "Thanks for coming, Cam."

Her
father's face was on the cover of every magazine in America. She was about to
be the belle of the country's biggest ball. Probably every girl in the country
would have traded places with her, but I saw the misery in her eyes as she
stood lost inside that massive space, and I knew why I was there. I remembered
that a Gallagher Girl is only as good as her backup.

"Let's
get this over with and get back to school, okay?" I said.

"Okay,"
she replied. I could have sworn she almost smiled.

And
she might have if we hadn't been interrupted by the sound of footsteps from
behind us and a voice saying, "Hello, ladies."

I don't
know about you, but there are certain assumptions I tend to make about a
teenage boy who insists on calling teenage girls "ladies." You expect
him to be handsome. You expect him to be slick. The kind of guy who owns more
hair styling products than you do.

But Preston Winters was…not.

He
was about Macey's height, but I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say I'm
pretty sure Liz could have taken him in a fistfight. His tailored suit hung
from his thin frame like he was a kid playing dress-up, which wasn't much of a
stretch considering the fact that he was wearing a Spider-Man wristwatch.

"Quick
question," Macey whispered. "When your mom said that we weren't
supposed to use any Protection and Enforcement moves this summer, that didn't
apply to presidential candidates' sons, did it?"

"I think it might apply
especially
to
them."

I'm
not sure if it was the presence of the Secret Service or the classified nature
of our sisterhood, but something made Macey take a deep breath and smile (and
whisper a really bad word in Portuguese).

"You're
looking very…patriotic…, today, Ms. McHenry," Preston said, looking Macey
up and down.

I
glanced at Macey's red, white, and blue sweater set (I know…
M
acey
was
wearing a
sweater
set!) and bit back a laugh.

"I
don't believe we've met," the boy said, turning to me and holding out his
hand. "I'm Preston. You must be—"

"Busy," Macey said,
trying to pull me away.

"Cammie,"
I finished, resisting my roommate's pull long enough to shake Preston's hand.
"The roommate," I offered.

He
bowed slightly forward at the waist and said, "It's nice to meet you,
Cammie the roommate—"

Before
he could finish I heard a shrill voice cry, "McHenry family, stage
left!" A trim woman was walking onto the stage, Macey's mom and dad
following closely behind her. She had a clipboard. And little horn-rimmed
glasses hanging
from a
chain
around her neck. And not one but two pencils stuck in the massive pile of hair
on the top of her head.

"Winters family, stage
right!"

As
the governor of Vermont and his wife took their places, I couldn't help but
notice that one of the most powerful men in the country looked absolutely
terrified of the woman with the clipboard.

"McHenry
family!" the woman called again. "We're missing—"

"Here I am," Macey
said, dashing toward the stage.

Her
mother rolled her eyes. Her father checked his watch. But Clipboard Lady just
said, "Excellent! We can't have a new Camelot without our young people.
Just look at those bright shiny faces."

"Actually,
I owe my complexion to your company, Mrs. McHenry." The entire group
seemed surprised to hear Preston speaking—especially Preston. But instead of
shutting up, he rambled on. "That new blemish reduction cream is…wow.
Good job," he added with a self-conscious nod. Clipboard Lady glared at
him, and it was pretty obvious that the shining faces were supposed to be seen
and not heard. "I'll be standing over here now," Preston said, taking
his place beside his parents.

The
candidates took turns behind a podium draped with what looked like every red,
white, and blue piece of fabric east of the Mississippi. Macey stayed in the
center of it all, never shrinking from the spotlight, while I eased to the back
of the arena and took my place among the shadows.

Number
of times Clipboard Lady made Governor Winters and Macey's dad practice shaking
hands and then turn to wave at the imaginary crowd: 14

Number
of times Macey glared at her mother: 26

Number
of times Preston tried to catch Macey's attention and she totally ignored him:
27

Number
of times Macey had to practice a "spontaneous" dip while dancing with
her father: 5

Number
of minutes I had to sit alone in that enormous arena, wondering if freedom and
democracy were always this well rehearsed: 55

By
noon, Clipboard Lady was running through things one final time.

"At
exactly 8:04 the music will come up." Clipboard Lady raised her hands
dramatically. "At this point," she said, studying the candidates and
their families over her dark- rimmed glasses, "I recommend spontaneous
dancing."

Preston smiled at Macey. Macey
shuddered.

"Balloons
will fall at 8:06. Celebrate, celebrate. Dance, dance. Fade to
commercial."

"All
done?" I asked when Macey appeared beside me a minute later. She looked
more relieved than I've ever seen her. (And that's including the time Dr. Fibs
announced that he wouldn't be needing her to help him with his bunion-
pads-as-weapons experiment. Which, needless to say, is pretty darn relieved.)

"Let's
go," Macey told me, but we both must have gotten a little bit sloppy over
summer vacation, because Preston was already on our tail.

"So,
can I interest you ladies in some midday refreshment? I hear the Hawaii
delegation might be roasting a big pig." At that point I might have felt
sorry for Preston because that was maybe the dorkiest thing I'd ever heard. But
Preston didn't shy away from his dorkiness—he
embraced
it.
No part of Preston Winters felt sorry for himself. He was the only person I'd
ever met who was completely without a cover. And I liked him for it.

"Sorry,
Preston," Macey said as she grabbed my arm and pointed me toward the
doors. She waved her well-worn itinerary in front of him. "Duty
calls."

But
if there's one thing that living with the child of a career politician has
taught me, it's that they never take no for an answer.

"Hey,"
he said. "Yeah. Itineraries. Doing our part. That's great." We were
ten steps ahead of him, but for a skinny guy he was really pretty fast. And
persistent. "I'll walk with."

Since
there were two Secret Service agents flanking us, and a news crew setting up
for a live feed, Macey must have thought twice about stopping him. Instead she
pushed against the metal doors again, and soon we were retracing our steps
through the underground tunnel.

An
older man with crazy white hair and wild eyebrows nearly ran me over, mumbling
a very southern, "Excuse me, miss." A pair of women wearing
"Washingtonians for Winters" T-shirts practically bowed in front of
Preston, but he just kept pace beside us, almost jogging to keep up.

"So,
you ladies go to the same school, I take it?" Preston gasped. "Are
all the women of the Gallagher Academy as striking as the two of you?"

Macey
spun on him. "Actually, striking is what we do best."

"So,
Preston," I said, eager to change the subject. We turned down the dingy
narrow corridor that had taken me to Macey that morning. "You must be
excited…about your dad. First son. All that."

"Oh,
yeah," Preston said. "I'm very excited about my father's plan for
America."

He
might have been a politician's son, but I was a spy's daughter, so I knew a lie
when I heard one. As we reached the service elevator, I watched Macey
frantically punch the button, saw her mentally planning ways to keep Preston
out, but all I could do was think about another boy and another elevator, and
remember that there are some things even a Gallagher Girl can't keep from
sneaking up on her.

As
the doors slid open, we all climbed on. It was tight fit, so one of the Secret
Service agents held back.