Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover (20 page)

Her
eyes seemed to be warning me not to argue. "Yes," I quickly answered.

"Very well."

For
a second I thought that might be all of it, but of course the lecture wasn't
over. "Cameron, I trusted you to believe me when I said that Macey's
safety was no longer your concern."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I
trusted you to know that security protocol is not something that should be
interfered with on a whim."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I
trusted you, Cammie." My mother's voice was softer then, so that was the
hardest part to hear.

"I
received a call from Bex's mother last night," Mom continued, and I braced
for the wrath of two spy moms scorned. "The Baxters would like for you to
spend winter break in London—"

"Really?" I asked in
surprise.

"And
if I hear," Mom spoke over me. "If I see … If I even
suspect
that
you have been out of these grounds again without permission, then that will not
happen. Am I making myself clear?"

"Yes,"
I said, feeling the weight of the situation settling down on me.

"The
latest polls have the race neck and neck," my mother said. She was too
calm. Too easy. "It's understandable then that Macey's parents are going
to want her with them as much of that time as—"

"No!"

"—possible,"
Mom went on as if I hadn't said a word.

I
glanced at Macey. She'd been quiet all day, but standing in my mother's office,
her silence seemed infinitely louder.

"That
will, of course," Mom said slowly, "be something we will not
allow."

I'd
already opened my mouth to protest when I heard her and stopped short.

"You
mean," Macey was saying beside me, "you mean I won't have to…go?"

"No,"
Mr. Solomon said. "Frankly, Ms. McHenry, the risk is too high. We want you
at home where you belong."

I've
lived with Macey for a long time, but one thing every spy learns eventually is
that you never know everything, and I'd never seen Macey look like she looked
then. I thought about the girl who had crawled out of the limo, and the girl
she had become before this crazy election started changing her back. It was as
if the word "home" was a code— a signal—and that alone told her she
was safe and she could lower her guard.

"Assuming
that's okay with you?" my mother asked, and Macey nodded.

Mr.
Solomon stepped away from the door, so like any good operatives (not to mention
teenage girls in trouble), we bolted for it.

"Oh,
Cammie," Mom called for me, and I stopped while Macey moved on ahead. Mr.
Solomon and Aunt Abby followed my roommate outside and closed the door as my
mother stepped closer. "Don't worry about Macey, Cam." But it wasn't
a soothing phrase. It was an order. "The Secret Service is very good at
what they do. For all our differences, my sister is very, very good at what she
does. I do not want you worrying about Macey."

"Okay."

"I mean it."

"So do I," I said. And
in that moment, I really did.

"I
knew you were in the compartment." Macey's voice sliced through the Hall
of History. Down in the Grand Hall, girls were eating, people were gossiping,
but Macey just sat on the top step looking into the foyer as if she didn't have
the strength to stand.

"I
didn't hear you or anything," she went on as I walked closer. "It was
just a…feeling." Then she looked at me. "You know?"

"Yeah," I said, and I
did.

"The
top sleeping compartment was hanging too low, and the magazine on the bench had
shifted, and I just…knew."

Then she looked at me. "I'm
good at this, right?"

"Yeah. You are."

"When
your mom called me in, I thought… I thought she was gonna kick me out."
She shrugged a little. "Usually that's when I get kicked out."

I've
seen Macey without makeup and in her fat jeans. I've heard what she says in her
sleep and seen the way her lips move when she's reading and the words just
won't sink in. I know Macey McHenry, but that night, sitting on that staircase,
I realized I'd never know what it's like to
be
her.

The
McHenrys have five houses, but this is Macey's only home. She's the most famous
daughter in America, but Liz and Bex and I are her only family.

"No
one's gonna kick you out, Macey." I tried to laugh. "You know too
much. By now we'd have to kill you."

It
took forty-seven seconds, but eventually Macey smiled. Eventually she laughed.

"So,
Preston?" I said, because, honestly, I was sort of about to explode. And…okay
… so it had taken me practically twenty-four hours to mention it, but I'd had
other things on my mind. Like my sanity, my future, and whether or not Zach's
sudden disinterest in kissing had anything to do with the fact that my hair
tends to get frizzy when it's raining. But that didn't stop me from leaning
closer and whispering, "Did I or did I not hear you kissing Preston?"

"There
are people I could hire to kill you and make it look like an accident."

I
gripped the banister and propelled myself up a couple of steps. "He's not
so bad."

"Seriously.
There wouldn't even be an inquest." Macey took a step then added,
"Besides, do I have to tell you that secret boyfriends are the
hottest?"

In spite of everything, I smiled.
"Point taken."

I still
remember the day—the moment—when I found my very first secret passage. I had
been at school three days. My mom had just started her job. My dad had just
died. And I'd just arrived at the school I'd heard about my entire life (or,
well, the parts of my life that came after the part where I figured out that my
mom and dad had more
covert
reasons for missing my
kindergarten graduation).

I
was wandering the hallways, wondering about this building that was bigger and
older and more beautiful than anything I'd ever seen. Wondering how long it
would take for me to realize that my mom would never go away again and my dad
would never come back.

Wondering
if I really belonged at the Gallagher Academy and if I was truly worthy to
carry both the Morgan
and
Cameron family names.

But then I stopped in the hallway
by the library.

A
window was open. The school still had the stale feeling of a building that had
been underoccupied for a long time, and I watched as a breeze blew through the
windows and pushed some dust along the stone-tiled floor, rolling dirt through
the cracks like water in a river. But at one point, instead of rolling along,
it dropped out of sight as if there were a waterfall in the grout that could
barely be seen by the naked eye, disappearing beneath a wall of solid stone.

I
pushed and pulled for five minutes before the wall slid open, and I found my
first way of disappearing in plain sight.

Three
days before I'd found it. Three days I'd been at this place I loved. Three days…

And already I was looking for
ways out.

And that was before I was
forbidden to leave.

PROS AND CONS OF BEING GROUNDED INSIDE THE MOST
AWESOME GROUNDS IN THE WORLD:

PRO:
It's a lot easier to protect your roommate from the people who want to kidnap
her if she spends most of her time in your room.

CON:
When Mr. Mosckowitz asks you to help him proof his paper for the Excellence in
European Encryption seminar on Friday night, you can't say "Sorry, I'm
going to be out of town."

PRO:
Staying out of secret, ancient tunnels means you don't get nearly as many
questionable stains on your white blouse.

CON:
When your roommate tests a landmark discovery in clean-fuel technology (that
happens to reside inside a Dodge minivan), you don't get to ride shotgun.

PRO:
You don't have to worry about running into the boy who may or may not have been
stalking you.

CON:
You don't get to run into the boy who may or may not have been protecting you.
(Even though you don't really need protecting, it totally is the thought that
counts.)

PRO: You have plenty of time to
think.

CON:
You don't always like what you're thinking about.

Zach hadn't tried to kiss me.

Of
course, there
are
bigger mysteries in the world, and I'm sure the CIA would have classified that
information as a low-level concern (I know … I asked Liz). Maybe it was the way
the walls felt close and the grounds felt small, but for some reason that fact
kept pressing down on me, day after day.

Don't
get me wrong, it's not that I think I'm so completely kissable (because,
believe me, I
don't),
but every morning I walked past the place where he had dipped me in front of
the entire school. In the Grand Hall every night I ate in the exact same place
where we had danced. And every day, with every step, new questions filled my
mind:

• Why had Zach been in Boston
(among other places)?

• What had he meant when he'd
said that he was someone who didn't have anything left to lose?

• Who had set all this in motion?
And why?

For
three weeks I wandered the halls, wondering about people who had hurt me and a
boy who hadn't tried to kiss me: two great mysteries. But there was only one of
them that I had any hope of solving.

"Did
you check again?" I asked Liz as we left Culture and Assimilation.
"Professor Buckingham told me that MI6 registers a dozen new terrorist
groups in their database every week."

"I
know," Liz said. "But Cam, there's nothing there. I've run the image
of that woman's ring through MI6, MI5, CIA, NSA, FBI. Believe me, if they've
got initials, I've hacked them, and that image isn't anywhere."

"I
didn't make that symbol up! It's got to exist …" I snapped, but the look
that my three best friends in the world were giving made me stop short.

"Cam,
darling," Bex said. "Is something…bothering you?"

"Well,
I …" I started, but Macey was the one who answered.

"She's still freaked out
about Zach."

I
may be a pavement artist, but Macey McHenry will always know more about boys
and all things boy-related than I can ever comprehend.

"What?"
Macey asked with a shrug when I stared at her. "I'm intuitive." She
took a step. "Plus, you talk in your sleep."

She was right.
Zach and I had
fallen out of that train berth together, and the world had been upside down
ever since.

"Boys!"
I cried, but luckily the halls were loud, and girls were hurrying, and the word
got lost in the crowd. Would we ever understand them?

"He
can't be…bad?" Liz asked softly. "I mean, didn't we establish last
year that Zach is not bad?" She wasn't asking as a girl, she was asking
as a scientist who really didn't want to reevaluate her models, duplicate her
research, and change any of the things that she thought she'd once proven
beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But
she hadn't been on the train. She hadn't seen with her own eyes that Aunt Abby
knew something about Zach. And Zach knew something about Boston. And someone
knew something about that emblem. As Liz started for the labs and Macey started
for Encryption, Bex and I boarded the elevator to Sublevel Two, and I couldn't
help but ask, "What good is it having elite spying abilities if the people
who have the highly classified information are even more elite?"

Bex
smiled at me. "Because where would be the fun in that?" The spiraling
ramp seemed steeper as it carried us deeper and deeper into Sublevel Two. When
we reached the bottom, she stopped and looked at me. "And maybe there are
some things"—she spoke slowly, and I knew the words were almost painful as
she said—"we aren't supposed to know."

"Motivation,"
Mr. Solomon said as we settled into our chairs around the old-fashioned tables
of the Covert Operations classroom. For weeks I'd been coming to that room,
studying our teacher, trying to find some clue in his eyes about Zach and the
train and a million other questions that swarmed my mind.

"It's
why people do the things they do," our teacher said, the sentence as
simple and basic as any lesson we had ever learned; and yet something in Joe
Solomon's tone told me it was also the most important.

"What,
ladies"—h
e took a
step, scanning the
dim room—"is almost always tied to
why.
There are six reasons anyone
does anything: Love. Faith. Greed. Boredom. Fear …" he said, ticking them
off on his fingers; but he lingered on the last, drawing a deep breath before
he said, "Revenge."