Harriet the Spy, Double Agent (2 page)

“Just Rocque. No La.” Harriet turned from the dog man to wave at Sport, whose hair, she noticed, was carefully parted and combed. Maybe he’d made his peace with Yolanda’s real name. “Hi, Sport.”

Sport nodded, tongue-tied. He seemed to be staring at Annie’s beret. Annie ignored him, turning to Harriet.

“Hey, H’spy, why do you call Simon Sport?”

“Same reason you call me H’spy.”

“That’s your
name
.”

“Well, Sport is
his
name.”

“I used to like football,” Sport mumbled. “When I was a kid.”

“I’m glad you outgrew it,” said Annie. “Football’s for morons.” She stepped into the deepest part of the corner puddle, sending twin waves of slush into the crosswalk.

Harriet followed suit. Sport, who was wearing his usual black Converse hightops, looked embarrassed at having to step to one side. The three of them strode across East End Avenue. Buses and taxis were lined up at every red light.

“So tell me about this Gregory School,” Annie said as she sloshed through the half-frozen lake on the opposite corner. “Who do I need to look out for?”

“Our homeroom is mostly decent. It’s all girls this year, so you missed Pinky Whitehead and the Boy with the Purple Socks. But there’s still the Marion Hawthorne Experience.” Harriet shuddered. “A legend in her own mind. And her faithful sidekicks, Rachel the Bland and Carrie the Clone. They won’t pick on you unless Marion does.”

“Sounds like a pack of snobs.” Annie kicked the wrought-iron railing that skirted a sycamore tree.

“You’ll be fine,” said Harriet. “Just don’t act peculiar.”

“I’m never peculiar,” Annie said with a sniff. “You must mean Rosarita or Zoe.”

“I thought you were Zoe when you felt estranged.”

“When did I say that?”

“Thanksgiving,” said Sport. Annie glanced over her shoulder, as if she’d forgotten he was walking behind them. Sport blushed the color of Annie’s beret.

“I’m not estranged, Simon,” she said. “I’m actually feeling quite rakish.” She flung her scarf over one shoulder and swept ahead. Sport started after her with a lovestruck expression, but Harriet laid a firm hand on his arm.

“Your school is that way,” she said, pointing south down the avenue. Sport looked embarrassed again. He nodded, hefting his backpack, and trudged down the sidewalk without a word. This nonsense has
got
to stop, Harriet thought, with her hands on her hips. She was vastly relieved when Sport lifted a small chunk of ice with the toe of one sneaker and started to dribble it soccer style, bobbing and weaving through the pedestrians.

She caught up to Annie in just a few strides. “Did you see my signal last night?” she asked.

“It was excellent,” Annie said. “Silly, but excellent.” Harriet drew herself up at that “silly.” So much for making up semaphore signals together, she thought, feeling miffed. She was still searching for just the right dignified comeback when they reached the Gregory School. The wide steps in front had been swept clear of snow, leaving big shapeless drifts on both sides and gray sprinkles of rock salt atop the wet granite. Students clustered in twos and threes, notebooks clutched to their chests, comparing Thanksgiving vacations. Several heads swiveled to see who was arriving with Harriet Welsch. Annie glanced around anxiously, lifting a hand to adjust her coat collar. “The bloody Bastille,” she muttered.

Marion Hawthorne turned toward them, swathed in a very expensive-looking white coat and silk scarf that her mother must have bought in Europe.

“Marion,” said Harriet, making her voice sound commanding. “This is my friend, and our new homeroom classmate—”

“Cassandra,” said Annie Smith, tossing her hair back from under her scarlet beret.

“I’m Cassandra D’Amore.”

“Why did you say that?” hissed Harriet. They were hanging up coats and stashing wet boots in the lockers just outside homeroom.

Annie shrugged, slipping her feet into loafers. “Free country, the last I heard.”

“Yes, but—”

“So mind your own business.” Annie walked through the door and stood there uncertainly, wondering which desk would be hers. See if I help you, thought Harriet, stung for the second time. She sat down at her desk, between Janie Gibbs and Beth Ellen Hansen. Mr. Grenville was already crossing the room to the new student, with a wide smile in place.

“There you are, so good to see you,” he burbled. “I’m Mr. Grenville, homeroom and English, and this’ll be your desk.” He pulled back a chair, catty-corner from Harriet’s. Annie sat down without looking her way.

Mr. Grenville went back to the head of the classroom and turned to address the group. “Everybody, I’d like you all to meet Annie Smith.” Marion Hawthorne swiveled to face her. “Annie?” she said. “You told me your name was—”

“Cassandra D’Amore. It is.”

Mr. Grenville frowned. “My attendance chart lists you as Annie Smith. Would that be … a nickname?”

Marion smirked and Beth Ellen Hansen leaned forward. Let’s see how she handles
this
one, thought Harriet.

“You might call it a nickname,” said Annie coolly. “In certain, er, federal circles.” Marion’s eyes widened. Beth Ellen looked frightened.

Mr. Grenville’s thick eyebrows rose high on his forehead. His voice sounded richly amused. “Or we might call it something else—for example, a genre of writing including novels, short stories, novellas, and experimental forms. Which is?” He looked straight at Harriet.

“Fiction,” she answered.

Mr. Grenville smiled. He had kind eyes. “Would that be correct, Annie?” She didn’t blink. “Names have been changed to protect the innocent. That’s all I’m permitted to say on the matter.”

Mr. Grenville made a small bow from the waist, and Harriet thought, as she often had, that he must have once yearned for a life on the stage. “All right, then, Cassandra D’Amore. We’re reading
Romeo and Juliet
. Are you familiar?”

“Montagues hate the Capulets, Capulets hate the Montagues, everyone dies.” Annie nodded.

There’s more to her than meets the eye, Harriet thought. She’s very well-read for an impolite person who lies a lot. Annie Smith was a woman of multiple mysteries: not just the reason for her expulsion from Sport’s public school, but the reason she’d come to live with her uncle and aunt in the first place. Where were her
parents
?

Harriet narrowed her eyes to slits and stared at the back of Annie Smith’s head, noting the way her pink-rimmed ears stuck through her hair. I’m going to find out all your secrets, she vowed, and the thought of it made her deliciously happy. I’m going to start spying on
you
.

WHY ARE THE FEIGENBAUMS SHELTERING ANNIE? IS SHE RUDE TO THEM? SHE APPEARS TO BE FOND OF THEIR CAT.

Harriet paused for a moment, the tip of her pen in her mouth. She could practically hear Ole Golly exhorting her, “Write with your brain, not your tongue.” She set the pen back on the page and thought for a moment before she continued.

NICE TO CATS ISN’T ENOUGH, she wrote, closing the notebook. She set it back in her trunk and turned the small key in its brass clasp. Her room was, as always, in order, her clothes for the following day folded neatly on top of her dresser. Spies needed to keep their possessions in readiness. One never knew when one might need to follow a lead on short notice.

She changed into her new flannel pajamas, the ones that were cut like her father’s, with notched lapels. She imagined herself strolling onto the set of a black-and-white Hollywood movie, something with Katharine Hepburn and dark marble floors. Who is that dashing young woman? Not
dashing
, she decided, editing herself as she headed into the bathroom to brush her teeth.
Insouciant
. Yes, that was the word.

She squeezed the paste onto her toothbrush and looked at herself in the mirror.

Not insouciant, either, she thought. The word for this outfit is
baggy
.

Harriet brushed, rinsed, and spit, set her toothbrush back into the rack and her glass in its usual spot, and switched off the light. A movement outside caught her eye.

She stepped into the bathtub and peered out the window in time for the second and third 10

flashes. Semaphore.

Chapter 2

Harriet woke feeling happy, remembering the inspiration that had come to her just before sleep. She’d been lying in bed for what seemed like a very long time, trying to make herself tired by mentally tracing the shadow of every venetian-blind slat on her ceiling, when the thought had flown in like a gift: the best way to spy
on
Annie would be to spy
with
Annie.

Spying was solitary work, she reflected as she pulled on the turtleneck sweater she’d chosen for school. Annie had time on her hands, and a good brain. Harriet would draw the girl into her daily routine, and once she had gained Annie’s confidence, and access to Morris and Barbara Feigenbaum, the answers to every mystery would be revealed. She picked up her green notebook and tucked it inside the zippered mail pouch she used to disguise it from prying eyes at the Gregory School, then sped down the four flights of stairs to the basement.

“My Lord, what a clatter.” Cook looked at her, frowning. “You sound like a whole herd of buffalos.”

“Buffalo. Plural and singular.”

“Buffalo, plural, if my ears are judging.” Cook was slicing a bright red tomato for Harriet’s sandwich. There was no need to ask what she wanted for lunch—Harriet had taken a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich to school every day since her sixth birthday.

That’s half my life, she realized with a shuddering thrill. She reached for a box of cornflakes, upending it into her favorite bowl.

“One of these days, I am not going to find any winter tomatoes worth slicing. Not even at the Koreans’. You’ll have to eat ham or bologna like everyone else.”

“Should that crisis arise”—Harriet opened the fridge and took out a half-gallon of milk—“I am prepared to go sandwichless. I am not everyone else.”

“You can say that again.”

Harriet, who secretly enjoyed these exchanges with Cook, opened her mouth.

Cook was quicker. “But I hope you won’t.”

Harriet shrugged and said, “That.”

Cook looked blank. “What?”

“I can say ‘that’ again.”

“I can throw a tomato.”

“But I hope you won’t.” Satisfied, Harriet poured the milk into her cornflakes, added a banana, and started to eat.

Cook finished wrapping her sandwich and moved to the sink to rinse off the knife.

“Are you going to school with the doctors’ niece again?” Harriet paused, spoon halfway to her mouth. Cook had once made it known that she had had offers of work from the Feigenbaums. Maybe she had inside information.

“Why do you ask?” she inquired craftily.

Cook shrugged, tipping her head toward the barred basement window that gave her a view of the neighboring sidewalk. “’Cause she just left her house.” Harriet leaped to her feet, grabbed her lunch box, and ran, ignoring Cook’s frustrated shouts. “Put your bowl in the sink! And don’t
clatter
!” The sun had come out, and the air was a little bit warmer than the day before. A man chipped away at his snowbound Toyota, and big chunks of ice fell away, crashing into the gutter. “I think doing semaphore letter by letter would take too long,” Annie said as they walked down the sidewalk. “Why can’t we have signals for whole phrases?”

“Such as?”

Annie thought for a moment. “‘Help, murder!’”

“I don’t think that’s going to come up.”

“It could.”

“How about just ‘Help’?” said Harriet irritably. “One long flash, one short.” She opened her notebook and started to write.

“I’ve got a better idea,” said Annie, stepping into the street. She bent down and picked up two pieces of red plastic that had cracked off someone’s taillight. She gave one to Harriet. “‘Help’ can be red.”

The suggestion did have its dramatic appeal, but Harriet hated to let someone else make the choices. “I’ve already written
One long and one short
.”

“So make that mean something else. Like ‘Did you get the homework?’” She’s taking over, thought Harriet. Whose idea was this in the first place? She opened her mouth to protest, but Annie was gazing down at the green notebook.

“What’s in there?” she asked.

I’ve hooked her, thought Harriet. “Nothing,” she said in a light, airy voice that implied just the opposite. “Just some notes from my spy route.”

“Oh, that,” Annie said.

She’s feigning disinterest, thought Harriet. I bet she’s dying to know. “I’ll be making my rounds after school, if you’d like to come with me.”

“Why not?” Annie yawned. “I’ve got nothing better to do.” 

Harriet shrugged, mirroring Annie’s attitude. “If you feel like it.” They had arrived at the steps of the school. Annie turned to face Harriet. “You do understand I can’t speak to you if you won’t call me Cassandra.” This was outrageous. “I don’t see the point.” It’s my name.

“No, it’s not.”

“At the Gregory School, I’m Cassandra D’Amore.” Annie turned and walked straight up the stairs. I’m not going to follow, thought Harriet, folding her arms. And I’m certainly
not
going to call you Cassandra. Enough is enough.