Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover (10 page)

"What
did you say, Cammie?" my mother asked in the manner of someone who already
knows the answer to her question.

"I
remembered …" I sank to the leather sofa. Mom inched closer, but behind
her, Aunt Abby gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head—a warning. Be
careful what you wish for. "I remembered something…about Boston. I put
Preston on that window-washing thing, and they didn't really…care." Mom
was easing onto the coffee table in front of me, moving slowly as if afraid to
wake me from that terrible dream. "They said get
her."

"Cam—"
Mom started, but flashes filled my eyes again—a gray door, a black helicopter,
and finally a white piece of paper fluttering to the ground.

"Preston's
agenda," I whispered, but this time I didn't look at my mother—I looked at
my aunt. "He was never supposed to be there, was he?"

Mom
started to say something, but Aunt Abby walked past her and dropped onto the
leather couch beside me. "Nope."

Some
people might wonder why it mattered—we'd known for weeks that Macey was in
danger. But sitting there, listening to the storm that had been a long time
coming, I couldn't help but feel like it made all the difference in the world.
The kidnappers weren't there for the son and daughter of two of the most
powerful families in the country—they were there for only one of them.

And she was one of my best
friends.

"It's
true, kiddo," Mom said. "Preston Winters wasn't supposed to be there,
so we can only assume that he wasn't the target."

I
nodded. She smoothed my hair. But nothing could keep my heart from pounding as
I asked, "Who were they?"

"More
than three hundred groups have claimed credit for the attack," my aunt
said, then added with a shrug, "which means at least 299 of them are
lying."

"The
ring," I said, closing my eyes and seeing the image that was burned into
my mind. "I drew you a picture of that ring. Have you—"

"We're
looking into it, kiddo," Mom said softly. I bit my lip, needing to know
where at least some of the pain I was feeling was coming from.

"Why Macey?" I blurted,
turning to my mother. "She's the daughter of very powerful people, Cam.
They have very powerful enemies."

And
then I asked the question more terrifying than anything I'd seen on the roof.
"Is she going to be okay?"

My
mother and aunt looked at each other, two CoveOps veterans who had seen enough
to know that there was no easy answer to my question. "The Secret Service
is good, Cam," my mother said. "Your aunt Abby is very good."
She looked at my aunt as if no amount of sibling rivalry could ever come
between them. So I sat there for a long time thinking about sisters. About our
sisterhood.

And
then suddenly it seemed funny. It seemed crazy. We were in the middle of the
Gallagher Academy, where the people are both crazy and really, really good at
being crazy about security. Of course Macey was going to be okay,

"Well,
at least we already go to the safest school in the world. And it's not like
Macey's going anywhere, right?" I said with a smile—totally not expecting
my aunt to smile back and say, "Yeah…well…Cam, have you ever been to
Cleveland?"

Ohio
has twenty electoral votes and a history of high voter turnout. It has a
governor from one party and two senators from the other. In September, it also
had a lot of women who were unsure about who to vote for but who were certain
about one thing: Macey McHenry was a brave, brave girl for surviving what
happened to her in Boston.

Macey
McHenry was going to be worth a lot of votes.

And so she was going there.
Alone.

Well
… if by alone you mean with one of the most honored Gallagher Girls in years
(who, reportedly, looks a little like me when I wear my hair back), a caravan
of fourteen Secret Service agents of her own personal detail, and at least
thirty advance team members who were tracking her father's every move. But in
the most important sense she was alone. Because she was going without us.

Monday
morning, Macey was up at five a.m. and together we all walked her downstairs,
where the smell of cinnamon rolls wafted in from the kitchen. Outside, the sun
was coming up in the distance. A hazy light fell over the horizon, and through
the windows I could see the guards doing a sweep of the woods.

Liz
was wearing her E=mc
²
pajamas, and Bex's hair was looking
particularly out of control, but still we paraded Macey through the mansion
until we saw Aunt Abby.

She
wore a dark gray pantsuit with a plain white blouse. A little plastic earpiece
was already pinned to her collar, the wires disappearing down the inside of her
jacket. She looked the part—she
was
the part. And then we handed
Macey off to her without a word, the changing of the guard.

And then I went and took a
shower.

And then I ate a cinnamon roll.

And
I didn't hear a thing Mr. Smith said about ancient Rome and the catacombs,
which if you know where to look, still provide pretty awesome access to the
city.

All
day long, it seemed like people kept saying exactly what I was thinking.

"Well,
I guess she's probably there by now," Tina said after breakfast.

"Macey
is going to get to see so many cool protection tactics," Eva remarked on
our way to COW.

"She's
with Abby," Liz said on our way down the Grand Staircase.

"And
Abby rocks," Bex reminded me just as we parted ways with Liz and headed to
the elevator for Sublevel Two.

From
a purely intellectual standpoint I knew Macey was as well protected as she
could possibly be, but Mr. Solomon had been teaching us for a year that being a
spy isn't always about intellect—it's about instincts. And right then my
instincts were telling me that it was going to be a very long day.

And
that was
before
Mr.
Solomon met us at the entrance to Sublevel Two with a stack of Winters-McHenry
T-shirts and said, "Let's go."

I'd
been in a helicopter with Mr. Solomon twice before. The first time I'd been
blindfolded. The second, I'd just found out that there was
another
top
secret spy school
… for boys!
But that day, boys and
blindfolds seemed easy in comparison.

"Security
threats come in how many forms, Ms. Alvarez?" Mr. Solomon asked.

"Five,"
Eva said, even though, technically, we hadn't covered that chapter yet.

"And
who can tell me what they are?" our teacher went

on.

"Long
range, short range, suicide, static …" Bex rattled, not to show off, but
more like she had to say them—like they'd been on her mind for too long and she
had to set them free.

"That's four," Mr.
Solomon told us.

The
blades of the chopper were spinning; the ground beneath us was roaring by—trees
and hills, rivers and highways, towns full of normal schools and normal kids
and people who would never ever know the answer to our teacher's questions.

"Internal,"
I said so softly that with the spinning blades and gushing winds I wondered for
a second if anyone heard.

But we're Gallagher Girls. We
hear everything.

"That's
right," Mr. Solomon told us. "And that's the big one."

I
told myself that he wasn't talking about Macey—that he didn't mean that what
had happened in Boston had been orchestrated by someone
inside
,
someone close. But rather he was speaking in general terms, reminding us all of
what we knew too well, that traitors are the most dangerous people of all.

"You're
going to see a lot of things today, ladies. Seasoned operatives working in the
field with one primary objective. It's not about intel, and it's not about ops.
It's about protection today, pure and simple."

In
my mind I was already running through the scenarios that only a man like Joe
Solomon could come up with. I was imagining what tests could possibly be
waiting on the ground.

Bex
must have been thinking along those same lines, because she asked, "What's
our mission?"

"It's
a hard one," Mr. Solomon warned, then smiled. "Just watch. Just
listen. Just learn."

Gallagher
Girls are asked to do hard things. All the time. But until that day I never
really knew that the hardest mission of all is to do nothing.

After
all, it's one thing to take a group of highly trained teenage future spies and
drop them off in a crowd of thousands and tell them to find the potential
security threat. It's quite another to take those same girls, equip them with
comms units tuned to the same frequency as the Secret Service (not that the
Secret Service actually
knew
or
anything), and tell them to sit back and enjoy the show.

I
don't even like letting someone else put the syrup on my waffles (I have a
system), so letting other people be in charge of Macey's safety…well…let's just
say it was a little out of my comfort zone.

And
if that wasn't bad enough, the jeans that someone had packed for me to change
into were a little on the snug side. And I don't know about everyone else, but
Bex Baxter is the only girl I know who can enter and exit a helicopter without
having it do really unfortunate things to her hair.

Most
of all, I wanted to pretend that I still believed I lived in a world where hair
and jeans really mattered. But I didn't. So I just thought about my mission and
stared out into the crowd.

And then I disappeared.

The
Essentials of Being a Chameleon
By
Cameron Ann Morgan

1. It's very
important, at all times, to look like you belong.

2.
              
When #I is
difficult, try pointing to imaginary people and walking purposefully toward no
one.

3.
              
Stillness.
Stillness is key (except when you're doing
#2)
because people
see motion more easily than they see things. So when in doubt, freeze.

4.
              
It totally
helps if you aren't all that special looking (in either really good or really
bad ways).

5.
              
Acquaint
yourself with your surroundings ASAP.

6.
              
Dress in a
way that isn't flashy, fashionable, ugly, or obscene.

7.
              
Hiding is for
amateurs.

"This
is…wow," Bex said ten minutes after we'd arrived at the park … or what I
think was supposed to be a park.

A
long grassy promenade covered at least two city blocks. Beautiful historic
buildings lined the space, but at the far end, someone had erected a stage.
Bleachers circled behind it, facing the lawn, and from where Bex and I stood it
seemed like half of Ohio had come out to see Macey's triumphant return.

Over
the loudspeakers I heard a local politician trying to make the people on the
bleachers behind him chant "Winters" while the people on the grass in
front of the stage were told to yell "McHenry."

"Are
American politics always so…crazy?" my best friend whispered.

I
wanted to tell her that this was nothing compared to the insanity of the
convention (because, for example, I hadn't seen anyone with hats shaped like
produce…yet), but somehow bringing up Boston didn't seem like a good idea, so
instead I just nodded and tried to squeeze through the crowds.

A
massive banner (that I'm fairly sure was also bulletproof) circled the stage,
reading
walk the walk.
I turned and scanned the long stretch of barricades that ran through the center
of the crowd. A huge tour bus turned onto the street and stopped at the end of
the alleyway that cut through the audience. Its doors swung open, and somewhere
in the distance, the Tri-County High School Marching Band started to play as Governor
Winters and The Senator stepped out and started down the long promenade full of
hands to shake and babies to kiss—two thousand screaming people, any one of
whom could have given me the bump on my head.

In my ear I heard a steady stream
of unfamiliar voices.

"Sir,
could you remove your hands from your pockets, please?" a tall Secret
Service agent asked the man behind me.

"Delta
team, I don't like the looks of the guy on the library steps. I repeat, the
library steps."