Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover (16 page)

After
learning that Operative McHenry was in danger from a person (or persons)
knowing the real identity of the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women,
Operatives Morgan, Baxter, and Sutton decided to implement a shadow operation
to oversee Operative McHenry's security.

It
also involved a lot of shadow of the eye variety.

Was it crazy? Yes.

Was it necessary? Maybe.

Was
there any way to talk Bex out of it? Only if we agreed to go with the hog-tying
option, so really, it seemed like our best bet.

We
spent all of Friday afternoon researching, planning, and doing some seriously
covert accessorizing, but by

Saturday
morning all I could do was walk with Bex and Liz through the halls and fight
the combination of nostalgia and nerves that seemed to be growing stronger with
every step.

After
all, I hadn't been outside the grounds (unofficially) in months; I hadn't
opened any of the secret passageways; I hadn't broken any rules. (Okay, I hadn't
broken any
big
rules.)

But
as I reached for the statue of the Rozell sisters (two identical Gallagher
Girls who had posed as double agents— literally—during World War I), I couldn't
shake the feeling that I was about to trigger an opening into something much
darker and deeper than any secret passageway I'd ever found before.

And
that was before I heard Liz cry, "Ew!" and saw her jump back, stumble
over Bex's foot, and slam against the wall, skinning her elbow in the process.

The
Operatives brought the necessary equipment for a detailed
deception-and-disguise operation.

They
did not, however, bring the necessary equipment for killing spiders.

Dusty
cobwebs hung between the low beams like nature's little surveillance detectors.
The biggest spiders I'd ever seen scurried from the light, and I just stood
there remembering that there are many, many reasons why a Gallagher Girl should
keep in practice. One, you don't want to lose your edge. Two, you never know
when you might have to call upon your training. And three, if you go too long
without using your secret passages,
other
things
tend to take over in your absence.

Even
Bex took a big step back. (Because, while Bex is perfectly willing to take on
three armed attackers at once, spiders are an entirely different thing.) But
Liz was the person I was staring at. After all, there we were, locked inside
the safest place in the country, and yet she was already bleeding.

"Hey,
Liz, maybe you should stay here. You know … set up and run a comms
center?"

"That's better if I'm on
site," she argued back.

"And
cover for us," I added, "if someone starts asking where we are."

"It's
Saturday," she reminded me. "In a huge building. That you are
notorious for disappearing inside."

"But—"
I didn't know what was coming over me, but suddenly I felt like someone should
change my nickname from Cammie the Chameleon to Cammie the Corrupter. I was
about to break out of my school (again), to do something I wasn't supposed to
be doing (again). But that wasn't what worried me as I looked at Liz, who
barely weighed a hundred pounds, and then at the secret tunnel that might have
been leading us to actual bad guys with actual guns. "Liz, it's just
that—"

"Why
aren't you telling Bex to stay behind?" Liz shot back, but we all knew the
answer: the only way Bex would miss this would be if she were unconscious. And
tied up. And locked in a concrete bunker. In Siberia.

Which
was a thought that almost made me laugh. Almost. But when I heard Bex say,
"Maybe you should sit this one out, Lizzie," I knew my best friend
was thinking it too. That once we went forward, there might not be any coming
back. In a lot of ways.

Liz
is a genius—the kind of genius that puts the rest of us to shame. She no doubt
knew the odds. She'd probably calculated the chances of us getting caught, of
us getting hurt, and (if it wasn't too traumatic for her to think about) of us
getting knocked down a full letter grade on our midterms. But still she turned
defiantly and pushed through the cobwebs.

There
was no hiding our tracks then—no turning back— so Bex swept her arm across the
door, gesturing "after you."

I
stepped into the darkness with nothing but my training and my cover and my
friends who would follow me to the end of the earth, no matter what was waiting
for us on the other side.

Well,
it turned out what was waiting for us was a 1987 Dodge minivan.

And Liz had the keys.

"Liz,"
I said, walking toward her, praying that no one would come driving by and see
us. (Partly because we totally weren't supposed to be there. Partly because…well
… it was a
really
ugly
minivan.)

But
Liz just said, "Get in." Then she stopped. "Who's driving?"

Bex
dove for the keys, but given her tendency to forget which side of the road
we're supposed to be on, I snatched them out of her grasp.

"Liz,"
I said again, eyeing the rusty fender, "when you said you could get us a
car… Liz, where did you get this car?"

"It's
a project," she said simply, strapping herself into the backseat.

I
pulled at the drivers-side door, and for a second I thought it would fall off
its hinges. I looked at the seat. Stuffing was bursting through its fraying
seams. The steering wheel was being held together almost entirely by duct tape.

"What
kind of project?" I asked, almost afraid of the answer because something
told me that pushing that van to Philadelphia wasn't really going to help our
mission objectives.

"Oh,
give me those," Bex said, grabbing the keys from my hand. She jammed them
into the ignition and turned and then…nothing.

"Great!"
I snapped. "It doesn't even work." But then I felt it. The car was
running, but it was almost completely silent, almost completely still.

"New
technology," Liz said with a shrug. "Dr. Fibs has been helping me.
We've got it up to 250 miles per gallon now," she said, with only the
teeniest hint of a gloating smile. "But I think I'll have it doing 325 by
Christmas."

And
who says Gallagher Girls on the research and operations track never get a
chance to save the world?

We
spent the next few hours in silence. Well, if by silence you mean that Liz was
rattling on nonstop like she does when she's nervous, and Bex was totally
tuning her out like she does when
she's
nervous. And me? I just drove,
listening to the rain that started as we crossed the Pennsylvania border. The
windshield wipers must not have been as high-tech as the engine because they
stuck and stalled, leaving streaks across the glass that caught the light of
passing headlights, and by the time we made it to Philadelphia, everything was
a blur.

"Right
turn," Liz said, navigating our way through narrow cobblestone streets.
Buildings older than the Declaration of Independence rose into the rainy sky.
Maybe I was expecting the noise of Ohio, the blockades and chaos of the
convention, but instead we peered out the grimy windshield onto the slick black
streets, and I couldn't help thinking that something felt…different.

"Are you sure this is the
right place?" I asked. Liz leaned between the two front seats, but before
she could act too insulted, we turned and saw a great stone building that covered
two city blocks. Massive columns spanned its front entrance, so that it looked
more like a Roman temple than a train station. And there, in the center of the façade,
was a banner fifty feet long that read
WINTERS-McHENRY: PUTTING AMERICA
BACK ON TRACK.

The
rain fell harder. Puddles collected on the sidewalks. And beside me, Bex said,
"We're here."

Every
mission is a lesson—in school and in life. And before we even reached the doors
of the 30th Street station, I learned two very important things.

1.
              
Getting
dressed with two other girls in the back of a Dodge minivan should totally be
worth extra credit in P&E.

2.
              
Even if they
are your best friends, you should never ever trust another operative to pack
for you.

"I
cannot believe I am wearing this," I muttered as I tugged at the hem of
the little black dress Bex had personally smuggled out of Sub level Two. But it
didn't feel like a dress. It felt like…torture. Torture with a
very low
back
and very
high
shoes.

Stretch
limousines were lined up outside the main stairs. Secret Service agents stood
guard at every possible exit, but still Bex whispered, "The key to
deception and disguise is to break with tendencies and norms."

And
right then I knew that having genius friends who are really good at memorizing
textbooks can sometimes be a very bad thing, because Bex was right: nothing
about that dress was norm.

Still,
I couldn't help saying, "Then
you
should be wearing it." But
Bex just shrugged.

"I'd love to," she
said. "And that's the problem."

Here's
the thing you need to know about disguise: it's not about being unseen. It's
not about being unnoticed. It's about being unrecognized—shedding your own
skin. And right then I wasn't worried about the Secret Service or five hundred
influential
party donors. Right then our
only concern was Aunt Abby: fooling her meant leaving our own identities in
the van.

I
glanced at Liz, whose long blond hair was hidden beneath a dark brown wig. Bex
was wearing a wig too, plus glasses and a padded bodysuit that changed the
natural silhouette of her athletic frame. We had used every trick in the
Gallagher Academy closet, and as we passed the darkened windows of the station,
I caught a glimpse of three strangers before realizing that, amazingly, they
were us. I didn't even recognize myself under the wig, colored contacts, and
fake nose that changed my forgettable face into one that…wasn't.

"Okay,
gang," I said, "according to blueprints, there's an elevator access
panel on the east side of the building. We may get a little dirty, but—"

"I
thought we'd just go through the doors," Liz said, flashing three
beautifully engraved invitations and some wonderfully authentic fake IDs.

The
tickets were $20,000 each. The Secret Service had been vetting the guest list
for weeks, so Bex and I stopped beneath a streetlamp and studied Liz.

"Do
I even want to know where you got those?" I asked.

Liz seemed to ponder it, and then
she said, "No."

And
just like that I remembered that Liz was probably the most dangerous one of us
all.

Stepping
inside the station was like stepping inside another world. Beautiful carvings
covered a ceiling that was at least fifty feet tall. A string quartet played
from the second-story balcony, their music echoing off the stone floors, while
five hundred men and women ate and drank and talked about the road to the White
House.

I
didn't want to think about the kind of favors someone had had to call in to
close down the entire station for the night (and come to think of it, an actual
act of Congress might have been involved), so I just stood at the top of the
steps with my best friends and a great statue of the angel Michael, who held a
fallen soldier in his arms, his wings poised to take flight. Somehow, it felt
like all four of us were on the lookout for Macey.

"Any
sign?" I asked twenty minutes later as I walked through the crowd.

"Negative," Bex
replied.

"Wow,
did you guys know the Pennsylvania train system dates back to—"

"Liz!" Bex and I
snapped in unison.

"It's
Bookworm," Liz corrected, and I couldn't really complain.

"Bookworm,
what did the official agenda say again?" I asked, needing to hear it.

"It
said Macey will be making one public appearance today. She'll be arriving at
seven thirty via the Back on Track Express—whatever that is."

"What time is it?" I
said.

"You
know what time it is," Bex reminded me, but I was hoping I was wrong,
because the candidates and their families were…late.

Late meant mistakes.

Mistakes meant problems.

And
problems…well, I really didn't want to think about what those meant.