Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover (4 page)

I heard Macey whisper,
"Charlie."

We
pushed past the churning machines and skirted a decade's worth of broken
furniture and hotel relics until we reached the elevator that had brought us
there.

And
then for the first time, I honestly felt like I could

cry.

The
elevator's doors stood open. Mangled wires protruded from the
control
box, still sparking where they'd
been pulled out of the wall and sliced in two with professional precision.

There
was no place we could run. No place we could hide. I turned to look at the
three figures, approaching us in perfect formation—a hunting party with a
helicopter ready to take my friend to someplace I didn't dare imagine.

I
glanced around for a weapon, found a rolling cart and pushed it toward them
with all my might, hoping it might serve as the greatest bowling ball in
history and knock the black-clad figures down in one swipe. But the man in
front merely tossed it aside.

"Cam,"
Macey whispered. She was growing paler. Her left arm had swollen to twice its
normal size, but still she managed to point with her right toward a square hole
in

the wall—a shaft or chute of some
kind.

I
didn't know what it was or where it led. And I didn't have time to ask. I just
dove, pushing Macey ahead of me.

One
of the men lunged forward. I heard a cry of "no" reverberating down
the shaft, but it was too late. Gravity had taken over, and I was hurtling
toward the unknown, praying that it would be better than the place I had just
left.

Free-falling,
I felt my head bang against the metal shaft. Something hot and wet oozed into
my eyes, and still I felt…grateful…hopeful. Dizzy.

There
was a soft thump. The ground beneath me seemed to roll, but at least there was
ground.

I
turned and squinted through dizziness and pain to see a red drop fall onto
white sheets. Macey lay unconscious beside me.

I
lay my head back and felt the world begin to spin. In the distance, someone
yelled, "United States Secret Service, open up!"

And
through a hazy fog, my mind drifted back to the last time the world had gone
upside down. A boy was dipping me in the center of my school and kissing me.
For a moment, I could almost see his face leaning toward me, as if my life were
flashing before my eyes.

And then the whole world faded to
black.

Not all
sleep is equal, of that much I am sure. After all, I've experienced many
varieties of it firsthand. There's Bex-challenged-me-to-a-round-of-kickboxing
sleep, where exhaustion is matched only by the aching of your body. There's
Grandma-Morgan-made-a-huge-dinner-and-there's- nowhere-I-have-to-be-for-three-weeks
sleep that only comes in places where you feel utterly safe. And then there's
the other kind—the worst kind—when your body goes someplace your mind can't
follow: the Mom-just-told-me-Dad's- never-coming-home-again sleep. Your body
rests, but your heart… it has other things to do, and you wake up the next
morning praying, hoping, willing the night before to have been a terrible
dream.

I'd never known it was possible
to have all three kinds at once. But it is. I know that now. "Don't
move," a deep voice said.

I felt the light first, burning
through my closed eyes,

forcing
me to turn my head away from the glare. As I moved, a rush of white-hot pain
seared through me, and a deep voice chuckled.

"I
know you're not big on following rules, Ms. Morgan, but when I tell you to stay
still, you might want to do as I say.

I
blinked and swallowed, but my mouth felt as if it were full of sand, my eyes
like burning embers. I tried to sit upright, but a hand eased me back down onto
soft pillows. I looked up at the blurry face of my mother—my headmistress—and
the best spy I've ever known.

And
then somehow I found the strength to say, "That wasn't a test, was
it?"

I
didn't know where I was, or even the day or the time, but I knew my mother's
face, and that was enough to tell me the answer to my question.

"Welcome
back," I heard the deep voice say, and I turned to see Joe Solomon
standing at the foot of my bed; but for the first time since I'd met him, I
wasn't worried about what my hair looked like in his presence.

"Mr.—" I started, my
voice rough.

"Here."
My mother brought a glass of water to my lips, but I couldn't drink.

"Macey,"
I cried, sitting up too quickly. My head swam and my throat burned, but nothing
could stop me. A thousand questions came to mind, but right then only one
really mattered. "Macey! Is she—"

"She's fine," Mom said
soothingly.

"Better
than you, actually," Mr. Solomon said. "A broken arm isn't quite as
scary as…" He trailed off but tapped his temple, and for the first time I
felt the bandage that covered my head. I remembered the fall through the shaft,
the blood in my eyes, and then, spy training or not, I felt a little woozy and
lay back down on the pillow.

"Where
am I?" I asked, noticing that instead of the skirt I'd been wearing in
Boston, I had on my oldest and softest pair of pajamas. Instead of the soreness
of fresh bruises, my body ached as if I hadn't moved in years, so then I knew
to modify my question. "
When
am I?"

"You've
been out for a little more than a day," Mr. Solomon said. "We brought
you here as soon as we could."

"Here?"
I looked around. The log wall beside my bed was rough beneath my fingers. The
floors were solid wood. I was in a cabin, I realized, probably belonging to the
school or the CIA. "Is this a safe house?"

I
didn't have a clue
how
safe it was until I heard my
teacher say, "It had better be. I own it."

Mr.
Solomon owned a house. Mr. Solomon owned
this
house. On any other day I might
have absorbed every detail of the place—the patchwork quilt, the tackle box,
the smell of fresh pine and old mothballs. I might have marveled that Mr.
Solomon
lived
anywhere, that he had roots.

"I
don't use it much," Mr. Solomon said, as if reading my mind. "But it
has come in handy"—he seemed to be considering his words—"on
occasion."

I
didn't stop to think about the "occasions" of Mr. Solomon's life. I
knew my imagination could never do them justice, so instead I just sat there
trying to summon the courage to say, "Charlie?"

Mom
smiled. She smoothed my hair. "He's going to make it, Cam. He's going to
be fine."

It
should have calmed me, but it didn't. The sun broke through the heavy trees outside,
and rays fell across the bed. I sat up a little straighter. "Is Macey here
too?"

My
teacher nodded. "Outside. It took a little doing to get her away from the
Secret Service after everything, but"— he trailed off, glanced at my
mother then back to me— "we've done harder."

Sometimes
it seems like we Gallagher Girls spend half our time wondering about the things
that our teachers have seen and done. But that day I didn't ask for details.
That day, I had seen enough to know that maybe I didn't want to hear the
stories.

"What
happened?" I asked. I didn't look at my mother or my teacher. My fingers
traced the pattern of the quilt. I was the one who had been there, and yet all
I could do was say, "I mean, was it…"

"A
kidnapping attempt?" Mr. Solomon finished for me, and I nodded, trying to
act as professional as my teacher sounded. "These things, they happen—or
almost happen— more than you'd think." I tried to nod and smile. After
all, the true measure of covert operations lies in how much nobody ever knows.
But people were going to know about this. "Ninety-nine times out of a
hundred it doesn't get that far, but—"

"They
were good," I said, almost shaking with the memory.

Mr.
Solomon nodded. "Yeah," he said, as if a part of him couldn't help
but be impressed. "They were. Secret Service and FBI are going to have
some questions for you. Ms. Morgan, these agents will have Level Six clearance
at the most—so you know what you're going to have to tell them?"

I
nodded. "My roommate invited me to the convention. We were attacked on the
roof. We got away." I felt myself reciting the cover story I'd have to
tell; I found myself remembering that I know fourteen different languages and
yet my life is ruled by the things I cannot say.

I
glanced out the window, saw the trees that surrounded us, a clearing, and in
the distance a sparkling lake. Macey stood on the end of a long pier, looking
out at the water.

"We
got lucky," I added softly, and at that moment my cover story didn't feel
like a lie at all.

My
mother's cell phone rang and she rushed to take it. I heard her whispering to
someone she called Sir. I turned and looked out the window at the girl on the
pier, and then I got up slowly and stepped toward an old-fashioned screened
door.

"There's
nothing wrong up there," Mr. Solomon said. I stopped and turned to see him
pointing toward my groggy head. "Trust me, Cammie, everything's gonna be
fine." He touched a faded scar on his temple. "I know a little something
about these things."

Mr.
Solomon was the best teacher I'd ever had, and I didn't want to disappoint him.
So I lied and said, "I know."

"Hey,"
I said as I reached the end of the pier. Macey was still standing there,
staring out at the still, quiet lake. Scrapes ran down her left cheek. Her
right eye was rimmed with black, and her left arm dangled from a totally
unflattering sling. As I walked toward her, I couldn't help but think that if
that was what
Macey
looked like, then I probably never wanted to see a mirror again.

"Welcome back," she
said.

"Thanks."

"How's the head?"

"Hurts.
How's the arm?" My roommate didn't answer. She didn't comment on my
hideous hair or the bruises on our faces that no amount of concealer could
hide.

There
were too many things to say, so I didn't press her. Instead I shifted and
listened to the boards creak beneath my feet and thought about how our school
had taught us how to get off that roof, but nothing in our exceptional
education had told us what we were supposed to do next.

I
wanted to sit in the CoveOps classroom and listen while Mr. Solomon dissected
every move, every clue, every punch.

And
I wanted to block it from my mind and never think about it again.

I
wanted to know who had done this and why and how.

And
I wanted to believe that it was over, and those

were the kinds of details that
didn't matter now.

I
wanted to take the greatest training I had ever received and learn from it, and
be better because of it.

And I wanted it to stop being
real.

I
wanted a thousand different things as we stood there, but most of all, I wanted
the girl who had been beside me in Boston to turn and realize that I was beside
her now.

"I
heard Charlie is going to make it," I said, but Macey didn't smile.

"Have
you talked to Preston?" I tried, but her gaze never wavered.

"Macey,
do you want to talk about it?" I asked, but her breathing stayed steady,
her gaze didn't move.

"Macey,"
I tried, "please say something. Please say—"

"It's
nice," she said as the late-summer breeze blew through the trees. "I
like this. I like the water."

"Don't
you have a house on Martha's Vineyard?" I asked, wondering how a rickety
shack on a quiet lake could ever compare; but Macey kept staring at the
stillness and said, "This is better."

"We're
going to have to answer questions. We're going to have to be very careful about
what we say. We're—"

"They
briefed me already," Macey said, her eyes never leaving the horizon.
"This
feels
like a
safe house." She finally turned to look at me. "Doesn't it feel safe,
Cam?"

"Yeah, Macey," I said
softly. "It does."

It
was getting late. My internal clock had rebooted, and something in the way the
sun dipped behind the tree- covered hills that surrounded us on all sides told
me it was nearly eight o'clock.

"It's
almost time," Macey said as if she'd read my mind. "They're coming.
My parents want me with them—"

"Of course," I blurted.

"—on
the campaign trail," Macey finished. I stared at her, forgetting my aching
head and sore muscles for a moment. She forced a smile. "We're up ten
points in the polls."