by Carter, Ally
“Oh.” I shot upright. “I was in Mongolia.”
Note to self: learn to be a less extreme liar.
“With the Peace Corps,” I said slowly. “My parents are big into that. That’s when they started the homeschooling thing,” I said, remembering my legend, feeling the momentum.
“Wow. That’s so cool,” he said.
“It is?” I asked, wondering if he was serious. But he was smiling, so I said, “Oh, yeah. It is.”
He slid onto the seat beside me. “So, have you lived, like, a lot of places?”
I’ve traveled quite a bit, but I’ve actually only lived three places: a Nebraska ranch, a school for geniuses, and a D.C. town house. Luckily, I’m an excellent liar with a very thorough legend. Four years’ worth of COW lessons swam in my head, and I went for some of the highlights. “Thailand’s really beautiful.”
“Wow.” Then I remembered Macey’s don’t be cooler than he is advice. “It was long time ago,” I said. “It wasn’t a big thing.” “But you live here now?”
The Subject likes to state the obvious, which may signify a defect in observation skills and/or short-term memory?
“Yeah.” I nodded. And then things got quiet—painfully quiet. “I’m waiting on my mom,” I blurted, finally remembering my cover story. “She takes a class at night . . . at the library.” I gestured to the red brick building across the square. “And I like to come into town with her because I don’t get out much, thanks to my nontraditional education.”
The Subject has really blue eyes that twinkle when he looks at someone like she’s maybe a little bit insane.
After a long stretch of really awkward silence, he stood up and said, “I gotta go.” I wanted to beg him not to leave, but even I knew that might come off as a tad bit desperate. He stepped away, and I didn’t know how to stop him (well, I did, but several of the moves I had in mind are really only legal during times of war).
“Hey,” he said, “what’s your last name?”
“Solomon,” I blurted.
Ew! A large portion of my future government salary will someday be spent trying to understand why I chose that name at this moment, but it was out there and I couldn’t take it back.
“Are you, like, in the book?”
The book? What book?
He laughed and stepped closer. “Can I call you?” he asked, reading the confusion on my face.
Josh was asking if he could call me! He wanted my phone number! What it meant—truly and irrevocably meant—I didn’t know. But I felt very safe in ruling out the possibility that he thought I was “nobody.” Still, that didn’t change the fact that the last phone I used doubles as a stun gun (so for obvious reasons I probably shouldn’t give him the number of that one).
I said, “No.” But then the most amazing thing happened: Josh looked totally sad! It was as if I’d run over his puppy (though no actual puppies were harmed in the formation of that metaphor).
I was shocked. I was amazed. I was drunk on power!
“No!” I said again. “Not, ‘no you can’t call me.’ I meant, ‘no, you can’t call me.’” Then, seeing his confusion, I added, “There are strict rules at my house.” Not a lie.
He nodded, faking understanding, then asked, “What about e-mail?”
I shook my head.
“I see.”
“I’ll be back here tomorrow,” I blurted, stopping him in his tracks. “My mom, she has class again. I’ll . . .”
“Okay.” He nodded, then turned to go. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“What the heck is that supposed to mean?” I yelled at Macey, though it wasn’t her fault. I mean, if a boy gets all gooey and disappointed because you won’t give him your phone number and then you tell him you will be at a designated place at a designated time—therein eliminating the need for a phone number—and he says “maybe” he’ll see you there? That’s cause to yell—isn’t it?
“Maybe?” I yelled again, which might have been overkill since I’d had the whole walk back to school to simmer in his words, and my roommates were hearing them for the first time.
Liz was wearing the same expression she gets whenever Dr. Fibs tells us we’ll be needing our gas masks for class— equal parts fear and euphoria. Macey was doing her nails, and Bex was doing yoga in the corner of the room.
Most people are supposed to get calmer with deep breathing and inner reflection—not Bex. “I could take him out,” she offered, and if she hadn’t been twisted up like a pretzel at the time, I might have worried more about it. After all, she knew where he lived.
“Well . . .” Liz stammered. “I supposed you’ll just have to go, and then if he shows, it means he likes you.”
“Wrong,” Macey said, making a buzzer sound as she flipped through a textbook. “If he comes, it means he’s curious—or bored—but probably curious.”
“But when will we know if he likes her?” Liz pleaded.
Macey rolled her big, blue, beautiful eyes. “That’s not the question,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “The question is—how much?”
Is there no end to the things we have to learn?
Spy training isn’t something you can turn off and on. We eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff. It has become as much a part of my DNA as lackluster hair and a weakness for peanut M&M’s. I know that probably goes without saying, but before I tell you what came next, I thought I’d better point it out.
After all, imagine if you were a fifteen-year-old girl standing alone on a deserted street on a dark night, preparing for a clandestine meeting, when, all of a sudden you can’t see anything because a pair of hands are covering your eyes. One second you’re standing there, being grateful that you’d remembered to pack a candy bar, and then . . . POW ... everything goes black.
Well, that’s what happened. But did I panic? No way. I did what I was trained to do—I grabbed the offending arm, shifted my weight, and used the force of my would-be attacker’s momentum against him.
It was fast. Really fast. Scary, these-hands-are-lethal-weapons fast.
I am so good, I thought, right up until the point when I looked down and saw Josh lying at my feet, the wind knocked out of him.
“Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry!” I cried and reached down for him. “I’m so sorry. Are you all right? Please be all right.”
“Cammie?” he croaked. His voice sounded so weak, and I thought, This is it. I’ve killed the only man I could ever love, and now I’m about to hear his deathbed (deathstreet?) confession. I leaned close to him. My hair fell into his open mouth. He gagged.
So . . . yeah . . . on my first psuedo-date, I not only physically assaulted my potential soul mate, I also made him gag—literally.
I pushed my hair behind my ear and crouched beside him. (Incidentally, if you ever want to feel a boy’s abs, this is a pretty good technique—because it seemed perfectly natural for me to put my hands on his stomach and chest.) “Ooh. What is it?”
“Do something for me?”
“Anything!” I crouched lower, not wanting to miss a single, precious word.
“Please don’t ever tell any of my friends about this.”
He smiled, and relief flooded my body.
He thinks I’ll meet his friends! I thought—then wondered, What does that mean?
The Subject demonstrates amazing physical fortitude, as was exhibited by his ability to recover quickly after a very hard fall onto asphalt.
The Subject is also surprisingly heavy.
I helped Josh get up and brush himself off.
“Wow!” he said. “Where did you learn to do that?”
I shrugged, trying to guess how Cammie the home-schooled girl who had a cat named Suzie would reply. “My mom says a girl needs to know how to take care of herself.” Not a lie.
He rubbed the back of his head. “I feel sorry for your dad.”
Bullets couldn’t have hit me any harder. But then I realized that he wasn’t taking it back, slinking away, try
ing to pull his foot out of his mouth. He just looked at me and smiled. For the first time in a long time, when thinking about my father, I felt like smiling, too.
“He says he’s pretty tough, but I think she could take him.”
“Like mother like daughter, huh?”
He had no idea what an amazing compliment he’d just given me—and the thing was: he’d never know.
“Can you . . . like . . .” He was gesturing to the town around us. “. . . walk around or something?”
“Sure.”
We set off down the street. For a girl who has been described as a pavement artist, I was a little surprised at how hard it is to walk when you’re actually trying to be seen.
After a few minutes of listening to our feet on the street, I realized something. Talking. Shouldn’t there be talking? I searched my mind for something—anything—to say, but kept coming up with things like “So, how ’bout those new satellite-controlled detonators with the twelve-mile range?” Or, “Have you read the new translation of Art of War? Because I prefer it in the original dialect. . . .” I half wished he’d charge at me again or draw a knife or start speaking in Japanese or something . . . but he didn’t, and so I didn’t know what to do. He walked. So I walked. He smiled, so I smiled back. He turned a corner (without using the Strembesky technique of detecting a tail, which was really sloppy of him), and I followed.
We turned another corner, and I knew from my Driver’s Ed recon that there was a playground up ahead.
“I broke my arm there,” he said, pointing to the monkey bars. Then he blushed. “It was a real rumble—bodies everywhere—you should have seen the other guy.”
I smiled. “Oh, sounds wild.”
“As wild as anything in Roseville ever gets.” He laughed, and then kicked a stone with the toe of his shoe. It skidded across the vacant street and into an empty gutter. “My mom totally freaked out. She was screaming and trying to drag me into the car.” He chuckled, then ran a hand through his wavy hair. “She’s a little high maintenance.”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling. “I know the type.”
“No,” he said. “Your mom must be cool. I mean, I can’t imagine getting to see the places you’ve seen. All my mom does is cook all the time, you know? Like one kind of pie isn’t enough. No. She’s got to have three different kinds, and . . .” His voice trailed off as he looked at me. “I bet your mom doesn’t do that.”
“Oh, yes she does!” I said quickly. “She’s really big on all that stuff.”
“You mean, I’m not the only kid who has to sit through eight-course dinners?”
“Oh, are you kidding?” I said. “We do that all the time!” (If eight courses could be defined as five Diet Cokes and three Twinkies.)
“Really? I thought that with the Peace Corps and . . .”
“Oh, no, are you kidding? They’re big on family time and”—I thought back to the huge stack of Pottery Barn catalogs—“decorating.”
“Yes!” he said. “I know. You know how they decide, overnight, that you need new curtains in your bedroom. . . . Like plain curtains aren’t really getting it done, and now you need striped curtains?”
Plain curtains? Striped curtains? What kind of society had I stumbled into? I should be getting COW extra credit for this! We walked farther, down a winding street with manicured lawns and perfect flower beds that couldn’t possibly have been mere miles from the Gallagher walls. I was getting an insider’s tour behind the picket fence. I was going where no Gallagher Girl (well, at least this Gallagher Girl) had ever gone before—into a normal American family.
“This is nice. It’s a nice . . . night.” And it was. The air was chilly but not cold, and only a light dusting of clouds blew across the starry sky.
“So what was it like?” he pried. What was what like? “Mongolia? Thailand? It must be like . . .”
“Another world,” I said. And it was true—I was from another world—just one that was surprisingly near his own.
Then he did the coolest thing. We were stopped under this streetlight, and he said, “Hold it. You’ve got a . . .” And then he reached up and brushed my cheek with his finger. “Eyelash.” He held it out in front of me. “Make a wish.”
But right then, there was nothing else I wanted.
I don’t know how long we wandered the streets of Roseville, because, for the first time in years, I lost track of time.
“But I guess you don’t have crazy teachers,” he said, teasing after he’d finished a story about his psycho track coach.
“Oh, you’d be surprised.”
“Tell me something about you,” Josh was prompting me. “I’ve told you all about my crazy Martha Stewart–wannabe mom and my hyper kid sister and my dad.”
“Like what?” I asked, freaking out, as was probably evident by the mind-numbing silence.
“Anything. What’s your favorite color? Your favorite band?” He pointed at me as he jumped off the curb and turned in the street. “What’s your favorite thing to eat when you’re sick?”
How great a question is that? I mean, my whole life I’ve been answering questions—hard ones, too—but that one seemed especially telling.
“Waffles,” I said, suddenly amazed when I realized it was true.
“Me too!” Josh said. “They’re so much better than pancakes, which my mom says is crazy because it’s the same batter, but I tell her that it’s a—”
“Texture thing,” we said at the exact same time.
OH MY GOSH! He gets the pancakes versus waffles thing! He gets it!
He was smiling. I was melting.
“When’s your birthday?” He shot the question at me like a dart.
“Um . . .” The second it takes for you to recall something your cover should know, is the second it takes for bad people to do bad things. “November nineteenth,” I blurted for no apparent reason; the date just landed in my head like a stone.
“What’s your favorite ice cream?”
“Mint chocolate cookie,” I said, remembering that was what we’d found in his garbage.
His face lit up. “Me too!” Fancy that. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“Sisters,” I replied instinctively. “I have sisters.”
“What does your dad do? When he isn’t off saving the world?”
“He’s an engineer. He’s wonderful.”
I didn’t even pause before I said it. The words were out, and I didn’t want to shove them back in. Of all the lies I’d told that night, that was the only one I knew I wouldn’t have to try to remember. My dad’s strict, but he loves me. He takes care of me and my mom. When I get home—he’ll be there.
And he did save the world—a lot.
I looked at Josh, who didn’t doubt me. And I knew that right then, right there, that in a way, all of it was true. I knew that from that point on, the legend would live.
“It’s not a family business, though. Right?” Josh asked.
I shook my head, knowing it was a lie.
“Good,” Josh said. “Be glad you don’t have someone breathing down your neck to follow in your old man’s shoes.” He kicked a stone. “What’s that they call it—you know, in the Bible—about how we can do whatever we want?”
“Free will,” I said.
“Yeah.” Josh nodded. “Be glad you’ve got free will.”
“Why? What do you have?”
We’d reached a corner of the square I’d never paid much attention to before. Josh pointed to the sign above a row of dark windows—ABRAMS AND SON PHARMACY, FAMILY OWNED SINCE 1938.
And then I knew why we do fieldwork. Of course I knew that Josh’s dad was the town pharmacist. But computer files and tax records hadn’t told us how Josh would react to that place. They hadn’t prepared me for the look in his eye when he said, “I don’t really like running track. I just . . . It keeps me away from here after school.”
Something in the way he said it told me that it was something he hadn’t told anyone else, but I was
no one his friends knew. I was no one who’d let it slip to his parents. I was no one.
“I guess there’s some pressure to follow in my dad’s footsteps, too,” I admitted.
“Really?”
I nodded, unable to say any more, because the truth was, I didn’t know where those footsteps led. I didn’t have that kind of clearance.
The clock in the tower over the library chimed ten, and I knew it may as well have been midnight, and I may as well have been Cinderella.
“I’ve got to . . .” I motioned toward the library (and, far beyond it, the towering walls of my home). “I can’t get . . . I’ve got . . . I’m sorry.”
“Wait.” He grabbed my arm (but in a nice way). “You’ve got a secret identity, don’t you?” He grinned. “Come on. You can tell me. You’re Wonder Woman’s illegitimate daughter? Really, it’s okay. I am fine with it—just as long as your father isn’t Aquaman, because, to tell you the truth, I always got a really superior vibe off of him.”
“This is serious,” I said through my laughter. “I’ve got to go.”
“But who’s going to make sure I get home safely? These are dark and dangerous streets.” Across the square, a group of older women was leaving the movie theater. “See, I’m not safe out here by myself.”
“Oh, I think you’ll survive.”
“Will I see you tomorrow?” Gone was the silly tone, the flirting cadence. If he hadn’t been holding me I might have fainted—seriously. It was just that sweet and strong and sexy.
Yes, my heart cried, but my brain spoke of a biochemistry midterm, seven chapters of COW reading, and two weeks’ worth of lab reports for Dr. Fibs.
Sometimes I really hate my brain.
But most of all, I heard Mr. Solomon’s voice, and it was telling me that a good spy always varies her routines. The people at the Gallagher Academy might not notice one stray girl two nights in a row—but three would be pushing my luck, and I knew it.
“I’m sorry.” I pulled away from him. “I never know when my mom has classes or when I’ll get to come. We live out in the country, and I can’t drive yet, so . . . I’m sorry.”