Double Cross

by Beth McMullen

  I’m so lost in this thought that I don’t notice someone is behind me until it’s too late. In a flash, I’m facedown in the grass, the wind knocked from my lungs, a knee digging into my spine. An involuntary groan escapes my lips. Am I really being mugged on the Briar Academy campus? For what? I’m not even wearing my cool tennis shoes because the right one is still in Tinker Bell’s car.

  Veronica says that when you are in a dangerous situation, the first thing you must do is clear your mind, create a blank space where you can envision your actions. I try that. My blank space immediately fills with fury toward Owen Elliott for setting me up. Did he tell Poppy I blew him off and she decided to demonstrate some of her black-belt karate skills on me? Veronica also says your action should never come from a place of fear or anger. Whatever.

  I manage to get my palms flat on the ground. The move is called Camel, and it’s one of Veronica’s favorites. I clench my abs and shoot my butt up in the air, using my arms for leverage. The idea is to toss the attacker off my back. Despite my still-strong biceps, it doesn’t work. Whoever it is hangs on and goes for my shorts pockets. The spy phone!

  Toby has forgiven me for a lot, but if this silver beauty gets stolen, I’m done for. He will never trust me again. I press my hips to the dirt, feeling the hard outline of the phone dig into my skin. The person grabs my hair and pulls my head back, twisting my neck at an unnatural angle. I swing my arm around and get a piece of T-shirt. Hair brushes my hand. A long ponytail. Poppy hair.

  Did she see me in the locker room photographing her book? Did she overhear Toby telling us about the spy phones, and she can’t imagine anyone inventing something cooler than what she’s invented? Come to think of it, there are many reasons why Poppy might want to beat me up.

  There’s another thing Veronica taught me. It’s called the Crow, and you use the sharp end of your elbow to jab your opponent in the eye. It can be painful and effective. I’ve never tried it while pinned down, but I’m willing to give it a go. I roll to the left for leverage and hammer my elbow up into my assailant. I miss her eye but get her square in the nose. She yelps. It’s probably bleeding. This is my opportunity. While she’s distracted, I heave her off my back with a wild Camel. She tumbles into the grass, into the darkness. All I can make out is the silver phone, which she waves at me before breaking into a run.

  No. Way. I leap to my feet and sprint after her toward the woods on the edge of campus. But she does that seven-minute mile. My muscles burn. I should take exercise more seriously. Izumi would have tackled her already. My breath comes in hot, choking gasps. In thirty seconds, I will definitely collapse.

  But Poppy trips on a branch hidden by leaves, sprawling face-first into the ground. The phone flies out of her hand. I love nature! Leaping over her, I grab the phone. She gets me by the ankle, her nails digging half-moons into my flesh. I kick her off and roll away. On all fours, she pursues like a half-crazed dog. Fighting in the dense woods in the dark is not a scenario Veronica ever envisioned in her training sessions, which makes me a little sad. I scramble to my feet. Poppy pulls me down.

  And we’re back where we started. I’m pinned to the ground, my mouth full of pretty autumn leaves. A rock digs into my jawbone. I clutch the phone in my hand while Poppy squeezes my wrist, intent on getting me to drop it. And suddenly, there it is, the blank space Veronica talked about. My head goes quiet. I see the scene as if from above. As much as it infuriates me, I am no match for Poppy in these conditions. She wants the phone and she will get it.

  But I am not going to let that happen.

  I bring the phone down hard on the rock beside my head. It pops and shatters. I smash it again and again, little slivers of glass embedding in my palm. “There,” I wheeze. “Now you can have it.”

  Poppy growls, her prize in shards, and she takes off into the woods. Abby one, Poppy zero. I sit on the forest floor collecting my thoughts and the bits and pieces of the beautiful silver spy phone.

  Toby is going to be really mad.

  Chapter 21

  How Low Will They Go?

  MY FRIENDS ARE STUNNED that Poppy would sink so low. I can’t decide if I’m madder at Poppy or Owen Elliott for setting me up.

  “As of this moment,” I announce, “Owen Elliott is dead to me.” The experience has left me stuck between embarrassed and furious. My friends swear he likes me, but is this the way you treat somebody you like? To make matters worse, Poppy almost got the better of me. Overall, not my best experience.

  Toby sifts through the pieces of smashed spy phone on his dinner tray. “It took you less than two hours,” he says, shocked.

  Come on, Toby, it’s not like I killed your secret cat or anything. I had no choice, not being stronger or better or more extraordinary. Quietly, Toby packs up the pieces. “I’ll let you guys know about the photographs,” he says glumly, leaving us to our macaroni and cheese.

  As a reward for not actually losing the phone or actually getting beat, I treat myself to three bowls of mint chip ice cream, covered in heaps of whipped cream and those horrifying red cherries Jennifer never lets me have. It works wonders.

  I fall asleep before my head hits the pillow and don’t move a muscle until Izumi shakes me awake at six o’clock the next morning.

  “Time for breakfast,” she says, much too chipper for the early hour. “And time to test our wits. Plus, Toby has news.”

  This should get me going, but my legs feel like lead and my head swims and it takes Izumi physically dragging me out of bed to wake me up. Good thing she’s strong. She throws some clothes at me and stands guard until I put them on and brush my teeth. She does not trust that I won’t sneak back to bed.

  But if I’m bad, Toby is far worse. He sags over his breakfast like a plant dying of thirst. “Long night,” he mumbles. “Bad data.”

  “What happened?” Izumi asks. “What’s in the book?”

  “I don’t know,” Toby says defensively. “The images were blurry, like wet, or something.”

  Oops. That might be my fault. “I have no idea how that happened,” I say.

  “It will take longer for the program to find anything useful from them,” Toby adds, with a sigh.

  “It’s almost seven,” I say. “We should make sure we are on time to get our wits clue.”

  But in the auditorium, we find a stranger up onstage rather than Baldy. Rumors fly around his absence. Baldy was mauled by a bear. He was bit by a viper. He fell out of a rowboat and drowned. He got food poisoning. He was arrested for embezzling money from the school. He got a really good deal on airline tickets to Italy, so he took a quick vacation. The stranger onstage, sweating through his pink button-down shirt, is Baldy’s assistant, a young man with round glasses and wispy hair. He taps the microphone a few times to get our attention.

  “Students,” he says. His voice is thin and reedy. “May I have your attention? Attention, please!”

  “Where’s the headmaster?” someone shouts.

  The assistant wrings his hands. “I’m sorry, but the headmaster has been . . . detained. I’ve been instructed to carry on in his place.” Baldy is gone? I glance over my shoulder to the seat where Jane Ann always sits. It’s empty. If my palms weren’t already sweaty, they would be now. This can only mean one thing—the Ghost ran out of patience.

  “This is bad,” Charlotte whispers.

  “Seriously,” Izumi agrees.

  Yeah. And if the Ghost ran out of patience with Baldy and Jane Ann, he is probably right now plotting another way to get what he wants from Team OP. But the Ghost never does his own dirty work. My eyes dart around the auditorium looking for anyone suspicious, but it’s just confused-looking teams.

  Onstage, Baldy’s assistant fumbles with a large envelope tucked under his arm. “I have here your clues, as discussed yesterday. Please retrieve them as you leave the auditorium.”

  As the teams press toward the exit, we stay seated, unsettled. Jennifer is nowhere to be found, and we have to make a choice: participate in
the wits task like a nice, normal Challenge team or keep to our Center minimission and follow Poppy. We all know what it means.

  “Left or right,” mutters Toby.

  “Rock and a hard place,” adds Izumi.

  “Scylla and Charybdis,” Charlotte whispers.

  “Yeah,” I add. “But I’ll do whatever you guys want to do.”

  Toby looks at me, surprised. “Really?”

  “Yes.” In my heart, I want to follow Poppy. I want to prove I can be trusted to do as I’m told, to follow orders even at great personal sacrifice. But I want my friends to want that too.

  Toby shakes his head sadly. He’s going to say we have to complete the Challenge task. But instead, he says, “Center missions take priority over everything. It’s what Mrs. Smith drilled into us when I used to, um, work for her. We have to follow Poppy.”

  “Statistically, we can’t win anyway,” Izumi adds thoughtfully. “So we might as well go ahead and save the world our way.”

  I do not point out that we have no plan for what to do if the Ghost makes a move to kidnap Poppy or something equally awful. We don’t discuss how unlikely it is for four kids to defeat a criminal mastermind intent on getting what he wants. No one mentions how much trouble we could be in if all we do is make a bad situation worse.

  But here’s the thing. Izumi, Charlotte, Toby, me—we’ve weighed the risks, we know the odds, and we willingly accept them. The four of us want the same thing, and we want it for one another, and we want to get it together.

  This is what being a team is all about.

  Chapter 22

  The Blue Whale.

  THE TEAMS GATHER OUTSIDE the auditorium as white envelopes containing clues are distributed. Ours contains a photo of Grand Central Terminal in New York City and train tickets.

  Charlotte bounces up and down on her heels. “A mission,” she says, eyes bright. “I love it.”

  “A minimission,” Toby clarifies.

  “But we will get credit with the Center for doing our job, right?” Izumi asks.

  “Of course,” I say. Won’t we?

  “I hate to break it to you,” interrupts Izumi, “but Team OP is going to be out of here in a second, and we should probably know where they are headed if we intend to follow them.”

  “Ideas?” I ask. We’re in a crowd, surrounded by people. Our options are limited.

  “Follow my lead,” Charlotte whispers. We edge close to Team OP. Poppy holds the clue. Owen Elliott looks over her shoulder, nodding and scowling.

  “Abby,” Charlotte commands. “Stand right here. Just like that. Okay, perfect.” With that, she gives me a mighty shove right into Poppy. Before I can protest, we are down in a heap. Charlotte rushes to our aid.

  “Are you okay?” she asks. “Oh man, what happened? Poppy, you keep falling down! Look at your elbow!”

  There’s a small scratch, but from her reaction you’d think she lost ten gallons of blood. Horrified, she drops the clue. “I’m injured!” she howls as Owen Elliott swoops in to help. “And it’s all your fault!” She glares daggers at me while Charlotte gracefully scoops up the clue and passes it back to Toby, who photographs it and tosses it back to the ground at Poppy’s feet. They are so smooth it’s like ballet. I untangle from Poppy, who’s on the verge of hysteria because she scraped her elbow.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I tripped.”

  Poppy has tears in her eyes, and her lower lip trembles. “It really hurts,” she moans. “You ruin everything.”

  I ruin everything? How dare she? “You tried to steal my phone,” I bark. “You attacked me in the woods!”

  Genuine confusion flashes across her face. “You’re insane,” she says. “But that’s not a surprise.”

  “Abby,” Toby chides. “Come on.” Poppy shoots me a series of world-class dirty looks as Toby drags me away. The teams disperse, buzzing about their next moves. I squeeze in next to Charlotte for a better view of the photo Toby snapped of Team OP’s clue. It’s a photo of a whale.

  “The Museum of Natural History,” I say. “It’s the blue whale model.” I’m appalled by their blank looks. “How can you not know the blue whale? She’s twenty-one thousand pounds, ninety-four feet long, and a replica of an actual whale found in 1925 off the coast of South America.”

  Toby gives me a curious look. “You have a weird knowledge base,” he says.

  “What’s weird is that you have never seen the blue whale,” I counter.

  “At least our train tickets will get us there,” Charlotte points out. “And just in time. I grow weary of this preppy paradise.” We fall in behind Team OP, subtly I hope, as a big group trudges toward the train station. The game is on.

  There are at least ten teams here waiting for the train to New York City, which helps us not stand out. In minutes, a city-bound train glides into the station. When the doors open, a gaggle of unchaperoned students tumble on, much to the horror of the regular commuters. Team OP climbs on the first car while we board car number two in time to claim the last seats, directly across the aisle from the toilet. Gross.

  Suddenly, Toby’s phone starts merrily chirping. His eyes, already at half-mast as the train rocks us gently, fly open. “It must be done,” he whispers. The red spy phone glows. We lean in for a closer look as Toby scrolls through a document with tiny print.

  “Interesting,” he murmurs. “Really? She can do that? I didn’t think it was possible.”

  Charlotte whacks him on the head with an open palm. “Tell us!”

  “Ouch! Jeez. It looks like there are a few ideas that she has come up with that are pretty cool.”

  “Like, cool enough for the Ghost to want to steal?”

  “Possibly. Look at this.” He holds the phone up, zooming in on a slightly blurry patch of Poppy’s loopy handwriting and a sketch. “It’s the details on Blackout.”

  “That program that can mess with your electronics?”

  “Yeah. It can infiltrate your house or your dorm room through whatever electronics you have—laptop, phone, television, a smart hub like Alexa or Siri, even your refrigerator if it’s wired. And then it can control your house. Like turn off the music, turn on the lights, run the heat, start your car, open your garage. You know, become the brain of your house. Or dorm room. Or wherever.”

  “But hasn’t this been done before?” Izumi asks. “What’s the big deal?”

  “It’s been done,” Toby replies, “but her solution, if it works, is incredibly simple, even a little beautiful.” He sounds impressed, dazzled, and this rarely happens. “The Ghost could use Blackout to take control of things like electricity and power in a heartbeat. He could turn off this train or the network that controls all the trains. Or crash a bunch of airplanes into the ground or one another. Or plunge us into darkness. Basically, he could hold the country hostage. It’s a recipe for chaos.”

  We let this settle in. The Ghost, able to turn the country off and on at will, does not sound good. “Is there more?” I ask, dreading the answer.

  “A lot more,” Toby says, “like smart fabric that tells you if you sweat too much or are too cold or getting sick, but that doesn’t seem to have world-ending implications, right? Blackout seems more potentially sinister.”

  The train lurches into a new station. Two men in black jackets and sunglasses climb aboard our car. There is nothing inherently suspicious about them, but the little hairs on my arms stand at attention. They take a seat a few rows ahead of us. Everyone is now suspect.

  “I guess it’s good we’re keeping an eye on her then,” Charlotte says quietly. “Let’s not mess it up.” But within five minutes they are all asleep. So much for eagle-eyed spies. The train trundles lazily toward New York City. Outside the window, the landscape turns gray and urban, and the trees disappear.

  My friends sleep hard, Izumi muttering about the weather, Toby drooling on his shirt. I eat brownies lifted from the cafeteria. Briar has its problems, clearly, but their food is delicious. After an hour, Toby wakes up.
He stares at the crumbs on my T-shirt.

  “Did you save me any?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sorry.”

  He rubs the sleep out of his eyes and stretches his arms above his head. “I have something for you,” he says.

  “More brownies?”

  He digs into his pack and pulls out the gold spy phone, the one I broke running from Tinker Bell. “This is the only phone I have left,” he says. “I fixed the screen.”

  A lump in my throat almost keeps me from answering. “I’m really sorry about the silver one.”

  He gives me a funny look. “If you were a cat, you’d be on life number eight or something by now.”

  I mumble promises about keeping the phone safe, putting life number eight on the line if necessary, but Toby just grunts and goes back to his nap. The men in the black jackets don’t sleep. They don’t talk. They don’t read. They maintain perfect posture. Definitely suspicious. No one can sit for this long without slouching.

  Finally, we rumble into Grand Central Terminal. Somewhere in this building is a person or thing that can help us take our water-cleaning device to the next level. But we will never know what it is because we have chosen our mission to follow Poppy over the Challenge wits task.

  Jennifer once dragged me to Miami in August to meet a man she called an “old friend.” This was before I knew she was a spy and that all these “old friends” were actually contacts giving her information. She said this particular “old friend” was a brilliant scientist and could have used his ability to cure diseases and stuff, but instead he went a different direction and did some things that haunted him to this day. It seemed to bum her out. I remember wondering why she’d come all this way, with me in tow, to hang out with a guy she clearly didn’t like.

  But what she was really talking about was choice, taking a left instead of a right, going forward instead of back. Every time we decide to do something, one avenue shuts down and another opens up. And you can’t return to the one you rejected. Today, we’ve decided to lose the Challenge in favor of potentially keeping a dangerous weapon out of the hands of a madman.