by Ally Carter
"No!" I said, wishing I hadn't gotten them started. "I don't know anything."
"So Solomon didn't ask your mother for two helicopters, three stun guns, and a dozen Brazilian passports?"
But before I could respond to Tina's ridiculous question, the main doors opened, and the seventh-grade class came in, doing a lot of bon jouring—"hello" being one of the few phrases they knew—and the sophomore class forgot about me and went back to doing what it had been doing for a week—watching Macey McHenry.
She was the first person to ever combine black fingernail polish with a Peter Pan-collared white blouse (that's not verified or anything—just a guess), and her diamond nose ring looked like a twenty-thousand-dollar zit, but to an outsider, Macey McHenry might have seemed like one of us. She walked through the Grand Hall like she owned the place (as usual), picked up a plain green salad with no dressing (as usual), and walked to our table. Then she plopped down next to Bex and said, "The munchkins annoy," which was totally not usual.
Up to that point, I'd mainly heard Macey say things like "You're in my light," and "If you're gonna have plastic surgery, you might want to try my mother's guy in Palm Springs." (Needless to say, Mr. Smith didn't write down the number.) But there she was, sitting with us, talking with us. Acting like one of us!
Liz said, "Je me demande pourquoi elk a décidé a parler à nous aujourd'hui. Comme c'est bizarre!" But I didn't know why Macey was feeling so talkative, either.
Before I could respond, Macey turned to Liz and snapped, "I don't want to talk to you either, freak."
I was just starting to process the fact that even cosmetic heiresses who get kicked out of a lot of private schools speak pretty good French, when Macey leaned closer to Liz, who leaned away.
"Tell me," Macey said in the worst imitation Southern accent I've ever heard, "how can someone who's supposed to be so smart sound so stupid?"
Liz's pale face turned instantly red as tears came to the corners of her eyes. Before I knew what was happening, Bex had flown from her seat, pinned Macey's right arm behind her back with one hand, and grabbed that diamond nose ring with the other so fast that I said a quick prayer of thanks that the British are on our side (well, assuming we never revisit the Revolutionary War).
"I know you're three years late, but let me give you a real quick, important lesson," Bex said in English (probably because it's harder to sound scary in French). But the strangest thing was happening—Macey was smiling—almost laughing, and Bex totally didn't know what to do.
The rest of the hall was going slowly quiet, as if someone somewhere was turning the volume down. By the time the teachers stopped talking, Bex still had ahold of Macey, I had leaned across the table to grab ahold of Bex, and Liz had a death grip on a flash card that listed the top five places you should go to look for black market explosives in St. Petersburg.
"Rebecca," said a male voice. I turned away from the tight-lipped smirk that was spreading across Macey's face to see Joe Solomon standing behind me, speaking across the table to Bex, who was slowly allowing blood to creep back into Macey's arm. "I understand you could get into trouble for that," he said.
It's true. Gallagher Girls don't fight in the hallways. We don't slap and we don't shove. But mostly, we don't use the skills of the sisterhood against the sisters. Ever. It's a testament to how universally despised and viewed as an outsider Macey was that Bex wasn't immediately jumped from ten directions. But Mr. Solomon was an outsider, too. Maybe that's why he said, "If you're so eager to show off, you and your friends can take point tonight." He looked at Liz and me. "Good luck."
It wasn't a cheery, break-a-leg "good luck," though. It was a watch-out-or-you'll-have-your-legs-broken "good luck."
Liz went back to her flash cards, but Bex and I stared at each other across the table as our faces morphed from sheer terror to uncontrolled excitement. For Gallagher Girls, leading a mission is no punishment—that's the gold-freaking-star! Only a little of the dread lingered in the back of my mind as I realized that we were about to play with live ammo— maybe in both the literal and figurative senses of the word.
Macey returned to her salad while Mr. Solomon added, "Et n'oubliez pas, mesdemoiselles, ce soir vous êtes des civils— ressemblez-y."
Oh, yeah, just what I needed—fashion advice from Joe Solomon himself. The Grand Hall went back to normal, but I doubt that any of the sophomores, besides Macey, took another bite. As if we hadn't known it before, Joe Solomon had just reminded us that we'd soon be venturing out from behind our comfortable walls, operating on our own for the first time in our superspy lives.
Four years of training had all come down to this, and I for one didn't have a thing to wear.
I'm not sure how it happened, but at some point between one P.M. and six forty-five, the sophomore class from the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women morphed from a group of spies-in-training into a bunch of teenage girls. It was pretty scary.
Liz spent her afternoon becoming the textbook version of what an undercover operative should look like, copying everything from the patent leather purse to the pillbox hat. (It was a pretty old textbook.) Then the hallways started reverberating with terrifying yells of "Have you seen my black boots?" and "Does anyone have any hair spray?"
I was seriously starting to worry about the fate of national security. In our suite, Bex looked awesome (as usual), Liz looked ridiculous (but try telling her that), and Macey was looking at an old Cosmo as if determining whether green is the new black was a matter of life or death. All I could do was sit on my bed in my old jeans and a black knit top my mom once wore to parachute onto the top of the Iranian Embassy, and watch the clock tick down.
But then Tina came busting into our room. "Which one?" she asked, holding a pair of black leather pants and short skirt in front of her. I was on the verge of saying, neither, when Eva Alvarez ran in.
"Do these go? I don't know if these go!" Eva held up a pair of high-heeled boots that made my feet hurt just by looking at them.
"Um, Eva, can you run in those?" I asked.
But before Eva could answer, I heard someone say, "They're all the rage in Milan." I looked around. I counted heads. And then it dawned on me who was speaking. Macey stared at us over the top of her magazine, and added, "If you want to know."
Within minutes, half the sophomore class was in our little suite, and Macey was telling Tina, "You know, lip liner is supposed to go on the lips," and Tina was actually listening! I mean, this is the same girl who had single-handedly started the Macey-is-Mr. Smith's-illegitimate-daughter rumor. Little did we know she was one fashion emergency away from turning to the enemy!
Courtney was borrowing earrings; Anna was trying on jackets; and I wasn't sure if I would ever feel safe going into hostile territory with any of them ever again.
"You know, Eva, what blends in Milan might stick out in Roseville," I tried, but she didn't care.
"You know, guys, hiding in plain sight requires looking plain!" I said, but Kim Lee was wriggling out of a halter top and nearly knocked my head off with her flailing arms.
"You know, I really don't think he's taking us to the prom!" I shouted, and Anna put Macey's gorgeous formal gown back into the closet.
I'm the chameleon! I wanted to cry. I'm the CoveOps legacy! I'd been preparing for this night my entire life—doing drills with my dad, asking my mom to tell me stories, becoming the girl nobody sees. But now I was drifting deeper and deeper into the shadows until I was standing in the middle of my own room, watching my closest friends swarm around our gorgeous new guest, and I was completely invisible.
"Lose the earrings," Macey said, pointing to Eva. "Tuck in the shirt," she told Anna, then turned to Courtney Bauer and said, "What died in your hair?" (Courtney does have a tendency to over-gel sometimes.)
Bex was sitting with Liz on her bed, and they both looked as amazed as I felt.
"Hey!" I cried again, to no avail, so I called upon my superspy heritage, and seconds later I was whistlin
g loudly enough to make the cows come home (literally—that's why Grandpa Morgan taught me how to do it).
My classmates finally turned away from Macey, and I said, "It's time."
A silence had fallen over the room, but then a longer, deeper quiet stretched out.
We were through playing dress-up, and everyone knew it.
"Hello, ladies."
The words were right, but the voice coming to us through the shadows was wrong in so many ways that I can't possibly describe it here. Really, it would be cruel to all the trees who would have to give their lives for me to explain what it was like to be expecting Joe Solomon and get Mr. Mosckowitz.
"Don't you all look very…" He was staring, mouth gaping, as if he'd never seen push-up bras or eyeliner before. "…nice," he finally said, then slapped his hands together, I guess to stop the nervous shaking. But he still couldn't steady his voice as he said, "Well, very big night. Very big. For…" He hesitated. "…all of us."
Mr. Mosckowitz pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and stared beyond the lighted driveway of the mansion. Even I didn't know exactly what lay in that dark abyss. Sure, there are woods and jogging trails and a lacrosse field that is handy during Code Reds (and doubles as a great underground storage facility for the helicopters), but everyone knows the Gallagher Woods are a minefield—maybe literally—and I started shaking in my sensible shoes.
What if there are snipers? Or attack dogs … or … but before I could finish that thought, I heard crunching gravel and squealing tires, and turned around to see an Overnight Express truck roaring toward us. Gee, what's the package emergency? I wondered. But when the driver's-side door flew open and Mr. Solomon jumped out and yelled, "Get in!" I realized we were the package.
Instantly, my mind flashed back to one of Liz's note cards. COVERT OPERATION RULE #1: DON'T HESITATE. Mr. Mosckowitz opened the cargo doors and I climbed inside, imagining that the truck was like our teachers—it had led a fascinating and dangerous life before it retired and came to us. But I didn't see a wall of monitors and headsets—none of the stuff the trucks have in movies—only crates and crates of packages. That's when the truck became even cooler, because I'm pretty sure Mr. Solomon had stolen it!
"First rule," he warned as we settled inside, "don't touch any of the packages."
Then Mr. Solomon crawled in behind us, leaving Mr. Mosckowitz outside looking up at him like a water boy who'd just been asked to hold the star quarterback's helmet.
"Harvey?" Mr. Solomon said impatiently but still soft enough that he sounded like a pretty nice guy, "clock's ticking." He tossed Mr. Moskowitz the keys.
"Oh!" This seemed to wake him up. "Yep. Sure thing. I'll see you"—he pointed toward all of us—"out there."
"No, you won't, Harvey," Mr. Solomon said. "That's the idea."
Call me crazy, but this wasn't how I'd always pictured the first time I'd be in the dark with a guy who looks like Joe Solomon. (And I'm pretty sure I speak for the entire sophomore class on that one.)
"Operatives in deep cover will be given false histories," he fired at us through the dark. "These histories, including names, dates of birth, and favorite kindergarten teachers, and are called …"
"Legends!" Liz blurted. A test is a test, in Liz's mind, and as long as there was a Q&A, she could handle this mission business.
"Very good, Ms. Sutton," he said, and even in the dark I knew Liz was a number two lead pencil away from heaven. "For this mission, ladies, you will be posing as normal teenage girls. Think you can handle that?"
I'm not sure, but I think that might have been Joe Solomon's idea of a joke—but it was soooo not funny because, if there's one thing we're not, it's normal. But he obviously didn't care about any of that, because he just plowed on. "When conducting manual surveillance on a subject in a three-man rotation, the person with visual contact is the …"
"Eyeball!"
"Correct. The person within sight of the eyeball is the…"
"Backup."
"And the final person …"
"The reserve."
"Very good. Now remember, rotate frequently, but not too frequently. Vary your pace and spacing, and above all…"
I felt the truck come to a stop. The engine turned off.
Above all, what? I wanted to cry. The most important night of my life, and he forgets the punch line! A small light came on in the ceiling of the truck, bathing us in an eerie, orange-yellow glow, and I heard music, the kind a merry-go-round makes, and I wondered if my whole life from that point on would be a house of mirrors.
Mr. Solomon moved a television monitor to one of the shelves and fiddled with some wires. I was expecting a view of the world outside (or at least something from the WB), but instead I saw what I'd been seeing for years—the fourteen faces of the sophomore class.
"In the field, ladies, you can never expect to have things go as planned. I fully expect you to master the ability to improvise. For example, tonight's mission requires a vehicle not owned by the Gallagher Academy. So"—he motioned around us—"I made alternative arrangements." (Yep. He definitely stole it!)
He passed earpieces to Bex, Liz, and me, and said, "Basic comms units. Don't be afraid to use them." Then he showed us a pair of tortoiseshell eyeglasses, an I [HEART] Roseville button, and a necklace with a silver cross. "There are cameras contained within these three items, which will allow us to follow and critique your progress." The cross swung from his forefinger and, on the screen, the image of my classmates swayed back and forth. "These are for our benefit tonight— not yours. It's a just teaching exercise, ladies, but don't expect us to come to your rescue."
Okay, I'll admit it. I was starting to get a little freaked out at that point, but seriously, who can blame me? We were all feeling it—I could tell by the way Bex's leg twitched and Liz kept wringing her hands. Every girl in the back of that truck was on edge (and not just because we were up close and personal with Mr. Solomon, either). Even though Liz, Bex, and I were the only ones going outside, we were all more than Gallagher Girls right then—we were operatives on a mission, and we knew there would come a day when way more than grades would be riding on what we were about to learn.
The carnival music suddenly got louder as the back door opened, and the first thing I saw was a bright orange cap as Mr. Mosckowitz peeked in. "They're close," he said.
Mr. Solomon plugged a wire into a speaker, and in the next second I heard my mother's voice joining the carnival music. "It's great weather for running."
My blood went cold. Anyone but Mom, I prayed. Anyone but Mom.
You know the phrase Be careful what you wish for! Oh yeah, I'm now a really big believer in that one, because no sooner had the words crossed my mind than Mr. Solomon turned to us and said, "There are three types of subjects who will always be the most difficult to surveil." He ticked them off on his fingers. "People who are trained. People who suspect they may be followed. And people you know." He paused. "Ladies, this is your lucky night." He pulled a black-and-white photo from the pocket of his jacket and held it up. The face was new to us, but the voice that came blaring through the speaker saying, "Yes. I should probably get back into that habit myself," was one we knew well.
"Oh, bollocks!" Bex exclaimed, and Liz dropped her note cards.
"Smith!" I cried. "You expect us to recon Professor Smith?"
I couldn't believe it! Not only was it our first mission ever, but he honestly expected us to tail a man who had thirty years of experience, and who had seen us every school day since seventh grade, and who, worst of all, was the single most paranoid human being on the planet! (Seriously. I mean, he's got the plastic surgery bills to prove it.)
A team of CIA all-stars would probably get made within twenty minutes. Three Gallagher Girls didn't stand a chance. After all, once a guy's heard you give a report on the trade routes of Northern Africa, he's probably gonna wonder why you're sitting behind him on the merry-go-round!
"But… but… but… he never leaves the grounds," I
protested, finally finding my words. "He would never enter an unsecured area on a whim." Oooh, good one, I thought, as I struggled to recall Liz's flash cards. "This goes against the subject's pattern of behavior!"
But Mr. Solomon only smiled. He knew it was an impossible mission—that was why he'd given it to us. "Trust me, ladies," he said with somber respect, "no one knows Mr. Smith's patterns of behavior." He tossed a thick file folder toward us. "The one thing we do know is that tonight is the Roseville town carnival, and Mr. Smith, for good or bad, is a man who loves his funnel cakes."
"Well, have fun!" My mother's voice came blaring through the speakers. I imagined her waving at her colleague as he turned at the edge of town. I heard her breathing become deeper, almost felt her cross trainers as they struck the dark pavement.
"Your mission," Mr. Solomon said, "is to find out what he drinks with those funnel cakes."
I'd been waiting my whole life for my first mission and it all came down to what? Carbonated beverages?!
"Subject's at the firehouse, Wise Guy," Mom whispered. "He's all yours." And then, just like that, my mother and her watchful eyes were gone, leaving us alone in the dark with Joe "Wise Guy" Solomon and a mathematician in a bright orange cap.
Mr. Solomon thrust the necklace toward me and said, "In or out?"
I grabbed the cross, knowing I would need it.
Chapter Six
I love Bex and Liz. Seriously, I do. But when your mission is to go unnoticed at the Roseville town carnival while trailing an operative who's as good as Mr. Smith, a genius in Jackie O shades and a girl who could totally be Miss America (even though she's British) are not exactly what I'd call ideal backup.
"I have eyeball," Bex said, as I lurked across the town square by the dunking booth. Every minute or so, I'd hear a splash and applause behind me. People kept walking by carrying corn dogs and caramel apples—lots of calories on sticks—and I suddenly remembered that while our chef makes an awesome crème brûlée, his corn dogs really do leave something to be desired.