by Cecilia Gray
“How did you start?” Because that’s not in the file. There are records of early jobs, but no origin.
“I began writing my name on train cars. Maybe because I wanted to destroy them a little, to stop feeling powerless. Months later, I would see a train I had tagged and know my name had gone all around the continent. Then that feeling in me changed. I wanted to do more.”
“Is this why you dropped out of school?”
“Ah,” he says. “That. No. Benard needed help.”
“But your parents…”
His expression hardens. The rise of his spine, the fisting of his hands—I recognize the symptoms. I’ve seen them in myself. The world around us silences as if everyone’s slipped out, even the crowd milling in the halls, leaving us and the works of art alone in the warehouse. I scoot forward so our knees bump. “What happened to them?”
When he speaks, it’s in a whisper so soft I’m not sure I hear him right. “Train bomb.”
I see in his face that he imagines it all. The crunch of the train car crumbling like an accordion. Metal shards ripping through skin and bone.
“It was the only way I knew to express what was inside,” he says.
“How did you go from that to working in a bar? Your work makes such a difference—it moves people.”
“My uncle needed me.”
“But your work is so important.”
“So is family. Don’t you miss your family?”
“I never knew my parents.” Why is it so easy to say this to him? “I have a foster mom—well, I had a lot of foster moms. But the one I have…had.” I take a breath. “The most recent one I didn’t have until I was twelve. But I lived with her a long time and she took care of me.” How can I describe her when I don’t talk about the biggest part of our relationship? When even I’m confused about what she means to me? “Before I had her, things were bad.”
I’ve never said that out loud. Agents don’t complain. They stay focused. They don’t whine about their lives, but saying it out loud, that things were bad, sends a rush of those memories back to me. I’ve said so much—too much—but I force myself to look him in the eye.
His expression doesn’t shift, and in the silence I feel us grow closer, like a string is encircling our waists and tightening. Somehow, by not asking for more, he makes me want to give him more, and our legs slide together as we edge forward in our seats.
“I was in and out of foster care for years. I hated it, so I ran away when I was ten.”
We scoot together another inch, my knee pressed between his thighs.
“I was stupid and did it in December. You don’t know Baltimore, but in December it’s freezing.” I can feel the memory of it now—the chattering of my teeth, my knuckles frozen rigid into claws. My senses sharpened from hunger and my stomach so nauseated that when I found something to eat—half a chocolate-covered donut tossed on the ground—I threw it up a short while later.
His palms rub up and down my arms, as if trying to warm me from the chill of those three days.
“I was scared.” I don’t think I’ve ever said that out loud. Ever admitted it. “Every single second I thought—if someone grabs me, I couldn’t stop them.” I want the string encircling us to tighten and draw us so close we’re against each other. “I couldn’t make it. I wasn’t tough enough. I wanted to run away so badly but once I did, I couldn’t get back fast enough. But it’s always there, that need. And what if I run away now and I can’t make it.” The corners of my eyes sting. “What if I’m never going to be good enough by myself?”
Another inch closer, the warmth of his breath fanning across my forehead, his fingers entwining around a lock of curls by my chin. He pulls softly on my hair so my head tilts towards him and I have to look at him again. “A famous artist once said that graffiti flourishes in the darkest places. At the time, I thought he meant where he worked. Alleys. Dark corners. But I think he meant inside himself. Inside me. Inside you. Don’t fear the darkness. The darkness is what makes us good at what we do.”
Good at what I do. Deceive. Manipulate. Betray.
I flinch as if the string around us has broken. He doesn’t notice the moment has changed—for me, we’re back in that territory where no one knows me. As close as I feel to Sebastien or Vivi, and as close as they believe they are to me, they can never know me at all—I’m not a graffiti artist. I’ve never wanted to be one. I don’t want to be one. But here he is, thinking we’re the same.
“Is something wrong?” he asks.
What am I doing?
What the hell am I doing?
I have to ditch him. But everything feels wrong. I want, for a second, to be normal, even if it means giving up all the other stuff.
I push the feeling away. I don’t mean it. I can’t make it. Normality? Not an option. Also not an option? Failure. Another failure. Another disappointed partner. Another request to bench me. I doubt I’d get three strikes. FBI. CIA. Who would trust me after that? Who would hire me in the real world? It would be back to the Lab for poking and prodding and tests. My only worth would be as a scientifically viable slab of meat.
“Sasha?”
I force myself to lean into him, to let our knees slide together. He inhales sharply as I slide our thighs together and practically wrap myself around him.
“This has me thinking,” I say. “Both of us. Orphans. It affected you so much but some of the places you hit—they have nothing to do with your parents. How do you pick?”
His hand slides around my waist and his pupils darken. “I pick where there’s a need for a voice.” He lips close in but no. I don’t want my first kiss to be this. Not this way.
I lean back an inch and he smiles predatorily. Chelsea’s mom was right. The best predatory is prey.
I keep our legs hooked together but lean back far enough to pick up a pencil and began to sketch, letting the lines spin out on paper as he draws his hands closer around my waist, scooting in, head bent. His breath rushing over my collarbone.
But as the drawing renders, he takes interest and pulls up.
I finish my throne made of weapons instead of metal. The King of M—— sitting pretty in the seat.
“I’ve been studying a lot of artists since helping Vivi,” I say. “One image. To change how people think. How they feel. How they see themselves.”
“Hmmm.” The timbre of his voice rumbles, sends shivers through me.
Ego. A guy who thinks he’s capable of changing the world has an ego. Assets always respond to ego.
“You’ve never hit the inside of an embassy. You couldn’t pull it off.” I turn to him, meet his dark eyes with wide ones of my own as I swallow a sense of self-disgust. “Could you?”
~~~~~
Jennings residence, Brussels, Belgium
My hands are shaking hard enough to rattle the doorknob as I quietly let myself in through the front door. Vivi had made me promise to come straight to her room with “the dirty details” but I head to the back room instead. He’d looked disappointed when I jumped off the back of the motorbike and run off without him but I couldn’t handle that walk to the door, the kiss, that collage of post-first-date-kiss scenes.
I flop back on the bed and rest my hands on my stomach. They’re still shaking so I grip my shirt in my fists as if I can squeeze out the panic. It’s not enough. I stand and cross the room to my desk, spill open the drawer and grab a pencil. Cup it under my nose and inhale. But it’s not enough.
There’s one thing that will make this better. If only I didn’t get the feeling that Sebastien might like me. If only his deepest thoughts about me are sympathy or annoyance like I’d thought.
What was it that he’d said? That embarrassed him? I flip open my laptop and pull up a translator.
Je te souhaite.
I sit back in the chair and it feels like I’m spinning it around and around.
Souhaiter. To wish. To hope for.
To want.
He wants me.
It makes
everything easier and harder at the same time.
What do I want? I want more than for him to hit M—— and then be out of my life. I want more.
But what?
A normal relationship?
A normal life?
A normal day?
For someone like me? A government asset and agent in training?
For someone like him? A political activist on the run from the authorities?
That will never be for us.
That will never be for me.
XI
Jennings residence, Brussels, Belgium
I crack open one eye. Vivi’s face is an inch from mine, and I jump. “What the hell?”
“How did it go?” She climbs onto the bed and sits at my feet. “You didn’t come see me last night so I assume that means it went just as I planned.”
My cheeks heat furiously as I gather the blankets closer to my chest.
“Did you guys…did you…?”
“No.” I say, but a smile breaks out on my face involuntarily.
“Are you guys dating? That would be so cool.”
“No. We walked around the comic museum. Why—did you think it was a date?”
“What did you talk about?”
“We talked about stuff and work.”
“Work?” she crinkles her nose. “What work?”
I hug my pillow to my knees. Use her. “You know—his Kid Aert stuff.”
Her mouth makes a silent O she climbs off the bed to stand over me. “He told you?”
He Goosed. “Yeah, he told me.”
“Why?” she asks, then rubs her mouth with her wrist the way she does when she Gooses. “I mean, wow—I didn’t expect that. He doesn’t tell anyone.”
All the more reason to feel guilty.
She takes in a big sigh and plasters a smile on her face. “That’s what you talked about?” she says, her voice cheery and a mile a minute. “Work stuff on a date?” She rustles through my drawers, shaking her head. “Opportunity wasted, Sasha. You should have talked about favorite love stories and how hot you would be together. Big mission fail. Big.”
The irony being that my mission is going as planned. “Yeah…”
“You don’t own any dresses,” she says. This from the girl sporting a Paws For A Cause tee with a big, black paw smack in its center, over purple tights.
“Great observation skills.”
“What are you going to wear on your next date?”
“There kind of…isn’t a next date.”
She whirls around and plops back down on the edge of the bed. “You left without a plan?”
“Is that bad?” How lame that I don’t know.
“Never mind,” she says resolutely. “Sebastien’s not like other guys. He doesn’t need to be guided into doing the right thing. And as for the dress, I’ll lend you something.”
She lays jeans, a tank, and a hooded sweatshirt at the base of my bed and heads to the kitchen. I dress quickly, and join Vivi and Rachel over chocolate-hazelnut-covered toast in the kitchen.
She doesn’t know what I’ve done. Doesn’t know how I’ve used and abused her friendship for my own agenda—but that will be over soon. I’ll succeed. Kid Aert will hit the Embassy. I’ll move into my own place. And my friendship with her will be over.
Is it so wrong to hold on to what I have while I can?
Vivi starts up on the pig slaughterhouse again and how the local news did a feature on their practices. “I’m organizing signatures at school on a joint statement of support for an audit of their entire organization.”
“I’m so proud of you, honey,” Rachel says.
And for a second my heart lifts because I’ve been so intent on what’s ahead, about having gotten Kid Aert, that I think she’s talking to me. But then she kisses Vivi on the head and I shake the thought away.
~~~~~
St. Anne’s International Academy, Brussels, Belgium
During Advanced Algebra, Vivi pushes me a note. I unfold it. It’s a pig sketch—this one with the pigs replacing the dogs in the tacky dogs-playing-poker piece. I sketch a version of the pig as a Degas ballerina.
She snorts.
We go back and forth for a while, and although we don’t say it, we both know we haven’t constructed the perfect idea.
When the bell rings, we kiss cheeks and agree to pick it up again at lunch.
~~~~~
Vivi lays out her picnic blanket in the quad under the weeping willow. We lie on the blanket, bundled in puffy jackets and scarves, and munch on cucumber sandwiches.
“You know what I like about you?” Vivi asks.
“No.”
“You don’t wear any animal products. No leather shoes or belts.”
“Well yeah, but not on purpose.” Leather is expensive.
“It shows a subconscious care of animals,” she insists. “You don’t even wear silk.”
“What’s wrong with silk?”
“Silkworms, hello. Poor, exploited little wiggly invertebrates.”
I laugh.
She passes me another pig drawing, this one with the pig as Whistler’s mother. Her drawings are weak—a combination of stick figures and circles.
“Still not it?” she says.
“Not quite.”
“It’s gonna be hard to top Cochon.”
Not that we’ll ever top Cochon. But I let myself pretend a while longer. I sketch out the pig as The Scream with its hooves pressed to its chubby cheeks, the background a whirlpool swirl.
She sighs and smiles. “I should have known you could top it.”
~~~~~
Stella Artois Restaurant and Bar, Brussels, Belgium
I push open the door to the bar, but Vivi grabs my hand. For a terrible moment, dread floods me that she’s onto me, figured me out, because everything has been too perfect and here she is, stopping me. But beneath all that is relief that maybe we can stop pretending.
“What?” I ask.
“I’m nervous.”
I try my best to give her a reassuring smile, but I’m nervous, too.
“This is the first time they’ve invited me to a planning session. I love Seb, but he’s always kind of had this boy’s club with Smacker. I feel like they’ve never taken me seriously since I suck at the art thing. Until you.”
Guilt gnaws at my insides. “Don’t sweat it.”
“Stop that,” she says, squeezing my palm. “I mean it. I’m grateful.”
I’ve been playing pretend all day.
Pretend I’m a normal student.
Pretend I go to a normal school.
Pretend I’m a normal friend.
When will playtime be over?
“It would have been a matter of time,” I say, squeezing back. “With or without me. They adore you.”
“But they respect you. It’s different. Everyone respects you, takes you seriously. Even my dad.”
“Come on,” I push the door open. “They’re waiting.”
Sebastien and Smacker lean over a stencil drawing of the M—— monarch on a throne of weapons.
I exhale involuntarily. Finally, proof we’re a go. He’s in. Mission accomplished. I revel in the fantasy of Porter’s approval. The pat on my back. Bigger assignments. More autonomy. Respect. Everything that comes with kicking ass.
My ticket is a simple piece of paper. They’ve tweaked the idea—adjusted the drawing to give it a Kid Aert flavor. His lines are more like slashes. His circles more elliptical. Everything skewed to the bottom of the image.
“What do we do?” Vivi bounces on her heels.
“We say âllo,” Smacker says with open arms, into which she flies.
I walk over to Sebastien, feeling strangely adrift when he doesn’t kiss me in greeting. Instead, he leans his chin on his fists over the bar counter to study a schematic of the Embassy. I have no idea where he got it.
“Where are you targeting?” I ask.
He circles an east-facing wall.
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
~~~~~
Le Pain Quotidien, Brussels, Belgium
I find Porter dressed, as usual, in Clark Kent lumberjack chic and seated up front at one of the oak tables closest to the exit point. He motions me over so I sit next to him, in front of the lit-up pen.
“Kid Aert’s in,” I say. “He’s going in tomorrow.”
“Great job,” he says, patting my shoulder. He looks relieved, almost like he didn’t think I could pull it off. “Your apartment should be ready in a few weeks. The company wants you to keep up with this assignment. Maybe send the assets out of country—internationally—so it’s important you dig deep into cover.”
“So…I need to keep seeing Kid Aert?” Which means I keep seeing Vivi—even after I move out. I don’t know if Porter will think it’s a good idea. I don’t even know if it’s a good idea. Maybe there’s no shaking her. Maybe I need to tell Porter how involved his daughter is in everything.
“There are others,” I say. “Other artists. Wouldn’t it be better to move on to someone new than to keep using him? It might seem suspicious, and he might catch on.”
Porter gives a noncommittal shrug. “The point of developing an asset is to use him long term.”
That word again. Use. Like he’s a pen or a piece of paper. An expendable instrument instead of a person. “Porter, can I ask a personal question?”
“Maybe.”
“Have you ever had to make a choice between someone you care about and the mission?”
For a second, his gray eyes turn gentle. “Every day.” He reaches across the table and pats my hand reassuringly. “That’s the job.” He clinks my glass with his own. “The job.”
I take a hard swallow of my drink, barely tasting it.
“I want you to know, Sasha, that I’m proud of you.”
The words rock me. Proud. Of me. And I’m proud of me, too. Even amidst the guilt I feel at having manipulated Sebastien, at lying to Vivi, is this sense that I’ve done something spectacular and interesting and different. Something that matters.