Bridget Wilder #3

by Jonathan Bernstein

  “Is this a fantasy about air travel?” asks Jamie. “Because that is not what I want to hear.”

  “Shh,” I command her. “I volunteer to give up my seat because I am a good person. I have to wait hours for the next plane, but I get my upgrade to first class. I board the plane, and the only other people in the cabin are . . .”

  “L4EEEE!” squeals Jamie. “Who do you sit next to?”

  “Kecks.” I’ve played this scenario out in my head so many times and I never thought I’d tell anyone. The thought of confessing this to Joanna—even NJ—is like a nightmare. She’d laugh in my face for fifteen minutes. But here I am pouring it all out to the president’s daughter, who is nodding and saying, “Uh-huh.”

  “But the others get jealous,” I go on. “Beano keeps leaning over and trying to talk to me. Lim wants me to hear this new song he’s written . . .”

  “He’s totally making that up to impress you.” Jamie laughs. “Lim’s never written a song in his life.”

  “The only one who doesn’t bother me is Cadzo. Eventually, I get up to go to the bathroom and, as I pass him, his hand touches mine. I stop. He looks up at me and says—I can’t do the accent—‘People think they know me, but they don’t understand who I really am. There’s something different about you . . . something that makes me think you’re the only one who gets me.’”

  “Oh my God!” shrieks Jamie. “Hall of fame fantasy. Mine is weak by comparison.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  Jamie curls up on the cushion like a cat and folds her arms under her chin. “They play a concert for me. Just me. I’m the only one in the audience. I’m right in the middle of the front row. They’re all looking at me. They dedicate every song to me. My name is in the lyrics. Every time they’re about to sing girl, they change it to Jamie. And Cadzo’s got the orange hair.”

  “The ‘Zohawk’?” I splutter. “The controversial shaved-at-the-sides look that split the Cadzo Army down the middle?”

  “I liked it,” she pouts.

  “It’s your fantasy.” I shrug.

  Jamie gives me this long look, and then she lets out a groan of pain.

  “What is it?” I say, concerned.

  “I like you,” she moans. “I should hate you. I’m entitled to hate you. Why can’t I just hate you?”

  I smile at her. “You caught the Bridget cold. It’s going around. There’s no known cure.”

  Jamie rolls off the cushion onto the carpet and looks up at the ceiling. “You’re weird,” she says. “You’re like my friend from home. . . .”

  “Molly Costigan-Cohen,” I blurt out.

  “Oh, of course you checked up on me,” says Jamie. “Yeah, MC-C. I haven’t seen her in sooo long. I mean, I see her on Instagram and Snapchat. She’s got all new friends. I don’t know what it’ll be like going back to Westlake and starting my life over, but . . .”

  Jamie sits up and hugs her knees to her chest. She looks at me with moistening eyes. “I really want Morgan Font to win. I really want to go home.”

  “You know I’m only here for a week, right?” I tell her. “You have to take over when I’m done.”

  “Are you asking if I’m I going to take advantage of the goodwill you built for me or if I’m going to run away again?” she says.

  “What’s your gut feeling?” I ask.

  Right away, Jamie says, “Do you have a backup mask? We could swap. You could stay on as me. I could go back to your life and pretend to be you.”

  “You’re the first person ever to want my life over theirs.”

  I give her a quick guided tour of Bridget Wilder’s amazing non-spy life. Being overshadowed by Ryan and Natalie. My bumpy friendship with Joanna. And the thing with my mom.

  “I can’t risk her ever finding out what I do,” I tell Jamie. “So I end up lying all the time, and she treats me like I’m this big disappointment.”

  “That’s too bad,” Jamie sympathizes. “But you’re only disappointing one person. I’m letting down the entire nation.”

  “That’s not true,” I say.

  “It is!” she insists. “The campaign staff have the numbers to back it up. Jamie, you don’t poll likable enough. You’re not warm and friendly like your mother. You don’t have her big, open personality. They’re right, I don’t! So stop dragging me to events where I’m going to get compared to her. Stop acting so shocked when I run away.”

  “I had the exact same experience,” I almost shout. “My mom dragged me to this boring event that I ended up running away from due to spy business, but I didn’t want to be there and she should have known that.”

  “Right!” Jamie shouts back. “People come to see her. They don’t want to see me.”

  “They do now,” I correct her. “They’re officially obsessed with you. Except no one knows it’s really me. Which is the job I signed up for. But still . . .”

  “You want to be noticed.” She nods. “You’re good at something, and you can’t tell the people you most want to tell.”

  It’s so easy with her. I don’t want to stop talking. I tell her about the wonders of Reindeer Crescent Middle School, with special emphasis on Brendan Chew.

  “Wait,” says Jamie. “You let someone called Brendan Chew call you Midget Wilder? Why didn’t you call him Brendan Poo?”

  “I . . .” I don’t have an answer.

  “It’s so obvious!” she yelps. “You might be a better me, but I’d make a way better you.”

  This isn’t the healing power of L4E anymore. This is two girls in a hotel room getting to know each other.

  I’m still aware of a distant throb in my nose from where Jamie’s sneaker hit me, but I feel something for this girl I didn’t expect to feel.

  I let out a groan of pain.

  “What is it?” she asks.

  “I think I just caught the Jamie cold.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Home

  People think they know me, but they don’t understand who I really am. There’s something different about you, something that makes me think you’re the only one who gets me.

  That’s my good-bye text from Jamie. My time with the first family is officially over. Their West Coast campaign is finished. First thing tomorrow, they fly back to the White House for a grueling week that starts with the president taking part in his first live televised debate at Georgetown University and continues with the entire family answering approximately a million questions, posing for a billion photographs, and shaking hands till all the feeling in their fingers has gone. These parts I will not miss. But I can’t lie, I am going to feel a little bit empty without my fake family.

  The president is, as my dad said, a doofus, but he’s a lovable one. FLB can be scary if she doesn’t like you, but I think she came around. And Jamie may forget we were friends the second I’m gone, but the best part of my week with the Brennans was the time I spent hanging out with her.

  Sure, our friendship was L4E based, but it grew beyond our mutual love of Cadzo. We had sleepovers in my room where we rehearsed new dance steps for her to bust out in public, and I attempted to introduce her to the musical delights of Ruth Etting. (“That sounds like a toilet being flushed” was her verdict.)

  Toward the end of my stay, we made a pact.

  “You try not being a disappointment to your mom,” I said, holding out a pinkie to her. “And I’ll try not being one to mine.” We hooked our pinkies together and swore that we’d make the effort to make our lives more bearable.

  I didn’t just know a New Joanna, I now knew a New Jamie, too. Not long after our pinkie swear, I saw her asking the campaign staff about what she should wear to the following day’s big events, the Celebrate America’s Families afternoon affair at the White House, and the evening’s televised presidential debate with Morgan Font. I can’t deny I felt a swell of pride knowing I helped coax Jamie out of her shell.

  I look around my swanky Los Angeles hotel room. It’s hard to imagine, after this week of five-star acc
ommodations, that tomorrow morning I’ll be back in Reindeer Crescent. Back home with my real family. As soon as I begin to think about my family, a word springs into my head: lies.

  I need to memorize a long list of credible lies about my time in the Secret Service motivational foundation for troubled youths. Strike and Irina have sent me files filled with fake information about my week: where I slept, what I ate, what the other kids were like. There’s no way Mom and Dad are going to be satisfied with one-word answers and vague shrugs. I have to be a walking commercial for the benefits of a place that doesn’t exist. I kick off my shoes, crawl onto my bed, and start studying.

  “Bridget . . . Bridget, wake up . . .”

  I hear my name. I feel a hand on my shoulder. I have a horrible dry taste in my mouth. Where am I?

  “Bridget, it’s Adina Roots. Please wake up.”

  I focus. I’m in my swanky Los Angeles hotel room, sprawled out fully clothed on the bed. I fell asleep rehearsing the lies I have to tell my family.

  “What time is it?” I yawn.

  “It’s two thirty in the morning.”

  I sit up on the bed and stare at Secret Service Director Roots, who is standing over me flanked by two agents. A skinny, unshaven guy stands by the window, talking on his phone.

  “What are you doing in my room?” I ask.

  Roots pauses for a second. She glances over at the unshaven guy, and then looks back at me.

  “Jamie’s gone.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Gone Girl

  “What do you mean gone?” I say.

  Before Roots can reply, the skinny guy comes stomping up to my bed. “Disappeared. Vanished. Departed. Evaporated. That kind of gone.”

  “Bridget,” Roots says, “this is White House Chief of Staff Hayes Oberman.”

  The skinny guy gives me a curt nod. “Great job, fake Jamie. Looks like you got the gig full-time.”

  Right off the bat, I don’t like this guy. I don’t like his bleary eyes or the way his hair sticks straight up from his head. I don’t like the way he’s furiously chewing gum, or that I can hear him breathe while he chews. I turn to Roots for an explanation.

  “There was no sign of Jamie in her room. No one saw her leave. We’ve checked the hotel surveillance records. There’s nothing. We’ve tried tracking her cell phone. It’s still in her room. The LAPD are on high alert.”

  “Awesome timing,” says Oberman. “Makes the first family look like they can’t control their own daughter. Which is why she did it. Hurts the campaign at a time it doesn’t need to be hurt.”

  “Jamie wouldn’t do this,” I am quick to say.

  “Right,” sneers Oberman. “It’s completely out of character.”

  “It is!” I shoot back. “You don’t know her like I do. She’s changed.”

  I want to tell him about the sanctity of our pinkie swear, but this guy wouldn’t get it.

  “I’m the White House chief of staff,” Oberman repeats. “I’ve spent every minute of the last four years dealing with the first family, the media, and the opposition. Putting out fires, averting disasters. Every minute. As opposed to your six days.”

  I sit up in bed. “I got to know Jamie better in twenty minutes of those six days than you did in four years,” I snap. “And I’m telling you she’s changed. She doesn’t want to run away anymore. If she’s gone, it’s because . . .”

  Oh my God.

  “We have to accept the possibility Jamie’s been taken.” Roots nods.

  “I’ve got every confidence in Director Roots and her team,” declares Oberman. “But in the meantime, we need you . . .”

  “Anything!” I am terrified for Jamie and also determined to do whatever I can to get her back.

  “Just keep doing what you’re already doing,” says Roots. “Keep wearing the mask. Fly back to the White House with the president and the first lady. Show up to First Lady Brennan’s Celebrate America’s Families party and smile. Go to the debate and wave to the audience.”

  I can’t hide my shock. I’ve barely processed Jamie’s abduction and now this?

  “I get it,” I tell Roots and Oberman. “You don’t want the country to panic. But the president and the first lady? Isn’t it going to be impossible for them to keep pretending nothing’s wrong?”

  Oberman and Roots swap looks.

  “Not if they don’t know,” mutters the chief of staff.

  “You haven’t told them?” I bawl.

  Oberman lunges at me, shoving his hand over my mouth. I rear back and kick his hand away. He howls in pain, as recipients of my kicks tend to do. Roots steps in between us, a warning look in her eyes.

  “I need everybody to calm down right now,” she says, her voice low and steady. “Mr. Oberman, explain your decision to Bridget.”

  Oberman rubs his hand and glares at me. “I don’t need to explain myself to some kid who’s half animal.”

  “Mr. Oberman,” repeats Roots, in a harsher tone than I’ve ever heard her use.

  Oberman sighs and sits down on the end of my bed.

  “This is a crucial time for us,” he says. “The live debates start tomorrow. The president cannot afford to be distracted. He cannot afford to look weak.”

  “Worrying about his missing daughter won’t make him weak,” I protest. “It’ll make him human.”

  “When we have a better handle on what we’re dealing with,” Oberman continues. “When we know who’s got Jamie and what their demands are, or if it ends up that she just went on one of her adventures, then we inform the president and the first lady. But right now I need them to focus.”

  Oberman stops talking and rubs his eyes. “It’s my job to make decisions like this. If it’s the wrong one, I’ll take responsibility for it.”

  “We know what we’re asking, Bridget,” Roots says. “We can’t force you to do it. But we need you.”

  “What about my parents?” I ask. “They’re expecting me to come home from Secret Service motivation camp tomorrow morning.”

  “Agent Strike is ready to put a backup plan into operation,” says Roots. “Your parents will be informed that you volunteered to spend one more week at the camp.”

  “Because I was so awesome or so bad?” I ask. “Seriously, you better convince them I’m staying on because I’m such a shining example to all the other at-risk teens. Because otherwise they’ll think the worst.”

  “You going to do it?” demands Oberman. “Y or N?”

  “Have you checked all flights headed to Fort Worth?” I ask. “Have you been in contact with Molly Costigan-Cohen?”

  “We’d be doing all that and a lot more if we knew we had a fake Jamie ready to go back to work,” says Oberman.

  I hug a hotel pillow to my chest and think about what I’m being asked to do.

  Don’t do it. This is a bad idea. It will cause pain and suffering. Mostly to you.

  I find my thoughts wandering to the unpleasant subject of Adam Pacific. He wouldn’t hesitate to say yes, but for him, it would be a chance to cover himself in glory. For me, it’s because my friend might be in trouble. We bonded. We pinkie swore. We exchanged L4E fantasies. I can’t let her down.

  “Y,” I reply.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  White House Party

  You know how my first week under the Jamie mask was an undeniable triumph? My unexpected second attempt at passing as the president’s offspring can officially be categorized as a disaster.

  Here’s the problem: when Mr. and Mrs. Brennan knew I was pretending to be their daughter on their West Coast tour, they were impressed by the way I grew into the part. Now that they don’t know I’m not Jamie, they see me looking lost when I’m meant to be doing things they think they’ve seen me do a hundred times in the past.

  This morning I flew from Los Angeles to Washington in Air Force One. Jamie Brennan has been in the president’s private plane enough not to freak out when she sees that it’s a big as a city street, and that it has its own gy
m, its own bedrooms, its own boardrooms and kitchens. Bridget Wilder didn’t just freak out at the size of Air Force One, she did not know which cabin Jamie usually sits in, and she certainly didn’t know Jamie was friendly enough with most of the flight crew and the kitchen staff that they had private jokes and pet names for her.

  If I’d been briefed maybe I could have done a convincing job, but I came across as standoffish and ended up alienating everyone who tried to be nice to me.

  The real Jamie Brennan has lived in the White House for the past four years. When she is driven into the building, she does not squeal, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m in the actual White House!” like I did.

  Luckily, the president laughed and said, “I still feel the same way, honey,” but FLB gave me a suspicious squint. The real Jamie Brennan knows where her bedroom is located. I had to search Google for a layout of the White House to find out Jamie resides in the so-called Blue Bedroom on the west side of the second floor. (Mary Todd Lincoln stayed there after her husband, Abraham, was assassinated. Google again.) I should have breathed a sigh of relief when I was able to take refuge in the Blue Bedroom, but I actually felt like more of an intruder being in Jamie’s room than I did wearing her face.

  As I gaze around Jamie’s spotless, beautifully decorated room with its vintage rocking horse, dollhouse, and chess board, I can only think I should not be here. The longer Jamie is missing, the more time I spend impersonating her, the more the Brennans are going to hate me when the truth comes out. This may be the chief of staff’s insane plan, and Adina Roots may have gone along with it, but I’m the one betraying the Brennans the most. I’m the one letting them believe their daughter is safe.

  I spend maybe five minutes standing dead still in the middle of Jamie’s room. I don’t want to touch anything. I don’t want to sit down. I don’t want to open any doors or look inside any drawers. Finally, I tell myself, You can keep feeling guilty or you can act like a spy and look for clues.

  I do all the things I don’t want to do. I look under her bedclothes and inside her closet. I take some of the pictures down from the wall—the official portraits she’d posed for and the ones she’d taken herself—and feel inside the frames. Nothing. No folded-up notes. No hidden hard drives. I open the top drawer of the mahogany dresser by her bed and take out a journal.