“You have them,” he shouts back, not even looking around.
I’m not eating doughnuts after they’ve been on the ground, even if they are still in the bag. I don’t want to leave them lying there littering the sidewalk. But why should I pick up after that ungrateful jerkface? And why am I thinking about Dale Tookey’s doughnuts when I just ran, jumped, flipped, kicked, balanced on one foot, and debuted my lethal fighting stance. Six things I’ve never done before. Six things I’m pretty sure I didn’t do on my own. And now I’m freaking out. I feel my face burning. My heart is pounding. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I start to walk back to the mall. I need to be close to the calming influence of Xan with an X. She’ll make me feel better. But I’m not going back to the mall. At least, my black-and-gold sneakers aren’t. They spin me around. They start moving, faster and faster. My legs start pumping. My elbows slice the air.
I’m running again!
CHAPTER SIX
Spool
Oh my God, am I gonna kick the front door down? No. I slow down as I head up the driveway to my house. I’m gasping for breath and soaked in sweat. I spit out something solid but squishy—was that a fly? Ewww, I think it might have been a fly! Then I reach for my keys and, with shaking hands, make a few attempts to open the door. What do I tell my family? Mom! Dad! Guess what? I’ve lost all control of my limbs. Quick, throw a net over me.
I don’t have to worry. No one’s home. I need a giant glass of milk right now to calm me down. But I’m not going to get it. My sneakers walk me to the stairs. They sprint me up the steps and hurry me into my bedroom. Where a phone is ringing.
I don’t recognize the ringtone. It’s some kind of bleepy-bloopy electro thing. Not my ancient Nokia. I look around the room for the source of the sound. The bag! The bleeping noise is coming from the brown-and-pink bag I consigned to my closet with all the other junk I refuse to let Mom toss but will never find any use for. I pull open the door. The ringtone is louder and clearer. I shove a hand deep into the gift bag and pull out the phone. The unactivated iPhone without a charger. It keeps bleeping and blooping, but I still don’t see any buttons to press or any icons on the all-black screen. Suddenly the all-black vanishes and a face fills the screen. A man’s face. Well, I say a man. It looks more like a baby’s face. Round, pink, chubby, and hairless.
“Spool,” the baby-faced man suddenly says.
“Aah!” I squeal and drop the phone.
“Hello? Hello?” says the voice.
I pick the phone back up and stare at the screen.
“Spool,” the face repeats. “Brian Spool. I work with your father.”
“At Pottery Barn?”
“No,” says Brian Spool. “Not that father.”
“Is there another one I don’t know about?” I say automatically. Then, “Oh.” And I stop talking.
Brian Spool blinks at me. A thumb appears at the bottom of the screen. The thumb rubs Brian Spool’s chin for a moment. When he finally looks back at me, he seems uncomfortable.
“There’s no easy way to tell you this . . .” He’s not telling me anything! His eyes are darting from side to side and he’s rubbing his chin again.
“Tell me what?” I say.
“This isn’t in my job description,” sighs Spool. “I’m not good at this kind of thing. I thought it would be easy if I just came right out and told you but now I’m thinking I should have written something down. At least a cheat sheet.”
I’ve had enough. “Tell Brendan Chew I said hi.” I drop the phone back in the bag and start to close my closet door.
“Who?” says Spool.
His voice does not come from inside the bag. It comes from somewhere else. I turn my head slowly.
Spool’s pink hairless face fills my computer screen. Which I put to sleep before I left for school this morning. Unless I didn’t. But even if I didn’t, I still couldn’t explain what Spool’s face is doing there.
“How are you doing this?” I ask, trying not to betray how uneasy I suddenly feel.
“I have a satellite,” he says.
“So do we.”
“Not a satellite dish. An actual satellite. In space. Like a lot of secret counterintelligence agencies do. Only ours is better.”
I’m not sure how to react. I don’t know what to believe.
“Go to the window,” Spool tells me. “Look to your right.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” I mutter.
“Just do it,” he sighs. “It’ll be worth it.”
I shuffle over to the window, and I look right. I can just about see Mrs. Telk, the old, old, old neighbor lady who accused Ryan of kidnapping her cat. (He claims she sat on it by mistake. Jury’s out.) Mrs. Telk is waiting for the WALK signal so she can teeter and ache her way across the road. The signal turns green. She begins her slow voyage. The light turns red again. It wasn’t green for even a second. Telk staggers backward. The light says WALK again. Telk shudders forward.
DON’T WALK. She looks confused and even more shaky than usual. I hear a high-pitched snicker. “That’s me,” laughs Spool. “I’m doing that. With my satellite.”
“Stop,” I say. “She’s old. She could fall.”
“If that happened, I could have a crew of paramedics attending to her within seconds. That’s the kind of technology I have at my fingertips.”
I watch Telk finally make it across the road without interruptions. In fact, the WALK sign seems to glow green a few seconds longer than usual, changing only when she’s safely on the sidewalk.
“Good for you,” I say. “What’s that got to do with me?”
Spool coughs into his hand. He takes a deep breath. “Like I said, I work with your father. At Section 23.”
“What’s Section 23?”
“It’s not a secret, extremely classified department of the CIA whose highly trained operatives are only called into action when the safety of the world is threatened by enemies so powerful and unstoppable there is no one else capable of doing the job.”
I stare at Spool’s pink face. He looks deadly serious. Like a deadly serious baby.
“Then what is it?” I ask.
“What’s what?”
“Section . . . what you just said . . .”
“I didn’t say anything.”
And I thought Dale Tookey was annoying.
“Yes, you did. I heard you. You said . . .”
“I denied the existence of a covert unit of highly trained agents headed by Carter Strike.”
“Who?”
“Nobody. Not a man hated and feared by enemies of freedom. Not the finest and most selfless man it’s ever been my privilege to work with. Not your father.”
“I’m hanging up, Spool.”
He looks pained. “I’m trained to deny everything when interacting with a civilian. But I guess you’re not exactly . . . okay, remember when I said the words not your father?”
I nod. “I was here when it happened.”
“That was not entirely accurate. The intel I am about to share with you is strictly classified.”
No one’s ever shared classified intel with me before. I wait for the oddball on my screen to continue.
“Thirteen years, nine months, two weeks, and an unknown number of hours ago, Special Agent Strike and an unknown female embarked on what was to be a short but passionate relationship . . .”
I’m already hoping Spool’s about done with the classified intel. I need to take a shower. I’m all sweaty and gross from the running.
“The world was then as it is now: in crisis. Special Agent Strike had a job to do. A job that required him to change identities and go into deep cover, where he could pass unnoticed among the enemies of freedom. A job where he couldn’t be reached so he didn’t know the unknown female had given birth to a child . . .”
“Spool,” I interrupt. “I’m really hungry.”
“A child who was given up for adoption a matter of minutes after her birth.”
I stop
thinking about my shower and my dinner.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Why do you think I’m telling you this?” asks Spool.
“Don’t answer a question with a question.”
Spool looks at me with sympathy. “He didn’t know. Not until very recently. Agent Strike’s reaction was similar to yours.”
Suddenly I’m finding it hard to breathe. I slump down on to the floor. I try to speak but nothing comes out.
“I don’t understand,” I manage to whisper.
“I’m sorry to be the one to have to break it to you like this, Bridget. Your real father is Special Agent Carter Strike.”
I say nothing.
Spool’s face vanishes. The screen is filled with a copy of an official-looking form. An adoption form. Signed by Jeff and Nancy Wilder. The image is replaced by a picture of man who looks like a movie star. Dark hair. Pale skin. Dark eyes, almost black. A gap between his teeth.
The man’s handsome face disappears to be replaced by Spool’s face. Which does not look good by comparison.
“That guy could be anyone,” I say.
“I’m not lying to you,” he says. “I have no reason to.”
“You could be pulling a prank. A huge prank.”
“The CIA doesn’t pull pranks. Not even its most secret departments.”
“That guy is my father? My real actual father?”
“He is,” says Spool.
“And my mother?” I croak. “Who is she?”
“Untraceable at this time,” says Spool.
A pink-faced man has just told me my real parents are a secret agent and a woman who doesn’t exist.
I think my head is about to explode.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Bond
“Bridget, listen . . .”
Oh my God. OH MY GOD! This is bigger than the throne of Luxembourg. THIS IS BIGGER THAN STEPHEN COLBERT!
“Bridget, this is important . . .”
Do Mom and Dad know? Are they spies, too? Maybe Pottery Barn’s a cover!
“Bridget!” yells Spool from the screen. I’d forgotten he was there.
What if Ryan’s a counterspy? What if Natalie’s one?
“Bridget!” Spool shouts. “I understand this is hard for you. You should probably talk to a qualified professional who can help you deal with what I’ve told you. Unfortunately, you can’t. Because the conversations taking place in this room are secret and highly confidential.”
“Do my family, my real family, know about this?” I ask.
Spool shakes his head no.
“Can I tell them?”
That head shake again.
“I’m expected to keep something this huge a secret?” I’m about to protest but then I don’t. I don’t protest because it hits me that I just used the words huge and secret in a sentence about me. I’ve never had a huge secret before. It feels good.
“Bridget,” Spool keeps shouting. “Can you pay attention for a second?”
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m all yours.”
“There’s a reason we made contact in this particular manner. If you watch the screen, you’ll understand.”
Spool’s face vanishes. Another face fills the screen. The handsome man. The man with the dark eyes and the gap between his teeth.
“Hi, Bridget,” the man says. And now I’m concentrating on my computer screen. The man’s head is slightly lowered. He looks up at me, nods like he’s a tiny bit embarrassed.
I whisper back, “Hi.”
“This isn’t how I wanted us to meet,” he says.
“Me neither,” I start to say. “This is such a surpr—”
“You deserve more from me than a recorded message.”
Oh. I’m not really talking to him. Whoever he is.
“I’d rather see you face-to-face. But you’ve talked to Spool. You know the kind of life I lead. I don’t always get to do the things I want to do. So this is the best I can do right now. I know this is a lot to deal with. But I’ve read Spool’s profile on you. I know you’re strong and I know you’re smart and capable. In fact, the more I read about you, the more I thought, This is the kind of person I would recruit.”
“Recruit for what?” I say. And then I remember he can’t hear or see me.
“For Section 23,” he says. “Which sounds crazy. Because you’re a kid. But I was seventeen when they recruited me, and you’re a lot more together than I was at your age.”
“Dude, you really don’t know me,” I say. But I’m flattered.
“So I said to Spool, what if we brought Bridget on board as an undercover junior operative? Assigned her Reindeer Crescent Middle School and the surrounding neighborhood. Put her in charge of identifying, profiling, and surveilling individuals with the potential to become future security problems. Gave her the tools to do the job. A little like the precrime department in that Tom Cruise movie Minority Report.”
“I like movies where there’s dancing,” I tell the screen. “Where there’s a big dance-off at the end.”
The recorded version of Carter Strike goes on. “Obviously, Spool looked at me like I was nuts. But that’s our deal. He looks at me like I’m nuts. Then I save the world. So now Spool’s come around to my way of thinking.”
I listen to Special Agent Carter Strike’s calm, persuasive voice and I imagine most people come around to his way of thinking.
“But this isn’t about what Spool thinks. I’m going be honest with you, Bridget. I’m scared.”
He stares at me from the computer screen.
“Of what?” I say.
“I can disable a nuclear warhead. I can topple an enemy government. I know three ways to eliminate an adversary using only a Styrofoam cup. But I don’t know how to be a dad.”
You’re talking to me, I think. You’re acknowledging I exist. That’s a start.
“I want to try, though,” he goes on. “That’s why I thought, if you knew a little of what my life is like . . . not the nuclear warhead part or the killing with cups. Just a taste of the spying part . . . there wouldn’t be such a distance between us. There would be a bond.”
I know he can’t see me but Carter Strike is looking right at me. And he looks like he wants that bond more than anything.
“I do, too,” I tell him, even though I know he can’t hear me. “Want it. The bond.”
“I wish I could talk longer. We will. Soon. But, for now, think about what I said. I can’t wait to meet you. Bye, Bridget.”
The screen goes black.
Then it goes pink.
“So?” says Spool.
I don’t reply. This is way too much to take in. My real father is a secret agent. Who wants me to be a secret agent.
“You want to do it,” Spool says. “I’ve got a sense about you.”
“I’ve got a sense you’re a moron,” I tell him. “Do you know anything about me?”
“I know you can take care of yourself in the face of conflict. Like you did this afternoon.”
This afternoon seems like ten million years ago.
“The tracksuit,” Spool reminds me. “Your speed, your balance, your martial-arts skills. I did that.”
“What do you mean, you did that?”
For the first time, Spool smiles. He looks like a baby who’s just enjoyed a loud and satisfying burp.
“This was actually kind of brilliant. I took a random sample of surveillance tapes of your father’s physical confrontations and created an algorithm that . . .”
“Spool!” I snap. “You’re losing me.”
“Sorry,” he says, and he looks disappointed he’s not getting the opportunity to explain his brilliant idea in lengthy and mind-numbing detail.
“The tracksuit and the sneakers have been designed to anticipate potential conflict in any given situation and react to it like your father would.”
“Shut up,” I retort.
“You shut up,” he says, sounding offended. “It works. You saw it work. You were there
.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean shut up shut up. I meant . . . I’m wearing my dad? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Well,” he says. “The suit was created using nanotechnology, which, at its core . . .”
“Spool!”
“Yes, essentially, you’re wearing garments that exactly imitate Special Agent Strike’s skill set. Put in the most simplistic terms . . .”
“I love the most simplistic terms.”
“While you’re wearing the suit and the shoes, you can run like him and fight like him.”
The stuff that happened this afternoon immediately comes rushing back to me. Oh my God! I jumped onto that Doom Patrol kid’s shoulders! And I hate heights. I flipped right over the other dudes. I kicked their caps off. I intimidated them with my unnamed fighting stance. But, wait . . .
“I got the suit and the shoes from a . . .”
Spool is smiling a little too smugly for my liking. “A Section 23 base entirely staffed by our operatives,” he says, talking over me.
“So the tall girl who served me was . . .”
“Section 23.”
“But what if I hadn’t wanted a tracksuit and sneakers? What if I’d wanted a dress or a scarf or . . .”
“Then my research would have been wrong. And that’s never happened.”
Me? A secret agent? Insane. But my dad thinks I can do it and he saves the world on a regular basis. And I want to get to know my dad. I want there to be a bond as much as he does. I think I’m actually seriously considering becoming a spy. Spies are secretive, right? They lurk in the shadows. They blend into the background. No one notices them. They’re more or less invisible. I’m perfect spy material!
A few minutes ago I thought I was about to have a panic attack. A minute ago I thought I was about to throw up. And now? I’m laughing. Talk about an emotional roller coaster!
“Is everything okay?” asks Spool.
“Yeah.” I grin. “I just . . . I don’t even know how to deal with this.”
“Maybe you want to take a break before we go into the rest of the plan.”
I feel my eyes go big. “There’s more?”
“There’s a whole bagful,” says Spool.
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