CHAPTER EIGHT
Toy Story
I’ve upended the contents of the brown-and-pink bag on top of my bed. I hold the box of green Tic Tacs up to the computer screen.
“Cameras,” says Spool.
I take a single Tic Tac from the box, hold it in my hand, and stare at it. Looks green and normal to me. I pop it in my mouth.
“That’s hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment you’ve got in your mouth,” shouts Spool.
“All that money didn’t help the taste,” I say.
“Touch the screen of the phone,” says Spool.
I roll the Tic Tac around my mouth, lean forward, and tap my middle finger on the phone. Spool’s face vanishes again. All I see is . . . it’s blurry . . . I see pink and white and something metallic and a flash of green and . . . oh my God, I’m looking at the inside of my mouth! It’s horrific. I spit the Tic Tac into my hand and stare at it. I look over at the phone and the screen is showing a close-up of my face. It’s even more horrific. I toss the tiny candy camera across the room.
“Hundreds of thousands of dollars,” moans Spool. “Years of research. Not meant to be sucked.”
“Why make it look like a Tic Tac, then?” As I ask the question, I know the answer. Because you can hide a piece of candy anywhere and nobody will notice it. Ooh, I can put one in Ryan’s bedroom. Find out what’s really going on with him. I can put one in Dale Tookey’s pocket. Not that I’d want to. But I could.
“The phone is bulletproof, fireproof, and missile-proof,” Spool says.
“Is there a chance someone’s going to fire a missile at me?”
“There’s always a chance,” he says. “It can disguise your voice, translate up to one hundred and thirty-five foreign languages, and act as a handy flashlight.”
I throw my old cell phone in the trash. I just upgraded. “The secret agent apple didn’t fall too far from the tree,” says Spool. “You’re turning into a spy right in front of me.”
“I never said a word,” I protest.
“You didn’t have to,” he smirks. “It’s written all over your face.”
“What about these?” I say, holding up the thick black glasses. “Can I see through walls?”
“No, but you can see through lies.”
“Shut up!” I gasp. “Seriously?”
I yank my glasses off and put the black pair on. I blink a few times. What was once blurry is now crystal clear. Technology!
“Look at me,” says Spool. “Get close.”
Not a fun assignment, but I hold the phone inches from my face.
“I much prefer dealing with you to my regular work,” he says.
As he speaks, green-tinged data floats in front of my eyes. The words forced smile hover by Spool’s face.
Body temperature elevated. Perspiration detected.
Eye movement to the right. Vocal pitch rising.
“You like your regular work more than dealing with me?” I snap. “What’s wrong with me?”
“I was demonstrating how the technology works,” says Spool.
Throat lubrication detected.
I pull the glasses off. “Too weird,” I say. “How can I ever trust anyone again?” Spool nods sadly. “It comes with being a spy. The short answer is, you can’t.”
I put the glasses back on. What’s left? I pull the USB drive out of the bag.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a superfast data storage device with infinite capacity.”
“Wow,” I say, hoping my wow communicates the depth of my disinterest. I pick up the keys and jangle them in front of the phone, hoping that communicates the depth of my interest. My very interested interest.
“A car, right?” I ask. “My spy car.”
Spool nods. “Yes.”
“Yeah, right.” I grin.
My lie-detecting glasses say . . . nothing. They say nothing. Spool’s not lying. He’s truthing!
“Shut up! I get a car? My own car? What kind is it?” I know nothing about cars so it doesn’t matter what he says.
“The car is for emergency situations that will never arise. But if they do, the car will take care of everything.”
“Will it take care of me not being able to drive and also being thirteen?”
“Yes,” says Spool.
I don’t know what this means but . . . I already love the car.
Spool says, “Tonight before I go to sleep, I will drop to my knees and pray that you never experience any kind of emergency.”
Once again, my glasses are free of lie-detecting data. But I find the mental picture of Spool on his knees praying for my continued well-being sort of touching. Embarrassing but touching. There’s one last item on the bed. The yellow tube of pear-flavored lip balm.
“This is the most important thing I’m going to tell you today,” intones Spool. “Never put the lip balm anywhere near your lips. Or your face. Point it away from you at all times.”
“Why?”
“Face it away from you and twist the bottom.”
I turn the bottom of the tube with my thumb and forefinger. The top pops off.
“Point it at something that is of no value to you.”
Everything in my bedroom is of value to me. My books. My clothes. My computer. My movie posters. My photographs. Even the stuff in my closet that’s been piling up for years and I’ll never get rid of. I hop off the bed and open the closet door. Empty boxes, single sneakers long divorced from their pairs, Billy the Singing Bass, too-small T-shirts, broken tennis rackets, and on and on and on . . .
I point the lip balm at the clutter.
“Now give the tube a single squeeze.”
I follow Spool’s instructions. I tighten my finger around the lip balm and . . . a flash of razor-thin white light comes out of the top. It’s a light saber! My lip balm tube is a light saber. I aim the white light at a single sneaker. It disappears. In its place is a small pile of ashes. I laugh out loud. I point the lip balm again.
The empty boxes. Ashes. The T-shirts. Ashes. Billy the Singing Bass. Ashes.
I spin around and scream “Oh my God!” at the phone. The light from the lip balm tube turns one of my desk legs to ashes. My computer and everything else on the desk slides onto the floor.
“Squeeze the tube again!” yells Spool. I do. The light vanishes. The top pops back on.
“It’s a laser,” explains Spool. “Use it sparingly and carefully. You might also want to make a note of its additional components. Two squeezes activates the Taser function. Three, the smoke machine.”
I have no words. I just gasp, stare, and nod. I look over at my desk with its missing leg. I could probably have propped it up with my tennis racket, if I hadn’t also reduced that to ashes with my lip balm laser.
“All right,” says Spool. “I think you’ve got enough to deal with for one day. You can contact me via the phone and I you. We’ll discuss your first assignment in due course.”
“Wait!” I yell at the screen. Spool stares back at me.
“Spool, what’s he like? My dad. I mean, you and him are friends, right?”
The screen on my phone goes black.
“What’s all that stuff on your bed?” says my mom.
I let out a gasp and feel myself flinch. I didn’t hear her walk in.
“You didn’t even knock! Don’t just walk in without knocking.”
I’m freaked out by Mom’s sudden appearance. It’s not a good idea to scare me right now. Not when I’m standing here with a laser in my hand.
She stares at my face.
“What are those? Where did you get them?”
She’s peering at my new, thick, black lie-detecting glasses. Which are not providing me with any telltale data right now.
“In school.”
“Someone gave them to you?”
A few days ago I was desperate to have Mom remember my birthday and shower me with attention. Now? Now I’ve got a huge secret. And I don’t want to answer any
questions.
“What happened to your desk?” she asks. “All your things are on the ground.”
I just want her to go. “Mom, I know. I’m fixing it. Look, I already tidied the closet, like I said I was going to do.”
I point at the closet door. Bad move. I should have swept up the piles of ash.
I can see Mom’s eyes pinballing from the ash to the stuff on my bed to my glasses to my broken desk. “Can you go, please?” I shout. “I’ve got stuff to do for school, an important project. You’re stopping me from working.”
“Bridget,” she says, taking a step toward me. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Ummmm . . .
CHAPTER NINE
Training Wheels
So I told my mom everything. About my real dad. His secret identity. Section 23. My recruitment. The bagful of gadgets. And she totally got it and was completely supportive. JK!! J absolutely and positively K to the nth degree. These lips stayed sealed. At home. In school. With Joanna. Bridget Wilder’s little—and by little I mean HUUUUGE—secret stays locked up tight. No one sees anything different about me. I’m just That Girl who’s friends with That Other Girl and that’s the way I like it. But inside it’s a different story. Inside me, there’s a volcano waiting to erupt. When do I meet Carter Strike? What will my first mission be? How long before I hear from Spool again? It’s been a whole week since he last made contact.
“Miss . . . uh . . . miss . . . uh . . .”
“Call her Midget.”
The sheeplike laughter of Room A117 distracts me from my constant monitoring of the Spool-phone. I look up, ignoring Brendan Chew, and focus on . . . what’s his name? He introduced himself to us at the start of the class. He scribbled his name on the board. I think it starts with a D? Maybe a B? No, can’t remember. Like it matters. He’s a substitute, a round, doughy, red-cheeked guy who’s sweating his way through a cheap white nylon shirt that’s stretched close to bursting. Wow, listen to me. It’s like Joanna’s rubbed off on me. I’m sure Mr. D-or-B is a perfectly adequate person, but he’s just a substitute, whereas I am a fledgling spy eager to take wing and prove my worth. He waddles toward me.
“Miss . . . uh . . . miss . . .”
As he gets closer, D/B has what can only be described as a flustered look on his face. Not a people person? Uncomfortable around kids? Seems like he made a perfect career choice.
“Your phone,” he says.
I stare at him. He’s not getting his stubby fingers on my super-sophisticated communications device.
“Could you, uh, not look at it while I’m talking?”
“Oh my God,” yelps Brendan Chew. “You just said what we’ve all been thinking. Someone finally had the guts to stand up to her.”
A117 erupts. Casey Breakbush and her coterie of slim, pretty friends with perfect lives have their hands up over their lovely mouths. Joanna dabs a pink tissue to her eyes in an effort to stem the tears of laughter. The sub stands awkwardly in the middle of the room. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Not sure what level to pitch his voice. And his lack of classroom leadership makes the laughter grow louder.
My phone vibrates.
I glance down.
There’s a picture of Spool’s pink face.
I jump out of my seat.
“IfeelsickIneedtoseethenurse.” I say it that fast and fly out of A117.
“The midget’s got a small problem,” says Chew seconds before I depart the room. The laughter is still ringing in my ears as I duck into the girls’ room.
“Hello,” says Spool.
“Is there a job?” I ask.
“How have you been?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say. “Are you calling about a mission?”
“We felt, your father and I, that we should give you time to process . . . ,” he says.
“Mission!” I snap, a little louder than I intended.
“There’s a pre-mission,” he says. “Nothing too taxing. It gives us a chance to see what you can do in the field.”
“Training wheels, in other words.”
“You can choose to look at it that way. Or you could choose to seize this opportunity with both hands and commit to showing your father that his faith in you is not misplaced.”
“What’s the pre-mission?” I ask.
“We’ve received credible intel that an enemy agency is about to engage in a game of misdirection.”
“Is that a board game?” I say. “Because I’m not great at those. I don’t have the attention span.”
“A piece of incriminating information is going to be secretly planted on someone in your school. That piece of information may be no bigger in size than a postage stamp, but it will be imprinted with a secret code. If an unauthorized person is in possession of that secret code, that person will look like a traitor to his-slash-her country. The authorities will be informed about this traitor. The individual will be removed from school and subject to lengthy, painful, and humiliating interrogation. Life-ruining interrogation. And while this is happening . . .”
Spool leaves a significant pause.
I take a wild guess. “Aliens attack?”
He shakes his head no. “The real information will be passed on to the real enemy agent based elsewhere in this state. And no one in authority will notice because they’ll be too busy congratulating themselves on the traitor they believe they caught.”
“Obviously I completely understand the pre-mission,” I say. “But let’s pretend I don’t. Is what you’re asking me to sort of do the same as Nola Milligan slipping Brendan Chew a note telling him Casey Breakbush really likes him? Demented, I know, but hear me out. Casey’s boyfriend finds out about the note and beats Chew to a pulp, which would be a joy. But while the boyfriend’s attention is directed toward Chew, he doesn’t notice Casey giving another, this time genuine, note to the boy she really harbors a secret crush on. The Dale Tookey figure. Or whoever. I picked that name at random. . . .”
I feel myself getting flustered. For once, I’m actually waiting for Spool to interrupt me, which, thankfully, he does.
“The scenarios are similar,” he says.
Oh my God! I kind of thought I’d be entrusted with stopping kids from tracking dog poop onto school property, but this is an actual case with intrigue and importance.
“What do you need me to do?” I say.
“Monitor your surroundings. Observe your fellow students and your teachers. Think like the enemy. Who would you choose if you had to pick someone to frame as a traitor?”
Where do I even start? My mind is reeling with possibilities.
“Is this going to be too much for you?” Spool asks. “We can find you something less demanding.”
“This is the exact correct level of demanding,” I reply.
“So you’re in?”
I’m actually physically tingling with excitement. “I’m in!” I shriek. “I’m all the way in!” My voice echoes around the bathroom. I try to control myself but this is a colossal deal.
“Calm down,” he says. “For you to be an effective operative, it’s important you do not draw attention to yourself.”
“Dude, I’ve been working on that for the past thirteen years.”
“Good,” he replies, missing my biting sarcasm. “Stay focused, blend in, and keep a close eye on everyone around you. You’ll soon start to notice if people begin to deviate from normal modes of behavior.”
“And if they do, I take them down with maximum force,” I say.
“It’s not a takedown,” he says, immediately sucking the fun out of the pre-mission. “It’s about gathering information. Can we use the victim for our own campaign of misdirection? Can we make them believe they’re doing vital security work when in reality they’re simply being used as a means to an end? Find out and report back before anyone is framed or subject to painful interrogation.”
I throw him a salute. I’m so into this.
I know what you’re thinking. I’
m going to be spending today and possibly many other days sneakily patrolling Reindeer Crescent in search of suspicious behavior. I’ll be forced to insinuate myself into the extracurricular clubs and observe the loose cannons in their natural habitat. I think you’re thinking wrong. Someone else might do those things, someone without spy blood running through their veins. Let Bridget Wilder of Section 23 explain how a real spy handles a mission of this magnitude. She doesn’t go down the obvious road. She takes big, bold deductive leaps and she asks herself a series of questions. Questions like:
1.Who has no idea what is going on in school?
2.Who is easy to manipulate?
3.Who would authorities believe to be powerless and resentful enough to work against their own country for an enemy agency?
At lunchtime, I knock on the door of the teachers’ lounge. A shy, cautious knock. I hear a “What?” from inside. I open the door and nervously look in. What a dump. Old carpet with holes in it. Old furniture. Old teachers covered in crumbs. Tiny fridge. Tiny microwave. Teachers separated into cliques shooting disparaging looks at one another’s groups. This place should be renamed the Traitors’ Lounge!
A few heads turn and stare in my direction. They have no idea who I am or why I have a lumpy silver triangle in my outstretched hand. They do not know the silver triangle houses a carrot cake I made several weeks earlier in cooking class that I literally would not feed to a dog.
“Hi, I, um, I had this left over from my b-b-birthday and, um . . . ,” I stammer and flush.
“You brought this for us?” My social studies teacher, Miss Helena Hartsock, comes to my rescue. “That’s so nice.” I catch sight of some of the other teachers, who are embarrassed and uncomfortable having their little refuge breached by one of the inmates. Nate Spar, the physics teacher, doesn’t even try to hide his disdain.
“I didn’t know it was your birthday. You never said.” Miss Hartsock looks genuinely sad for me through her cat-eye glasses.
“Learning is your present to me,” I say.
I know. I know. Carter Strike would be proud.
I see Nate Spar smirk. But Miss Hartsock swallows hard, and she’s not the only one.
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