My stomach growled, but I didn't feel hungry.
"Someday I'll tell you the story, kiddo." My mother smiled and handed me a plate. "Just as soon as you have clearance."
I sat in the secret-room-slash-observation post for a long time that night, listening to the wire taps. Searching for some small clue.
It was well after midnight when I finally eased out of the corridor and stepped over the ashes of a fire that had gone out. I slipped through the massive opening of a stone fireplace (one of many entrances to that corridor), expecting silence, expecting darkness, expecting anything but the sound of Zach Goode saying, "So the tour is closed, huh?"
Which is why, spy training or not, I bolted upright too quickly and banged my head on the top of the fireplace.
"Ow!" I cried, clutching the back of my head. "What are you doing here?"
"Come on," he said, ignoring my question and gently feeling the back of my head where a bump was starting to form.
I tried to pull away, but he pushed harder, and even though I know he was The Subject and all, it's hard not to get a bit of a shiver down your spine when a cute boy is inches away with his hand in your hair.
"You'll live."
"You're being nice," I said, honestly shocked.
"Don't tell anyone." He crossed his arms and nodded at the stone wall from which I'd just mysteriously appeared. A smile grew on his lips as he said, "So…did your bugs hear anything interesting?"
21:00 hours: The Subject admitted to leaving some of The Operative's listening devices within the East Wing. Or he tried to trick The Operative into admitting that there were remaining devices … Or The Subject was just making covert small talk. Or …
21:01 hours: The Operative couldn't help but remember how much easier it is talking to regular boys.
"What is it, Gallagher Girl?" He asked, sliding his hands into his pockets. "No snappy comebacks? Nonexistent cat named Suzie got your tongue?"
"How do you know about Suzie?"
He pointed to himself once more and said, "Spy."
Moonlight fell through the windows, slicing between us. There were no sounds of squeaking floorboards and giggling girls, and I couldn't think of a single thing to say as I stood there drowning in the silence, struggling for breath while my head throbbed and Zach leaned closer. And closer. His hand reached toward my face, and for the second time that semester I froze.
His finger brushed a strand of my hair away from my eyes, but then he pulled back as if he'd felt a shock. His hands slid into his pockets. His gaze fell to the floor.
And it felt like we might have stood there forever, before he said, "Why don't you ask me about it? About them?" I felt my breath catch as Zach glanced back at me. "I'll tell you mine if you'll tell me yours."
I don't know what surprised me more—that someone had finally asked to hear what happened to my dad or that Zach's tough exterior was crumbling. He didn't cry or shake, but instead he stood so still that when I started to reach for him I pulled back, almost afraid to break whatever trance he'd fallen into. I remembered Grandpa Morgan's warnings that there are some wild things you're not supposed to touch.
"It was a mission."
I don't know why I said it. The words were foreign to me, and yet they slid so effortlessly from my mouth that they must have been back there, fully formed for years, waiting for that chance to slip free.
"Four years ago my dad went on a mission. He didn't come home. Nobody knows what…happened."
Then Zach looked at me and said the words I've always known but never dared to utter: "Somebody knows."
And he was right—someone somewhere knew what had happened to my father, but I couldn't say so. There was something in the way Zach stood watching me. A silence stretched out between us; and even though we were inches away from each other, it felt like a thousand miles.
"What?" I asked. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying somebody knows," Zach said, not snapping, but his voice was sharper—stronger. "I'm saying you shouldn't act like there aren't any answers just because you haven't taken the time to look for them."
"What am I supposed to do, Zach? I'm just—"
"Just a girl?" he questioned me. Then he shrugged and sighed. "I thought you were a Gallagher Girl."
Zach walked away, but I stood there for a long time, wondering if I should go to my mother; if I should go to my friends; but instead I slipped into the corridors I hadn't used in months, pushed my way through cobwebs and darkness, trying to walk away from the tears that burned hot down my cheeks, because maybe I didn't want to admit weakness; maybe I wanted to wallow in my solitude and grief.
Or maybe crying is like everything else we do—it's best if you don't get caught.
Chapter Twenty-four
The next two weeks were honestly two of the weirdest in my life—not for what happened, but for what didn't happen.
Zach didn't harass me. He didn't tease me. He didn't even call me Gallagher Girl and flash his cocky grin in my direction.
After a lifetime of being the girl nobody sees, I felt like I'd become a whole new type of invisible.
And then one day, as I was leaving the Grand Hall, I felt someone bump against me and I heard Zach say, "Sorry." Then we kept walking in opposite directions—him up the Grand Stairs and me outside.
I didn't notice the note in my pocket until I was already outside, standing in the light rain that seemed to never stop.
I didn't stop to marvel that he'd just pulled off the greatest brush pass I'd ever seen. I didn't run for the shelter of the barn.
Instead, I stood in the heavy wet air, looking at my name scrawled across a piece of Evapopaper. I opened the note and scanned the page, the words barely registering before the paper washed away in the rain.
Well, obviously the note was gone long before I found my friends and barricaded the door to our bedroom—which was a shame, because, if ever there was a piece of evidence that needed examining, that was it. But the note was gone. Lost. We couldn't analyze the handwriting or the intensity with which he'd held the pen. We had to go on words themselves and what little prior knowledge we had about the subject.
(Copy courtesy of Cameron Morgan)
So I hear we get to go to town this weekend. Want to catch a movie or something?
— Z
P.S. That is, if Jimmy doesn't mind.
Translation: This weekend might be a good chance for us to see each other outside our school in a social environment, free of competition. I do not view other boys as threats, and I enjoy making them seem insignificant by calling them the wrong names. (Translation by Macey McHenry)
"Oh my gosh, Cam," Liz exclaimed. "He asked you out!"
"What does it mean?" I asked, turning to Macey, who plopped down on her bed and pulled off her nine-hundred-dollar shoes that she'd worn to the P&E barn and were now covered with mud.
"You mean besides the obvious he's-asking-you-to-the-movies part?" Macey asked.
"Yeah, besides that," I said, because it couldn't have been that easy. Spies never act without motivation, without a cause, and I didn't have a clue what Zach's ulterior motive might have been. I didn't know why he'd asked me in a note and not in person. I didn't have a clue what the significance was behind him not signing with his full name. We'd been studying boys for almost an entire academic year, and yet I didn't feel any closer to understanding a culture where people insult you, then tease you, ignore you for weeks, and then ask you to the movies!
"He's got to be up to something," I said finally. But my roommates just looked at each other like there was another explanation. "Don't you think he's up to something?"
The rain grew heavier outside, the wind howled, and finally Bex stood and strolled toward me. "Yes. He's definitely up to something."
I looked at Liz for confirmation, but she was busy entering Zach's words into the Boy-to-English translator that had finally made it to the prototype phase.
"And that's why," Macey said, smiling, "you've got to go."
Sure, if you're a Gallagher Girl and you spend all day every day inside the Gallagher grounds, then the thought of going to town—any town—starts to look pretty good. And going with a guy like Zach Goode looks even better.
But not if you're a Gallagher Girl who is actually engaging in what might be a deep cover honeypot scenario … Not if your best friends think this is the perfect opportunity to A) Try out Macey's new under-eye concealer that's legal only in Switzerland. And B) Practice the classic three-operative-surveillance scenario…
And most of all, not if you're a Gallagher Girl with an ex-boyfriend in that particular town.
Saturday morning we woke to sunny skies. Winter had gone away somehow, melted with the snow, and now a pale sunlight filtered through the windows. And I remembered what I'd agreed to do.
"I can't do this," I said, not really sure if I was talking about Zach or the push-up bra that Bex was insisting I wear (because push-up bras were invented for honeypot situations). "What if I let it slip that we're on to them? Or what if he drugs me and uses me to access the restricted portion of the science labs? Or what if…" I trailed off, thinking of the one question I couldn't bring myself to say: What if I have fun?
Instead, I asked the other question that had haunted me for days: "What if I see Josh?"
I'd spent months shrouded in the safety of our walls, knowing that as long as I didn't leave the grounds I'd never have to see Josh again—which is a luxury normal girls don't have when avoiding their ex-boyfriends.
"Relax, Cam," Bex said. "We'll be following you on comms—you'll have backup. And besides, what are the odds you'll even see Josh anyway?"
"One hundred and eighty-seven to one," Liz answered automatically. I might have looked at her like she was a little bit freaky (which she is—in a good way), but she shrugged and said, "What?" defensively. "If you factor in pedestrian traffic routes, population numbers, and patterns of behavior, the answer is one hundred and eighty-seven to one."
But there was one thing not even Liz had learned how to quantify: fate. I knew I was tempting it. Again.
My stomach flipped. My fingers tingled. Every nerve in my body seemed to be alive—pulsing with a charge that felt nothing like I'd ever felt on dates; and nothing like I'd ever felt on missions—just nothing I'd ever felt.
Liz did my hair. Macey worked a miracle with my makeup. And Bex was busy sewing a button camera onto my jacket. We had a plan. We had been training for this moment for years, but when my roommates started downstairs, I looked at myself in the mirror.
"It would be okay if you liked him, you know." Macey lingered in the open doorway. Behind her, the hall grew silent as girls headed out for the long walk into town.
I thought about the rules of covert operations: don't get emotionally involved in a subject; never lose perspective or control. Better spies than I have flouted those rules and ended up heartbroken … or worse. I glanced through the window at the barn, where we learn to shield our eyes and protect our kidneys—we dodge punches and take kicks.
But even the Gallagher Academy hadn't figured out a way to help us protect our hearts.
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