Cross My Heart And Hope To Spy (11 page)

The gazebo still stood in the center of the square. The movie theater was behind me, and the Abrams and Son Pharmacy—Josh’s family’s business—was exactly where it had been for seventy years. Things are supposed to look different when you come back, but despite the sight of my classmates walking two by two down sidewalks, everything was exactly as I’d remembered. Not even the purses displayed in the Anderson’s Accessories window had changed; for a second it felt like the past two months hadn’t happened.

“So,” Zach said as he stretched out on the steps of the gazebo, “come here often?”

The loose stone where Josh and I had hidden our notes— my first dead-letter drop—was just a foot away so I shrugged and said, “I used to, but then the deputy director of the
CIA
made me promise to stop.” Zach laughed a quiet, half-laugh as he squinted up at me through the sun.

In my earpiece, I heard Mr. Solomon say, “Okay, Ms. Walters, you’re it. Be aware of your casual observers, and let’s make those passes quick and clean.”

I saw Tina and Eva walking past each other on the south side of the square; their palms brushed for a split second as the quarter passed between them. “Well done,” said Mr. Solomon.

Zach tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and soaked in the sun as if he’d been coming to that gazebo his whole life.

“So what about you?” I asked, once the silence became too much. “Exactly where does the Blackthorne Institute call home?”

“Oh.” He cocked an eyebrow. “That’s classified.”

I couldn’t help myself: I got annoyed. “So you can sleep inside the walls of
my
school, but I can’t even know where yours
is?”

Zach laughed again, but it was different this time, not mocking but deeper, as if I were on the outside of a joke I could never hope to understand. “Trust me, Gallagher Girl, you wouldn’t want to sleep in my school.”

Okay, I have to admit at that point my spy genetics and teenage curiosity were about to overwhelm me.

Through my comms unit, I heard Mr. Solomon say, “Two men are playing chess in the southwest corner of the square. How many moves from checkmate is the man in the green cap, Ms. Baxter?”

Bex replied “Six” without even breaking stride as she and Grant strolled along the opposite side of the street.

“What do you mean? Why can’t you tell me?”

“Just trust me, Gallagher Girl.” He straightened on the gazebo steps, placed his elbows on his knees, and something more substantial than a quarter seemed to pass between us as he stared at me. “Can you trust me?”

A torn and faded movie ticket blew across the grass. Mr. Solomon said, “Ms. Morrison, you just passed three parked cars on Main Street; what were their tag numbers?” and Mick rattled off her response.

But Zach’s gaze never left mine and I thought his question might have been the hardest of them all.

In the reflection of the pharmacy window I saw Eva drop the quarter in the open bag at Courtney’s feet while, through my comms unit, Mr. Solomon warned, “There was an
ATM
behind you, Ms. Alvarez. ATMs equal cameras. Tighten it up, ladies.”

Zach nodded and said, “Solomon’s good.” As if it didn’t go without saying.

“Yeah. He is.”

“They say you’re good, too.” And then, despite some very rigorous P&E training, I think a feather could have knocked me over, because A) I had no idea who “they” were or where they got their information. And B) Even if it was reliable intel, I never dreamed Zachary Goode, of all people, would say so.

“Okay, Zach,” Mr.  Solomon said.  “Without turning around, tell me how many windows overlook the square from the west side.”

“Fourteen.” Zach didn’t miss a beat. His eyes didn’t leave me for a second. Then to me he said, “They say you’re a real pavement artist.”

Zach leaned back on the steps again. “You know, it’s probably a good thing we got to tail you in D.C. If you’d been following me, I probably never would have seen you.”

It was supposed to be a compliment—I know it was. After all, for a spy, there’s probably no higher praise. But right then, as I stood in the place where I’d had my first date—my first kiss—I didn’t hear it as a spy; I heard it as a girl. And for a girl, having a boy like Zach Goode tell you that he would never notice you isn’t a compliment. At all.

I should have said something sassy. I should have made a joke. I should have done anything but turn around and walk away from the gazebo and my partner and my mission. Bex and Grant veered onto the sidewalk and headed straight toward me. I felt Bex bump into me, heard her say “I’m sorry” as her hand slid softly over my own.

“Nice pass, Ms. Baxter,” Mr. Solomon said as I held the quarter in my palm.

I turned down a side street on the far side of the square, passed the pharmacy, and thought for a second about the one boy who had seen me—once—and I wondered if life were just a series of brush passes—things come and go.

Then I heard a familiar voice say, “Cammie, is that you?”

Then I realized that sometimes things come back.

Josh.

Josh was standing in front of me. Josh was stepping closer. Josh was looking at me, smiling at me. “Hey, Cammie, I thought that was you.”

Now, I know I’m new to this whole ex-girlfriend thing, but I’m pretty sure exes aren’t supposed to talk to each other. In fact, I’m pretty sure exes are supposed to hide when they see each other, which totally sounded like a great idea to me, because, well, hiding’s what I do best.

But Josh had seen me. Josh always saw me.

“Cammie?” Josh said again. “Are you okay?”

I honestly didn’t have a clue how to answer, because, on the one hand, Josh was there—talking to me! On the other hand, I had broken up with him. And lied to him. And the last time I’d seen him he’d shown up during a CoveOps exercise, driven a forklift through a wall, and had his memory modified, so
okay
wasn’t necessarily the word the came to mind when describing how I felt right then.

Spies are good at multitasking—we observe and we process, we calculate and we lie, but I didn’t think it was possible to feel so happy, scared, and generally awkward all at the same time, so I muttered, “Hi, Josh,” and tried to keep my voice from cracking.

“What are you doing here?” Josh asked, then looked up and down the narrow street as if he were being followed (which, when you think about it, wasn’t all that far-fetched).

“Oh, it’s a … school thing.” At the word
school,
he recoiled slightly. I looked down at the uniform that—until that moment—Josh had never seen me wear. “So, how have you been?”

“Okay. How about you?”

“Okay,” I said, too, because, even though I could have told Josh a lot of things in a lot of different languages, the things I most wanted to say were the very things that neither the spy in me nor the girl in me could ever let him hear.

“So we’re both okay,” Josh said. He forced a smile. “Good for us.”

Oh my gosh, could this moment be any more awkward, I thought—just as… you guessed it…
the moment got a lot more awkward.

“Josh.” The voice was soft and familiar. “Josh, your dad said he could …” The voice trailed off, and I saw one of Josh’s oldest friends step out of the pharmacy’s side door.

DeeDee’s short blond hair did a little flippy thing where it stuck out of the bottom of her pink hat. Which matched her pink scarf. And her pink mittens. Pink was definitely DeeDee’s signature color. “Oh my gosh, Cammie! It’s great to see you!” she exclaimed.

She paused and studied my uniform for a second, as if remembering that almost everything I’d told her last semester had been a lie. And then, despite everything, DeeDee hugged me.

“Hi, DeeDee,” I said, forcing a smile. “It’s really … good … to see you, too.” And it would have been if I hadn’t noticed something just then that had nothing to do with being a spy on a training op and everything to do with being an ex-girlfriend.

DeeDee and Josh were standing too straight and trying too hard not to touch. A panicked look passed between them that screamed,
We’ve been caught.
And,
Do you think she’ll know?

It didn’t take a genius to look at them together—to know that Josh and DeeDee were no longer just friends.

Spies don’t train so that we’ll always know what to think; we train so that in times like this we don’t have to think; so that our bodies will go on cruise control and do the right things for us. My mouth smiled. My lungs kept breathing. I maintained cover, even when I heard Mr. Solomon’s voice in my ear saying, “Okay, Ms. Morgan, let’s see you hand off.”

“We’re … I mean…I’m…” DeeDee corrected quickly, as if trying to hide the fact that in the past few weeks she’d lost her single-pronoun status. “I’m on the committee for the spring fling—it’s a dance…and you know…kind of a big deal…” She was rambling, unsteadied, which is pretty common for people in deep cover for the first time. “And Josh is helping me get businesses to donate door prizes and stuff. For the fling. Next Friday night. And—”

She might have rambled on forever, and I might have let her, but then a voice echoed down the narrow street. “Cammie, there you are,” Zach said as he strolled around the corner, stopped suddenly, and looked from Josh to DeeDee and finally at me. “I was wondering where you’d disappeared to,” he said. Then he turned to the boy next to me, stretched out a hand, and said, “I’m Zach.”

DeeDee looked at Zach then back to me, and smiled that all-American-girl smile of hers like this was the most superfun reunion ever!

But Josh didn’t smile. He looked between Zach and me with the same kind of expression he used to have while doing his chemistry homework—as if the answer were right in front of him but he couldn’t quite see it.

“Zach,” I said as my Culture and Assimilation training kicked in, “this is DeeDee. And Josh. They’re …” I started before I realized I had no idea how that sentence was supposed to end.

“We’re friends of Cammie’s,” DeeDee said, saving me.

“Zach and I …” I started, but then somehow couldn’t find the words to finish.

“I go to school with Cammie,” Zach said, and I marveled for a moment about how smoothly he had lied, before I realized it wasn’t a he at all.

“Really?” DeeDee looked confused. “I thought it was a girls’ school?”

“Actually, my school’s doing an exchange with Gallagher this semester.”

Then (and I swear I’m not making this stuff up) Zach slipped his hand into mine!

“Oh.” DeeDee’s eyes got wide as she looked at Zach, then at me, then at our joined hands. “That’s really great!” She beamed, and since DeeDee is about the most un-spylike girl I know, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind she was happy for me.

I looked at Zach, trying to see him as DeeDee did. He was sort of tall, and his shoulders were pretty broad. I guess if you have to run into your ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend, then there are probably worse kinds of cover. (I know, because my mom told me a story once about the Privolzhsky region of Russia and a very unfortunate hat.) But that didn’t change the fact that I was finally with Josh again, but Josh…was with DeeDee. And I was holding the wrong boy’s hand.

“Cam,” Zach said, and I realized it was the first time he’d actually called me by my name—not
Gallagher Girl.
It sounded … well…
different.
“The van’s leaving in ten.” He nodded at Josh and DeeDee. “It was nice meeting you.”

“You too,” DeeDee said, but Josh didn’t make a sound as we watched Zach go. He’d already turned the corner by the dry cleaners before I realized he had taken the quarter with him.

As little as I liked to admit it, Zachary Goode was officially
it.

“Oh…well…I’ll let you guys get back to your party plans,” I said as I stepped away.

“You could come,” Josh called after me. I stopped. “Next Friday. You know, the whole town’s gonna be there. You could come if you want.”

“And bring Zach,” DeeDee hurried to add.

“That sounds like fun,” I said, except, if you asked me, a party with Josh and DeeDee and Zach sounded like the kind of torture that had been outlawed by the Geneva Convention. But of course I couldn’t say that. Of course I had to smile. And lie. Again.

PROS
AND
CONS
TO
BEING
A
SPY
WITH
A
BROKEN
HEART:

PRO: Whenever you feel like punching someone, you can. As hard as you want. For credit.

CON: The person you punch may very well punch you back. Harder. (Especially if that person is Bex.)

PRO: High stone walls and state-of-the-art security greatly reduce the chance of seeing ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend in tremendously awkward social settings.

CON: Advanced training means that your photographic memory is now so reliable that you’ll never be able to forget the sight of the happy couple together.

PRO: You’re perfectly capable of putting all your old love letters and ticket stubs into a burn bag and hiding it really, really well.

CON: Realizing that, despite everything, you can’t set the bag on fire. Not yet.

PRO: Knowing that, no matter what the operation, you can always count on your friends.

“We hate her,” Bex proclaimed that night as the four of us walked downstairs for supper.

“No, guys, we don’t
hate
DeeDee,” I said.

“Of course
you
can’t hate her—that would be petty,” Liz said in the manner of someone who had given it a great deal of thought. “But
we
can totally hate her.”

That sounded great in theory, except… well… DeeDee wasn’t exactly easy to hate. I mean—she’s the kind of person who dots her I’s with little hearts (I know because we found a note from her in Josh’s trash last semester), and she wears pink mittens and invites her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend to parties even though she totally doesn’t have to. DeeDee was utterly un-hate-able. (And that’s what I despised most of all.)

The corridors were virtually empty. Delicious aromas drifted from the Grand Hall as Macey McHenry placed one hand on the railing of the Grand Staircase, turned to me, and said, “We could hack into the
DMV
and set her up with a dozen unpaid parking tickets.”