Spy-in-Training (4 page)

A
s I walk away from the mall and head toward the bus stop, I look at my black-and-gold-clad self in every store window I pass. I like what I see. I like it so much I wish there was someone here to confirm that I look as good as I think I do. And then there's Dale Tookey! Literally at the exact moment I thought that, he came skittering out of a doughnut store a few yards away from me, clutching a paper bag. Things are turning around for Bridget Wilder.
Should I act like I don't see him?
Because that's worked so well for me in the past.
No. Not this time
. Not this so-called Midget. I smile straight
at him. That's right, Dale Tookey, this black-and-gold girl is smiling back at you. So what are you gonna do? Are you gonna step up or are you . . . ?

No! He's turning away! He's looking over his shoulder. Like he's deliberately trying to ignore me.

And now he's running straight past me! Without even looking in my direction. I stare after him, stunned.

I'm so stupid! I
knew
he never smiled at me. But I'm at my least grotesque ever right now. Why would he run right past me? What would make him do that?

“Doom Patrol!”

I whip around and see why Dale ran. The four guys who hassled him outside the fro-yo place are hot on his trail. For a second, I'm happy and relieved. It wasn't
me
he was running from. Then I remember his face after the Doom Patrol got through with him. I don't want him to suffer through that again. But, by the evil grins on the stubbly faces of the four thugs who charge past me, I've got a sinking feeling they've singled him out for special attention. They're not putting any effort in their pursuit, either. They're not running. Just shadowing him, staying close enough to intimidate him with their continued presence so they can extract maximum amusement from his misery. They're doing that “Doom Patrol!” chant over and over, getting louder and louder. I need to do
something this time. But what? I take a hesitant step in their direction and . . .

I'm running!

I mean,
I'm
not running. But I am. It's like I'm not in control. I look down and my legs are flying with the speed and grace of a young gazelle. (Young Gazelle could be my alter-ego name!) My black-and-gold sneakers are moving so fast they're a blur beneath me. My arms slice back and forward, propelling me ever faster. I don't know what's happening. It's like I'm in the passenger seat of a car and I don't know who's driving. I just know they like to go really,
really
fast. Within seconds, I'm bearing down on a Doom Patrol member. Something's happening. I'm on the balls of my feet. My hips start to sink toward the ground. And then . . . I jump!

I've gone out of my way to never be in a position where I have to do things like jump in front of people. But no one's told whatever has control of me because my feet have definitely left the ground.

Two things happen as I soar through the air.

       
1.
  
I make a noise that sounds like
Eeeeeeee
.

       
2.
  
I land smoothly and accurately with one foot on either shoulder of the shortest Doom Patrol member.

I gasp for breath but the
Eeeee
continues. It's not me. It's the boy beneath my black-and-gold sneakers. He's screaming in shock and fear. I feel him sway beneath me. His knees start to buckle.

“Sorry,” I start to say. Then it's
Eeeee
again and this time it's definitely me because I feel my hips sinking. Just as the Doom Patrol dude crumples, whimpering, to the ground, I shoot off his shoulders and . . .
Eeeee . . . I somersault straight over the heads of the other three.

I'm now midway through a three-hundred-and-sixty degree flip and, as I rotate through the air, I think,
I am the girl who doesn't get picked for teams. I stay on the bench. I've used the same please-excuse-Bridget-from-gym-class note for eight months. The gym teacher always looks at it like it's the first time she's ever seen it. Or me.

And yet . . .

I land perfectly in front of the three Doom Patrol guys.
Wow, they're ugly
, I think.
Wow, they're big. Wow, my stomach is churning.
One of them is wearing dark glasses. I sneak a peek at my reflection. As I feared. Hair wild. Face scarlet. Glasses all over the place. So much for my big moment of looking good. While I'm checking myself out in the guy's lenses, I see Dale standing behind me. The three Doom Guys recover from their surprise. They go to shove past me but I stop them. When I say
I
stop them, that is not accurate. My arms spread. I do not spread them. The Doom Guys start laughing.

“Your bodyguard's a beast,” one of them jeers over my shoulder.

“How much you pay her?” mocks another.

“I don't even know her,” I hear Dale shout back. Not really what I want to hear.

The three Doom Guys stop laughing and give me cold hard stares designed to strike fear into my heart. It works.

“Move. Now,” one of them growls.

I move. Or rather my foot does. My right foot. It spins me halfway around and then yanks me back and as I'm being yanked back, it does this wide, sweeping one-hundred-and-eighty-degree kick. The three Doom Guys rear back. They look at me in shock. Then they look at the ground. Where their baseball hats sit faceup. Yep,
please excuse Bridget Wilder from gym class
just flew through the air. Again.

The most vocal Doom Guy fixes me with his meanest stare. “You don't want to get into this with us, little girl,” he says.

“You're right,” I agree. “I don't.”

“I don't even know her,” repeats Dale Tookey from behind me.

“You know a few cute tricks,” growls the lead Doom Guy. “But you push us one more time and we push back. You won't be so cute once we're done with you.”

I'm tempted to thank the Doom Guy for calling me cute but my arms have other ideas. They have decided to spread out again. My right knee raises in the air, higher than I'm comfortable with. I feel like I'm going to topple over. But I don't. My right foot extends slightly. It circles the air. The three Doom Guys stare at my right foot like it's a snake waiting to strike.
Wait, is this my fighting stance? I've seen enough of Ryan's rip-their-heads-off video games to recognize an unbeatable fighting stance and apparently this is mine. I might call it Gazelle Stance.
The Doom Guys try to maintain their mean, intimidating looks but they also begin to back away. Slowly. One inch at a time. They point threatening fingers both directly at me and over my shoulder. Forced into a humiliating retreat by the Young Gazelle.

Once they've gone, I turn around to face Dale Tookey.

“You dropped your doughnuts” is the first thing I say. It's true. His paper bag is on the ground by his feet.

“I don't even know . . . ,” he begins to say.

“You do so,” I snap back at him. It's like he'd rather have been beaten to a bloody pulp than admit knowing me. “You might not know my name. But you've seen
me. We have a bunch of classes together. You've seen me hundreds of times. You smiled at me.”

That last bit slipped out by accident.

He looks annoyed. At
me
! “Well,” he says, “I didn't ask you to do that. I didn't ask you to help me.”

Of all the unbelievable things that just happened, this boy's ingratitude is maybe the most unbelievable.

“It'll never happen again,” I assure him.

“I don't care,” he says.

He starts to walk away.

“You're just going to leave your doughnuts lying there?” I call after him.

“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!

O
h 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.