The Doublecross (3 page)

“I know, but if it goes wrong . . . We can't—not yet. Not until we've figured everything out. We have to play along, pretend like we don't know the truth . . .” Mom's voice dropped at the end and wavered like she might cry. Mom never cried! What were they . . .

“Hale!” Mom was suddenly in front of me, her eyes fiery and dark. I jumped down the hall, nearly tripping over the leg of my pants.

“I was just coming to dinner,” I said quickly. “I didn't hear anything.”

“Then how did you know there was anything to hear?”

“Okay, I heard
something
,” I confessed. “About someone wanting to quit SRS? And something called Project—”

“Quiet.” Dad looked grave now, way more serious than he usually was inside our apartment, and it scared me a little. “Forget everything you ‘didn't hear,' okay, Hale? We shouldn't have been talking about work at dinnertime. We broke our own rule.”

“You broke the rule?” Kennedy cried, crashing out of nowhere, an explosion of red hair and flailing arms. I really didn't understand how she could hear so well through all that hair. “Does that mean—”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Mom said, waving a hand as she turned to go back into the kitchen. She seemed relieved to change the topic. Kennedy and I followed. “Darling? Hale caught us breaking our rule. Do we have any ice cream from last time?”

“Check the compartment?” Dad said. Mom ducked into the freezer, grabbed ahold of what looked like a frozen meatloaf but was actually a handle to a small but effective hidden compartment. A carton of vanilla-caramel-swirl ice cream was nestled snugly inside.

“I think there's enough for one more go-round,” Mom said as she opened the carton to check. We probably didn't
really
have to hide the ice cream, even though it was technically considered contraband—SRS agents, after all, had to be in peak physical condition, so ice cream was a treat
we got only when we were out on excursions. But Mom and Dad were The Team, so they got a little leeway. Besides, anyone who might turn us in could probably be bought off with a scoop.

“All right. After dinner. And then your mother and I start following our own rules about bringing work home, because you two have no idea how hard it is sneaking ice cream in here.”

Mom handed me a stack of plates to set the table. Kennedy tried to slink away and avoid silverware duty, but Dad thrust a handful of forks at her before she made it out the door.

“Want to hear my cheer now, Hale?” Kennedy asked as she noisily dropped the last fork in its place.

“Sure.”

“Okay!” she said, breaking out a wide grin. Kennedy slammed her hands against her sides and dropped her head. Taking a deep breath, she snapped her chin up and began to chant, slamming her arms at different angles around her body. It was a pretty stock cheer—lots of “Hey! Hey! Step back! We're on the attack!” type rhymes—but she did it with more enthusiasm in her little finger than I think I had in my entire body. When she finished, Kennedy leaped into the air and slid down into a perfect split, grinning and holding imaginary pom-poms aloft.

“What did you think?” she asked.

“I think . . . ,” I began, pretending like I was going to
tease her. Her face fell; I smiled. “I think you're right. SRS really
should
have a cheerleading squad.”

“I know,” Kennedy said solemnly, rising. “But I'm going to convince Dr. Fishburn. You'll see.”

I didn't think it was likely that Dr. Fishburn, SRS's director, was going to be convinced about anything that involved glitter and loud music, but I nodded. Kennedy had been obsessed with cheerleading for a year or two, ever since all the SRS kids had gone to the local high school's football game so we could see non-spy kids firsthand. We were supposed to study them so we could blend in better in case we became junior agents. Kennedy basically spent the entire time studying the cheerleaders (and so did a bunch of the boys in my class, but for a very different reason). I spent most of my time with Walter, taking notes and joking about how neither of us had a clue how football worked. I bet he knew how it worked now. Knowing about sports is probably something that just
happens
when you gain twenty pounds of muscle and lose one hundred and thirty pounds of Hale Jordan.

I took my seat at the table; Kennedy did some sort of crazy pommel horse move over the back of her chair to take hers. Mom and Dad joined us. We ate dinner fast, all eager to get to the ice cream, and as a result spent the next two hours sprawled out in the living room, clutching our overfilled stomachs. Dad quizzed Kennedy and me on SRS mission history, which devolved into him inventing stories
and us adding on, Mom shaking her head at all three of us, smiling.

Here's the thing about SRS: it was a secret organization, and we were all in it together. We were all members of this great big impressive awesome thing. But sometimes? Sometimes, it was nice to be just a family—me, Kennedy, and Mom and Dad. A really little, probably sometimes a little boring, awesome thing. They felt like two entirely different places. There was SRS, where I had to prove myself, and there was apartment 300, where I could be just
Hale
and that was enough.

Or at least, it was enough until the next morning, when
everything
changed.

“Hale, honey,” Mom said the next morning, shaking a carton of orange juice harder than necessary before she poured a glass. “We've got a mission. Should be back late this evening. Emergency numbers for the neighbors and the medics are here.” She tapped the refrigerator.

She paused to wiggle her torso, like something wasn't fitting right in her suit. It was some sort of stretchy combination of leather and Kevlar, with a zipper down the front and a turtleneck top. Mom tugged at her utility belt and then continued. “Try to get Kennedy to start her reading—I know, I know, but at least try—before dinner. We'll be back before you go to bed. Kennedy?” she shouted down the hall.

“I'm getting up!” Kennedy yelled, which was a lie.

“No cheers after six, got it? The people downstairs keep complaining.”

“I'm getting up!” she yelled again. Kennedy didn't so much rise as she did melt out of bed, always leaving a trail of pillows and blankets behind her.

Dad laughed silently at Kennedy as he used the doorframe to stretch his shoulders. Mom finished her juice and joined him jogging in place for a moment. They moved to the living room to practice punching each other as I slogged through the rest of my oatmeal.

“Hale,” Dad said, jumping backward and kicking at Mom's head. “It might be best if you stayed away from Agent Otter's bad side today, all right?”

“I try to stay away from all Agent Otter's sides. I'm not sure he'd like me any better even if I looked like the rest of the class,” I grumbled as I rinsed my bowl out and set it in the sink.

“Hey now, Hale . . . ,” Mom began sternly, ducking Dad's fist and kicking him hard in the back of the knee. He started to fall, but she swooped in at the last moment to push him back to his feet. She turned to me while Dad caught his breath. “Heroes don't always look like heroes.” This was something she and Dad said a lot. They acted like it was just general advice, but I knew it was to try to make me feel better about myself.

“Villains don't always look like villains either,” Dad
added. “Nothing is that simple. Just because Agent Otter isn't always very nice, doesn't mean he's your enemy. He's just still grumpy about being taken out of the field. Don't think he ever planned on being a teacher . . .”

“Yeah, but he got taken out of the field a billion years ago,” I griped, but gave up when Dad shot me a pointed look. I changed the subject. “So, what's today's mission? Is it Project—” I fell silent, because I was about to say “Project Groundcover,” but then remembered how serious Mom and Dad were about me never mentioning it again. They clearly realized what was about to come out of my mouth, though, because they froze and gave me matching stern looks.

“It's in Spain, I think,” Mom said, without answering my question—which I suspected meant yes. She turned back to Dad. She bounced forward and back on the balls of her feet, waiting for him to strike.

“Spain?” Dad said, shaking out his arms. “I thought Fishburn said Seoul.”

“Maybe. SRS has outposts in both places, don't they?” Mom shrugged. We lived in SRS's biggest location, but SRS was international—agents were tucked away throughout the world. It was sort of nice, knowing no matter where my parents went, they had allies nearby.

I leaned in the doorframe. “Do you really not know, or do you just not want to tell me?”

“Come on, Hale,” Dad said, smiling. “Don't you trust us?”

“You're spies,” I said warily, and turned to go to my bedroom and change.

“We're your parents!” Mom called back, laughing.

“Also spies!” I answered, shutting my door.

It was uniform day.

I often called uniform day by a variety of names—mostly involving words I heard Agent Otter muttering when the drink machine stole his dollar. I understand why spies have to wear black spandex—I do, really. You couldn't exactly crawl under a laser grid wearing shorts and a T-shirt. What I didn't understand was why anyone would
make
black spandex. Did a bunch of fabric company people get together somewhere to intentionally create the worst material on the planet? Or was it the result of some crazy factory accident? Surely, no one made this stuff on purpose.

“All right,” Agent Otter said, walking briskly into our classroom. He scratched his head without looking at us. “Come on. Formation.”

We hustled into neat rows in the center of the room, barely fitting in between the weight-lifting equipment. Otter turned to the door as the SRS uniform mistress entered.

Ms. Elma was an older lady with pale brown hair and a thin scar on one cheek. She was famous for this scar. She got it in a knife fight and sewed up the wound herself during her brief stint as a field agent. This was a story she liked
to remind us of at every opportunity. “Your uniform doesn't fit? I'm so sorry. I suppose I'm not as good at sewing spandex as I am at sewing
my own face
.” She was also known for her undying love for the Doctor Joe talk show. Let me explain Doctor Joe for you in one sentence: TV doctor with gray hair tells you to eat more salmon. I thought the show was super boring, but Ms. Elma—and a few of the other agents here—watched Doctor Joe like he was the soul mate they'd never met. I'd even heard that Ms. Elma wrote the guy love letters. Dad said she was just being a fan. Mom said she was just being delusional.

Tossed over Ms. Elma's right arm were dozens and dozens of SRS uniforms. Black spandex with blue trim that indicated our in-training status. “Stand up straight so I can see your shoulders,” she barked, and we all jumped, straightening our spines. Ms. Elma chewed her tongue for a moment and then began to toss uniforms to us with complete confidence, despite the fact that she was hardly looking at them. “Go change, come back.
Fast
, please. And no primping, ladies. I don't have time for that. It's a uniform, not a prom dress.”

One by one, students vanished from the formation as they ducked into the bathrooms to try on uniforms. All SRS trainees wore the hand-me-downs of older SRS members. Every now and then someone would get lucky and be fitted with a suit on its first go-round, but for the most part,
our uniforms came complete with rips, tears, and burns, a bouquet of problems that we'd only add to before handing them down yet again. Once I got one that had a whole leg spray-painted pink.

I discovered that day that the only thing worse than black spandex is pink spandex.

“And . . . Hale Jordan,” Ms. Elma said, a note of exhaustion in her voice. She looked down at the uniforms in her hand, then unfolded one and held it up in front of me. No. She tossed it over her shoulder and held up another, pursing her lips in a way that made her look like a duck. Finally she shoved the second uniform at me. “Try this, Jordan. It might work.”

I nodded and trotted off toward the bathroom with my uniform. Walter and the other two boys in our class were still there, turning back and forth in front of the mirror, and I couldn't help but think Ms. Elma had warned the wrong people not to primp. Walter's arms were squeezed tightly into his sleeves; when I walked in, he turned to me and grinned.

“Hey there, cheater,” he said. “Don't worry. My uniform doesn't fit either.” With that, he hunched his shoulders forward and flexed his arm muscles until the seams of his already-battered uniform gave way along his biceps. He laughed, the sound all echoey in the bathroom, and high-fived Michael and Cameron, his junior-agent best friends.
They too had exceptionally large biceps, which I envied, and even larger foreheads, which was about the only thing I could silently make fun of them for.

“I wasn't worried,” I answered. “
You
might be, though, when Ms. Elma sees your sleeves.”

Walter's face paled a little, but he still managed to snort. “Yeah. Whatever, Whale.”

Sometimes I pretended Walter hadn't changed due to puberty—that he'd just fallen into some toxic sludge—and that was why he transformed from totally-normal-guy Walter to worst-person-at-SRS Walter. One day, he's coming over after school; the next, he has a little facial hair and is busy in the afternoon. One day, he's huffing and puffing through the field exam along with me; the next, he's sprinting along with the junior agents, looking like a fairy godmother granted him the gift of calf muscles. It's not like Walter and I had a big fight or anything. One day we were friends, and the next, we weren't. Was it better or worse that way? I couldn't tell.

I walked into a stall, double-checked the door was locked, and began to change. My feet went in easily, as did my legs, but when it came time to pull the uniform over my torso, things came to a grinding halt. I shimmied and twisted and managed to get the shoulders up. I could even zip it a little, so long as I didn't need to do things like breathe or eat or have to pee. All in all, it was at least a better fit than my last uniform, which I couldn't even pull past my
stomach. I walked out of the stall, trying not to move too much, and made my way back to the classroom.