The Inside Job (11 page)

“We practice it at home over the mats,” Kennedy said.

“It looks great. And it looks like Kennedy is a lot easier to throw than I am,” I said, smiling and thinking about Walter heaving me over a fence a few weeks prior. Kennedy continued to look pleased, and even though Walter liked to
pretend he wasn't into the cheerleading thing, he looked pretty happy too.

Which was a relief, because it meant they hadn't seen my face falter when Kennedy said the word “home.” See, when I hear that word, I think about apartment 300 at SRS. I think about the baby-chick-yellow living room, and the secret ice cream compartment in the freezer, and my bedroom with the dinosaur sheets that I always covered when friends came over but actually liked way better than my more grown-up blue-striped sheets.

I didn't think of League headquarters, like Kennedy must. But then, Kennedy had a bedroom full of stuffed animals and cheerleading posters and glitter pens at League headquarters. I had a white bedroom with nothing in it. I wondered where all the stuff I left behind was now. Did SRS stick it in storage? Did they comb through it? Did they burn everything?

I wondered where Mom and Dad were living. Had they made a new home somewhere, like Kennedy, or were they like me? I wasn't sure which one I wanted for them. It was hard to think of them relaxing in some strange living room, eating out of some strange fridge, putting pictures on strange walls. Did they tell jokes and eat ice cream and talk about me and Kennedy, or did they sort of avoid the subject, like Kennedy and I did about them some days? Were they happy even though we weren't with them?

I didn't
think
they could be happy without me and my sister, but then . . . I didn't think they would just leave us behind, either.

I felt bad immediately for thinking that—I mean, what choice did they have? But still . . . I wondered what my life would be like if my parents weren't heroes.

If they were just art thieves.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I went to bed early because I knew I'd never be able to fall asleep after Ben started snoring. That was probably why at about four in the morning I woke up suddenly. I stared at the bunk above me for a while, then tried to count to a million, then tried to clear my mind, but in the end nothing worked. I kicked my legs over the side of the bed, straightened up my pajama pants, and then slipped out of the room to get a glass of water.

To my surprise, the lights were still on in the kitchen. Beatrix was asleep in a chair, exactly where she'd been when I saw her a few hours before. Her computers still buzzed all around her, and her glasses were pushed up on top of her head like a headband.

“Beatrix?” I whispered.

She didn't move.

Whenever Kennedy fell asleep on the couch back home, Dad would carry her to her bed. I was pretty certain I wasn't strong enough to lift Beatrix, but I felt bad that she was going to sleep in a kitchen chair all night. I crept to my bedroom, snatched a blanket off the bunk occupied by Ben's inventing tools, and went back to the kitchen. I tiptoed around Beatrix and tried to slide it over her shoulders . . .

Beatrix sat up and yelped. I clapped a hand over her mouth and tried to spin her so she'd see it was me, but she braced her legs into the table and slammed the chair backward, crushing me between it and the wall. The breath was knocked right out of me, and I'm pretty sure my kidneys had been too—

“Oh! Hale! Oh, I'm sorry!” Beatrix said, yanking the chair off me. “Are you okay?”

I tried to say “I'm fine,” but it sounded more like “Iihhii.” Beatrix winced with apology, then glanced at the clock.

“Whoa! It's four in the morning. Did I fall asleep?”

“Yes. And apparently you dreamed of ninjas or something,” I said, rubbing the spot on my stomach where the chair had dug in.

“Otter said I should learn some basic self-defense,” Beatrix said.

“You're excelling at it.”

“Really? Yay! I mean—well. Yay, but sorry for smashing your ribs.”

“It'll be fine, really.” I pointed to her Right Hand. “Any luck with the helium?”

Beatrix's face fell, and she sat back down in her chair. I pulled up one of the others. She said, “Not really, Hale. I mean, plenty of people order helium, but it's the sort of people you'd expect. Blimp companies. The government. Cryogenics companies—did you know that's what they use to cryogenically freeze people? I had no idea. But anyway, there's no one who's ordering a regular supply who isn't someone you'd
expect
to order it, you know?”

I sighed and leaned back in the chair. Then Beatrix said quickly, “I'll keep looking, though!”

“It's okay, Beatrix,” I said, shaking my head. “I just don't know where to go from here.”

Beatrix bit her lip and tapped her Right Hand absently for a moment. “Maybe we have to look at SRS now, Hale.”

“No, that's—”

“Shh! You'll wake everyone up!” she said. I slammed my lips shut—I didn't realize I was shouting. Beatrix and I listened for a moment and, when no one stirred, she beat me to speaking first. “I know it's important to you that your parents have
always
done the right thing, Hale. But you know, it's okay if they messed up. They're still good people, I'm sure.”

I waited a long time. Maybe it was because it was dark and the middle of the night, or maybe it was because this
was Beatrix, but I closed my eyes and said, “That's not really the problem. Well. Not all of it, anyway.”

“What is?”

I opened my eyes and stared at her computer screens, unblinking. If I were being interrogated, my eyes would definitely have given away how uncomfortable all this made me. I reached forward and picked up a screw that had fallen out of one machine or another, rolled it between my forefinger and thumb, and then finally spoke.

“My parents left when they realized SRS was doing something wrong—kidnapping kids for Project Groundcover. But . . . there's no way they couldn't have known stealing art from some little old lady's house was wrong, right? But they did it for years and years, according to Otter. Because that was the mission. You always have to think of the mission at SRS. It's the most important thing.”

“Okay . . . ,” Beatrix said, nodding, trying to understand.

I went on. “My parents eventually left SRS—which was the right thing to do. But they also left me and Kennedy behind. They didn't warn us or take us with them or come get us after it all blew over. Because they
can't
—their mission,
our
mission, is to take down SRS for good. And if they come get me and Kennedy, the mission could be compromised. So they're thinking of the mission, just like they did at SRS. Putting the mission first. Above everything, even their kids.” I drummed my fingers on the table and shook my head. “I get that they're heroes and spies and all,
but sometimes I wish they'd just be my parents. I wish we were as important as the stupid mission.”

“Hale, I'm sure your parents think you're just as important—
more
important—than the mission! But it's not safe for them to come get you yet,” Beatrix said.

I shrugged. “I guess. I mean, I
know
that's true, deep down, but sometimes it doesn't feel very true. And then I get so mad at myself for
getting
mad, because of
course
they should be thinking of the mission!”

“You are always telling the rest of us to put the mission first,” Beatrix agreed.

“Right! But then . . . then I'm just acting like I'm back at SRS too. So what's the point of fighting SRS if, in the end, they're too deep inside me for me to ever really escape them? Maybe it's too late for me and my parents and Walter's mom. Maybe we'll always be SRS agents, no matter how hard we fight it.”

Beatrix went quiet and put her Right Hand down, which wasn't something she did very often. She turned to face me, even though I still wasn't really looking at her. “Remember how my parents were League agents?”

“Of course.”

“And that they died on a mission?”

“Yes. I mean, you and Ben didn't tell us that, but I sort of guessed,” I said quietly.

Beatrix folded her legs up underneath her. “I don't really know how it happened or anything—Ben and I
were only a year old or so. Uncle Stan says he won't tell us everything till we're older, but I think he really just never wants to think about it. I don't know that I want to know. Ben says he does, but I'm not sure he means it. Anyway—sometimes I'm mad at them. Which is the worst, since they're dead and all, but sometimes I'm mad because they went on that mission. There were a billion other agents at The League back then who could have gone, agents without kids. Why did
they
have to do it?”

I didn't say anything. I didn't know what
to
say. I understood what she meant, and I thought I understood how she felt, but there was just no fixing it.

Beatrix took a long breath. “If they'd known what would happen, I'm sure they wouldn't have gone. And if your parents had known how long they'd have to be away from you and Kennedy, I bet they wouldn't have gone either. Just because they're parents doesn't mean they can't make mistakes. And just because they're SRS agents doesn't mean they love the mission more than you. They were all just trying to be heroes.”

I nodded because she was right, and then I sighed. “I always wanted to be a hero, you know. Like them. But I don't think I want to be the kind of hero who leaves my family behind. Does that make me a terrible person?”

Beatrix smiled. “No. It just makes you a regular person, I think.”

I nodded. Then after a long time I said, “I'm sorry about your parents, Beatrix.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, and smiled. “But it's okay. We're all okay. Also, we're all tired. Seriously, Hale, your eyes look like someone punched you. Unless—were you trying to help Kennedy with that cheerleading pyramid she wants to do? Because Ben tried a few weeks ago, and she kicked him right in the eye on accident.”

“No—just tired,” I said, and smiled too. I stood up and pushed my chair in. “Are you going to bed?”

“I guess so. I'll run everything through the system again tomorrow just to make sure I didn't miss anything. But . . . do you think maybe we can look into SRS now that the noble gases turned up nothing?” she asked.

I bit my tongue for a second, because I was thinking,
Of course we can—mission first, right?
Then I let my fingertips linger on the list of partygoers that rested on the edge of the table. “Yes. Of course, yes . . . but can I go over these people one more time to make
sure
they're dead ends?”

Beatrix sighed a little—her talk, however moving, however sincere, hadn't gotten to me quite as completely as she hoped it would. “You can do whatever you want, Hale. But you trust me, right? I went over them all.”

“Of course I trust you; I just . . . I just want to be sure, I guess. It's not even because I don't want to look into SRS. It's that I feel like I missed something.” Once I said it aloud,
the feeling grew stronger—that gut feeling that SRS had taught us to trust.

Beatrix lifted her Right Hand. “Well, let's go over it together. So, we ruled out all the employees, right? Ben and Kennedy felt pretty confident about those.”

“Okay, yeah.”

“And then . . . we have the three families from Hastings's birthday party who live in other countries, but I picked through their bank accounts. No sign of an influx of money, and no sign of sudden helium buying.”

“All right, yes . . .”

“And then there are the country club families. I checked them for helium buying too, but you also cleared the Stonemans, the Alabasters, and . . . what was that final name?”

“The St. Claires.”

“Oh, right, the ones who made fun of Hastings for having a clown at his birthday party—”

Beatrix nearly dropped her Right Hand. Our eyes snapped together and widened in sync. The paper slipped from my fingers.

“Access to helium. Attended the birthday party.
The clown
,” I said under my breath. “We never looked into the clown.”