by Robin Benway
The best is when you get into the Zone, as I call it. It’s almost like the numbers are singing to me, calling me to them. I don’t feel anything except those numbers and my heartbeat, and we work in synchronicity, like the best orchestra in the world. That dial is the baton in my hand, and we’re playing toward the final crashing crescendo, to the cymbal sounds of justice.
18-6-36.
It clicked open.
“Gotcha,” I whispered.
I swung open the door carefully, just in case it was like a jack-in-the-box (small traumatic childhood incident, too long to explain), but all that was in there was a large envelope. I picked it up and used the dim lights outside the office to examine its contents.
Jackpot. Dozens of passports were inside, all belonging to young women, along with a Post-it note stuck on top, reading: “TO SHRED.”
“Not anymore,” I whispered, as I put them back in their manila envelope and tucked it underneath my shirt. I shut the safe, the knockoff Kandinsky went back on the wall, and I was about to leave when a noise stopped me.
At first, I thought that my pulse was so loud I could hear it, but it wasn’t my pulse. It was the sound of footsteps in the hall. They were a man’s, heavy and assured. Women’s shoes make tap-tap-tap sounds. Men’s shoes go clunk-clunk-clunk. They got closer and my heart sped up with them, clunking along at a breakneck pace. There was only one person who would be coming toward the office this late at night, and he was the one person I didn’t want to see: the CEO.
I hit the floor, the paperwork still hidden against me as I thought fast. I hate thinking fast like this—there are too many opportunities for mistakes—but I happen to work well under pressure. Still, it’s not fun, especially when you’re trying to suppress a sneeze because the floor’s all dusty and clearly my mom hasn’t been cleaning this office and …
I had an idea.
By the time the CEO came through the door, I had slammed on the lights and was using a tissue to wipe down the Kandinsky’s frame, praying he wouldn’t notice that I was shaking a little from adrenaline. “Can I help you?” I said in Icelandic. “Are you looking for someone?” My dad had taught me those sentences, as well as “Hello” and “More coffee, please.”
The CEO looked like the most average man in the world, not someone who had conspired to make money off human trafficking. “This is my office,” he replied in perfect English, brow furrowing in concentration. (I love to watch them squirm; it’s so satisfying.) “What are you doing—?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” My mom appeared suddenly, pushing her cleaning cart and wearing her janitorial outfit. “I have a new assistant; we’re training her.”
I smiled. “There’s a lot of dust in here. Have you thought about getting an air filt—”
The CEO cut me off. “I need. My office back.” He spoke the same way my dad did whenever he was annoyed with me. Short sentences. Because the effort. Of Talking. Is just. Too much.
“No problem,” I said, balling up my tissue and skirting past my mom. “Only three hundred more offices to go, right? The night is young!”
I went out the door, the passports now scratchy and warm against my skin, and took off for the elevator bank while my mom apologized to the CEO once again. I was glad she was busy because she would freak if she knew I was taking the elevator. My parents are always like, “Take the stairs!” but to me, the stairs are usually foolish, especially if you’re on a high floor. If you’re being chased, you’ve basically trapped yourself in a spiral, and running down twenty-eight flights of stairs is way too time-consuming. The elevator is best.
Plus elevator music can be very calming. I’m just saying.
The doors were just opening when I heard a “Psst!” sound behind me. My mom poked her head around the corner, glaring at me. “Stairs,” she mouthed, and pointed at the large EXIT sign hanging over the door.
I took the stairs.
By the time I got into the empty lobby, I was breathing hard but still moving, almost on autopilot. I could feel the security guard’s eyes on me as I went toward the revolving doors. “All good?” he asked nonchalantly, sipping at coffee while flipping through the local paper.
“We’re good, Dad,” I said, keeping my eyes straight ahead. “See you in ten.”
“What have we told you about taking the elevator?” my mom screeched at me eleven minutes later as my dad pulled our car out of the parking lot, backing over all of the SIM cards from our disposable cell phones and crushing them into smithereens. Another mission accomplished.
“I know, I know!” I said, trying to put on my seatbelt. “I just don’t like stairs!”
“You took the elevator?” my dad said, looking at me in the rearview mirror.
“She tried to, but she almost got caught,” my mom said. “Seriously, Maggie.”
“Merde,” my dad muttered.
Aside from being a statistician, my dad’s also great with languages. He knows how to say “You’re grounded!” twelve different ways.
¡Estás castigado!
Tu es privée de sortie!
Tы наказана. Ты не можешь выхо∂umь uЗ ∂оMy!
“Yeah, hey, by the way, guess who cracked the safe?” I pulled the envelope out of my shirt and handed it to my mom, ready to change the subject. “Check it out, he’s so guilty!”
She flicked through the passports, then gave me a smile over her shoulder. “How many numbers in the combination?”
“Three,” I said smugly.
“Amateur,” my mom and dad said at the same time.
We zipped through the wet streets toward the airport. Our car was a late-model sedan, black exterior, tan interior, just like every third car on the road today. Someday I’m hoping we get a Maserati or something cool like that. My dad taught me how to drive when I was ten, back when we lived in Germany near the autobahn. I’m pretty good at doing 180s and I’m awesome at driving a stick shift, which makes it all the more disappointing when we end up with Toyotas. The speedometer doesn’t even go past 160 mph. Not that we’d have to drive that fast, but it’d be nice if the car had some power.
We pulled in to the executive airport, and my dad parked the car in the lot. He got our overnight bags out of the car (even spies like to brush their teeth before bed), and I went to work on the license plates, unscrewing them and handing them to my mom as I took them off the car.
“Plane’s waiting,” my dad said.
“New York’s not going anywhere,” my mom replied, but she grinned and followed him into the airport and through the concierge area. She took my hand and squeezed it as we walked, and I let her. My parents always get weirdly over-protective whenever we leave a town. It’s best just to let them get it out of their system.
The Collective started using private planes after 9/11, but to be honest, I really miss commercial airports. I hear that airport security is the biggest nightmare in the world, but an airport is a spy’s best friend. Disposable cell phones at every kiosk, coffee every ten feet, and international newspapers. (You can use your phone to read the Washington Post or Le Monde, I know, but sometimes you have to go offline, and a spy without access to information is a cranky spy.) You can even get a delicious soft pretzel. Okay, that last one may be important just for me. I love pretzels.
I grabbed some juice from the concierge area and followed my parents onto the tarmac. The rain was picking up now, a little bit cooler than it had been all summer. Autumn was definitely on its way, and I suddenly felt tired. The adrenaline was leaving now, and when it goes, it’s hard to find something else to take its place.
There was one flight attendant and a pilot. We rarely talk to them, but I’m pretty sure they work for the Collective, too. Our whole thing is secrecy, so what are we going to say? “We just got paperwork to bring down an evildoer! Booyah!” That definitely wouldn’t be keeping in line with the “stay beige” rule.
My mom handed the license plates and the manila folder to the flight attendant. “Thank
s, Zelda,” she said. They must have worked together before. I wondered where. All I really know about my parents is that they were both orphaned young and met in Paris. Maybe Zelda was with them in Paris, too. Maybe Angelo was, as well. I wondered who my friends were going to be when I got older. Judging from my summer with Cute Boy, they would probably be imaginary.
Great.
Still, I knew I was expected to eventually go out on my own once I turned twenty-one. I hoped that I would meet awesome people, people who wanted to drive Maseratis instead of Toyotas, people who knew how to change the world, like me.
And I also hoped that they were terrible safecrackers. A girl has a reputation to uphold, after all.
I curled up in a seat near the window and stretched out across from my parents, who were sitting at the table. They probably wouldn’t sleep, but I was exhausted. “It’s late,” my mom said. “Get some rest, okay? Busy day tomorrow. Another life ahead.”
“Our family is weird,” I replied as I took the blanket from Zelda, the mysterious flight attendant. “I’m the only spy in the world who has someone telling them to go to bed.”
“We all start somewhere,” my dad said. “Catch some winks.”
The plane’s engines started to rev as the doors closed.
The lights overhead were soft and muted, probably for my benefit, and I pulled the blanket up to my chin and kicked off my shoes. I hoped I had cute shoes waiting for me in New York. I was tired of wearing flip-flops from Old Navy. It had been almost five years since I had last been in New York, but I knew you could get away with a lot, clothes-wise, in Manhattan. I mean, I’m a spy, but even spies watch Gossip Girl once in a while. I hoped for boots. I hoped the assignment was good. I was ready for a major change.
The plane started to pick up speed, its force pushing me back into my makeshift bed before lifting us up into the sky. I almost peeked out the window to see Iceland disappear below us, but I didn’t.
Because that’s the third rule of being a spy:
Never look back.
Chapter 2
If Iceland was flatlining, then New York looked like it was having a heart attack.
We landed at JFK somewhere around three thirty in the morning, and I didn’t remember the car ride to our new place. We were living downtown this time, deposited in a Soho loft five stories above Prince Street. I was so tired that I barely saw it on my way to what I guessed was my bedroom. I even fell asleep in my new bed with my shoes on, which explained all the scuff marks on the clean white sheets.
Occupational hazard, I guess.
It took me a few seconds to remember where I was when I woke up the next morning. My new bedroom was smaller than the one in Reykjavík, but this one had a wall of exposed brick and a window that faced west. If I stood on my bed, I could probably see the Hudson River. The white curtains were nice, as was the brass bedframe, but I already knew not to get too attached to things like bedroom furniture. When I was five, I had to leave a princess-style canopy bed behind in Sydney, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that it was tragic. I think I’m still grieving for that bed.
My parents were already at the kitchen table when I stumbled out to join them around eleven, bagels and coffee spread out over the wide butcher-block table. It was a pretty nice kitchen, lots of shiny stainless-steel things that did stuff, and I knew immediately that Angelo had picked out our place for us. He told me once that he had always wanted to be a chef, even though I’ve never seen him cook a thing.
The microwave looked all fancy. It would be great for heating up takeout, at least.
“What’s the story, morning glory?” I said to my dad, who pushed a cup of coffee at me.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” he said. “Did you remember where you were?”
“Of course,” I teased. “I love New Jersey.”
He grinned and passed over a bagel. I started picking off the sesame seeds with my fingernails, yawning hard. “So what’s the word? What’s the deal? What are we up to?”
My parents exchanged glances. My dad’s hair was starting to go a little gray at the temples, but it was still mostly dark brown, just like mine. My mom’s hair was black and just barely touched her shoulders, but she and I had the same pale skin.
“Uh-oh,” I said around a mouthful of dough and sesame seeds. “Does Mom have to clean offices again?” That hadn’t been a popular assignment for her, to say the least.
“No, thankfully,” she said, then passed my dossier over to me.
We each had one, manila envelopes that had probably been left in our new place a minute before we walked through the door. That’s how it’s always been; we move and our new identities are there to greet us.
Colton Hooper is the reason we have new identities every time. He’s been in charge of our safety since before I can remember, moving my family and me to secure locations and slipping shiny new passports under the door. Angelo may forge them, but Colton puts them into our hands.
Neither my parents nor I have ever met Colton. It’s safer that way, not knowing what people look like or where they are. Colton seems like he’d be cool to hang out with, though. Over the phone, he always sounds smooth and relaxed, like some playboy billionaire without a care in the world. He calls me “the infamous Maggie,” which I like. It sounds like he trusts me as much as he trusts my parents, and since our lives are often in his hands, we trust him right back.
I opened up my folder and flipped through it. “Ooh, I get to keep my first name!” I said as soon as I saw the school ID. “Maggie Sil—wait, what?”
My parents exchanged another glance.
“I get to go to high school?” I said. “No more homeschooling? Do I … do I finally get an assignment?”
“All last summer, you kept saying that you were bored and wanted to talk to people who didn’t remember being at the fall of the Berlin Wall,” my dad pointed out.
“Holy crap!” I said. “Hallelujah, it’s a miracle! I finally get to do something besides watch everyone else have fun!” I raised my bagel in the air like an award, then pretended to wipe away tears. “This just means so much to me! I’d like to thank all the little people that I crushed on my way to the top.”
“You are ridiculous,” my mother said, her smile tight.
I took a bite of bagel, then washed it down with coffee. “These high school kids won’t know what hit them. Who do I get to emotionally destroy?”
I shook the rest of the manila folder, waiting for some piece of crucial information to fall out, but there was nothing. Just my new birth certificate, social security card, school ID, all with the name Maggie Silver, and a cell phone that I knew was for speaking with anyone not in the Collective. My last name was completely new—I’d have to get used to it.
“So am I breaking into lockers and looking for drugs?” I asked. “Is it a performing arts high school? I don’t know that I’m good with singing and dancing. It might be hard to assimilate.”
“No singing and dancing,” my dad said. “But please remember that that’s exactly what a spy does. We assimilate.”
“Like I had any say in that decision,” I muttered. “What if I have to go to a pep rally?”
My dad raised an eyebrow. “It’s a private high school in Greenwich Village,” he pointed out. “Do you really think there’s a football team?”
“I’m sure they have pep about something!” I cried.
And then it hit me.
“Wait. Did you say it’s private?” I asked. “Are there uniforms?”
My parents’ faces went decidedly blank.
“I have to wear a uniform?” I screamed. “Are you serious?”
“The blouse is so darling,” my mom said.
I whirled around and ran back to my room, throwing open the closet doors. I hadn’t even looked at my clothes yet, but sure enough, there were five identical private school uniforms: white blouses (who even says “blouses” anymore?) and dark blue plaid skirts. There were also some jeans, sweaters, and really cute gray
suede boots, but I couldn’t focus on them. I grabbed a uniform off the hanger and carried it back to my parents.
“Look at this!” I said, shaking it in front of them. “I’ve waited my whole life to go to high school and now I have to wear this?”
My mom spread cream cheese on her bagel. My dad sipped his coffee and nodded.
“Are you okay with me walking the streets of downtown New York looking like Lolita?” I pressed on. I could feel my argument going nowhere, and for the first time in years, I felt nervous. If this didn’t work, I’d be starting high school the very next morning showing more leg than I had ever shown before. “This looks obscene. Someone should call Dateline.”
“You’ll probably need a sweater,” my mom replied. “It’s a little chilly out.”
“Cheer up, buttercup,” my dad added. “It’s your first job. You’ve got bigger and better things ahead.” He pushed the envelope at me. “Here, sit down. Time to work.”
I slumped back into my chair, the wind out of my sails already. “I just hope that for your sakes, I don’t get caught up in a sexting scandal,” I told them.
“Duly noted,” my mom said. “Anyone want more coffee?”
That’s the thing with having spies for parents. They don’t get upset about much. Sometimes it’s awesome, and sometimes it does not work in my favor.
I sighed once more and reached for my coffee cup. It was white and modern, almost too heavy in my hand. I sort of missed the I BRAKE FOR CAFFEINE mug that we had in our old house. I wondered if another spy had that mug now, or if it had been destroyed. When I was younger, I used to take one thing from each house we lived in, but after a while, they just made me homesick for homes that I would never see again and that had never really been mine anyway.
The dossier was straightforward. Maggie Silver, sixteen years old, transferring from Andover in New Hampshire to the Harper School in Greenwich Village. The school’s pamphlet looked pretty straightforward: a happy, smiling, multicultural, “Yay, we’re so smart!” student body, reading their books and enjoying their study groups. Liberal arts education, a focus on the individual, blah blah blah.
