by Robin Benway
Oh, no, I suddenly realized, my heartbeat flying into overdrive. Oh no, oh no, oh no.
“So,” Jesse Oliver said, “what’s this about being a great spy?”
“Maggie?” my mother chirped on the other hand. “What exactly is licking you?”
“Bye,” I said, then pressed the END button as fast as possible. Jesse was still standing there; his dog was lying down, still giving me the doggie smile. “Um, do you always eavesdrop?” I asked. “It’s rude.”
He shrugged. “Do you always talk on your phone while surrounded by strangers?”
Why did he have to be so fast with a retort? I tried to think even faster. “I’m not telling you what I do,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that because you’re …” He leaned in for greater emphasis, and why, oh why, did he have to have such nice, soft-looking skin? “… a spy?”
“I was talking,” I said huffily, “about a Halloween costume. Yes. A Halloween costume. That will be the best one ever. Yes.” I had no idea what I was saying. Halloween was still a month away, and the last time I dressed up, I was four and trick-or-treated at exactly one house: Angelo’s. (He gave me a full-size Snickers bar and a diary with a little lock and key. It was awesome.)
But that was then, this was now, and I had to get in the game.
“My friend Roux is having a Halloween party,” I continued, like I hadn’t just met Roux six hours ago. “Costumes are very important.”
“Roux?” Jesse repeated. “She’s having a party?”
“You know her?” I pretended to play dumb and twirled a lock of my hair for good measure.
“How many Rouxs do you think there are?”
“The one I know is the only one that matters.” My hair was starting to get tangled around my finger and it was hurting. I let it go and it spiraled out into a snarl. Wonderful.
Jesse snorted, which was really not an attractive quality for him. “You’ll probably be the only person at the party. So, you go to Harper?”
“Maybe,” I replied. “Where do you go?”
“Harper.” He extended his hand and his stupidly adorable golden retriever leaped toward him, like he was expecting a treat. “I’m Jesse. This is Max.”
“Hi. Hi, Max,” I added for good measure. Max appeared to have an out-of-control drooling problem, and I took a step back as he came toward me.
“What, you don’t like dogs?” Jesse asked.
“I like dogs. I don’t like saliva. Are you sure he’s not going to dehydrate?”
“So you’re new at Harper?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” I pointed out.
“Well, you’re answering them, so …” He shrugged.
“Yes, I’m new at Harper.” Pull. It. Together. Maggie. “I’m a junior. I didn’t see you around school today. Where do you ditch?”
Jesse gave me a real smile for the first time. “Here and there.”
“Is it easy to get off campus?”
“Not really, no. You have to want it.”
“Oh, I want it,” I said, and then found myself blushing a little. “You’ll have to show me sometime.”
I was so, so, SO thankful that this conversation wasn’t secretly being recorded. I think I would rather have been targeted by a sniper than have anyone overhear it.
“We’ll see,” Jesse replied, then tightened Max’s leash around his hand. “C’mon, buddy, let’s go. Bye, Spy Girl,” he added as Max trotted past me, leaving a drool trail behind him. I watched them leave while mentally readjusting my to-do list.
Number one: make Roux my friend. Number two: convince her to throw a Halloween party. Number three: invite Jesse Oliver.
And somewhere in there, figure out how I became such a bumbling, ridiculous spy.
Chapter 4
The next morning, after tossing and turning for most of the night, I had a shiny new plan.
And like most of my plans, it involved deviousness, blatant lying, and coffee.
I started with the coffee first.
I had come up with the shiny new plan (SNP, because acronyms always sound more important) about three in the morning, after I realized that what I had said to my mom earlier was true: I was cracking a person, not a safe. Jesse Oliver didn’t have a keypad attached to his forehead, and this “let’s make googly eyes at each other” business was going to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. Let’s just put it this way: I’ve never had a safe make googly eyes at me.
The first step: changing my class schedule.
The second step: making Roux my new BFF. (Acronyms, like I said.)
I strolled into the school’s office at eight the next morning, large coffee in hand, still wearing my boring and itchy school uniform. (Unfortunately, my SNP didn’t involve accessorizing. I’m a talented person, but some things are just out of my league.) Kids were filling the hallways, each person looking cooler than the next. Were teenagers always this loud? I was going to need to buy an economy-sized bottle of aspirin before this job was over.
“Hey!” someone yelled, and when I turned around, I saw Roux strolling toward me. “Seriously, not even a pin or something?”
“What?”
She waved her hand toward me. “Your uniform. Didn’t we discuss this yesterday?”
“Oh.” I glanced down at my plaid monstrosity. “Um, I thought that was more of a theoretical conversation.”
Roux just stared at me. “Theoretical conversation? Are you for real?” She continued on before I could even answer. “Look, please, do it for me. My eyes, they burn when I look at this situation. Help me help you.”
I’ve met a lot of people in my life, but this girl took the cake. “You realize that it’s just a uniform, right?” I said. “It’s not the be-all, end-all of who I am.”
“Good thing,” she replied. “Because if it was, it would be saying, ‘I’m boring.’”
“Boring?” I cried before I could stop myself. “Boring? Are you kidding me?” I started to laugh. “Oh my God, you have no idea.” Boring people do not flee the Luxembourg government, I wanted to add, but I kept my mouth shut.
Roux gave me the side eye as I tried to compose myself. “Riiiiight,” she said. “Okay, I’m just going to back up slowly and hustle myself to class while you figure out something to do about this.”
“You do that,” I told her, still giggling. “I’m sure I’ll come up with a creative use for some safety pins and paper clips in the meantime.”
“That’s the spirit,” Roux said. “Trust me, I’m trying to save you from social extinction.” Then she turned and walked down the hall, so confident in her stride that people moved to get out of her way.
I could see that step 2 of SNP was going to need some revising. As was my uniform.
I shook it off, though, because I had bigger fish to fry. I needed to get my class schedule synced up with Jesse Oliver’s, which meant I needed to get into the school’s computer system.
This is always my favorite part of the job.
The administrative office smelled like old paper and burned coffee and looked like the kind of room where dreams go to die. There was a halfhearted GO HARPER! sign stretched across one wall, but it just looked ambivalent. It could have said, WE LOVE CHEESE! for all it seemed to care.
There was only one secretary in the office that morning, her desk empty save for a large box of Kleenex and a photo of her two kids. She was typing away furiously and didn’t even look up when I stood right in front of her desk. “And how may I help you this morning?” she asked.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Maggie, I’m new here, and I think I have a problem with my class schedule.”
“Do you now?” She didn’t make it sound like a question, though.
I plopped down into the chair next to her desk, balancing my coffee in one hand as I began to rifle through my bag. “It’s just that I’m in geometry, and my parents, they want me to, you know, reach my potential and try to maximize my abilities.” I had no idea what I was sayi
ng, but it sounded good to me.
“Your class assignments are permanent unless—”
“Oh my God, are those your kids?” I changed topics like a seasoned pro. Which I was. “They’re so cute!” And they were cute, in a sort of missing-teeth chipmunk way. “Twins?”
This time, the secretary actually smiled a little. “Yes,” she said. “Six years old.”
“What are their names?”
“Detroit and Dakota.” She smiled a little more while I tried not to widen my eyes too much. Apparently I had gotten off easy with a name like Margaret. “They just started first grade yesterday and—”
“Oh my God, I am so sorry!” The coffee fell from my fingers and flooded over the box of Kleenex and the desk, dripping into the secretary’s lap. I had made sure it was lukewarm beforehand, just in case of that. “Oh, no, let me help!”
She leaped up from her seat as the coffee continued to stream across the desk, flooding everything in its path. “It’s all right,” she said, trying to hold her soaked sweater away from her. “Just let me, um, get cleaned up here.” She tried to wipe the coffee off her desk, which was useless. Believe me, I know how to make a real mess. “Oh, geez.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said, which wasn’t a lie. “I’m such a butterfingers. Maybe too much caffeine this morning. I’ll totally pay for the dry cleaning.”
She nodded, already looking down the hall toward the restroom. “Why don’t you come back later this afternoon?” she said. “We can talk about your schedule then and …”
“Great,” I said, and made a mental note to send her an anonymous fruit basket. Detroit and Dakota would probably love it.
“I’m just going to go get cleaned up and … yeah.” She didn’t look thrilled with me, and I couldn’t blame her. I hate when innocents are in the line of fire.
As soon as she disappeared into the restroom, I slid into her seat and immediately pulled up the log-in screen. Her user name was still there, but the password was empty.
Hello, kiddos.
I tried entering “DETROIT” but it didn’t work. Then I tried “DAKOTA.”
Bingo.
Sometimes it’s so easy that it’s not even fun.
My fingers moved fast, pulling up my and Jesse’s class schedules. He had chem, French, calculus (which he was failing, I noted), English III, and AP US History. Also, despite the failing math grade, he was an A/B+ student. “He totally cheats,” I whispered to myself.
I opened up my schedule next and immediately put myself into Jesse’s French and calculus classes, dropping geometry for good. I thought about putting myself in AP English, as well, but come on. Like I have the time to read all those books and write the papers.
The secretary still hadn’t come back yet (coffee can be such a bitch to get out of cotton, I knew from my own clumsy experience), so I took a risk and opened up Roux’s class schedule. She had French, too, but I wasn’t about to move her into our class. I wasn’t going to spend an hour every day listening to Roux translate “Why is your uniform so boring?” or “What do you have against accessorizing?”
I logged out and slid myself away from the desk and out of the dusty office just as the bathroom door swung open. The secretary wasn’t thrilled to see me in the hallway. “So sorry!” I said again. “So klutzy! I’m amazed I haven’t spent half my life in traction!”
“You better get to class,” she said. “You don’t want to be late.”
First period was calculus with Jesse. “No, I definitely don’t,” I said. “Good call.”
Chapter 5
After my first week of high school, I was ready for it to be over.
I was exhausted from waking up at five forty-five every morning (while my parents got to sleep in, ugh), tired from trying to navigate crowded hallways filled with teenagers, and annoyed with the amount of homework I had. Did they assign so much just to keep us busy and off the dangerous streets of Manhattan? It felt like a conspiracy to me, and if I saw the words “Make sure to show your work” or “Why or why not?” written on assignments one more time, I was going to have a meltdown.
I had seen Jesse Oliver a few times in the hall, but I couldn’t figure out how to talk to him. He was always nodding at people, and one time he even nodded at me (I can’t lie, I was secretly thrilled), but by the time I figured out what to say to him, he had already walked away.
My parents, by contrast, were slowly going crazy at home. It was obvious that they weren’t used to not running a job, so every day when I came home, they bombarded me with questions. Did you talk to Jesse today? Did you talk to other kids? What’s the geographical layout of the school? Does anyone seem suspicious?
“Everyone seems suspicious,” I answered that last one. “It’s high school.”
And at the start of the second week, I got an even bigger surprise.
“Parent-teacher conferences?” I said, looking at the piece of paper that had been distributed during first period. My parents had been assigned Wednesday afternoon at three o’clock. “Oh, no, this is not happening.”
“Tell me about it,” Roux said, coming up behind me. “It’s so elementary school. But hey, when you pay thirty thousand dollars a year for your kid’s education, I guess you want proof that people are earning their money.”
“When are your parents coming?”
“Oh, they’re not.” Roux examined one of her perfect cuticles. “They’re in London for the Frieze Art Fair. When are your parents coming? Do I get to meet them?”
Hell no was my first thought, but I kept it to myself. “Um, I’m not sure they can make it, either,” I told her, deflecting the question.
“They should come. It’s a really big deal. Like, whose parents care the most.”
“So if they don’t come …”
“People will talk about you just like they’re going to talk about me.”
I sighed. “Fantastic.”
*
My parents, of course, were thrilled that they got to finally do something. “Here are the rules,” I told them on Wednesday morning before I left for school. (They were up early that morning, those crazy overachievers). “You do not embarrass me.”
“And?” my dad asked. “What else?”
“That’s it. Consider that rule number one, two, and three.” I gathered up my bag and my coffee. “And please, don’t wear anything weird, okay? Just look like regular Soho parents. This is the most basic assignment ever. Just be yourselves.”
But even I knew the truth: in high school, that was easier said than done.
By Wednesday afternoon at 2:45, I was a nervous wreck. “Did you have a triple espresso or something?” Roux said as we packed up at the final bell. “You look all wobbly.”
“Don’t tempt me,” I replied.
“Here,” she said, shaking a bottle in my direction.
“What is that?”
“Xanax, duh. Never leave home without it.”
“Are you crazy?” I snapped at her, throwing a quick glance down the hallway to make sure no one saw us. “You could get us both suspended for having that here!”
“Oh, relax. I have a prescription.”
“You do?”
“No, I lied. It’s my mom’s.”
I shoved the bottle back in her bag. “Here. Go. Do something.”
“I will. I have a massage appointment with Rosie the Miracle Worker. It’s not her official title, but it should be. She’s way better than a parent-teacher conference.”
“Well, enjoy your relaxing life,” I said. “I’ll be here, dying of embarrassment.”
“Ta-ta,” she said, wiggling her fingers at me. “You probably won’t recognize me the next time we meet, I’ll be so mellow.”
“We can only pray,” I replied.
But when my parents showed up at school, I realized that I should have gone with Roux.
“Um, excuse me,” I said to them, “but what in the world are you wearing?”
My mom was wearing a Chanel suit a
nd taller heels than I had ever seen her wear before, making her an inch or two taller than my dad. A double strand of pearls hugged her neck, and her makeup looked professionally done. She had a wig on, a blond bob that hid her black hair and looked completely natural. I smelled perfume, too, something strong.
“Too much?” my mom asked.
“Too much perfume,” my dad told her, waving his hand and wrinkling his nose. He had a suit on and kept tugging at the collar, but his shoes were polished and his hair looked newly cut. They seemed to be the perfect Upper East Side parents I had never had.
“One problem,” I said, then stopped myself. “Actually, there are multiple problems, but this is the main one. You look uptown and we live downtown.”
“Downtown is the new uptown,” my dad said. “Look, my socks match my tie!”
“He read that in the Times Style section.” My mom rolled her eyes. “Maggie, fix your hair.” She reached out to brush a lock of hair off my shoulder.
They may have looked different, but they were still my parents.
They were suitably impressed by the school building. “Wow, look at this masonry,” my dad said. “What is this, prewar, do you think? Or maybe—?”
“It’s old,” I said, cutting him off. “That’s what it is. And it’s worth thirty-thousand dollars a year, apparently.”
“Is that a community garden?” my mom said, peering out a window. “Do they do organic?”
“Sure,” I said. I wasn’t the only student hurrying their parents through the hallway, though. Several other kids were herding parents into classrooms and looking just as mortified as I felt. “All the organic you want.”
My parents were due to meet with my French teacher, Monsieur McPhulty, whose name my dad had a hard time swallowing. “I’m pretty sure ‘McPhulty’ isn’t in the original French,” he had grumbled when I first told him, but when I introduced them, it was all “Bonjour” this and “Merci!” that.
“I didn’t realize that Maggie had French-speaking parents,” Monsieur McPhulty said, shooting a glance in my direction. “Her accent is, well, terrible.”
