by Carter, Ally
It was true; things were hard enough already.
“Hi, Josh. Hello, Dillon, so nice seeing you again,” I practiced as I paced the shadows of the sidewalk—waiting, not really thinking about what I had to do, but instead trying to figure out a way to accidentally-on-purpose kick Dillon in the head—hard.
Beep. Beep beep. Beepbeepbeep.
I glanced down at my watch and saw the red dot on the screen moving closer to my position as the tracker became a constant Beep-beep-beep-beep-beeeeeeeeeeeep.
I temporarily deactivated it just as I heard Dillon’s echoing, “I’m telling you, this is gonna be off the—”
“Hi, guys.” Okay, so my chameleon-ness wasn’t entirely gone, because it was pretty obvious they hadn’t had a clue I was there. Dillon even dropped his rope. (By the way, what kind of wuss needs a rope to climb a twelve-foot stone wall? I’d totally been doing that since second grade!)
But the fact that I’d caught him off guard didn’t stop Dillon from being super cocky (once he’d managed to round up his rope and all). “Well, well, well.” He strolled toward me. “There she is. How was school today?” he asked, as if he was going to be really clever and trip me up.
“Fine.” I swallowed. I didn’t want to look at Josh. If I did, I feared my nerve would crumble. More than anything, I wanted Dillon to pick a fight. I could yell at Dillon; I could scream; I could earn my Gallagher glare from him. Josh was another story.
“We were just coming to see you,” Dillon said, inching closer.
“Really?” I said, adding an artificial nervousness to my voice. “But . . .” I glanced between the two of them. “You don’t know where I live.”
“Oh, sure we do,” Dillon said. “I saw you Saturday. Walking back to school. With your friends.”
“But . . . I’m homeschooled.” And the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Teenage Drama goes to—Cammie Morgan! “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The streetlight above us flickered off and on, and in that half second of darkness, Dillon stepped closer.
“Give it up, rich girl. I SAW you!”
Behind him, Josh whispered, “Dillon . . .”
“Yeah, you don’t own this town, you know. I don’t care what your daddy—”
“Dillon,” Josh said again, growing louder.
Now I couldn’t help looking at Josh. I couldn’t stop looking at him.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. It was the admission of guilt Dillon had been waiting for. He just didn’t know it was for the wrong crime. “I’m so sorry. I’m so . . .”
“Cammie?” Josh asked, as if trying to recognize me. “Cammie, is it—”
I nodded, unable to meet his gaze through my tear-blurred vision.
“See!” Dillon said, mocking me. “I told you—”
“Dillon!” Josh cut him off. “Just . . . get out of here.”
“But—” Dillon started, and Josh stepped in front of me. He was trying to shield me from Dillon, but really he’d just taken away the best chance I’d ever have to claw the little jerk’s eyes out. (Literally, eye-clawing was going to be on the P&E final.)
“Dillon, just go,” Josh said, forcing his friend to back away. But that didn’t stop D’Man from smugly saying, “See you around.”
I wanted to punch and kick and make him feel as much pain as possible, but I remembered that no amount of P&E training would help me make him hurt the way that I hurt. Even at the Gallagher Academy they don’t teach you how to break somebody’s heart.
As Dillon walked away, I thought of the lies I had planned to tell Josh, and for a second I thought I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hurt him—then or ever. But just as soon as Dillon disappeared, Josh spun and shouted, “Is it true?”
“Josh, I—”
He stepped closer. His voice was harder. “You’re one of them?”
One of them?
“Josh—”
“A Gallagher Girl.” All my life, that term had been revered, almost worshipped, but on Josh’s lips it was an insult, and in that instant he stopped being the boy of my dreams and started being one of Dillon’s hoodlums at the pharmacy; he was ganging up on Anna; he was judging me, so I snapped, “So what if I am?”
“Humph!” Josh said then shook his head, staring into the dark night. “I should have known it.” He kicked at the ground like I’d seen him do a thousand times, and when he spoke, it was almost to himself. “Homeschooled.” Then he looked at me. “So what was I? Some kind of joke? Was it like, hey, who can make a fool out of a townie? Was that—”
“Josh—”
“No, I really want to know. Was it charity case week? Or date your local delivery boy month? Or—”
“Josh!”
“Or were you just bored?”
“YES!” I yelled at last, wanting it to stop. “Yes, okay. I was bored, and I wanted to see if I could get away with it, okay?”
Mr. Solomon was right—the worst kind of torture is watching someone you love get hurt.
Josh backed down, and his voice was almost a whisper as he said, “Okay.” We’d both gone too far—said too much— but we both knew then that there are reasons Gallagher Girls don’t date boys from Roseville. He just didn’t know that the reasons are classified.
“Look, I’m leaving tomorrow,” I said, knowing that I couldn’t have Josh climbing the fence that night or any other. “I had to say good-bye.” I reached into my pocket for the earrings. They glistened in my hand like fallen stars. “You should probably take these back.”
“No,” he said, waving them away. “They’re yours.”
“No.” I forced them into his hand. “You take them. Give them to DeeDee.” He looked shocked. “I think she’d really like them.”
“Yeah, okay.” He shoved the earrings into his pocket as I forced a smile.
“Hey, take care, okay?” I took a step, then remembered how he’d felt chained to one kind of life while I felt bound to another. “And you know free will?”
“Yeah?” he said, sounding surprised that I’d remembered.
“Good luck with that.”
Free will. I used mine to walk away—back to the life I’d been bound to, the life I’d chosen—and away from the boy who had shown me exactly what I was giving up. I hoped he wasn’t watching me go. In my mind, he had already turned a corner—hating me a little, allowing that to bridge the gap over his grief. I walked on through the darkness, but I didn’t look back.
If I had, I probably would have seen the van.
Tires squealed across the pavement. I smelled burning rubber and heard shouting and the sound of metal against metal—a door, I think. Hands were around my eyes, covering my mouth, just like on another night, on another street, when another set of hands came from out of nowhere. Autopilot kicked on, and seconds later my attacker lay at my feet—but it wasn’t Josh—not that time.
Another set of hands were on me. Fists were everywhere. I kicked—made contact—heard a familiar, “Oh, jeez that hurt.”
But before I could process what I had heard, I was on my stomach in the van, and someone was commanding, “Drive!”
I lay there, motionless, really ticked off, because, even though Mr. Solomon had been hinting for weeks that our CoveOps semester final was going to be a practical exam, I hadn’t realized how literally he’d meant it until Mr. Smith blindfolded me and bound my hands.
“Sorry, Mr. Mosckowitz,” I muttered, feeling guilty about kicking him so hard. After all, it was only the second mission he’d ever been on, and I kicked him in the gut. Plus, I’m pretty sure he’s a bruiser.
He wheezed a little before saying, “That’s okay. I’ll be . . . fine.”
“Harvey . . .” Mr. Solomon warned.
“Right. Be quiet,” Mr. Mosckowitz said, jabbing me softly in the ribs, sounding like he was having the time of his life.
Since it was a test and everything, I knew I’d better do as I was trained. I lay on the floor of the van, counting seconds (nine hundre
d eighty-seven, by the way), noting how we made a right-hand turn, two lefts, one U, and eased over some speed bumps that left me with the distinct impression that we’d detoured through the Piggly Wiggly parking lot.
As the van veered south, I was willing to bet my semester grade in CoveOps (which, technically, was exactly what I was betting) that we were heading to the industrial complex on the south edge of town.
Doors opened and slammed. People got out. Someone pulled me to my feet on a gravel parking lot, then two strong sets of hands dragged me onto a concrete floor and then into the artificial light and empty echo of a large, hollow space.
“Sit her down. Tie her up,” Mr. Solomon commanded.
Do I fight now? Do I fight later? I wondered, then took a chance—I kicked and I made contact.
“You know, Ms. Morgan, that was your mother you just hammered,” Mr. Solomon said.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” I cried, spinning around, as if I could see my mom through my blindfold.
“Good one, kiddo.”
Someone pushed me into a chair, and I heard Mr. Solomon say, “Okay, Ms. Morgan, you know the drill: there are no rules. You can hit as hard as you want to hit. You can run as fast as you want to run.” His breath smelled like peppermint gum.
“Yes, sir.”
“Your team was tasked with retrieving a disk with pertinent information. You were captured and are being held for interrogation. The retrieval team will be after two packages. Care to guess what they are?”
“The disk and me?”
“Bingo.”
“You can’t be certain that they can track you to this location.” I heard him step away, his feet scraping across the concrete floor.
“Are they Gallagher Girls?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Then they’ll be here.”
Fifteen minutes later, I was locked in a room. I was blindfolded and tied to a chair and thanking my lucky stars that they’d made it so easy on me.
They’d left me with Mr. Mosckowitz.
“I really do feel bad, Mr. M,” I said. “Really.”
“Um, Cammie, I’m pretty sure we’re not supposed to be talking.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.” I shut up for about twelve seconds. “It’s just that if I’d known it was a test, I never would have used one of the forbidden moves—I swear!”
“Oh.” A heavy silence filled the room as I waited for Mr. Mosckowitz’s inevitable, “Forbidden?”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure you’re okay. It’s not like you’re light-headed or seeing spots or anything.”
“Oh, dear.”
For the world’s foremost authority on data encryption, Harvey Mosckowitz was pretty much an open book.
“Hey, Mr. M, don’t worry,” I said, trying to sound all fake-calm. “It’s only a problem if the red splotches appear on the small of your back. You don’t have red splotches. Do you?”
That’s when I heard the sounds of a certified genius spinning around in circles like a dog chasing its tail.
“I can’t . . . Oh, the light-headedness is getting worse.” (I didn’t doubt it—he’d been spinning pretty fast.) “Here.” He ripped the blindfold off. “You look.”
Sadly, it was just that easy, and it would have been a lot easier if I hadn’t been afraid to use any of the actual forbidden moves (mainly because I like Mr. Mosckowitz, and I didn’t have written permission from the Secretary of Defense and all). Still, Mr. Mosckowitz was a pretty good sport about it.
“Oh, you girls,” he said in a very aw-shucks way, once I had him tied to the chair.
“Just sit tight, Mr. M. It’ll be over soon.”
“Um, Cammie?” he asked as I headed for the door. “I wasn’t too bad, was I?”
“You were awesome.”
The first thing I had to do was get out of that room. The disk wasn’t there—if it was, no way would Mr. Solomon have left only Mr. Mosckowitz to guard it, so I darted through the empty warehouse to an exit door, checked it for sensors and alarms, then rushed out into the shadows of the complex.
Outside, I felt my eyes adjust to the black. A little light escaped from the building I’d just left, but otherwise I was surrounded by nothing but old rusty steel, and dark, cracked windows. A cold wind blew through the maze, whistling between the buildings, blowing dead leaves and plumes of dust along the gravel lot. I squinted through the night, trying to sense movement of any kind, but if it hadn’t been for the glistening new wire of a tall chain fence and some very well-hidden surveillance cameras, I would have sworn the place was a ghost town.
Then I heard crackling static and a familiar voice.
“Bookworm to Chameleon. Chameleon, do you read me?”
“Liz?” I spun around.
“Chameleon, it’s Bookworm, remember? We use code names when on comms?”
But I wasn’t on comms! I was on a mission to break up with my secret boyfriend. I wasn’t exactly prepared for active duty. But then I remembered the silver cross that dangled from my neck.
Before I could even ask, Liz explained. “I got bored one weekend and decided to fix your necklace. And upgrade it. What do you think?”
I think my friends are both brilliant and a little scary, is what I think. But of course I couldn’t tell her that.
“So, how’d it go with your project?” Liz asked, and I remembered that half the school was probably listening. “I mean, were there complications or—”
“Liz,” I snapped, not wanting to think about Josh or what I’d just done. The time for crying with your girlfriends about a broken heart is over chocolate ice cream and chick flicks—not stun guns and bulletproof vests. “Where’s the disk?” I asked.
This time, it was Bex’s voice that answered, “We think they’re in the big building on the north side of the complex. Tina and Mick went to recon, and we’re holding here.”
“Where’s here?”
“Look up.”
Two days after my dad’s funeral, my mom went on a mission. I never understood it until then—that sometimes a spy doesn’t need a cover so much as she needs a shield. Crouched on the roof between Bex and Liz, I wasn’t a girl who had just broken up with her boyfriend; I looked at my watch and checked my gear instead of crying. I had a mission objective and not a broken heart.
“Okay,” Liz said, as the majority of the sophomore class circled around her. “My guess is the school actually owns this place, because someone has sunk some serious cash into it.” She pointed to a crude diagram, which my superspy instincts were telling me was made out of Evapopaper and eyeliner. “There are motion triggers on the perimeter. The windows are rigged to an alarm.” Bex lit up at the sound of this, but Liz stopped her enthusiasm cold. “A Doctor Fibs original. No way we’re cracking it in the middle of the night with minimal equipment.”
“Oh.” Bex deflated as if they weren’t going to let her have any fun.
Eva pointed a device that looks like an ordinary radar gun but is really a body-heat detector toward the building across from us and swept it side to side before saying, “Bingo. We have a hot spot.”
At least a dozen red images walked back and forth across the screen, but the majority of the red figures were huddled in the center.
“That’s our package,” Bex said.
“Doors are problematic,” Liz said, reeling off options. “Windows are out. You’d better believe they’re watching the heating ducts and—”
“You know what that leaves,” Bex said, her voice like a dare.
Liz looked at us one by one, realizing what we were all thinking—what our only mission option was—and that we had twenty pounds on her.
“No!” Liz snapped. “I’ll get tangled or decapitated or—”
“I’ll do it.” And that’s when I turned to look at Anna Fetterman—Anna, who had clutched her class assignment slip just months before as if CoveOps was going to be the death of her, was stepping forward, saying, “I’m the right size, am I not?”
And that’s whe
n I knew that Dillon was going to see Anna again someday, and then he’d be the one who would need saving.
Beep.
What was that? I wondered.
Beep-beep.
“Is it a missile?” Anna snapped, looking to the sky.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.
“We’re locked in as targets of a heat-seeking tranquillizer dart!” Eva yelled.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeep
“Okay, everybody, freeze!” a male voice behind us cried out.
Some of my classmates did as they were told. I did too, but for an entirely different reason. I’d never thought I’d hear that voice again, but there it was, saying, “I’ve . . . I’ve . . . already called nine-one-one. The cops are going to be here any—”
But the Gallagher Girls didn’t let him finish. The nine-one-one thing had been the totally wrong thing to say, because in a flash, two of the girls were on him, and I had to cry, “Eva, Courtney, no!”
Everyone was staring at me—Josh, who was surprised I wasn’t tied up or dead; and all of the sophomores (besides Bex and Liz), who couldn’t imagine why I would have stopped them from neutralizing someone who had such obvious honeypotness.
“Josh!” I snapped in a harsh whisper as I turned off the power to the tracking device and headed toward him. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to rescue you.” Then he glanced around at my black-clad classmates. “Who are they?” he whispered.
“We’re here to rescue her, too,” Bex said.
“Oh,” he said, and then nodded blankly. “There was a van . . . I saw you . . . I . . .”
“That?” I said with a wave of my hands. “It’s a school thing.” I tried to sound as casual as possible when I said, “Kind of like . . . hazing.”
Josh might have believed me if the entire sophomore class hadn’t been standing on a warehouse roof, dressed in black and wearing equipment belts.
“Cammie,” he said, stepping closer, “first I find out you go to that school, and then you tell me you’re leaving, and then I see you kicking like a madwoman and getting kidnapped or something.” He took another step, accidentally knocking over an old piece of metal that then skidded off the side of the roof and crashed to the ground below.
