Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

by Ally Carter

  "What, ladies"—he took a step, scanning the dim room—"is almost always tied to why. There are six reasons anyone does anything: Love. Faith. Greed. Boredom. Fear …" he said, ticking them off on his fingers; but he lingered on the last, drawing a deep breath before he said, "Revenge."

  I thought about the people on the rooftop, wondered which of those six things had brought them there. And why.

  "We have gadgets," Mr. Solomon said. "We have comms units and trackers and satellites that can photograph the wings of a fly, but make no mistake, we practice a very old art. Six things, ladies. And they haven't changed in five thousand years."

  Mr. Solomon turned back to the board. My classmates sat at attention, but my mind was spinning, going over and over what my teacher had just said. I gripped the edge of the table. I saw the classroom fade away. The world came into focus as I said the words, I must have known for weeks but only just realized.

  "They're old."

  "What are you going on about?" Bex asked. For once in her life she could barely keep up with me as I stepped from the elevator and started up the Grand Staircase.

  "We were wrong. I was wrong," I said, the words coming faster now.

  "Cam, what—"

  "Of course Liz didn't find it in the computer files. Going back fifty years wouldn't help. Going back a hundred wouldn't help. Bex, they're not a new threat!"

  In the foyer below us, girls were going in for lunch. The halls were alive with the smells of lasagna and talk of midterms, but my best friend and I were alone in the Hall of History as I pointed to our school's most sacred treasure.

  "They're old."

  Chapter Twenty-two

  "That's it," I mumbled, staring at the book on the table in front of me. "I've walked by that sword a million times. I should have realized as soon as we got back. I should have recognized it on the rooftop. I should have…I'm an idiot!"

  "It's okay, Cam," Liz soothed. "You were all…concussiony."

  "Thanks," I said, even though it didn't help as much as it should have.

  I looked at the etching in the ancient book. Every new student in the history of our school had heard the story of Gillian Gallagher and stared at that very image, but that day I didn't look at President Lincoln or the dozens of men who stood around him. I didn't even look at the young woman with the sword, who was moving through the ballroom with more grace and strength than a hoopskirt was ever supposed to allow.

  This time I looked at the man on the floor, a pistol falling from his limp hand, the empty scabbard at his side. This time I stared at the tiny emblem I'd seen a million times in the sword's hilt, barely visible next to Gilly's hand.

  "That's it," I said softly, shifting the book to better catch the light.

  Liz read the caption out loud: "Gillian Gallagher slays Joseph Cavan, founder of the Circle of Cavan. Virginia, December, 1864."

  "She killed him with his own sword," Bex said in awe.

  Then I dropped a satellite photo onto the open book. "The Circle of Cavan attempt to kidnap Macey McHenry, Massachusetts, present day."

  "So the Circle of Cavan…" Liz started.

  "Is alive and well," Bex finished.

  I looked at my roommates. "And they want our friend."

  I knew the first attempt to kill President Lincoln had really happened. I'd walked by the sword and thought of Gilly a dozen times a day for years, but before that moment Gilly's story had seemed like some fabulous dream. So, standing in the library, the fire crackling beside us, I couldn't shake the feeling that we'd just seen a dragon in the lake, a ghost in the labs. An ancient evil was alive in the world. I knew that Gilly had won the battle in the ballroom that night, and almost immediately she'd started her school, maybe because she understood the war was far from over.

  "You don't think they're after Macey because she's…" Liz started. "You know…" She dropped her voice to a whisper. "Gilly's descendant?"

  I thought about the day, more than a year before, when my mother had shared that information. And when I looked at Bex, the expression on our faces said the exact same thing: Absolutely.

  The people on the roof had reason to hate the school and reason to hate Gilly. Macey was the last true Gallagher Girl—their best chance at real revenge.

  I looked at the satellite photo again, the grainy black- and-white image that had been on my mind for weeks, and I thought about what Bex and Aunt Abby had said: The woman on the roof had been too good at her job to wear a ring that would allow her to be identified. But now I knew that's exactly why she'd worn it. I thought of the look on Abby's face as I'd studied that image in her room, and I realized my aunt had known that all along.

  For the first time in a long time, a lot of things made sense.

  But that didn't mean I had to like it.

  From that point on, everything—and I do mean everything— about our school looked different.

  The Gallagher Academy history section of the library? Full of books that didn't tell the whole story. That painting of Gilly standing at a window, staring across our walls? Now I had a whole different idea of what our school's founder had feared seeing in the distance.

  By the end of the week, I hadn't heard a word my teachers had said without reading between some imaginary line, biting back some question that I knew they would probably never answer: Who, exactly, were the Circle of Cavan? What did they want? Where had they been for the last hundred and fifty years? And, most important, as Liz and Bex fell into step beside me on our way to dinner that Friday night, what were we supposed to tell Macey?

  Because, believe it or not, "Oh, by the way, you know the guy Gilly killed? Well, I guess he's still got friends who are really ticked off about it, and they're trying to take their revenge out on you. Oh, and did we mention that you're Gilly's great-great-granddaughter, and that's why you were admitted to the school in the first place?" was harder to work into everyday conversation than you might think.

  "Is khabar ko kisi kitab ke andar daal dein, ya aisa kuch?" Liz whispered as we practiced our Hindi and ate our macaroni and cheese (the gourmet kind); and yet, as much as I appreciated Liz's flash cards, I didn't think planting the news in Macey's textbook was the best way to tell her the truth.

  "Usse apne pari war ke panch jani dushmano ke naam puchain aur phir ek naam aur jord dein." Bex offered, but I shook my head because the "Hey, Macey, just when you thought no one could hate your family more than you do" option didn't seem like the way to go either.

  The truth of the matter is, we might know fourteen different languages, but when it comes to breaking bad news, not even a Gallagher Girl can always find the words.

  "Maybe," I said slowly and in English, despite the teachers that roamed the Grand Hall making sure our Hindi had the accent we were all trying to master, "maybe we shouldn't…"

  "Tell her?" Liz asked, reading my mind.

  I don't like keeping secrets, which, given my chosen profession, is strange but true. But I remembered the way I had felt on my first elevator ride from Sublevel Two—that there are some secrets we keep because we can't bear to let them out, and some because it's better to keep them in. I looked at my two best friends and wondered which kind we were keeping now.

  "I'd want to know," Bex said simply, and I nodded, not surprised, but glad to hear it all the same.

  "I…" Liz whispered and leaned closer. "I think…" she stammered again, and I could tell that Liz the genius knew that the more information you had—the more data points you could plot—the better your conclusions. But Liz the girl, knew that ignorance is sometimes bliss.

  "No," she said finally with a shake of her head. "I wouldn't want to know. And besides"—she looked at me, her blue eyes wide—"if it were best for Macey to know, wouldn't your mom and Abby and Mr. Solomon and everybody…tell her?"

  I hate it when she's right. And unfortunately, it happens a lot.

  I felt Bex and Liz staring at me, and I knew that I was the tiebreaking vote. A girl at the senior table held a copy of a
newspaper; it rustled as she turned the page. The headline, "Tuesday's Presidential Race Too Close to Call," screamed louder than the voices of a hundred chattering girls as Macey walked through the doors at the back of the room with the rest of the ninth graders who had stayed late in P&E. She was smiling; she was laughing; the girl by the lake seemed farther away, and yet I knew that she was still inside Macey somewhere, and I really didn't want to see her again.

  "What's up?" Macey asked as she took the seat beside me. I didn't have a clue what to say or how to say it.

  Fortunately, Joe Solomon was the one who answered, "Pop quiz."

  "Now, I know some of you aren't on the CoveOps track of study," Mr. Solomon said, glancing down the table at the entire junior class, "but there are aspects of this life—of this world—from which you can never walk away. Ever. The fact that almost everything you say to almost everyone you love for the rest of your life will be a lie is one of them. So, if you don't mind a little extra work …" he said, looking down at Liz, which is kind of like asking me if I didn't mind an extra dessert, "plain clothes. Foyer. Twenty minutes."

  Ten minutes later I was running down the Grand Stairs, a half step behind Bex and Liz. The adrenaline that only comes from going someplace else, doing something else, being someone else for just a little while was starting to course through me again. Macey was beside me. I didn't have a clue where we were going, but to be honest, I didn't care.

  Abby was standing by the door, smiling a knowing, mischievous smile to everyone who passed. But as Macey and

  I stepped toward the door, my aunt's smile was totally not what we got.

  An arm. That's what I saw first. An arm blocking the doorway, reaching for Macey's shoulder.

  "Sorry," Aunt Abby said. "Not a secure location."

  I gave Macey a sympathetic shrug and tried to push past. But Abby didn't budge. "Oh." She looked at me. "I think you and your mother have an…arrangement?"

  I could hear the retreating footsteps in the blackness outside. I could feel the opportunity slipping away.

  "But—" I started. I didn't know if I was pleading with my aunt, or my teacher, or with Macey's Secret Service shadow, but I knew the situation called for some serious pleading with someone. "But this is an assignment!" I blurted. Abby just shook her head.

  "Sorry, girls," she said. "Sure"—she glanced at Macey— "I'll take a bullet for you, but that doesn't mean I'll incur the wrath of Rachel."

  Bex and Liz skidded to a stop outside and turned back to us, Bex's eyes asking what was taking us so long; but Aunt Abby turned away, into the darkness, without a second glance.

  "Hey," I said, running to catch up with Macey. "You okay?"

  She smiled. "I'm great." But she didn't sound great. Not even a little.

  "It's me you're talking to," I told her. "I can't vote, remember?"

  "I'm…" This time she really seemed to be thinking about the answer, and I knew there was a chance I'd get the truth instead of the party line. "I'm mad," she said finally, the words echoing down the long empty hall.

  "Okay."

  "And I'm sick of this." She held out the cast that covered her left arm. "This stupid, dirty, itchy…reminder. But apparently I poll ten points better with it on."

  "Okay."

  "And I'm so tired…" Her voice was softer then, her fight almost gone as she sank to the stairs. "I am so tired of being Macey McHenry."

  I sank onto the stairs beside her.

  "It could be worse," I tried, hoping my smile didn't look quite as counterfeit as it felt. "You could be left-handed," I said, pointing to the cast on her left arm.

  Macey laughed. "I could be stuck on a campaign bus…with my mother."

  "You could be your mother," I tried.

  "I could be Preston," she said with a laugh.

  I thought about it for a second. If Macey was going crazy living in the most secure building in the country, with Aunt Abby as her security detail, then the son of a presidential candidate had to be going out of his mind.

  "I'm so ready for this to be over," she said as if she'd just admitted her deepest, darkest secret. "I'm so ready for Tuesday."

  That was the moment we'd been waiting for—the opening I'd needed to tell her the truth about what was happening and warn her that it wouldn't end that quickly— that she wasn't going to stop being Gilly's descendant on Wednesday.

  "What?" she asked, reading my face. I'd come to that corridor to tell her the truth, to warn her, but Macey still had hope that Tuesday might mark the end, and I for one didn't want to take that away from her too soon.

  I found myself standing, thinking, moving.

  "What do you want to do, Macey?" I asked.

  "I want … I want to not be watched all the time," she said. "I don't want to be looked at by the people in town. I don't want to be looked at by my parents. I just don't want to be"—she turned her gaze toward me—"looked at."

  When you look like Macey McHenry, the urge to disappear might sound crazy. But not if you're a teenage girl. Not if you've been on the cover of every magazine in America in the last six months. And not if you're a chameleon.

  I was maybe the one person in the world who could understand, and maybe that's why she told me.

  And maybe that's why I said, "Come on."

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Did I know it was against the rules? Yes.

  Did I think it was foolish? Absolutely.

  Did I think it was worth it? Honestly? Yeah, I guess I did.

  Sometimes I wonder what makes me the Chameleon— why I like to hide and blend, why I'd rather be unseen than noticed. But as Macey and I walked down the basement hallway, I knew that being invisible was not without its appeal.

  After all, it had taken ninety minutes, but Macey McHenry had been successfully made under (not over), and now we were ready for the outside world. I glanced at the girl beside me. Her trademark blue eyes were hidden behind brown contacts and thick glasses. We'd added a faint trace of freckles across her pale nose. Her glossy black hair was tucked up under a curly red wig, and I knew that's all anyone who glanced at her would remember: big red hair and glasses.

  I reached for the old Gallagher family tapestry that hung against the stone wall, then looked at the girl I hardly recognized, and said, "You sure?"

  She reached for the small crest that was inset into the stone and twisted the sword, triggering the release of one of my favorite secret passageways. "You bet."

  Roseville always struck me as the kind of place where nothing ever really changes, but that night, lights burned in the distance, and a bright iridescent glow grew from the horizon as Macey and I walked into town. There was a sound, too, that came and went, a low rumbling, like a river. All around us, people were hurrying from restaurants, carrying big armloads of blankets across the square, streaming toward the light.

  "What do you want to do?" I turned to Macey. She was looking at a reflection in a store window of two girls. To the citizens of Roseville they probably looked like ordinary girls. People passed them by without a second look. The redhead in the glass was no one of consequence. She was unnoticed and unseen.

  She was like me.

  And she was loving every second of it as she said, "We follow them."

  Okay, as a pavement artist, it wasn't the toughest tail I'd ever encountered. The lights were strong and growing brighter. Dozens of people were walking in the same direction, down the side streets that led from the square.

  A pair of men were passing, arguing.

  "McHenry," one of the men spat at the other. "He's no better than the others."

  I looked at Macey, expecting to see some sort of reaction in her eyes, but her expression was as indifferent as someone would expect a sixteen-year-old girl's to be.

  "I don't care if he does have ties to Roseville!" one of the men protested.

  "You mean his daughter being up at the school?" the other man asked.

  And then Macey did something I'll never forget. She bumped in
to the man, actually made physical contact, and looked him in the eye. I held my breath for a second as Macey McHenry—the very girl he was talking about—stared at him with her contact-colored eyes and said, "Excuse me."

  "No, pardon me, young lady," the guy said, and then he turned back to his friend. He kept walking toward the lights.

  I knew we were breaking a promise to my mother, and that we were taking a terrible risk. But the look on Macey's face right then made it all okay.

  Then we turned a corner, and I saw the rows of glowing orbs, the waving American flag, and I heard the roaring sound for what it was. Not a river…

  Football.

  The Roseville football stadium was on the far side of town, nestled against the tall hills that rose from the valley just fifty yards behind me. In the distance, the band started playing. The sound echoed through the hills. The cheering crowd grew louder as we walked toward the chain-link fence, joining the stream of people that flowed inside the gates. Steel beams framed the stands. Specks of dust and debris would fall sometimes like a faint snowfall as we stood beneath the bleachers, staring out onto the field. There were uniformed officials holding big orange markers. A coach paced back and forth, yelling orders no one seemed to hear. Cheerleaders moved in perfect unison, their red pleated skirts flipping as they yelled and kicked. And behind them sat a small stage with five girls in crowns and fancy dresses.

  "Oh my gosh," Macey said, pointing to the girl in the center who wore a white dress and a tiara. She sounded as overwhelmed as I felt.

  "I think maybe she's their queen," I guessed, because, honestly, we were in completely foreign territory!

  Spies have to be comfortable in all kinds of social situations, but I don't think I'd ever been anywhere where some people were wearing tiaras and others were wearing sweatshirts. I mean, I'd watched football on TV with Grandpa Morgan, but never once had I seen any girls in formal wear!