“No. Blows up. Boom.”
I take the phone reluctantly. “Thanks,” I say. “I think.”
He hands me a black plastic block about three inches in length. Do spikes shoot out of it and slice up my enemy, buying me time? Or does it send a message to the aliens hovering above in their spacecraft that I’m ready to be transported off this rock? I’m almost afraid to ask. But considering some of Toby’s toys blow up, I hedge my bets.
“What does this do?”
“It charges the phone,” he says. “Like a battery. But way fast.”
“Oh.” Must get control of my imagination. Right now. He unzips the backpack.
“The pack is made of a virtually indestructible material,” he says. He keeps unzipping until the whole thing is laid out flat, a giant circle of fabric. “I don’t know what you want to do with it, but I think it’s cool so, you know, here you go.”
“Will it make me invisible?”
Toby frowns. “No.” Too bad. He begins to zip it up. I’m not very good at puzzles, and the one time I made an origami frog it looked like roadkill, so the chances of me being able to zip this thing back up are slim. I try to pay attention, but Toby moves too fast. He plops the pack in front of me.
“Don’t lose my stuff,” he says.
“I won’t,” I promise.
“You lose things, Abby.”
“I do not.”
“Your backpack? At the train station?”
“That was different. That was self-defense.”
“Whatever. I stuck a tracer on you at the Annex that night and you lost it. It was a good one too.” So it was Toby! I level the iPhone at him, finger on the gun app. He has the decency to look concerned.
“What you’re saying is none of my friends gave me up?” I ask. Toby shakes his head. “And how did you know I was going to bolt?”
He shrugs. “Tucker. Any normal person would have to consider running.”
“Thanks for getting me busted.” I sniff.
“I saved your life,” he says, equally peeved. “I did the right thing.”
“No you didn’t,” I snap. “I got away. Lotus Man was on the train and I was on the platform!”
“You keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.”
“Jerk,” I whisper.
“What?” he says.
“Never mind,” I say. If you can’t win an argument, go for mean. “So you just, like, hang out down here and tinker with electronics?” I ask. “I mean, you never go out in the field, do you? Or on missions like Veronica? You just stay home, right?”
“I don’t go out in the field,” he says quietly, closing up his hidden wall of gadgets. His smug expression evaporates, and I feel just the opposite of better. “I’m not allowed.”
He doesn’t even look at me as he leaves without another word. As I gather my gadgets into the backpack, I don’t think I have ever felt as alone as I do right now. After a minute, I follow him out and make my way back to the surface.
Chapter 14
Spy Training with Veronica: Night Number Two.
WHEN I ARRIVE AT ROOM unlucky number seven down in the catacombs, I find Veronica in a variation of the twisted lizard pose she was in the first time I saw her. But now she’s so twisted it looks like her head is screwed on backward. Her eyes are closed. It’s creepy.
“Hi,” I say. Can she talk in this position? Is she stuck? Do I need to call for help? She doesn’t answer but begins to slowly unravel. Once upright, she takes a few deep breaths.
“You’re three minutes late,” she says.
Well, that’s because Toby finally gave me a secret override code for the McKinsey House alarm system so I could actually exit through the front door. Of course, I forgot the code and had to go out the window again. It slowed me down. “Sorry,” I mumble.
“Tonight,” she says, “we work on lessons three and four.” I can hardly wait. Maybe those will include how to survive on no sleep or how to keep big fat secrets from my best friends? “Lesson three. Simplicity. Keep things basic. Don’t get complicated. Complication leads to failure.” I nod vigorously as if I have any idea what she’s talking about. “An example of simple but effective is Snake in the Grass.”
Huh? How did we go from simplicity to animals? Before I know it, WHAM, and I’m back to staring at the ceiling tiles. I really hate Veronica’s foot.
“Stand up,” she barks. I hop to my feet. “Now watch.” She drops down in a squat position with her hands flat on the floor behind her. She rolls her weight onto her palms and with incredible speed shoots her right leg out in my direction. The foot of my nightmares wedges between my ankles. When she yanks her leg back, I go down in a heap. Snake in the Grass. Wow.
“I can’t do that,” I groan from the floor. “No way.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Nope.”
She sighs. “We can do anything if we get out of our own way. Now you try.” I don’t want to. Even in practice I don’t want her to take it the wrong way. “Go,” she snaps.
On my first attempt I fall over backward. The second try I accidentally kick her in the shins. The third go is worse. I get my foot tangled up in her feet and then I fall over backward. It’s embarrassing. On the four thousandth try, I sort of knock her over. “Simple” does not mean “easy.” Veronica looks almost defeated by my ineptitude, but she takes a drink of water and regroups.
“Let’s try another one,” she suggests. “We won’t actually do it because I don’t want you to end up blind. It’s called Crow.” Blind? Crow? My head spins. “Come on now, Abby. Keep up!” Veronica stands with her feet wide. Her right elbow is up by her ear. She faces the padded wall and lets the elbow come down like a hammer. Thunk! She does it again a few times, fast as lightning. Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! “Ideally, you want that elbow in your victim’s eye socket,” she says. “But if you’re too short to reach the head, any soft place on the body will do. It packs some power. Just remember a crow pecking his dinner.”
I’m a little grossed out by the eye-socket thing, but I do better with Crow. After thirty minutes I’m quite confident I can defeat a padded wall. We sit on the floor and drink water. My muscles ache. “Have you ever used these on a real person?” I ask quietly.
“Yes,” Veronica says. I want details. I want to know what it felt like, what she was thinking at the time. Was she scared? Did she panic? But from the look on her face I can tell no details will be forthcoming. Veronica dismisses me. “I’m going to bed,” she says. “You should do the same.”
I follow her out of the training room and past the couch and the steel table and the clocks. She moves fast through the dark catacomb tunnels. She can probably do this with her eyes closed. Only when I can no longer see the glow of her flashlight beam do I realize she never gave me lesson number four.
“Wait!” I yell, my voice bouncing off the tunnel’s stone walls. “What’s the last lesson?”
Her light moves back toward me, and when she appears, she looks ghostly, like the Veronica creature I saw projected on the wall of Mrs. Smith’s office. I take an involuntary step back and hit my head.
“Ouch.”
“Number four,” she says. “Act normal. A normal kid is invisible to adults. At least kids like us.”
And I swear she sounds sad.
Chapter 15
Mrs. Smith’s Office. Where She Instructs Me on How to Explain the Unexplainable.
THE NEXT MORNING, I DRAG myself to Mrs. Smith’s office for a final meeting before boarding the plane to California. I look like a zombie. I’m surprised my fellow students don’t run away screaming. I’m not designed for Crows or Snakes or fleeing bad guys or buying time. I carry the pink iPhone in my pocket. It feels good there, like a security blanket but less fuzzy.
I knock on Mrs. Smith’s door and she beckons me in, eyeing me skeptically. I
don’t blame her. No one is more skeptical about this than I am. I have a lot of questions. For example, how is Jennifer going to know I’m in San Francisco? And how am I supposed to convince my friends that I’m going to a cousin’s wedding in California all of a sudden? They’re pretty smart. They’re going to know right off the bat that I’m full of it.
The Smith School for Children acts in loco parentis, which is Latin for “in place of parents.” The adults here take on the parental role and your classmates that of siblings. It’s all very cozy, but it also means it’s incredibly hard to get away with lying, especially a whopper like this fake cousin’s wedding. Mrs. Smith should know this. She went here, after all. She and Jennifer probably told each other everything. Bitterness rises in my throat. I get madder at Jennifer every time I think about her.
“Abigail,” Mrs. Smith says. “Are you listening to me?”
No. Not even a little bit. “Of course,” I say.
“You said you had questions,” she says impatiently. “What are they?”
“How is Jennifer—I mean, my mother—going to know I’m in San Francisco anyway? She hasn’t answered any of my texts, and when I tried calling her, the line did this weird beeping thing. And what about my friends? They’ve never heard of cousins in California before.”
Mrs. Smith gives me a thin smile. “You honestly believed she was going to text you?” At least I can tell this is not a question that requires answering. She continues.
“As for knowing you’re coming, we’ve put word of your travel out over our networks. Although we tried to be subtle. We don’t want all the crazies in the world coming after you, now, do we?”
All the crazies? “And you think she’ll know I’m coming?” I ask.
Mrs. Smith narrows her gaze. “Do you think a mother like Jennifer Hunter is not keyed into your whereabouts every second of the day? She knows what you have for breakfast. She knows if you even think about cutting class. She knows you have a crush on Quinn Gardener.”
Wait, what? This is insane! I open my mouth to say so, but no sound comes out. I flap my lips like a suffocating goldfish.
“Some parents helicopter,” says Mrs. Smith with a pinched expression. “Jennifer takes it to a whole new level. You just can’t tell. She knows you’re coming. Trust me.”
“Won’t she be suspicious?”
“I imagine she will be. Yes.”
“And?”
“That’s not our problem. We need to lure her out, and this is how we’ll do it.”
I don’t like the sound of this, not one bit, but before I can protest, Mrs. Smith moves on. “As for lying to your friends, that’s easy. You lie to one another all the time. Didn’t you tell them something about tripping on a carpet?”
“But that was different,” I protest. I did that because I was embarrassed by the truth. Then I got caught and ended up having to share the humiliating details anyway. In front of Quinn. This is not something I want to repeat.
“Was it?” Mrs. Smith says.
“Yes,” I say stubbornly.
“It’ll get easier with practice,” she says, a bit nicer. But I don’t want it to get easier. I don’t want to do it at all. I’m uncomfortable enough with the spy school secret. But Mrs. Smith is not the kind of person who you have a heart-to-heart with about your guilty conscience. I stare at my shoes.
“Do we need to run through your travel details again?” she asks, moving on.
“No.”
“Do you have any other questions?”
“Do you mean in general or about this trip?”
“What do you think, Abigail?”
“No,” I mumble. “No more questions.”
“Okay, good. Now tell me what you’re going to do when you arrive in San Francisco.”
“Meet Bronwyn. Get further instructions. Proceed as directed.”
“And?” Mrs. Smith prompts.
“Check in at the scheduled intervals.”
“And?”
“Don’t lose Toby’s toys.”
Mrs. Smith rolls her eyes. She really does! “Don’t worry about Toby’s toys too much. What else?”
“Be careful? Pay attention? Don’t talk to strangers? Don’t eat too much red meat?”
“No freelancing,” she says sternly.
“No freelancing,” I repeat.
“And I suggest you get some sleep on the flight. You’re going to have a long day.” This is the first thing she’s said that I wholeheartedly endorse. As I leave, she throws a “Good luck” at my back. I don’t turn around. Mentally, I’m already preparing for how to lie to the girls.
As I pass the Cavanaugh Meditative Fountain, I bump into Mr. Roberts. Literally. “Sorry!”
“Oh, it’s fine,” he says, steadying me. “Are you quite all right, Abigail? You look pale.”
I’m suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to tell Mr. Roberts everything that’s going on and beg for guidance. I’m confused and worried and unsure, and none of these are familiar emotions.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I have to go to San Francisco to a wedding. I’m just a little distracted.”
Mr. Roberts smiles. “San Francisco, you say?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“It’s nice out there. I’m sure you will have a good time. Try the sourdough bread. It’s delicious.”
“Yeah. See you, Mr. Roberts.” I have to go lie to my friends, I add silently.
Charlotte is in the dorm lounge, lying on the floor, with a huge biology textbook covering her face like a tent. Izumi is sleeping on the sofa.
“Hi,” I say.
“Abby,” Charlotte says from beneath her book. “Did you know the appendix is pointless? It just sits there at the end of the intestine and does nothing?”
“Yes,” I say. “Useless. Kind of like Tucker.”
“I guess I never thought about it.”
“Unless it ruptures, most people don’t spend much time thinking about their appendix,” I say, collapsing into a chair. The iPhone tumbles from my pocket onto the floor. In a flash, Izumi, clearly not asleep, has it in her hand. “This is cool,” she says, examining it. “But it’s weird-looking.”
I freeze. Please don’t push any buttons, I mentally plead. What if there are other glitches Toby just kind of forgot to mention? I do not want to accidentally blow up the McKinsey House common room.
Charlotte removes the textbook from her face. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Abby has a new phone.” Izumi waves it in the air.
This is bad. The thought of one of us losing an eye or our dorm going up in flames is becoming more and more of a real possibility.
“Where’d you get it?” Charlotte asks, leaning in for a better look.
“Um, my mom gave it to me?” Izumi ignores my outstretched hand, which is a good thing because it shakes. She’s peeling off the pink case. She wants a look at the guts. If I freak out, they will know something is up.
And I want to tell them. The words bunch up in my throat, desperate to spill out. But I made a promise.
“Hey, you guys!” I yell suddenly. “What to hear something crazy?” My friends jump at my outburst, and when they do, I snatch the phone back and slide it into my pocket.
“Jeez, Abby, we’re right here,” Charlotte complains.
“Sorry, but check this out. I have to go to California this afternoon.” I could be subtle or I could sugarcoat it as fabulous or I could manipulate the information in some clever way to make it easier for them to digest. Instead, I drop it like a bomb and wait to see what happens. And this is what happens.
“Like the state?” Izumi asks. She sits up on the couch and eyes me with suspicion. “Why?”
“Jennifer’s cousin is getting married,” I say. “And Jennifer’s been on this big family kick lately and decided I just had to
go. So off I go, I guess.”
Charlotte cocks her head. “Weird.”
“Totally,” Izumi says.
“Very spontaneous,” Charlotte says.
“Jennifer does this kind of thing,” I say.
“I guess you did say that,” she agrees.
“It’s cool,” Izumi says. “Anything’s cooler than here.”
“Exactly!” I exclaim.
“LA?”
“San Francisco.”
“Even better,” Izumi says. “So foggy and atmospheric. It’s like a noir movie set all the time out there.”
I wish she hadn’t said that. I don’t want to be in a noir movie because the girls always end up dead in those movies. I’d prefer a Disney identity-mix-up kind of thing where it turns out everyone thinks this is my life but really it’s not. A girl can dream.
“Do you want to borrow my blue dress?” Charlotte asks. “It’ll totally work for you.” I stare at her blankly.
“That would be great,” I say finally. Can it really be this easy? I’m almost home free. I’ve almost got this done! Charlotte puts the biology book back on her face. But Izumi eyeballs me.
“What?” I ask.
“I was just thinking,” she says.
“About?”
“Well, the timing of this wedding is pretty bad.” I start to sweat. Izumi is the smartest person in our grade, possibly in the world. She sees right through me, I just know she does.
“Why?” I ask quietly. My shoulders tense.
“You’re going to miss the Chinese History exam,” she says. “Mr. Chin is going to kill you.”
I hadn’t thought about that. Schoolwork seems the least of my problems. But still, it is a problem. “I’m sure he’ll let me take the exam when I get back,” I say with much more confidence than I feel.
Izumi narrows her gaze. “If you say so.”
But now that I think about it, what do I know?
Chapter 16
Mrs. Smith's Spy School for Girls Page 8
