“Abby,” Bronwyn says. “We thought it would be more realistic if you hung around the city with a friend. From the outside, it’ll look like two kids having some fun and seeing the sights. Does that make sense?”
A day with Tom? I nod. I grin. I try to compose myself.
“Sounds good to me,” says Tom with a wink. I go beet red. In reality, Tom is my babysitter, but who cares? He will be glued to me all day long.
“Now,” Bronwyn continues, “you two just do your thing. Wander around. Stay visible. Try not to go inside if you can avoid it. I’ll be on you the entire time. Keep your eyes open but also play the part: kids having fun.”
Tom gives a mock salute. “Got it,” he says.
“Sure,” I say. “Great.”
“Tom,” Bronwyn says. “The tracker?”
“Right.” Tom grabs a shabby backpack from the floor behind him and dumps the entire contents on the table, including a half-eaten Clif Bar, an apple core, a calculus textbook, and a green spiral notebook.
“Tracker?” I ask. “Do you plan on losing me?”
“Of course not,” says Bronwyn hastily. “But you can never be too prepared.”
I must not look convinced, because Tom tells me to relax. “Hey, Abs, we’re just two people out having fun.”
He called me Abs! I wish I could text my friends. They’d remind me not to act like a dork. I realize not only do I miss them, I almost kind of miss Smith right now. Back at school, it’s eleven o’clock and Charlotte and Izumi will be shuffling off to English Composition, dissecting any and all conversations with interesting boys that happened since breakfast. There will be at least some complaining about how much homework there is for World Civilizations, and Quinn will make at least one vain attempt to get Charlotte to fall madly in love with him. And Toby will sit back, watching the whole scene with a look of mild amusement on his face.
“Here we go.” Tom’s voice brings me back to this strange kitchen table three thousand miles from everything I know. I shake it off. As Mrs. Smith so deftly pointed out, I’m here to do what I’m told, and that’s what I’ll do. “How about a purple one for you?” Tom throws a purple plastic watch in my direction. I wrap it around my wrist and cinch it tight before realizing it’s not a watch at all. It’s a small computer screen with two buttons. As soon as it touches my skin, it greets me with a jaunty “Hello” and a mini burst of hearts and stars. I blush. Again.
“Okay,” Bronwyn says, “let’s get organized and get out there before the day is gone.”
A cold sweat blooms across my forehead. What if this all goes horribly awry? Lower Middles the world over will blame me for the failure of the entire operation. That’s a lot of pressure. I smile wide and steady myself. I can do this. Tom lays a hand on my shoulder.
“Hey,” he says quietly. “Don’t worry. We’ll protect you. I’ll protect you.”
I don’t swoon. I think seriously about it, but I don’t. I take a deep breath. “Okay. I’m ready. Just give me a minute.”
In the small bathroom, I brush my teeth and, knowing what I know about the San Francisco wind, pull my hair back into a tight ponytail. I don a Smith School baseball cap and cheap sunglasses. This is me, incognito. I return to the bedroom to find Tom pawing through my backpack of Toby’s toys. This is my stuff. Why is he touching it all? More important, he’s tapping away on the leopard-print iPhone like he owns the thing.
“Don’t play Solitaire!” I shout, making him jump.
“What?”
“Solitaire,” I say, grabbing the phone and stuffing it in my jacket pocket. “It blows up.”
“You should send it back if it’s glitchy,” Tom says. He picks up the headphones and examines them. “What’s with the pink leopard print anyway? It doesn’t seem exactly you.”
Does this mean he thinks I’m not girly enough for the phone case? Or that I actually like it? Before I can decide which is worse, he removes the small battery pack and brings it right up close to his face.
“What’s this?”
I snatch it from his hands and throw it back in the pack. “A good-luck charm,” I say. “Kind of like a rabbit’s foot, but not as gross.”
I take the pack from the bed and shrug it on. I should probably have kept it out of view. A good spy would have hidden her spyware under the mattress or something. But alas, I’m not a good spy. I’m not even a bad spy. I’m bait.
“We should go,” I say. “Bronwyn’s waiting.”
Plus, I might chicken out any second now.
Chapter 19
San Francisco. Where Tom and I Pretend to Be Friends.
WE HEAD OUT THE DOOR first. Bronwyn gives us a five-minute head start. Traveling west, we hit Broderick Street and turn right. The sun is bright and the fog that devoured the city last night has receded. The bay glistens like it’s sprinkled with diamond dust. We walk a paved path alongside a marina, where gleaming white yachts sway and tug at their mooring lines. I take a deep inhale of the salty air.
“Have you ever been here?” Tom asks. “San Francisco?”
“Once,” I say, remembering.
It was one of Jennifer’s courier trips where she dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night and plopped us on an airplane to an unknown destination that turned out to be here. We met a man in Golden Gate Park by the Conservatory of Flowers, a building that looks like a glass wedding cake. I wanted to buy tickets and go inside because a giant banner over the entry promised a thrilling exhibit about man-eating plants. Jennifer said I had to wait until later.
“But I’m missing school!” I protested. “Shouldn’t I be doing something educational at least? Man-eating plants are educational!”
“Meat-eating plants,” she corrected. “We’re waiting for someone.”
“That’s not educational.”
“Patience is a virtue.”
“Not one of mine,” I grumbled. I entertained myself by hanging upside down on the guardrail to the stairs, much to the horror of the many visitors tromping into the conservatory to see the carnivorous plants. Meanwhile, Jennifer scanned all their faces, back and forth, constantly and continuously. If she objected to my acting like a wild monkey, she didn’t mention it.
We waited a long time. The someone was an hour late, and this made Jennifer tense. I could tell because she gnawed on her cuticles, and she only did that when she was thinking really hard or freaking out about something. And if this person didn’t show up soon, she was in danger of running out of fingers to chew.
But he did finally arrive, and Jennifer handed him an envelope, which he took without a word and quickly left. The entire exchange took exactly ten seconds. My mother then flashed me a bright smile and said we could go see the plants.
Tom’s voice breaks the spell. “San Francisco’s the best city in the world,” he says with a grin. He’s cute but deluded.
“Have you even been to New York?” I ask, incredulous.
“Yeah.” He sniffs. “One time. It was hot and smelled bad.”
“You can’t make up your mind about a place after a single visit. There’s just no way.”
“Well, you’ve only been here once!” he protests.
“And I haven’t made any decisions about it one way or another!” I bark back.
We reach a stalemate and walk on in silence. Soon we arrive at a wide, sandy path separated from the bay by beach and scrub. The waves roll in smoothly, and I pause to enjoy them. I don’t get to the ocean much, but in this city it’s everywhere.
The walking path is crowded with people. Some are clearly tourists, puzzling over maps and freezing in the stiff cold wind. There are moms with strollers and joggers and more tourists on bikes, careening this way and that as if riding irritated broncos. It’s not the kind of walk where you can lose yourself in the scenery unless you want to get run over. Even the moms in their brightly colored w
orkout wear are intensely focused—baby strolling as competitive sport. I keep to the edge of the path and put Tom between all the dangerous people and me.
Plus, I have the added paranoia of thinking each and every person we pass wants to kidnap me or kill me or, I don’t know, do something terrible. I avert my eyes to avoid showing my fear. Tom clears his throat. It sounds like an attempt to reboot our conversation.
“So I hear you’re new to this whole thing,” he says.
I laugh. I can’t help it. “‘New’ is probably the right word for it. Last week I was a normal Lower Middle, I mean seventh grader, and now, well, now here I am.”
“Jennifer Hunter’s a legend,” he says.
Oh no, not again. Not the Jennifer was a superhero until you came along and wrecked it soliloquy. I’m not sure I can take it. Unfortunately, Tom sees my clenched-jaw silence as a sign to go on talking about Jennifer.
“There was one time,” he continues, “when she actually ran the length of a moving train on the roof, chasing a guy. It was in Switzerland or something. Going up a mountain! I know you see that in the movies, but do you know how hard it is to do in real life and not die?”
“No,” I say with a grimace. “I don’t. Because I can honestly say I’ve never thought about it before right this minute.”
“Well, it’s impossible! Only Teflon could pull that off. And she got the guy, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Anyway, I’m not supposed to talk to you about her, but I can’t help it. She was cool back in the day.”
“Apparently.”
“So what’s she like now?” he asks. “What’s it like seeing her all the time?”
I want to scream, but I fear that in this wind the effect will be utterly wasted. “She’s fine,” I say. “Normal. She likes movies.” I hope this is enough. “Did you know that as soon as they finish painting the Golden Gate Bridge, they start all over again at the beginning?”
“What?”
“Trivia,” I say, “about your city.”
“They’re putting up a net to catch the jumpers too,” Tom says. “It’s going to ruin the bridge.” He goes on about San Francisco politics for a while, and I watch the waves as we walk along.
We stop fifteen minutes later at the Warming Hut, a small bay-side building selling sandwiches, coffee, and hot chocolate, plus postcards, books, and toys to frozen visitors. It’s crowded with bodies, and Tom takes my hand. I experience an unexpected tingle up my arm. Maybe I can forgive him for dissing New York.
We push up to the counter and order two hot chocolates with whipped cream. A little kid crashes into my legs and I flinch.
“Don’t worry,” Tom says. “You’re fine.” I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or the kid.
We take the hot chocolate and walk out onto a wide pier that extends into the bay. A bunch of bored-looking fishermen cast lines into the water. At the far end, we sit on the pier’s edge, our legs dangling over the side. Sailboats and a dozen kite surfers cruise on the icy water. I’ve never seen a kite surfer before. They bounce off the surface as if untethered from gravity, holding on to a giant kite, feet strapped into a modified surfboard. They move much faster than the seagulls circling continuously overhead, zipping out of sight in an instant.
“Have you ever done that?” I ask, gesturing to one of the kite surfers.
“No,” Tom says with a shiver.
“Have you seen Bronwyn since we left?”
“No. But don’t worry. You’re not supposed to see her. Drink your hot chocolate.”
I take a sip. “Thanks.”
“I’m on an expense account,” Tom says with a grin.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure. Shoot.”
“What do you know about all of this?”
“Your mom being gone, you mean?”
I nod, fearing my voice will crack.
“Well,” he says, “Suzie called me yesterday and asked if I could do this today. Usually, I have more lead time when they send me out, so I was kind of surprised.”
“Who?”
“Bronwyn, I mean,” he says quickly. He casts his eyes down, away from mine. My stomach tightens uncomfortably. He definitely said Suzie. I try to keep my face neutral as I race through possibilities. The obvious answer is the Ghost’s people have kidnapped me and intend to use me for the same purposes the Center did. But the Bronwyn at the airport had the flower! And the password! Sure, she forgot to give it to me right away, but she knew it. But then again, she wasn’t at baggage claim and hustled me out of the airport in an awful hurry. What if I’d checked a suitcase? Suddenly, I have a terrible thought. Somebody’s sold me out.
But before I can latch onto this idea and totally freak out, my eyes are drawn to one of the kite surfers that dot the bay. Most of the surfers are middle-aged men, soft around the middle, with wet suits squeezing them a bit too tightly. Sausages with helmets, tufts of wet gray hair sticking out every which way. But not this guy. This guy wears a neoprene mask and looks like something out of a horror movie. He executes an amazing one-hundred-eighty-degree turn, bouncing over the waves, leaving a wake of spray. He’s moving so fast, flying through the air, ten feet above the water now on a hydrofoil board and coming right at us.
And then he’s on me like a seagull on an ice-cream cone and I’m dragged away onto the bay, still clutching my hot chocolate, the remaining whipped cream flying into the wind.
Chapter 20
Where I Get an Up-Close View of San Francisco Bay.
WHAT’S FUNNY IS I DON’T scream. It’s like when Veronica was beating me up and I started thinking about other things. Well, right now I’m thinking how beautiful the bay looks rushing by at an insane speed beneath my feet. Sure, I’m terrified. And freezing. But still, Alcatraz glimmers in the faint sunlight and the waves are dark blue rippling silk.
The man has me around the waist and he’s holding on tight. If he lets go, he’ll run me over. We’re moving fast, so much faster than it appears from land. So wrestling free is not an option. I crane my neck around to catch a glimpse of him.
“Stop doing that!” he yells. It’s hard to hear with the wind in my ears.
“Doing what?”
“Wiggling.”
“I’m not wiggling. Believe me.”
“You are. Stop it.” His voice is strained. It must not be so easy to hold on to me and not lose control of the kite or the board. We head toward the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s an incredible sight, and that’s probably why in disaster movies it’s always the first thing to get blown up. From this angle, it looms large.
The purple tracker slides down my wrist. If Bronwyn is not Bronwyn, then Tom is not Tom. I have terrible luck with boys. The cute ones are either not interested (think Quinn) or playing for Team Evil. Do Fake Bronwyn and Tom work for the Ghost? Are they in competition with the Ghost? Mrs. Smith said there would be others.
With freezing fingers, I peel the watch off my wrist and let it fly away into the bay. I’ve been kidnapped from my kidnappers by a kite surfer. This has got to be some kind of first. I come up with a quick plan: survive and escape.
“Where are you taking me?” I shout. Japan? Hawaii? There’s a whole lot of nothing once you pass under that bridge.
“Somewhere.”
“That’s not superhelpful,” I say.
“Stop talking,” he grunts. I’m guessing he’s working up a good sweat in all that neoprene. A ferry shuttling visitors from San Francisco to Alcatraz passes on our right. They look at us. Some of them point.
“Wave,” the man instructs. “Act like you’re having fun.”
The passengers wave back. Don’t any of these people know weird when they see it? The ferry slips out of view and we draw closer to the bridge. My feet are soaked and tingle painfully in the cold.
“So we
’re headed west,” I say, sounding oddly conversational in light of the circumstances. “Where are you planning on landing?”
“It’s not called ‘landing.’”
“I don’t know anything about kite surfing,” I say. “Actually, this is my first time. So what’s it called when you, you know, stop? You do know how to stop, don’t you?”
“You have a lot of questions.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“I guess.”
“How much longer?” I ask. “I’m freezing.”
“I’m not exactly having much fun myself.” He switches arms so the one around my waist is now controlling the kite. I think he groans.
“Sorry,” I say. “You could just let me go. I mean, once we’re on land and all.”
“Not an option.”
I didn’t think so, but sometimes when you ask for things politely, you get them. We pass under the bridge and head north along the jagged coastline of the Marin Headlands. Ahead is a beach tucked into a small cove. Even though I can see the San Francisco skyline over my right shoulder, there’s something about this location that feels remote.
Our landing, or whatever it’s called, is not exactly graceful. We’re ten feet above the water when the man unclips his feet from the board but doesn’t neutralize the sail, so we literally fly through the air and crash on the narrow, sandy strip. My ankles buckle with the impact. My kidnapper grunts, and I realize he’s working hard not to fall over and crush me. I scramble out from under him. He untangles himself, pulls off his mask, and swabs his sweaty face with the red bandanna tied around his neck. A big blue Rip Curl logo strains across his wide chest. He looks like he might burst out of the wet suit any second now.
“I thought that would be easier,” Rip Curl wheezes, bending at the waist, hands on knees. “I do CrossFit six times a week. I compete! And win! This sucks.”
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says miserably. “Listen, kid. Don’t try anything funny. I may look like I just do the heavy lifting around here, but I’m no dummy.”
Mrs. Smith's Spy School for Girls Page 10
