Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Page 23

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 into 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!
A track circled around the football field. On the other side lay the opposing stands, the opposing team. Macey and I started walking in that direction, past the concession stand, and ran right into Tina Walters.
"Excuse me," Tina said, stumbling a little. And then she looked at Macey. She looked at me. She opened her mouth to speak, but then, just as quickly, she shook her head as if dismissing some crazy thought.
"Ummm…sorry." I grabbed Macey and bolted away.
Macey looked at me, her contact-colored eyes wide as we both silently mouthed, Pop quiz!
Near the bathrooms we saw Eva Alvarez posing as a member of the other team's flag corps and talking to a middle-aged woman wearing an I [heart] #32 corsage that was as large as her head.
I heard Courtney Bauer's laughter from under the stands. Now I know, technically speaking, that a crowd full of Gallagher Girls is supposed to make me feel safe, but right then they weren't backup—they were highly trained operatives who could blow our cover at any time.
Macey and I stayed calm and kept walking, taking in the sights and sounds, until suddenly things felt…different. Again. I sensed the Gallagher Girls in the crowd, but also…something else. The game must have been going well for Roseville, because the home crowd was cheering; but for some reason I found myself thinking about another day and another crowd. But this time I didn't think I was crazy as my mind flashed back to Washington, D.C. This time, I knew what I was looking for.
"He's here," I muttered as my gaze swept over the crowd, no longer seeing football fans and cheerleaders, band members and aging former jocks.
"What?" Macey asked over the roar of the crowd.
"Zach," I whispered back.
"I don't know why he didn't kiss you!" Macey said with an exasperated sigh, as if she totally wasn't in the mood to debrief again.
"No." I shook my head. "He's here."
And that got my roommate's attention. "How do you know?" she asked, turning to take in the crowd. "Is it a pavement artist thing?"
"No," I said. "It's a girl thing."
Macey nodded as if she knew exactly what I was feeling. She scanned the bleachers. "Maybe Blackthorne is here for a CoveOps exercise too?" she offered, but I shook my head. "Ooh! Solomon alert!" Macey said then, coming even more alive.
Our teacher was by the flagpole. Our teacher was looking our way. It would have been easy to spin around, to try to hide. But luckily Macey stayed with me, quiet and still, as Joe Solomon's gaze passed over us.
Maybe it was instinct or training that made me freeze. Or maybe it was the sight of the boy standing forty feet behind my teacher, in the middle of the track, staring right at me.
Being recognized during a covert operation is bad. We're talking democracy (not to mention life) as you know it may cease to exist…bad. Enemy agents might try to kill you. Friends who don't have a clue that you're posing as a United Nations translator and using the name Tiffany St. James might totally blow your cover. But until that moment,
I didn't realize just how dangerous it is to be recognized by…
Your ex-boyfriend.
"Isn't that.,." Macey started, but I couldn't wait for her to finish.
"Josh."
My mind raced with all the reasons I shouldn't panic. After all, it was homecoming and it seemed like the entire town of Roseville had come out for the show. And not only that, but at that moment I looked more like Macey than like me as I stood there in my long black wig and blue contacts, and jeans that the real me would never wear for fun on a Friday night. But the hope I clung to the hardest, as I stood twenty feet away from my first boyfriend, was simple: I was still the girl nobody sees.
But there had always been one exception to that rule. And he was standing right in front of me.
"Has he…filled out a little?" Macey asked, squinting her eyes to see better through her fake glasses. "He seems…hotter," she added, as if she totally approved.
I wanted to say no. I wanted to pretend it didn't matter. But when he turned and started walking away from us, I did what any spy (not to mention ex-girlfriend) would do: I followed him.
I should have waited for Macey, but instead I found myself pushing through the marching band, which was lining up to take the field at halftime. I headed after the boy who was walking freely through the crowd—not hiding. No disguise. I marveled at the fact that there are boys in the world who are exactly what they seem.
From a pavement artist standpoint, following a boy like Josh Abrams is about as easy as it gets. After all, he's untrained, unaware, and utterly unconcerned about the Essentials of Elementary Countersurveillance (my favorite book when I was seven). And yet, something about that mission was harder than anything I'd done in a long time. Maybe it was the fact that I was on totally unfamiliar ground. Maybe it was the way the crowds crushed around me, making it difficult to follow against the current. Or maybe it was the sight of another boy who had come from nowhere and now stood blocking my path.
"What are you doing here, Gallagher Girl?" Zach's voice was low but strong. He gripped my forearm and ushered me out of the way of a convertible that was driving the freshman homecoming attendant around the track.
"CoveOps assignment," I lied. "You?"
"I thought you weren't supposed to leave school," he told me.
"Yeah, because you're so into sticking around campus these days. Seriously, Zach, do you ever stay at Blackthorne?"
But he didn't answer (which, Macey tells me, is a typical reaction for both boys and spies, so I don't know which he was being then).
"I had a feeling you might try something like this." It sounded like the most truthful thing he'd said to me in ages.
"Just tell me …" Zach started, and for the first time his anger seemed to fade. "Just tell me you didn't do this to see Jimmy."