"So right you are," Dr. Steve chimed from the front seat. "As I was telling Headmistress Morgan just this—"
"It's you and the street today," Mr. Solomon said, ignoring Dr. Steve. "Today's test might be low tech, but this is trade craft at its most essential."
He pulled a small box from beneath his seat, and I instantly recognized the cache of comms units and tiny cameras that were concealed within pins and earrings, tie clips and silver crosses exactly like the one I'd worn last semester.
"Watch. Listen," Mr. Solomon said. "Remember to communicate. Observe."
Kim Lee was struggling to pin an American flag-pin-slash-camera onto her coat, and then Grant said, "Allow me," and Kim batted her eyelashes and swooned a little (yes—actual swoonage) as he helped her.
"Pair off," Solomon continued his instructions as the van stopped. "Blend in, and remember, we'll be watching."
I looked at Bex and started for the doors, but before I could put a foot outside, Mr. Solomon said, "Oh no, Ms. Morgan. I believe you already have a partner."
It shouldn't have been that hard—not the brush passes, not the questions Mr. Solomon fired through our comms units at regular intervals. None of it. But as I climbed out of the van I knew this was going to be one of the toughest assignments I'd ever been on. Because, for starters, at eleven a.m. on a Friday morning, there isn't a lot of pedestrian traffic on the town square in Roseville, Virginia, and everyone knows pedestrian traffic is key when trying to covertly pass something between two agents.
Also, despite the bright sun and cloudless sky, it was still pretty cold outside, so I could either wear gloves and potentially inhibit my quarter-handling ability, or go gloveless and allow my hands to freeze.
And, of course, there is the fact that your partner is your lifeline during covert operations, and at that moment, my partner was Zach.
"Come on, Gallagher Girl," he said as he headed for the square. "This should be fun."
But it didn't sound like fun—at all. Fun is movie marathons; fun is experimenting with fourteen kinds of ice cream and creating your own custom flavor. Fun is not hanging out in the place where I had met, kissed, and broken up with the world's sweetest boy. And participating in a clandestine training exercise with a different boy who wasn't sweet at all.
The gazebo still stood in the center of the square. The movie theater was behind me, and the Abrams and Son Pharmacy—Josh's family's business—was exactly where it had been for seventy years. Things are supposed to look different when you come back, but despite the sight of my classmates walking two by two down sidewalks, everything was exactly as I'd remembered. Not even the purses displayed in the Anderson's Accessories window had changed; for a second it felt like the past two months hadn't happened.
"So," Zach said as he stretched out on the steps of the gazebo, "come here often?"
The loose stone where Josh and I had hidden our notes— my first dead-letter drop—was just a foot away so I shrugged and said, "I used to, but then the deputy director of the CIA made me promise to stop." Zach laughed a quiet, half-laugh as he squinted up at me through the sun.
In my earpiece, I heard Mr. Solomon say, "Okay, Ms. Walters, you're it. Be aware of your casual observers, and let's make those passes quick and clean."
I saw Tina and Eva walking past each other on the south side of the square; their palms brushed for a split second as the quarter passed between them. "Well done," said Mr. Solomon.
Zach tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and soaked in the sun as if he'd been coming to that gazebo his whole life.
"So what about you?" I asked, once the silence became too much. "Exactly where does the Blackthorne Institute call home?"
"Oh." He cocked an eyebrow. "That's classified."
I couldn't help myself: I got annoyed. "So you can sleep inside the walls of my school, but I can't even know where yours is?"
Zach laughed again, but it was different this time, not mocking but deeper, as if I were on the outside of a joke I could never hope to understand. "Trust me, Gallagher Girl, you wouldn't want to sleep in my school."
Okay, I have to admit at that point my spy genetics and teenage curiosity were about to overwhelm me.
Through my comms unit, I heard Mr. Solomon say, "Two men are playing chess in the southwest corner of the square. How many moves from checkmate is the man in the green cap, Ms. Baxter?"
Bex replied "Six" without even breaking stride as she and Grant strolled along the opposite side of the street.
"What do you mean? Why can't you tell me?"
"Just trust me, Gallagher Girl." He straightened on the gazebo steps, placed his elbows on his knees, and something more substantial than a quarter seemed to pass between us as he stared at me. "Can you trust me?"
A torn and faded movie ticket blew across the grass. Mr. Solomon said, "Ms. Morrison, you just passed three parked cars on Main Street; what were their tag numbers?" and Mick rattled off her response.
But Zach's gaze never left mine and I thought his question might have been the hardest of them all.
In the reflection of the pharmacy window I saw Eva drop the quarter in the open bag at Courtney's feet while, through my comms unit, Mr. Solomon warned, "There was an ATM behind you, Ms. Alvarez. ATMs equal cameras. Tighten it up, ladies."
Zach nodded and said, "Solomon's good." As if it didn't go without saying.
"Yeah. He is."
"They say you're good, too." And then, despite some very rigorous P&E training, I think a feather could have knocked me over, because A) I had no idea who "they" were or where they got their information. And B) Even if it was reliable intel, I never dreamed Zachary Goode, of all people, would say so.
"Okay, Zach," Mr. Solomon said. "Without turning around, tell me how many windows overlook the square from the west side."
"Fourteen." Zach didn't miss a beat. His eyes didn't leave me for a second. Then to me he said, "They say you're a real pavement artist."
Zach leaned back on the steps again. "You know, it's probably a good thing we got to tail you in D.C. If you'd been following me, I probably never would have seen you."
It was supposed to be a compliment—I know it was. After all, for a spy, there's probably no higher praise. But right then, as I stood in the place where I'd had my first date—my first kiss—I didn't hear it as a spy; I heard it as a girl. And for a girl, having a boy like Zach Goode tell you that he would never notice you isn't a compliment. At all.
I should have said something sassy. I should have made a joke. I should have done anything but turn around and walk away from the gazebo and my partner and my mission. Bex and Grant veered onto the sidewalk and headed straight toward me. I felt Bex bump into me, heard her say "I'm sorry" as her hand slid softly over my own.
"Nice pass, Ms. Baxter," Mr. Solomon said as I held the quarter in my palm.
I turned down a side street on the far side of the square, passed the pharmacy, and thought for a second about the one boy who had seen me—once—and I wondered if life were just a series of brush passes—things come and go.
Then I heard a familiar voice say, "Cammie, is that you?"
Then I realized that sometimes things come back.
Chapter Fourteen
Josh.
Josh was standing in front of me. Josh was stepping closer. Josh was looking at me, smiling at me. "Hey, Cammie, I thought that was you."
Now, I know I'm new to this whole ex-girlfriend thing, but I'm pretty sure exes aren't supposed to talk to each other. In fact, I'm pretty sure exes are supposed to hide when they see each other, which totally sounded like a great idea to me, because, well, hiding's what I do best.
But Josh had seen me. Josh always saw me.
"Cammie?" Josh said again. "Are you okay?"
I honestly didn't have a clue how to answer, because, on the one hand, Josh was there—talking to me! On the other hand, I had broken up with him. And lied to him. And the last time I'd seen him he'd shown up during a CoveOps exercise, driven a forklift through a wall, and had his memory modified, so okay wasn't necessarily the word the came to mind when describing how I felt right then.
Spies are good at multitasking—we observe and we process, we calculate and we lie, but I didn't think it was possible to feel so happy, scared, and generally awkward all at the same time, so I muttered, "Hi, Josh," and tried to keep my voice from cracking.
"What are you doing here?" Josh asked, then looked up and down the narrow street as if he were being followed (which, when you think about it, wasn't all that far-fetched).
"Oh, it's a … school thing." At the word school, he recoiled slightly. I looked down at the uniform that—until that moment—Josh had never seen me wear. "So, how have you been?"
"Okay. How about you?"
"Okay," I said, too, because, even though I could have told Josh a lot of things in a lot of different languages, the things I most wanted to say were the very things that neither the spy in me nor the girl in me could ever let him hear.
"So we're both okay," Josh said. He forced a smile. "Good for us."
Oh my gosh, could this moment be any more awkward, I thought—just as… you guessed it… the moment got a lot more awkward.
"Josh." The voice was soft and familiar. "Josh, your dad said he could …" The voice trailed off, and I saw one of Josh's oldest friends step out of the pharmacy's side door.
DeeDee's short blond hair did a little flippy thing where it stuck out of the bottom of her pink hat. Which matched her pink scarf. And her pink mittens. Pink was definitely DeeDee's signature color. "Oh my gosh, Cammie! It's great to see you!" she exclaimed.
She paused and studied my uniform for a second, as if remembering that almost everything I'd told her last semester had been a lie. And then, despite everything, DeeDee hugged me.
"Hi, DeeDee," I said, forcing a smile. "It's really … good … to see you, too." And it would have been if I hadn't noticed something just then that had nothing to do with being a spy on a training op and everything to do with being an ex-girlfriend.
DeeDee and Josh were standing too straight and trying too hard not to touch. A panicked look passed between them that screamed, We've been caught. And, Do you think she'll know?
It didn't take a genius to look at them together—to know that Josh and DeeDee were no longer just friends.
Spies don't train so that we'll always know what to think; we train so that in times like this we don't have to think; so that our bodies will go on cruise control and do the right things for us. My mouth smiled. My lungs kept breathing. I maintained cover, even when I heard Mr. Solomon's voice in my ear saying, "Okay, Ms. Morgan, let's see you hand off."
"We're … I mean…I'm…" DeeDee corrected quickly, as if trying to hide the fact that in the past few weeks she'd lost her single-pronoun status. "I'm on the committee for the spring fling—it's a dance…and you know…kind of a big deal…" She was rambling, unsteadied, which is pretty common for people in deep cover for the first time. "And Josh is helping me get businesses to donate door prizes and stuff. For the fling. Next Friday night. And—"