Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover (Gallagher Girls 3)

The shift in her had been effortless, as if her thousand- watt smile was attached to a switch that the fates kept flipping off and on. Sure, I might have been the CIA legacy, but right then it was obvious that Macey knew as much about secret identities, hidden agendas, and covert alliances as anyone I'd ever known.

"So," I started, "what's new with you?"

She pulled a neatly typed piece of paper from her pocket. "Six a.m.: appear on national morning shows. Nine a.m.: get fitted for navy suits." Macey leaned closer and added in a whisper, "Evidently, red makes me look trampy." She resumed her usual posture and walked faster, the sloping ramp leading us closer and closer to a pair of metal doors at the end of the tunnel. "Eleven a.m.," she continued, "fun, family bonding with Mom and Dad."

Macey stopped. She rested her hands on the metal handles.

"So, you know," she said as she pushed open the doors of the single largest room I've ever seen, "the usual."

Chairs—thousands of empty chairs—spread across the arena floor. Signs bearing the names of all the states hung above them. We started out in Oregon, then walked through Delaware and past Kentucky. Stands rose high before us. I craned my head upward, scanning the skyboxes that circled the arena, boasting the logos of every news outlet known to man.

Macey and I stood there for a long moment, alone for the first time. Maybe that's why she felt safe to whisper, "Thanks for coming, Cam."

Her father's face was on the cover of every magazine in America. She was about to be the belle of the country's biggest ball. Probably every girl in the country would have traded places with her, but I saw the misery in her eyes as she stood lost inside that massive space, and I knew why I was there. I remembered that a Gallagher Girl is only as good as her backup.

"Let's get this over with and get back to school, okay?" I said.

"Okay," she replied. I could have sworn she almost smiled.

And she might have if we hadn't been interrupted by the sound of footsteps from behind us and a voice saying, "Hello, ladies."

I don't know about you, but there are certain assumptions I tend to make about a teenage boy who insists on calling teenage girls "ladies." You expect him to be handsome. You expect him to be slick. The kind of guy who owns more hair styling products than you do.

But Preston Winters was…not.

He was about Macey's height, but I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say I'm pretty sure Liz could have taken him in a fistfight. His tailored suit hung from his thin frame like he was a kid playing dress-up, which wasn't much of a stretch considering the fact that he was wearing a Spider-Man wristwatch.

"Quick question," Macey whispered. "When your mom said that we weren't supposed to use any Protection and Enforcement moves this summer, that didn't apply to presidential candidates' sons, did it?"

"I think it might apply especially to them."

I'm not sure if it was the presence of the Secret Service or the classified nature of our sisterhood, but something made Macey take a deep breath and smile (and whisper a really bad word in Portuguese).

"You're looking very…patriotic…, today, Ms. McHenry," Preston said, looking Macey up and down.

I glanced at Macey's red, white, and blue sweater set (I know…Macey was wearing a sweater set!) and bit back a laugh.

"I don't believe we've met," the boy said, turning to me and holding out his hand. "I'm Preston. You must be—"

"Busy," Macey said, trying to pull me away.

"Cammie," I finished, resisting my roommate's pull long enough to shake Preston's hand. "The roommate," I offered.

He bowed slightly forward at the waist and said, "It's nice to meet you, Cammie the roommate—"

Before he could finish I heard a shrill voice cry, "McHenry family, stage left!" A trim woman was walking onto the stage, Macey's mom and dad following closely behind her. She had a clipboard. And little horn-rimmed glasses hanging from a chain around her neck. And not one but two pencils stuck in the massive pile of hair on the top of her head.

"Winters family, stage right!"

As the governor of Vermont and his wife took their places, I couldn't help but notice that one of the most powerful men in the country looked absolutely terrified of the woman with the clipboard.

"McHenry family!" the woman called again. "We're missing—"

"Here I am," Macey said, dashing toward the stage.

Her mother rolled her eyes. Her father checked his watch. But Clipboard Lady just said, "Excellent! We can't have a new Camelot without our young people. Just look at those bright shiny faces."

"Actually, I owe my complexion to your company, Mrs. McHenry." The entire group seemed surprised to hear Preston speaking—especially Preston. But instead of shutting up, he rambled on. "That new blemish reduction cream is…wow. Good job," he added with a self-conscious nod. Clipboard Lady glared at him, and it was pretty obvious that the shining faces were supposed to be seen and not heard. "I'll be standing over here now," Preston said, taking his place beside his parents.

The candidates took turns behind a podium draped with what looked like every red, white, and blue piece of fabric east of the Mississippi. Macey stayed in the center of it all, never shrinking from the spotlight, while I eased to the back of the arena and took my place among the shadows.

Number of times Clipboard Lady made Governor Winters and Macey's dad practice shaking hands and then turn to wave at the imaginary crowd: 14

Number of times Macey glared at her mother: 26

Number of times Preston tried to catch Macey's attention and she totally ignored him: 27

Number of times Macey had to practice a "spontaneous" dip while dancing with her father: 5

Number of minutes I had to sit alone in that enormous arena, wondering if freedom and democracy were always this well rehearsed: 55

By noon, Clipboard Lady was running through things one final time.

"At exactly 8:04 the music will come up." Clipboard Lady raised her hands dramatically. "At this point," she said, studying the candidates and their families over her dark- rimmed glasses, "I recommend spontaneous dancing."

Preston smiled at Macey. Macey shuddered.

"Balloons will fall at 8:06. Celebrate, celebrate. Dance, dance. Fade to commercial."

"All done?" I asked when Macey appeared beside me a minute later. She looked more relieved than I've ever seen her. (And that's including the time Dr. Fibs announced that he wouldn't be needing her to help him with his bunion- pads-as-weapons experiment. Which, needless to say, is pretty darn relieved.)

"Let's go," Macey told me, but we both must have gotten a little bit sloppy over summer vacation, because Preston was already on our tail.

"So, can I interest you ladies in some midday refreshment? I hear the Hawaii delegation might be roasting a big pig." At that point I might have felt sorry for Preston because that was maybe the dorkiest thing I'd ever heard. But Preston didn't shy away from his dorkiness—he embraced it. No part of Preston Winters felt sorry for himself. He was the only person I'd ever met who was completely without a cover. And I liked him for it.

"Sorry, Preston," Macey said as she grabbed my arm and pointed me toward the doors. She waved her well-worn itinerary in front of him. "Duty calls."

But if there's one thing that living with the child of a career politician has taught me, it's that they never take no for an answer.

"Hey," he said. "Yeah. Itineraries. Doing our part. That's great." We were ten steps ahead of him, but for a skinny guy he was really pretty fast. And persistent. "I'll walk with."

Since there were two Secret Service agents flanking us, and a news crew setting up for a live feed, Macey must have thought twice about stopping him. Instead she pushed against the metal doors again, and soon we were retracing our steps through the underground tunnel.

An older man with crazy white hair and wild eyebrows nearly ran me over, mumbling a very southern, "Excuse me, miss." A pair of women wearing "Washingtonians for Winters" T-shirts practically bowed in front of Preston, but he just kept pace beside us, almost jogging to keep up.

"So, you ladies go to the same school, I take it?" Preston gasped. "Are all the women of the Gallagher Academy as striking as the two of you?"

Macey spun on him. "Actually, striking is what we do best."

"So, Preston," I said, eager to change the subject. We turned down the dingy narrow corridor that had taken me to Macey that morning. "You must be excited…about your dad. First son. All that."

"Oh, yeah," Preston said. "I'm very excited about my father's plan for America."

He might have been a politician's son, but I was a spy's daughter, so I knew a lie when I heard one. As we reached the service elevator, I watched Macey frantically punch the button, saw her mentally planning ways to keep Preston out, but all I could do was think about another boy and another elevator, and remember that there are some things even a Gallagher Girl can't keep from sneaking up on her.

As the doors slid open, we all climbed on. It was tight fit, so one of the Secret Service agents held back.

"This is Charlie, by the way," Preston said, gesturing to the man who seemed to take up more than his fair share of the small space. "Charlie's been with me since…when was it? Missouri, I think?"

The door slid closed. Charlie didn't say a word. And beneath his breath, I heard Preston fill the awkward silence with a whisper, "Good times."

The ride to the top seemed slightly longer this time. I should have wondered why, but I didn't—not until I heard the ding and saw the doors slide open onto a space that I was certain I had never seen before.

We might as well have been in a different country— much less a different building—as we stepped into the fluorescent glare of a room that had no red carpets, no rushing interns or patient guards. A room-service cart that was missing two wheels sat along one wall. There were laundry carts and old headboards. Massive machines churned, filling the space with loud noise and an almost unbearable heat.

"Did you hit the wrong button?" I asked, looking at Macey.

"It says 12:05: film promotional video. Service elevator. Level R." She pointed to the big R that had been painted on the wall in front of us.

I glanced at Charlie, who hadn't said a word since we left the convention center floor, but he didn't hesitate to hold up his sleeve and say, "Control, I'm with Peacock and Mad Dog—"

Beside me, Preston raised his eyebrows and whispered, "I picked that myself."

But Charlie carried on. "We're on Level R. Are they filming the video here, or has that been changed?" He looked at me. "They're checking."

The air was hot and stale, the room way too small to be an entire floor. A door with a small window was at the far end, so I wasn't surprised to hear Macey say, "I bet we're supposed to be out here," and see her push out into the light.

There are many things a Gallagher Girl has to be: adventurous, daring, and totally unafraid of heights, to name a few. And all of those came in handy as Macey, Preston, and I stepped out onto the hotel's roof.