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

But I wasn't really listening as I pulled the tapestry aside and turned the tiny sword in the Gallagher Academy crest, which lay embedded in the stone wall.

"She might be in the ninth-grade common room," Liz was saying in the manner of someone who has to keep talking or else she'll fall asleep. "They have those really comfy chairs…"

But I just watched the wall slide aside to reveal the empty corridor. I listened to the sounds of silence echo through the shaft. I looked down at the place where Macey and I had left our disguises earlier that night—at the place where no wigs, no glasses, no trace of the girls we'd been earlier that night remained.

"She's here," Liz said. "She can't be…"

"Gone."

Chapter Twenty-five

"Tell me." Mr. Solomon's voice was steady as he sat on the coffee table in front of the leather couch in my mother's office. I didn't look around the room. I didn't listen as my mother spoke on one phone and my aunt on another. I didn't watch Liz and Bex as they sat in the window seat, answering questions from Buckingham and Mr. Smith. It was the quietest chaos I'd ever seen or heard, so I just sat there, trying to keep my tired mind from drifting too far down that empty passageway, chasing after Macey.

One floor below us, girls were gathering for Saturday morning breakfast; up in the suites, half the junior class was probably sleeping in. The news about Macey hadn't spread yet, but it would…and I knew it was up to the people in my mother's office to make sure it didn't spread too far; so maybe that's why Joe Solomon looked at me as if we were the only two people in the room—the school. His world wasn't falling apart. He was going to hold it together—I could hold it together. I just had to…

"Tell me everything, Ms. Morgan."

"The last time I saw her was last night."

"Everything."

"At eight forty-seven p.m. last night we were in town…at the football game," I admitted, expecting him to shout or at least look confused, but Joe Solomon isn't one of the best covert operatives in the world for nothing, so he just nodded and told me to go on. "And we saw Zach."

Maybe it was my overactive imagination, but I could have sworn that that made Mr. Solomon blink. I thought about the way he and Zach had rendezvoused in the train tunnel in Philadelphia. A dozen questions sprung to mind, but as badly as I wanted answers, I wanted Macey back more. So I said, "Do you want it verbatim?"

He seemed to appreciate the offer but shook his head. "Not now."

"Zach and I were talking about the Circle of Cavan—I figured it out, you know. From the ring and the sword?"

He smiled. "I knew you would. Go on."

"Macey overheard us. She didn't know she was related to Gilly. She wanted to know if that was why she was admitted here. She didn't know about any of it until then, and so she…ran. It was loud and crowded and I lost her." I couldn't look at him. "I'm supposed to be a pavement artist, and I lost her."

"It's what she does, Ms. Morgan." Mr. Solomon's eyes found mine, but there was a change in him somehow. "Running," he added. "Of course, technically, her pattern is to do something to get kicked out, but that's not an option now, so she's taken matters into her own hands. Do you know what I'm saying, Ms. Morgan?"

But sadly, I didn't.

"Sometimes people run… to see if you'll come after them."

I've seen Joe Solomon every school day for more than a year, but I don't think I'll ever really know him. There are times when he's one of the strongest people I've ever known, and then there are moments—like that one—when I think he might be broken, deep down, in a place that will never mend.

And then just like that, he became my teacher again. "Is anything missing from your room?"

I stopped for a second, closed my eyes, and visualized the space. "Her passport."

"No clothes? No money?"

"She has fourteen different credit cards and knows all the numbers by heart."

Mr. Solomon looked as if he wanted to smile, as if he wanted to laugh. "She also has the most famous face in the country right now, Ms. Morgan," he told me, not a hint of worry in his voice. "I think we can track her down." But then he read my expression, and the smile slid from his lips. "What?"

"Well," I said slowly, "remember how we had that disguise class?"

There wasn't time for yelling. It wasn't the place for mother-daughter lessons in regret. As our teachers huddled around us, I gave them details of the items Macey had taken with her. When I finished, my mother shook her head and started for the phone. Unfortunately, Aunt Abby wasn't as easily distracted.

"I know what I did," I said before my aunt could utter a word.

"Do you?" There was something deeper in her eyes. She wasn't just Aunt Abby then; she was more than Macey's protector; for a split second she was the woman on the train, but then—just as quickly—that woman was gone. "You went into town alone and…and now, come Tuesday, we are going to have to produce Macey McHenry, and if we can't, every agent in the Secret Service and half the FBI is going to descend upon this mansion, Cameron, and I don't know if even your mother can keep them out. They're going to pull back carpets and knock down doors until they track Macey's every step, and in the process, they might take my head for good measure. And meanwhile, she's—" Abby placed a hand on her hip, and for the first time, I saw a holster. Like smoke and fire, I knew that somewhere there was a gun. "She's out there. She's goodness only knows—"

"New York!" Buckingham shouted and banged down a phone. "A young woman matching Macey's description purchased a bus ticket to New York last night. And someone using one of Macey's mother's business accounts reserved a private jet to Switzerland."

Abby looked at me. "Her family has a house there," I said. "It fits."

Mom turned to Buckingham. "We have alumni in Switzerland?"

"Of course," was Buckingham's reply.

"Have them sit on her until we can get a grab team in place." Professor Buckingham turned to go, but Mom called after her. "And Patricia, tell them she's a hard target. Tell them she's one of us."

I would have given anything for Macey to have heard that. Maybe then she would have believed me. Maybe then she wouldn't have run away. Maybe then things would have been very different. But Macey didn't hear, and that was the problem. She was half a world away. On her own. And one look at my mother's worried eyes told me that we probably weren't the only ones looking for her.

As Abby bolted for the door, Bex, Liz, and I rushed after

her.

"When do we leave?" Bex said.

"We aren't going anywhere," Abby snapped. Through the windows I could see that a chopper was already spinning its blades, waiting for her. She rushed toward the staircase, but then stopped short. "She'll be okay, you know." For a second, Abby was her old self as she cocked a hip. "Trust me."

I know, scientifically speaking, that all days have twenty-four hours. One thousand four hundred and forty minutes. Eighty- six thousand, four hundred seconds. But even Liz admitted that the days that followed seemed longer, as we stared out every window we passed, expecting the gates to swing open, to see Aunt Abby and Macey coming down the lane.

But the gates stayed closed. The lane stayed empty. And Macey stayed gone.

By Monday night, a feeling was resurfacing inside of me like a virus that had been dormant for years, as I thought about when my parents would go away for days or weeks on end; before the days when I knew my father wasn't coming back at all. Walking downstairs for supper, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'm really great at disappearing, but Macey might have been a whole different kind of gone.

"Oops, sorry," someone said, just as I looked up to see Tina Walters running up the stairs. The sign above the Grand Hall told me we were going to be conversing that night in Portuguese; the aromas that filled the foyer told me we were having lasagna. But something in the way Tina looked at me told me that none of the junior class was feeling very hungry.

"You okay, Cam?" she asked, and I nodded, but for some reason I couldn't move out of her way.

"Tina, have you …" I started, then paused because I honestly couldn't quite believe what I was about to ask. "Have your sources heard anything?"

I wanted her to tell me that Macey was okay. I would have settled for a crazy story about a girl matching Macey's description who had been staking out an ex-KGB hitman in Bucharest. I needed anything but the sight of Tina shaking her head and saying, "Not a word."

She smiled sympathetically. "But no news can be good news, right?" she asked. "Everyone's looking for her."

But as I looked up into the Hall of History, all I could do was stare at the sword that still stood gleaming inside its case, a sharp blade cutting through time, and whisper, "That's what I'm afraid of."

I'm an expert on hiding. Not to brag, but it's true, and as I sat staring at my plate that night, something about Macey's disappearance didn't make sense.

"Both disguises," I said.

"What?" Bex asked, leaning closer.

"Both disguises were gone when we went back—the one she wore and the one I wore."

Then Bex grinned at me. "You thinking what I'm thinking?" she asked, and in a flash we were running up the stairs, Liz trailing along behind us.

The Hall of History was dim. My mother's office door was closed, but I didn't slow down until Madame Dabney appeared out of nowhere, firmly blocking my path.

"I need to see my mom," I blurted.

"Oh, Cammie dear, I'm afraid your mother isn't here."

"But I need to see her!"

"Well, I don't doubt that, but given recent circumstances, the headmistress has gone to see Senator and Mrs. McHenry to explain why their daughter might be…delayed … in attending the campaign's watch party tomorrow night. That is, if we get her back from Switzerland in time at all,"

Madame Dabney added just as Bex and I lurched forward.

"But Macey's not in Switzerland!" we blurted at the exact same time.

Madame Dabney stopped. She turned. "Why do you say this? What do you know?"

"Well…" Bex and Liz and I glanced at each other. "It's just that she took both disguises. And you've been looking for her in Switzerland for three days. I think the reason no one has found her is because she isn't there."

"Cameron, dear, I understand your concern, but a girl fitting Macey's description took a private plane to Switzerland—"

"But—" I started, but Madame Dabney didn't let me finish.

"Her passport was booked through. She's there, ladies." Madame Dabney patted my arm. "She's there. And I don't want you to worry. We'll find her."

Walking upstairs to our suite, I couldn't help but think that either Macey deserved to be called a Gallagher Girl or she didn't; that she was either good enough or she wasn't. We couldn't have it both ways, no matter what our faculty seemed to think.

I closed the door behind us and looked at Bex. "If you're Macey, what do you do?" I asked.