Yeah, that's right. My first covert operations mission was also my first wet T-shirt contest, and as I stood there shivering, I knew it would probably be my last of both. People were rushing toward me, offering towels, asking if they could give me a ride home.
Yeah, I'm stealthy, I thought, as I thanked them as unmemorably as possible and darted away. Halfway down the sidewalk, I pulled a soggy twenty-dollar bill from my pocket, bought a Go Pirates! sweatshirt, and pulled it on.
In my ear, the comms unit had gone from crackling static to dense nothing, and I realized with a thud that my little silver cross, though state-of-the-art, wasn't the waterproof edition. Bex's band of football jocks strolled by, but not a single eye looked my way. As a girl, I wouldn't have minded a little corner-of-the-eye checking out, but as a spy, I was totally relieved that the whole drowned-chic look didn't undermine my covertness too much. I walked toward the funnel-cake stand, knowing that at any minute I could turn the corner on disaster—and I guess in a way, I did.
Bex and Liz were sitting together on a bench as Mr. Smith paced before them, and boy, was he scary just then. His new face had always seemed strong, but I hadn't appreciated its hard lines until he leaned over Liz and yelled, "Ms. Sutton!"
Liz started shrinking, but Bex crossed her arms and looked totally bored.
"I want to know what you are doing here!" Smith demanded.
"Ms. Baxter"—he turned to Bex—"you are going to tell me why you and Ms. Sutton have left campus. You are going to explain why you've been following me for thirty minutes, and …" I watched his expression change as something dawned on him. "And you are going to tell me where Joe Solomon is right now."
Bex and Liz looked at each other for a long time before Bex turned back to Mr. Smith. "I had a craving for a corn dog."
Well, I have already pointed out the corn dog inadequacy of the Gallagher Academy food service team, but Mr. Smith didn't buy her argument, which was just as well. He wasn't supposed to. He'd heard her real message loud and clear—Bex and Liz weren't talking.
Those are my girls.
Then I remembered that I was probably supposed to be doing something! After all, the mission wasn't over yet—not really. There was still hope. Surely I could salvage some of it. Surely…
I was really starting to hate Joe Solomon. First he sends us out to tail a guy who was almost bound to catch at least one of us, and then he doesn't teach us what to do when we get caught! Was I supposed to cause a diversion and hope Bex and Liz could slip away? Was I supposed to find a weapon and jump Smith from behind? Or was I simply supposed to stroll across the street and take my rightful place beside them on that bench of shame?
From the corner of my eye, I saw the Overnight Express truck cruise by. It could have stopped and an army could have swarmed in and saved the day, but that didn't happen; and I instantly knew why. The street was full of people who could never know the power of the girls on the bench. I could have saved the sisters, but not at the risk of the sisterhood.
"Get up," Mr. Smith told Liz. He tossed a Dr Pepper bottle into a nearby trash can. "We'll finish this discussion back at school."
I stayed in the shadows and watched Bex and Liz walk by. You know you're stealthy if your two best friends in the universe can pass within twenty feet of you and don't have a clue you're there. But it was for the best, I figured. After all, I was still a girl on a mission.
I waited until they turned the corner, then I strolled across the street. No one looked twice at me. Not a soul stopped to ask my name or tell me how much I looked like my mother. I didn't have to see the look of instant, uncomfortable sadness in anyone's eyes as they realized I was Cammie Morgan—one of the Morgans—that I was the girl with the dead dad. On the streets of Roseville I was just a regular girl, and it felt so good I almost didn't want to pull a Kleenex from my pocket, reach into the trash can, and carefully retrieve the bottle Mr. Smith had thrown away—but I did it anyway.
"Mission accomplished," I whispered. Then I turned, knowing it was time to go back to the world where I could be invisible, but never unknown.
And that's when I saw him—a boy across the street— seeing me.
Chapter Seven
In shock, I dropped the bottle on the street, but it didn't break. As it rolled toward the curb, I bolted forward and tried to pick it up, but another hand beat me to it—a hand that was pretty big and decidedly boylike, and I'd be lying if I said there wasn't some inadvertent pinkie-brushing, which led to a tingly sensation similar to the one I get when we use Dr. Fibs's temporary fingerprint modification cream (only way better).
I stood up, and the boy extended the bottle toward me. I took it.
"Hi, there." He had one hand in the pocket of his baggy jeans, pressing down, as if daring the pants to slide off his hips and gather around his Nikes that had that too-white, first-day-of-school glow about them. "So, do you come here often?" he asked in a slightly self-mocking way. I couldn't help myself—I smiled. "See, you don't even have to answer that, because I know all the trash cans in town, and while this is a very nice trash can, it doesn't look like the kind of trash can a girl like you would normally scavenge from." I opened my mouth to protest, but he went on. "Now, the trash cans on Seventh Street, those are some very nice trash cans."
Mr. Solomon's lesson from the first day of class came back to me, so I noted the details: the boy was about five foot ten, and he had wavy brown hair, and eyes that would put even Mr. Solomon's to shame. But the thing I noticed most was how easily he smiled. I wouldn't even mention it except it seemed to define his entire face—eyes, lips, cheeks. It wasn't especially toothy or anything. It was just easy and smooth, like melting butter. But then again, I wasn't the most impartial judge of such things. After all, he was smiling at me.
"That must not be an ordinary bottle," he said (while smiling, of course).
I realized how ridiculous it must have looked. Under the warmth of that smile, I forgot my legend, my mission— everything—and I blurted the first thing that popped into my mind, "I have a cat!"
He raised his eyebrows, and I imagined him whipping out a cell phone to notify the nearest mental institution that I was on the loose in Roseville.
"She likes to play with bottles," I rambled on, speaking ninety miles an hour. "But her last one broke, and then she got glass in her paw. Suzie! That's my cat's name—the one with the glass in her paw—not that I have any other ones— cats, I mean, not bottles. That's why I needed this bottle. I'm not even sure she'll want another bottle, what with the—"
"Trauma of having glass in her paw," he finished for me.
I exhaled, grateful for the chance to catch my breath. "Exactly."
Yeah, this is how a highly trained government operative behaves when intercepted on a mission. Somehow, I think the fact that the interceptor looked like a cross between a young George Clooney and Orlando Bloom might have played into that a little bit. (If he'd looked like a cross between Mr. Clooney and, say, one of the hobbits, I probably would have been far more capable of coherent thought.)
From the corner of my eye I saw the Overnight Express truck turn into an alley. I could sense it idling there—waiting on me—so I turned and started down the street, but not before the boy said, "So, you're new to Roseville, huh?" I turned back to him. Mr. Solomon probably wouldn't lay on the horn to tell a girl to hurry up, but even through my busted comms unit I could feel his frustration, hear the ticking clock.