Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

"Josh," I corrected Zach for about the millionth time, but he didn't smile, and somehow I knew that the joke was long since over. "No," I said, meaning it. "I'm just…here."



I didn't look for him, but somehow I knew that Josh was standing with a group of friends ten feet away. Zach was right in front of me. There I was, caught between two boys who couldn't have been more different. If I'd been another girl with another cover, I don't know what I would have done; but right then, only one thing mattered.



"Why were you in Boston, Zach?" The air was crisp and cool around us. Soft music started on the loudspeaker as the homecoming court made their way to the center of the field. I felt more than a new season blowing in the breeze, so maybe that's why I looked at the boy I hadn't really seen in months and said, "Why are you here, Zach?"



I stepped closer to him, waiting for him to reach out, to tease, to smile. And more than anything, I wanted him to say I am here for you.



The space between us shrank, but as I took another step forward, Zach took a step back. Last spring, he'd teased me, he'd flirted with me—I'd been the one who was hard to get. But standing under those bright lights, I could see that somehow, in the last few months, Zach and I had changed places. I didn't like the game from that side of the field.



"Come on," he said, taking my hand (but not in a nice, romantic way). "We're taking Macey home."



"We're not doing anything."



"Fine," he said, starting away. "I'll go find Solomon, get his opinion."



"Zach," I started, cutting him off, but he wheeled on me.



"Do you even know who's out there?" he snapped louder now, and then just as quickly he stepped closer. "Do you even care?"



"The Circle of Cavan is after my sisterhood, Zach. Not yours. They're hunting my friends. They're sending Gallagher Girls down laundry chutes, so don't show up here and lecture me about what's at stake." He drew a breath as if to speak, but I knew better than to let him. "If Joseph Cavan's followers want to settle the score with Gillian Gallagher's great-great-grand- daughter, then they're going to deal with all of us, and that doesn't necessarily include you."



The announcer was talking over the loudspeaker, saying something about the homecoming queen and her deep love of puppies or something, but I just looked at Zach, trying to shake the feeling that I hadn't really seen him in months. If ever. "Why do I feel like I can't trust you anymore?"



I wanted him to lash out. I wanted him to fight, to protest, to argue—to do anything but look deeper into my eyes and say, "Because the Gallagher Academy doesn't admit fools."



Hundreds of people filled the stands around us. They were teachers and accountants, stay-at-home moms and men who worked at the toilet paper factory—regular people doing their best to live regular lives. They couldn't have been farther from Macey McHenry (both the spy and the girl) if they'd tried.



And yet she was right there beside them.



Beside us.



And she'd heard everything we'd said.



"The family tie to Roseville," Macey softly repeated what the man on the street had said.



"Macey," I said, stepping closer.



"Does this mean …" she started, and I knew there were a dozen ways that sentence could have ended. If I had just discovered that I was related to Gillian Gallagher, I would have been ecstatic. Bex would have thought it was the coolest thing ever. Liz might have decided to conduct some serious DNA experiments to determine if covertness was hereditary.



But it didn't matter what we would have done. What really mattered was what Macey did.



"You knew about this?" she asked me. Her voice was cracking. Her lip was shaking. "How long have you known about this?"



I could have lied, I guess. But I didn't. Maybe because Macey had lived with me for over a year and would see through it. Maybe because we hadn't covered lying to a trained operative yet in CoveOps. Or maybe I just thought Macey had the right to know that of the thousands of Gallagher Girls in the world, she was the only one who carried Gilly's blood in her veins.



"Yeah, my mom told us last—"



"Us!" Macey snapped. "Does the whole school know?"



"No! Just Bex and Liz and me. Mom explained all that after you got accepted. She—"



"So I'm Gillian Gallagher's descendant?" The fire seemed to be fading from her, so I reached out, still half afraid that when I touched her she would turn to ash. "So that's why they let me in."



"Macey, it's not—"



"True?" she said, staring at me, but for once in my life I couldn't lie—couldn't hide. I could only watch as she pushed away without another word, through the red-clad members of the Pride of Roseville Marching Band, who were exiting the field.



"Macey!" I called after her, but then Zach's hand was in mine.



"Cam—" he started.



"Not now, Zach." I jerked away. Maybe I wanted to find Macey. Or maybe I just wanted to be anywhere but there.



I set off through the crowd, pushing through the band and out into open space—seeing potential threats everywhere I turned.



Twenty feet to my right and up three rows, there was a guy in a red cap who jumped to his feet to cheer a split second too late, as if his attention had been elsewhere. On the track between the cheerleaders and the bleachers, two women stood together scanning the crowd while wearing



shoes that no small-town housewife would be caught dead in.



I wanted to scream into my comms unit and call for backup, but I had no comms. There was no backup. And Macey was already gone.



Chapter Twenty-four



The road from Roseville had never felt so long. In the hours that passed, the mansion had never felt so big. And I had never felt so stupid as when Bex and Liz and I went room to room, floor to floor, searching for Macey.



Covert Operations Report 0500 hours



Operatives Morgan, Baxter, and Sutton conducted a detailed search of the Gallagher Mansion, following the textbook grid pattern of detection. (They were sure about this because Operative Sutton brought along the actual textbook.)



"I know she made it back," I said for what must have been the hundredth time, but I had to keep saying the words. It didn't matter that neither Bex nor Liz needed to hear



them. "I tracked her footprints down the tunnel…She came back that way—I'm sure of it. She left her wig by the door with the rest of her disguise, so I dropped mine there too and went looking for her. …" I looked at Bex and Liz, not even trying to hide my panic as I begged them to believe me. "I know she made it back!"



I wanted Liz to cite the incredible odds in our favor that Macey was fine. I expected Bex to tell me that everything was going to be okay, but instead she just stared at me and asked, "Scale of one to ten, how mad was she?"



We were in the library, but there were no girls among the stacks. The clock in my head was telling me it was almost five in the morning. The fire in the fireplace was nothing but a pile of smoldering embers—the only light in the room. I thought about Bex's question, slowly realizing that mad wasn't the word. Mad could be handled by challenging Bex to a good sparring match in the P&E barn. Mad goes away with a good night's sleep.



"Not mad," I said, shaking my head. "It was more like she was—"



"Heartbroken." Liz's voice was so soft I barely heard it, and even now I'm not sure if she knew she'd said the word aloud. We'd been looking for Macey for hours, but something in the way she sank onto the spiraling staircase made me realize that, somewhere along the way, Liz had gone missing too.



"When Macey found out, she was heartbroken," Liz said again, and I knew she was right.



"Yeah," I said, turning to her. "Heartbroken."



"Oh, I'll break something when we find her…" Bex's accent was coming back in waves. "She's gonna get herself snatched right up if she keeps acting this bloody stupid. Running about the country on her own …"



"You don't get it, do you?" It was the first time I'd ever heard Liz raise her voice, the first time I'd seen her skin so deathly white. Even Bex stopped and stared. "I mean, look at you—look at both of you! You don't know what it's like. You…belong," Liz said, as if Bex and I were at the core of an ancient secret and didn't realize it. And I guess, in a way, we were.



"You." Liz turned to Bex. "You go all over the world with your mom and dad, tracking down arms dealers and staking out terrorists during summer break."



Bex started to protest until she realized that what Liz was saying wasn't an insult and, furthermore, it was absolutely true.



"And you," Liz said, spinning on me. "Cam, your mom is the headmistress…Your aunt's a living legend…" For some reason I felt my cheeks flush red. "You guys don't have any idea what it's like to be…normal. And then one day someone tells you that the toughest, most elite, most amazing school in the world is in Roseville, Virginia"—Liz's voice had taken on a very dreamy quality, but as she settled her gaze on us, her words turned to steel—"and they want you."



I thought about what she'd said and realized that there'd never been a moment in my life when I'd doubted whether or not I could become a Gallagher Girl. For Bex, the toughest barrier was geography.



"Yeah," Liz said, reading our expressions. "I'd always been pretty good at school." It was probably the understatement of the century, but I didn't dare interrupt. "People always told me I was smart—people always said that I was special. But Macey…" Liz's voice cracked. My eyes were going blurry, and even Bex looked as if she were about to cry. "What have people always told her?"



I didn't want to think about the answer to that question—not then. Not ever. So the three of us sat surrounded by books and secrets and the light of a dying fire, finally realizing that we were the only people in Macey's life who knew not to judge a girl by her cover.



"We've got to find her," Bex said, starting for the door. "Now."



But I was already way ahead of her, pushing forward, riding a wave of exhaustion and terror; instinct driving me forward as I prayed that I was wrong.



I could hear them following behind me, their footsteps echoing on the old stone floors while Bex called, "We've looked down there already."



But I just ran faster through the abandoned halls, past empty classrooms and dark windows and, finally, down the stairs that led to the long basement corridor—to the place where, in a way, it had all begun.



There were no windows there. The corridor was dark, the stone floors were rough, but still I ran toward the place where my mother had brought us more than a year ago and told us the truth about Macey.



As I stopped in front of the tapestry that showed the entire Gallagher Family tree, I tried to imagine how many times I'd disappeared behind it, but I knew that our trip that night had been the most important journey that that passageway had ever witnessed.



I was breathing heavily, almost afraid of what I'd find, as Bex and Liz appeared beside me.



"She's here somewhere," Liz said. "She's got to be. She's…"