"Don't tell me," my aunt said as she turned to Bex, "you must be a Baxter."
Bex beamed. It didn't matter that the two of them had never met before. My aunt didn't wait on introductions. Which was just as well—Bex never waited on anything. "So how's your dad?"
"He's great," Bex said with a grin.
Abby winked. "Do me a favor and tell him Dubai at Christmas is no fun without him,"
Beside me, I could practically feel Bex's mind spinning out of control, wondering about Dubai in December. But Abby didn't offer details; instead she just turned to Liz.
"Oooh," Abby said as she examined the fresh cut on her chin. "Paper clip?" she asked.
Liz's eyes got even wider. "How did you know that?"
Abby shrugged. "I've seen things."
I thought back to Mr. Solomon's cabin. Whenever he and my mother spoke about the things they'd seen and done, I wanted to hide from the details of their lives. But as Abby spoke, we hung on every word.
"Does Fibs still have that stash of the SkinAgain prototype in the lab?" my aunt asked.
"Isn't that a little"—Liz started—"strong?" (Which might have been a bit of an understatement, since I know for a fact the Gallagher Academy developed SkinAgain after an eighth grader fell into a vat of liquid nitrogen.)
Abby shrugged. "Not if you mix it with a little aloe. Rub some of that on, and no way that leaves a scar."
"Seriously?" Bex and Liz asked at the exact same time.
Abby leaned into the light. "Does this look like the face of a woman who survived a knife fight in Buenos Aires?"
Every girl in the foyer (by then there were quite a few) craned to look at her flawless, porcelain skin.
"That's not a good idea, Ms. McHenry," my aunt said, startling her admirers. I turned and saw Macey reaching for the front doors, and realized Abby had sensed her without even turning around. And just that quickly her skin stopped being the most amazing thing about her.
"I don't do breakfast," Macey said. (Which was a lie, but I didn't say so.) "I'm going for a walk."
At the sound of the word "breakfast," the girls in the foyer seemed to remember that they'd spent an entire summer without access to our chef's Belgian waffles. They filtered out, one by one, until it was just me, my three best friends in the world, and the woman who had taught me how to use a jump rope to temporarily paralyze a man when I was seven.
She stepped closer to Macey. "The security division noted two helicopters in the vicinity this morning— probably paparazzi looking for pictures of you—but until we're sure…" She eased between her protectee and the door. "You can't go outside. I'm sorry." She added that last part later, like an afterthought.
"Isn't that why you're here?" Macey reminded her and stepped toward the door again, but Abby casually cut her off.
"Actually, that's why I'm here." Abby pointed to her feet and leaned against the door. It might have been a casual gesture from another person, in another place. But as I looked from my aunt to Macey, I realized they were both strong. Both smart. Both used to being the prettiest girl in the room. The last time I'd had a feeling like that, it had involved Dr. Fibs's lab and two chemicals that are both potent, and volatile, and don't really like being put together under pressure.
"Rule number one, ladies," my aunt said. "Get careless…get caught."
As she walked away, Bex grabbed my arm and mouthed, "She's bloody awesome!"
Then, without turning around, Abby called, "I bloody know."
The rest of the morning was something of a blur.
Macey was in the junior level Countries of the World class, so she sat right beside me as Mr. Smith talked for forty-five minutes about the pros and cons of getting your cosmetic surgery at CIA-approved facilities. (Evidently, the work is very high quality, but since they don't technically "exist," the insurance paperwork is a nightmare!)
Madame Dabney gave a nice, relaxing refresher course on the basics: i.e. identifying every piece in a twenty-piece place setting (and the corresponding best methods in which each utensil could be used as a weapon).
Things seemed perfectly normal as we started down the
Grand Staircase and Liz headed toward Dr. Fibs's lab in the basement.
"See ya!" she called, which was okay. I'd gotten used to the idea that Liz was destined for the research-and- operations track while Bex and I were training for a life in the field.
It wasn't until I heard Macey say, "See you at lunch," that I remembered she was still behind the rest of us, academically.
As she set off for the freshman-level encryption course taught by Mr. Mosckowitz, Bex and I moved into the small passage beneath the Grand Staircase and stepped before a gilt-framed mirror. A thin laser beam scanned our faces, reading our retinal images. The eyes of the painting behind us flashed green, and a mirror slid aside, revealing the elevator to the most secret classrooms of the most secret school in the country.
But I didn't feel a rush. I wasn't thinking about pop quizzes or how Mr. Solomon looked that one time when we were doing wilderness reconnaissance exercises and he rolled up his sleeves.
Instead I just said, "Bex," and waited for my best friend's "Yeah."
"I'm worried about Macey."
"Why?" Bex asked, pressing her palm against the glass on the inside of the elevator. "She seems fine to me."
I placed my palm beside my best friend's. "That's what worries me."
Bex is black and I'm white. She's beautiful and I'm plain. She grew up in London and I spend my summers on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. She was born for fight and I was born for flight. But the way she looked at me reminded me that Bex and I are alike in all the ways that matter.