I could feel the train—or maybe just the world—slowing down as she stepped toward the door and whispered, "Stay away from that boy, Cammie." It wasn't an order this time, it was a plea.
"Zach?" Macey asked, as if there could possibly be anyone else. "He's from Blackthorne. We know him."
Then Abby looked at me. For the first time, it seemed like she wanted to smile, but there was no joy in her expression as she asked, "Do you?"
I love the Gallagher Academy at night. There's beauty in the shadows—the only time when the outside really reflects what's going on inside. Nothing is truly black or white. The whole world in shades of gray.
And that night was no different.
"What does that mean?" Liz asked, and Bex paced, but I just stood at the little diamond-shaped window in our attic suite, looking out at the dark grounds, letting the story I'd just told wash over me.
"Wait, you mean Zach got to jump out of a moving train?" Bex asked, not even trying to hide the envy in her voice.
I looked at Macey, who shrugged.
"I still can't believe you left the mansion like that," she said, examining my short skirt and tall shoes.
I tried to smile. "Originally, there was also a wig."
I expected her to laugh. I wanted her to roll her eyes or say something about the world of synthetic hair and people fashion-deprived enough to actually utilize it. I wanted it to be funny. But it wasn't.
"So Abby was really…" Liz started, then lowered her voice, "mad?"
I nodded. The word didn't do it justice, but at the moment, it was the only one I had.
"You're not going to get into trouble, Cam," Bex argued. "Abby's cool."
But she hadn't seen the change in Abby on the train. She hadn't heard the tremor in my aunt's voice or seen the look in her eyes as she strolled through the Hall of History and into my mother's office and closed the door, leaving Macey and me to make our way upstairs alone.
"What?" Bex asked, proving that she knew me maybe better than I knew myself.
"He …" I struggled with what I wanted to say, what I wanted to believe. "He didn't kiss me."
Yes, I'd just been severely reprimanded by a member of the United States Secret Service. And yes, I'd been caught sneaking out and violating about a dozen school rules. And yes, my elbow was totally swollen from where Zach and I had landed on the floor of Macey's compartment.
And yet that was the thing that worried me most.
"He didn't flirt," I said finally. "He didn't tease me … I mean, once I figured out I'd seen him in Boston—"
"Wait," Bex said, moving closer, completely ignoring the big pile of junk food that she and Liz had smuggled back into the school after their road trip home. There was something new in her eyes as she said, "Zach was in Boston?"
"I kept thinking I saw him there," I said again, calmer now. "But I thought that I was…you know …"
Bex and Liz looked at each other as if they totally didn't know.
"She thought she was only seeing him because she wanted to see him," Macey explained.
"Ooooh," Bex and Liz sighed together.
"It's a by-product of very dramatic kissing," Macey went on like a doctor identifying a common side effect. "Go on."
"So I didn't think anything about it. But today I saw him again. And he was in the same disguise, and I knew it was him in Boston." I looked down at the pile of candy wrappers and half-eaten bags of chips and thought about how, a year ago, we'd huddled together in that very room, going through Josh's trash, but there was a lot about boys and their dirty little secrets that we still had to learn.
"So he followed you before?" Liz asked. "So what? He's probably just doing what we're doing—tracking Macey."
And then she stopped. And realized.
"In Boston, there was no reason to track Macey," I said, just because I needed to say the words out loud. I looked back at the grounds that seemed darker than usual. And colder. Somehow when I wasn't looking, fall had fallen, and I shivered a little, still chilled from the rain.
"Maybe he knew what was going to happen," Macey
said.
"Or maybe he was one of the people doing it," Bex said, the old skepticism coming back to her voice.
"Or"—Liz's eyes were the only ones shining as she said—"he wanted to be near Cammie!"
Macey shrugged as if to say that our little blond friend had a point.
Whatever the case, that didn't change the fact that a very cute, very mysterious spy boy was either out to save us, or kidnap us, or date us.
And I wasn't sure which one we were best equipped to handle.
I don't know about normal girls, but for spy girls, there are few things as scary as a closed door, a locked room, and a whispered conversation you can't quite hear. Well, the next day my life was full of all three.
The Hall of History remained dark. My mother's office doors remained closed (and, unfortunately, soundproof). I thought about the passageway that led behind the room, but then I shook the notion from my head. I didn't know what my aunt had told her. I didn't know what kind of trouble I was in.
All around me girls worried about tests and projects. People opened letters from home and continued the debate about whether or not Mr. Smith's new face made him as hot as Mr. Solomon. But I couldn't help but think about how the world is just a web of secrets. I kept wondering if there was any way to break free.
That Sunday night I walked toward my mother's office, thinking about Abby and Zach, Philadelphia and Boston— all the questions no one ever answered, but as I stepped foot inside the Hall of History, I found myself looking at Gilly's sword.