I gave Macey a sympathetic shrug and tried to push past. But Abby didn't budge. "Oh." She looked at me. "I think you and your mother have an…arrangement?"
I could hear the retreating footsteps in the blackness outside. I could feel the opportunity slipping away.
"But—" I started. I didn't know if I was pleading with my aunt, or my teacher, or with Macey's Secret Service shadow, but I knew the situation called for some serious pleading with someone. "But this is an assignment!" I blurted. Abby just shook her head.
"Sorry, girls," she said. "Sure"—she glanced at Macey— "I'll take a bullet for you, but that doesn't mean I'll incur the wrath of Rachel."
Bex and Liz skidded to a stop outside and turned back to us, Bex's eyes asking what was taking us so long; but Aunt Abby turned away, into the darkness, without a second glance.
"Hey," I said, running to catch up with Macey. "You okay?"
She smiled. "I'm great." But she didn't sound great. Not even a little.
"It's me you're talking to," I told her. "I can't vote, remember?"
"I'm…" This time she really seemed to be thinking about the answer, and I knew there was a chance I'd get the truth instead of the party line. "I'm mad," she said finally, the words echoing down the long empty hall.
"Okay."
"And I'm sick of this." She held out the cast that covered her left arm. "This stupid, dirty, itchy…reminder. But apparently I poll ten points better with it on."
"Okay."
"And I'm so tired…" Her voice was softer then, her fight almost gone as she sank to the stairs. "I am so tired of being Macey McHenry."
I sank onto the stairs beside her.
"It could be worse," I tried, hoping my smile didn't look quite as counterfeit as it felt. "You could be left-handed," I said, pointing to the cast on her left arm.
Macey laughed. "I could be stuck on a campaign bus…with my mother."
"You could be your mother," I tried.
"I could be Preston," she said with a laugh.
I thought about it for a second. If Macey was going crazy living in the most secure building in the country, with Aunt Abby as her security detail, then the son of a presidential candidate had to be going out of his mind.
"I'm so ready for this to be over," she said as if she'd just admitted her deepest, darkest secret. "I'm so ready for Tuesday."
That was the moment we'd been waiting for—the opening I'd needed to tell her the truth about what was happening and warn her that it wouldn't end that quickly— that she wasn't going to stop being Gilly's descendant on Wednesday.
"What?" she asked, reading my face. I'd come to that corridor to tell her the truth, to warn her, but Macey still had hope that Tuesday might mark the end, and I for one didn't want to take that away from her too soon.
I found myself standing, thinking, moving.
"What do you want to do, Macey?" I asked.
"I want … I want to not be watched all the time," she said. "I don't want to be looked at by the people in town. I don't want to be looked at by my parents. I just don't want to be"—she turned her gaze toward me—"looked at."
When you look like Macey McHenry, the urge to disappear might sound crazy. But not if you're a teenage girl. Not if you've been on the cover of every magazine in America in the last six months. And not if you're a chameleon.
I was maybe the one person in the world who could understand, and maybe that's why she told me.
And maybe that's why I said, "Come on."
Chapter Twenty-three
Did I know it was against the rules? Yes.
Did I think it was foolish? Absolutely.
Did I think it was worth it? Honestly? Yeah, I guess I did.
Sometimes I wonder what makes me the Chameleon— why I like to hide and blend, why I'd rather be unseen than noticed. But as Macey and I walked down the basement hallway, I knew that being invisible was not without its appeal.
After all, it had taken ninety minutes, but Macey McHenry had been successfully made under (not over), and now we were ready for the outside world. I glanced at the girl beside me. Her trademark blue eyes were hidden behind brown contacts and thick glasses. We'd added a faint trace of freckles across her pale nose. Her glossy black hair was tucked up under a curly red wig, and I knew that's all anyone who glanced at her would remember: big red hair and glasses.
I reached for the old Gallagher family tapestry that hung against the stone wall, then looked at the girl I hardly recognized, and said, "You sure?"
She reached for the small crest that was inset into the stone and twisted the sword, triggering the release of one of my favorite secret passageways. "You bet."
Roseville always struck me as the kind of place where nothing ever really changes, but that night, lights burned in the distance, and a bright iridescent glow grew from the horizon as Macey and I walked into town. There was a sound, too, that came and went, a low rumbling, like a river. All around us, people were hurrying from restaurants, carrying big armloads of blankets across the square, streaming toward the light.
"What do you want to do?" I turned to Macey. She was looking at a reflection in a store window of two girls. To the citizens of Roseville they probably looked like ordinary girls. People passed them by without a second look. The redhead in the glass was no one of consequence. She was unnoticed and unseen.
She was like me.
And she was loving every second of it as she said, "We follow them."