He clamped a hand onto his son's shoulder. "And some day, it's all going to belong to this guy."
"Oh, Jacob," Mrs. Abrams said, "give the poor kid a break." An air of perfection floated all around her even in that dusty barn, and I knew that she'd never been stained, wrinkled, or unaccessorized in her life.
I tugged at the hem of my skirt and fingered my corsage, feeling naked since I hadn't known to wear my mother's pearls. (Even the ones without the microfilm reader could have come in handy.) There were a lot of things I wanted to ask, like How do you stay so clean? and Does that tooth-whitening gum really work? but I couldn't say any of that, so I just stood there like an idiot, smiling at her, clinging to my cover.
"Are your parents here, darling?" she asked, and then started scanning the crowd.
"No," I said, "they're … busy."
"Oh, what a shame," she said, with a tilt of her head. But she didn't give me time to reply before blurting, "Cammie, I want you to feel as welcome in our house as you do your own."
Immediately, I started fantasizing about the recon we could set up with that kind of access, but all I could manage to say was, "Oh … Um … Thanks."
The band changed songs, and Mrs. Abrams leaned close to yell through the noise, "What's your favorite kind of pie?"
I barely heard her, and was on the verge of shouting, "I'm not a spy!" when I saw Dillon standing on a bale of straw, waving wildly in our direction.
Josh glanced at his mother but didn't have to say a word before she said, "Okay, darling. You kids go have fun." And then she gave me another hug. THREE HUGS! This was seriously freaking me out.
"Cammie, darling, you just come over any time, okay? And when you get a chance, give our number to your parents. Maybe they'd be interested in joining our bridge club."
The last bridge my parents had anything to do with involved the Gansu Province, dy***ite, and a really ticked-off yak, but I just smiled and said, "Thanks."
As Josh pulled me away, I risked a glance back. Mr. Abrams had his arm around his wife's shoulders, and Mrs. Abrams raised her hand in a sad half-wave, as if she were freezing that bit of Josh in space and time. So those are normal parents. I studied the boy beside me who longed for a life in Mongolia and wasn't allowed to leave the house in anything wrinkled or stained, and another piece of his code fell into place—he was a little less encrypted.
I started walking toward Dillon and the crowd of kids our age (if you're going to do the deep-cover thing you might as well do it all the way), but Josh tugged at my hand, stopping me.
"Come on, let's dance."
"But"—I pointed to the teenage mob—"aren't those your friends?"
Josh looked at them. "Yeah, those are the kids from my school."
"If you want to go say hi or something …"
"Let me think," he said, teasing. "I could dance with the prettiest girl at the party or go hang out with a bunch of idiots I see all day every day. What do you think?"
I thought he was getting some serious bonus points for the prettiest girl at the party line, was what I thought, but that didn't stop me from looking at him in a new way as he steered us to the opposite side of the barn, away from his friends, away from his parents. For the first time, I realized I might not be the only one in deep cover.
We danced for a long time before Josh said, "Thanks for meeting my parents. They're big on that."
"Yeah," I said. "They're really nice."
"They're psycho," he corrected me. "Did you hear what he said? About the store? He seriously thinks everyone in this town would die if it weren't for him." He shook his head. "You're so lucky no one cares what you do. I mean, you can be anything you want to be. No one's waiting on you to be some kind of chosen one."
"No," I said. "I guess no one is." Lie—absolute, total, and complete lie.
He pulled me tighter, which was a good thing for two reasons, because A) it kept him from seeing the tears that were forming at the corners of my eyes, threatening to test the waterproofness of Macey's new mascara, and B) it gave me pretty good cover, which I was about to totally need. In fact, no spy in the history of the known universe has ever needed cover more.
"Oh my gosh!" I gasped and ducked, hiding my head behind Josh's shoulder.
"What?" he said.
"Oh, um, I just stubbed my toe," I lied, because that was hardly the time to say, Hey Josh, speaking of parents, MY MOM JUST WALKED IN WITH MY COVEOPS TEACHER!
Across the dance floor, Mom was in Mr. Solomon's arms. They were both totally laughing, and he was twirling her, and her hair was flying around like she was in a shampoo commercial. Seriously. She could have sold conditioner to a bald man the way she looked out there.
I started easing toward the shadows, far away from the main doors, cursing myself for not marking all the exits earlier. I was stupid. STUPID. STUPID. STUPID.
"I think I want to sit down for a while." I found a stretch of shadowy space at the back of the barn, beneath the hayloft, far away from Mom and Mr. Solomon.
"Do you want some punch?" he asked.
"YES! Punch sounds great!"
I watched Josh disappear into the crowd, and for a second the panic stopped and I felt another feeling in my gut, like the ground had been swept out from under me. But it wasn't just nerves. I was flying, hurtling through the sky. Literally.