I didn't notice the note in my pocket until I was already outside, standing in the light rain that seemed to never stop.
I didn't stop to marvel that he'd just pulled off the greatest brush pass I'd ever seen. I didn't run for the shelter of the barn.
Instead, I stood in the heavy wet air, looking at my name scrawled across a piece of Evapopaper. I opened the note and scanned the page, the words barely registering before the paper washed away in the rain.
Well, obviously the note was gone long before I found my friends and barricaded the door to our bedroom—which was a shame, because, if ever there was a piece of evidence that needed examining, that was it. But the note was gone. Lost. We couldn't analyze the handwriting or the intensity with which he'd held the pen. We had to go on words themselves and what little prior knowledge we had about the subject.
(Copy courtesy of Cameron Morgan)
So I hear we get to go to town this weekend. Want to catch a movie or something?
— Z
P.S. That is, if Jimmy doesn't mind.
Translation: This weekend might be a good chance for us to see each other outside our school in a social environment, free of competition. I do not view other boys as threats, and I enjoy making them seem insignificant by calling them the wrong names. (Translation by Macey McHenry)
"Oh my gosh, Cam," Liz exclaimed. "He asked you out!"
"What does it mean?" I asked, turning to Macey, who plopped down on her bed and pulled off her nine-hundred-dollar shoes that she'd worn to the P&E barn and were now covered with mud.
"You mean besides the obvious he's-asking-you-to-the-movies part?" Macey asked.
"Yeah, besides that," I said, because it couldn't have been that easy. Spies never act without motivation, without a cause, and I didn't have a clue what Zach's ulterior motive might have been. I didn't know why he'd asked me in a note and not in person. I didn't have a clue what the significance was behind him not signing with his full name. We'd been studying boys for almost an entire academic year, and yet I didn't feel any closer to understanding a culture where people insult you, then tease you, ignore you for weeks, and then ask you to the movies!
"He's got to be up to something," I said finally. But my roommates just looked at each other like there was another explanation. "Don't you think he's up to something?"
The rain grew heavier outside, the wind howled, and finally Bex stood and strolled toward me. "Yes. He's definitely up to something."
I looked at Liz for confirmation, but she was busy entering Zach's words into the Boy-to-English translator that had finally made it to the prototype phase.
"And that's why," Macey said, smiling, "you've got to go."
Sure, if you're a Gallagher Girl and you spend all day every day inside the Gallagher grounds, then the thought of going to town—any town—starts to look pretty good. And going with a guy like Zach Goode looks even better.
But not if you're a Gallagher Girl who is actually engaging in what might be a deep cover honeypot scenario … Not if your best friends think this is the perfect opportunity to A) Try out Macey's new under-eye concealer that's legal only in Switzerland. And B) Practice the classic three-operative-surveillance scenario…
And most of all, not if you're a Gallagher Girl with an ex-boyfriend in that particular town.
Saturday morning we woke to sunny skies. Winter had gone away somehow, melted with the snow, and now a pale sunlight filtered through the windows. And I remembered what I'd agreed to do.
"I can't do this," I said, not really sure if I was talking about Zach or the push-up bra that Bex was insisting I wear (because push-up bras were invented for honeypot situations). "What if I let it slip that we're on to them? Or what if he drugs me and uses me to access the restricted portion of the science labs? Or what if…" I trailed off, thinking of the one question I couldn't bring myself to say: What if I have fun?
Instead, I asked the other question that had haunted me for days: "What if I see Josh?"
I'd spent months shrouded in the safety of our walls, knowing that as long as I didn't leave the grounds I'd never have to see Josh again—which is a luxury normal girls don't have when avoiding their ex-boyfriends.
"Relax, Cam," Bex said. "We'll be following you on comms—you'll have backup. And besides, what are the odds you'll even see Josh anyway?"
"One hundred and eighty-seven to one," Liz answered automatically. I might have looked at her like she was a little bit freaky (which she is—in a good way), but she shrugged and said, "What?" defensively. "If you factor in pedestrian traffic routes, population numbers, and patterns of behavior, the answer is one hundred and eighty-seven to one."
But there was one thing not even Liz had learned how to quantify: fate. I knew I was tempting it. Again.
My stomach flipped. My fingers tingled. Every nerve in my body seemed to be alive—pulsing with a charge that felt nothing like I'd ever felt on dates; and nothing like I'd ever felt on missions—just nothing I'd ever felt.
Liz did my hair. Macey worked a miracle with my makeup. And Bex was busy sewing a button camera onto my jacket. We had a plan. We had been training for this moment for years, but when my roommates started downstairs, I looked at myself in the mirror.
"It would be okay if you liked him, you know." Macey lingered in the open doorway. Behind her, the hall grew silent as girls headed out for the long walk into town.