"But why is he doing the security check of our room?" she pleaded after we'd changed into our uniforms and stared downstairs. "Is he on the security staff?"
"I'm not sure, Liz, I admitted. "He's just an agent I met in London."
Liz was practically jogging to keep pace beside me, her hand on the banister. "So he was on your protection detail?"
I looked at Bex and shrugged. "Not exactly."
"Did you met him?" Liz asked whirling on Bex.
"No," Bex said truthfully. "I didn't."
"You left her alone?"
I'd almost forgotten that Macey was there, to tell you the truth. She'd been so quiet, walking ahead of us, but now she was standing at the bottom of the staircase, glaring up at Bex.
"I thought we agreed . . ." Macey started, then stopped suddenly.
"Agreed to what?" I asked, but got nothing. "What?" I asked again. "Did you guys get together before break and agree to never let me go someplace by myself? Or was it more like and agreement to monitor my mood and behavior so you could warn someone if I was about to crack up and do something stupid?"
My three best friends in the world looked at each other as if they'd all forgotten how to speak English. Finally, Bex said, "Both."
The big double doors of the Grand Hall were standing open. I smell fresh bread and heard the voices of a hundred girls talking, laughing. I was home. After weeks of running and hiding, I was finally home; but looking at my roommates, I remembered that being a Gallagher Girl sint about a building. It's about a sisterhood.
I remembered that I'd never really left.
"She didn't leave me, Macey," I said. "They hauled me in for questioning one day, and he's the one who did it." I stepped toward the Grand Hall, with one last smile back at my friends. "She didn't leave me."
* * *
Four things came to mind as I took my regular seat at the junior table. 1) Being on the run in a foreign country is enough to make a girl seriously miss our awesome chef's cooking.
2) The windows of the Grand Hall had been upgraded to a substance that could probably survive a direct hit from a missile. 3) The packets of sweetener on the table now bore the words "The contents of this packet have been certified psychoactive-free."
But it was the fourth thing that I hadn't really been expecting: silence. As soon as I sat down, it felt like the entire table - the entire hall - stopped talking.
Only Bex seemed to be immune to the silence as she threw one leg over the bench and took her place next to Macey. "Everyone have a good holiday?" She reached for the pitcher of water at the center of the table and filled her glass. And still the silence drew longer.
"I said," Bex repeated slowly, "did everyone have a nice holiday?"
"Yes."
"Sure."
"Uh-huh," everyone hurried to say, but the eyes of my classmates . . . the eyes still stayed on me: Cameron Ann Morgan, Chameleon no more.
And then, just as quickly, their gazes passed to Tina Walters.
"So, um . . . Cammie," Tina started, "how was your break?"
"Our holiday was lovely, Tina," Bex answered for me. "Thank you for asking."
Her back was perfectly straight as she said this. She gently shook out a linen napkin and laid it across her lap. Madame Dabney would have been so very proud, but of course Madame Dabney wasn't there - none of our teachers were - so maybe that's why Tina felt safe putting her elbows on the table and leaning closer.
"But did they . . . you know . . . catch them?" she asked, maybe because she's the daughter of both a spy and a gossip columnist and she wasn't going to rest until she heard the full story. Or maybe she was just hoping for a different story from the one that should have obvious to every girl in the (recently reinforced) Grand Hall.
"No, Tina," I said carefully, "they didn't. Not yet."
"But they have a lot of good leads, don't they?" Eva Alvarez asked.
"Of course they do." Bex's gaze found mine, the unspoken words coursing between us: And his name is Joseph Solomon.
"Yeah. I bet your mom and Mr. Solomon are going to find something any day now,"
Anna Fetterman said, and I glanced around the Grand Hall, processing, thinking, realizing that no one had heard a rumor. Not a single one of my classmates had overheard their moms and dads whispering about a rogue operatives and sleeper agents in the middle of the night.
"Yeah," Anna said again. "Mr. Solomon will catch them."
She nodded and smiled and sounded so sure.
I nodded and smiled and wanted to cry.
To them, Mr. Solomon wasn't a sixteen-year-old boy who had joined the Circle. He was still was man who had walked through the double doors at the back of that very room a year and a half before.
I turned and looked at the doors and almost jumped out of my skin when they swung open - as if I'd willed it to happen, traveled back in time. I half expected to see Joe Solomon among the long line of teachers making their formal entrance down the center aisle. I felt the room around me changing as, one by one, my classmates counted heads, scanned the line, and realized someone was missing.
I was staring down at the table, unable to look, as Tina asked, "Hey where's Headmistress Morgan?"
Buckingham had said she wasn't back yet. That she was detained . . . delayed. And delayed meant running late. Delayed meant "back in a flash."