I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Chapter Nine

Culture and Assimilation isn't like our other classes, so I guess that's why Madame Dabney's tea room isn't like our other classrooms. French silk lines the walls. The lighting fixtures are crystal. Everything in that room is beautiful and refined and reminds us that we don't just have to be spies— we have to be ladies.

Sometimes I hate it and spend hours thinking what a waste it is to teach us things like calligraphy and needlepoint (aside from the obvious coded message usages, of course). But other times I love listening to Madame Dabney as she floats through the room with a monogrammed handkerchief in her hand, talking about what flowers are in season or the history of the waltz.

The day after our first mission was one of those days. I might have blown the mission, but I was still a whiz at setting tables, so I was actually sad to hear Madame Dabney say, "Oh, dear, girls, look at the time." I didn't want to put away the good china. I didn't want to go downstairs and face Mr. Solomon again.

"But before you leave today, girls," Madame Dabney said in an expectant, excited tone that held my attention, "I have an announcement to make!" The sounds of clattering china all but ceased as everyone took Madame Dabney in. "It's time for you to expand your education here at the Gallagher Academy, so…" She adjusted her glasses. "…beginning today after school, I am going to be teaching Driver's Ed!"

Oh my gosh! I'd completely forgotten about Driver's Ed! Sure, we're allowed to toss each other over our shoulders or concoct antidotes for rare poisons for extra credit, but when it comes to tricky stuff like adjusting rearview mirrors and knowing who has the right-of-way at four-way stops, the Gallagher Trustees don't take any chances. Plus, there's that whole discount-on-your-car-insurance thing to consider.

Madame Dabney said, "We'll be going out in groups of four—by suite." She consulted a piece of paper then looked directly toward Liz, Bex, and me. "Beginning with the four of you."

Liz looked at Bex and me, not understanding. "Four?" she whispered, just as a light seemed to dawn, and from the back of the room we heard Macey say, "Sounds like fun."

(Do I really need to say she was being sarcastic?)

That afternoon, we strolled down the steps of the rear portico and toward the motor pool, where an old Ford Taurus was waiting for us, its yellow STUDENT DRIVER triangle gleaming in the sun.

Mom tells me Madame Dabney spent most of her career in deep cover, working the underground Nazi cells that remained active in France after World War II, but at times like this I have a really hard time believing her—especially when the woman in question shows up wearing a Give Safety a Brake! T-shirt.

"Ooooh, girls! This is going to be such a delight!" she said, and then proceeded to do things like point to the brake and say, "That makes the car stop," and the accelerator, "That makes the car go." But the craziest thing of all was that Liz was taking notes.

She has a photographic memory! She joined Mensa at the age of eight! And yet she felt compelled to draw a diagram of the steering column and note exactly which button turned on the windshield wipers.

"Be sure you write down that the steering wheel is round," I said, and she seriously had the W-H-E of wheel written in her little notebook before she realized I was joking.

"Cammie, don't make fun," Liz said, the way she always did. But just then, Macey mocked, "Yeah, Cammie, don't make fun." Even Liz wanted to deck her.

"Now, girls," Madame Dabney said, "let's focus." She drew her hands into a position of prayer as she turned to Bex. "Rebecca, dear, how do you feel about starting us out?"

I gasped. Don't get me wrong; I love Bex. She's my best friend. But I've been driving since I could see over the wheel and work the pedals at the same time (something Grandpa Morgan swears is a milestone in every farm kid's life), so why should Bex, a native Londoner who spent her formative years riding the Tube and waving down taxis, be the first to tackle Highway 10?

I consoled myself by thinking that Bex is my best friend, and she is good at everything, or so I thought until she pulled out onto the highway ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD! Now all this might have been funny except there's a hill there—did I mention that? A great big can't-see-the-semi-until-it's-about-to-hit-you-head-on hill. But I was the only one who noticed, because Madame Dabney was writing on her clipboard, Liz was doing bio-chem homework, and Macey was having a fingernail emergency.

I tried to yell, but I must have temporarily lost the power of speech, and Bex was the only other person paying attention to the road, and she thought she was on the right side of it—or left side—or whatever (you get what I mean).

My voice returned just in time for me to yell "BEX!" and she said, "What?" turning and sending us swerving into the other lane, which under normal circumstances would have been disastrous, but in this case really saved our lives. Fate is tricky that way—something I guess every spy figures out eventually.

Then Bex calmly righted the car and headed into town, completely unfazed.

When Bex hung a left at the Piggly Wiggly and nearly took out a crossing guard from Roseville Elementary School, Madame Dabney made her pull into the grocery store parking lot and trade places with Macey. But Bex didn't seem mad, which in itself was a little scary. Instead, she had a really pleased look on her face as she opened my door and made me push Liz into the seat Macey was vacating, which was harder than it sounds, since Liz had become kind of… oh, what's the word?…petrified.

Madame Dabney had obviously learned her lesson with Bex, because there were lots of Easy on the accelerator, dears and Okay, there's a stop sign over there, darlings coming from the front seat as Macey eased onto the streets.

Things were starting to get pretty calm. I mean, really, it was almost nice, being driven around, sitting between my two best friends in the world, feeling the sun beam through the windows. It was almost normal—or as close to normal as three geniuses, a cosmetics heiress-slash-senator's daughter, and a secret agent in a Ford Taurus can ever be.

Nestled in the backseat between Liz and Bex, I started thinking that it would have been way too much to ask for us to have a tour of the town before we were supposed to tail one of the most wanted men in the world through it. Oh, yeah, that would have been a totally unfair advantage. In the daylight, I could see thousands of hiding places where a girl could linger unseen. I recognized alleys and side streets that would have been great shortcuts. I started, despite everything, to want a rematch with Mr. Smith. But mostly, I wondered about the boy I'd seen. Was he real? Did he really walk these streets?

Then, I got my answer.

"What the bloody hell are you doing down there?" Bex asked.

"Looking for my contacts," I snapped back.

"You have twenty-twenty vision," Liz reminded me.

"It's just… I just… I can't look up right now."

I knew the car was stopped, probably at a traffic light— one of only two in the town, so Josh had to be getting close.

"What?" Bex asked in a whisper. "What's going on?" She shifted into spy-mode, sat up, and looked around. "There's nothing out there. Oh, well, you are missing a real hottie at three o'clock."

Liz craned her neck around to look. "Ooh, yeah, he's pretty skinny but worth checking out." Then she shrugged and said, "Oh. Never mind. He's giving us the Gallagher Glare."

I have no idea who came up with that name, but it's what we always call the look that people in town give us whenever they figure out where we go to school. It's the only time I ever hate our cover story—when people look at me as if I must be privileged, as if I must be spoiled. As if I must be like Macey McHenry. I want to tell them that I spent my summer cleaning fish and canning vegetables—but that's just one of a thousand things that the good people of Roseville will never know about me. Still, when people like Josh look at you like you're a cross between Charles Manson and Paris Hilton, it hurts a little—even for a spy.

"Yeah, but he's still a boy," Bex said longingly. "Hey, Cam, come take a peek."

"I am not going to look at some boy!" I snapped. "I don't care how wavy his hair is."

"Who said anything about wavy hair?" Oh, Bex is good.

"I can't believe this!" Liz said, pacing. She hadn't sat down once since we got back to the mansion—she just kept going back and forth—trying to make sense of it all. I couldn't really blame her. Liz's belief system is pretty natural for scientific geniuses. She wants life to be something that can be tested in a lab or referenced in a book. She'd thought she'd known me. I'd thought I'd known myself. Now both of our hypotheses had been thrown out the window, and we hated to start from scratch.

I couldn't let her see how shaken I was, so I did the next best thing: I got angry.

"Exactly what is so unbelievable?" I asked. "That a boy looked at me?" Sure, I'd never be an exotic beauty like Bex or a pixyish waif like Liz, but I had yet to grow boils all over my body. Mirrors don't crack when I walk by them. My Grandfather calls me Angel. Was I that unworthy of being noticed?

"Cam!" Bex ordered. "Of course that's not it."

Liz threw her hands into the air and said, "I can't believe you didn't tell us! I can't believe you didn't tell someone."

Liz's definition of someone didn't mean someone. Liz's someone meant a teacher.

"So what?" I said, trying to brush the whole thing aside.

"So what?" Liz said. "So, he saw you! Cammie, no one sees you when you don't want to be seen." She eased onto the bed beside me. "When we were trailing Smith and I had to keep you in sight, it was almost impossible, and I could hear you through the comms unit. And I knew what you were wearing. And …" She threw her hands into the air. "So what?"

I turned to look at Bex, my eyebrows raised as if to ask Are you freaked out, too?

"You really are amazing, Cam," Bex said in a perfectly serious tone, so I knew it must be true.

"Something isn't right, here," Liz said as I went into the bathroom and started brushing my teeth. (It's hard to say things that will do lasting damage to a lifelong friendship when you're foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog.) "Mr. Solomon wants summaries of our mission, so we've got to include him. He could very well be trying to infiltrate the school through Cammie. He could be a honeypot!"

I nearly gagged on my own toothbrush. The technical definition of a honeypot is a female agent using romance to compromise a target. The practical definition is anyone with cleavage. (Rumor has it Gilly kind of inspired the term.) The thought that Josh could be the male equivalent made my stomach flip.

"No!" I cried. "No. No. No. He is not a honeypot."

"How do you know?" Bex asked, playing devil's advocate.

"I just do!" I replied.

But Liz was shrugging, saying, "We've got to include him in the reports, Cam."

But reports lead to reviews. Reviews lead to protocol. Protocol would lead to two weeks of the security department tailing him through town while they track down his birth certificate and find out if his mom drinks or his dad gambles—they've done far more for fewer reasons. After all, the Gallagher Academy hasn't remained a well-kept secret for more than a hundred years by taking chances.

I thought about Josh, how sweet and normal he had seemed. I didn't want strangers looking at him beneath a microscope. I didn't want there to be a file in Langley with his name on it. But mostly, I didn't want to sit in a room and explain why he'd approached me, when the town square had been full of far prettier girls.

I looked down at the floor, shaking off the thought. "No, Liz, I can't do it. That is way too high a price to pay for talking to a girl."

Then Bex crossed her arms and grinned deviously in my direction. "I think there's something more to this story," she said with her usual flair. The rush of blood to my cheeks must have been enough to betray me, because she leaned down and said, "Spill it."

So I told them about the trash can and the dropped Dr Pepper bottle and, finally, Tell Suzie she's a lucky cat, which, even if it hadn't been for the whole genius thing, I still would have been able to remember verbatim, because sentences like that are like peanut butter on a girl's mind. When I finished, Bex was staring at me as if she wondered whether or not I had been replaced by a genetically engineered clone, and Liz had a starry-eyed gaze very similar to the one Snow White wore while those birds fluttered above her head.

"What?" I asked, needing them to say something—anything.

"Sounds like I could snap his neck with one hand," Bex said, and she was probably right. "But if you go in for that sort of thing…"

"…he's amazing," Liz finished for her.

"It doesn't matter what he is or isn't. He's…" I struggled.

Liz shot upright and finished for me. "…still got to go in the reports!"

"Liz!" I cried, but Bex's hand was on my arm.

"Why don't we do it?" Her most devious expression flashed across her face. "We'll check him out, and if he's an ordinary boy, we forget about it. If something's strange, we'll turn him in."

I knew instantly what the arguments against it should have been: we were too busy; it was against about a million rules; if we got caught, we could be risking our careers forever. But in the silence of the room, we looked at each other, our mutual agreement settling down upon us in the way of people who have known each other too well and too long.

"Okay," I said finally. "We'll do the basics, and no one has to know."

Bex smiled. "Agreed."

We both looked at Liz, who shrugged. "Let's face it—he's either an enemy agent trying to infiltrate the Gallagher Girls through Cammie …"

Liz stopped midsentence, prompting me to say, "Or… ?"

Her entire face lit up. "He's your soul mate."