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 cle**age. (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 When I finished, Bex was staring at me as if she wondered whether or not I had been replaced by a genetically engineered clone, and Liz had a starry-eyed gaze very similar to the one Snow White wore while those birds fluttered above her head.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."
Chapter Ten
Okay, from this point on, if you are related to me or in a position to add things to my "permanent record" (which I'm assuming at the Gallagher Academy is a little more detailed than what they keep at Roseville High), you might want to stop reading. Seriously. Go ahead and skip the next hundred pages. It won't hurt my feelings at all
In other words, I'm not proud of what comes next, but I'm not exactly ashamed of it either, if that makes any sense. Sometimes I think my whole life has been that kind of contradiction. I mean, all I've heard for the last three years has been Don't hesitate, but be patient. Be logical—trust your instincts. Follow protocol—improvise. Never let your guard down—always look at ease.
So, see, if you give a bunch of teenage girls those kinds of messages, then, yeah, eventually things are going to get interesting.
The rest of the week staggered on, our unspoken mission looming in the back of our minds like a silent but ever-present charge that filled the air, so that every time one of us reached for the doorknob, I half expected to see sparks.
We were up at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning, which was definitely not my idea. Thanks to Tina Walters's annual Dirty Dancing extravaganza, where we watched the "nobody puts Baby in a corner" scene a dozen times, I was really needing a good "lie-in," as Bex calls it. But even though Liz might have been at the bottom of our class in P&E, she is the best person I've ever seen at getting me out of bed, which is saying something, considering the woman who raised me.
Macey was asleep in her headphones, so Liz felt free to yell, "We're doing this for you!" as she pulled on my left leg and Bex went in search of breakfast. Liz put her foot against the mattress for leverage as she tugged. "Come on, Cam. GET. UP."
"No!" I said, burrowing deeper into the covers. "Five more minutes."
Then she grabbed my hair, which is totally a low blow, since everyone knows I'm tender-headed. "He's a honeypot."
"He'll still be one in an hour," I pleaded.