Chapter Fifteen
Spy training isn't something you can turn off and on. We eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff. It has become as much a part of my DNA as lackluster hair and a weakness for peanut M&M's. I know that probably goes without saying, but before I tell you what came next, I thought I'd better point it out.
After all, imagine if you were a fifteen-year-old girl standing alone on a deserted street on a dark night, preparing for a clandestine meeting, when, all of a sudden you can't see anything because a pair of hands are covering your eyes. One second you're standing there, being grateful that you'd remembered to pack a candy bar, and then…POW…everything goes black.
Well, that's what happened. But did I panic? No way. I did what I was trained to do—I grabbed the offending arm, shifted my weight, and used the force of my would-be attacker's momentum against him.
It was fast. Really fast. Scary, these-hands-are-lethal' weapons fast.
I am so good, I thought, right up until the point when I looked down and saw Josh lying at my feet, the wind knocked out of him.
"Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry!" I cried and reached down for him. "I'm so sorry. Are you all right? Please be all right."
"Cammie?" he croaked. His voice sounded so weak, and I thought, This is it. I've killed the only man I could ever love, and now I'm about to hear his deathbed (deathstreet?) confession. I leaned close to him. My hair fell into his open mouth. He gagged.
So … yeah … on my first psuedo-date, I not only physically assaulted my potential soul mate, I also made him gag—literally.
I pushed my hair behind my ear and crouched beside him. (Incidentally, if you ever want to feel a boy's abs, this is a pretty good technique—because it seemed perfectly natural for me to put my hands on his stomach and chest.) "Ooh. What is it?"
"Do something for me?"
"Anything!" I crouched lower, not wanting to miss a single, precious word.
"Please don't ever tell any of my friends about this."
He smiled, and relief flooded my body.
He thinks I'll meet his friends! I thought—then wondered, What does that mean?
The Subject demonstrates amazing physical fortitude, as was exhibited by his ability to recover quickly after a very hard fall onto asphalt. The Subject is also surprisingly heavy.
I helped Josh get up and brush himself off.
"Wow!" he said. "Where did you learn to do that?"
I shrugged, trying to guess how Cammie the homeschooled girl who had a cat named Suzie would reply. "My mom says a girl needs to know how to take care of herself." Not a lie.
He rubbed the back of his head. "I feel sorry for your dad."
Bullets couldn't have hit me any harder. But then I realized that he wasn't taking it back, slinking away, trying to pull his foot out of his mouth. He just looked at me and smiled. For the first time in a long time, when thinking about my father, I felt like smiling, too.
"He says he's pretty tough, but I think she could take him."
"Like mother like daughter, huh?"
He had no idea what an amazing compliment he'd just given me—and the thing was: he'd never know.
"Can you…like…" He was gesturing to the town around us. "…walk around or something?"
"Sure."
We set off down the street. For a girl who has been described as a pavement artist, I was a little surprised at how hard it is to walk when you're actually trying to be seen.
After a few minutes of listening to our feet on the street, I realized something. Talking. Shouldn't there be talking? I searched my mind for something—anything—to say, but kept coming up with things like "So, how 'bout those new satellite-controlled detonators with the twelve-mile range?" Or, "Have you read the new translation of Art of War? Because I prefer it in the original dialect. …" I half wished he'd charge at me again or draw a knife or start speaking in Japanese or something … but he didn't, and so I didn't know what to do. He walked. So I walked. He smiled, so I smiled back. He turned a corner (without using the Strembesky technique of detecting a tail, which was really sloppy of him), and I followed.
We turned another corner, and I knew from my Driver's Ed recon that there was a playground up ahead.
"I broke my arm there," he said, pointing to the monkey bars. Then he blushed. "It was a real rumble—bodies everywhere—you should have seen the other guy."
I smiled. "Oh, sounds wild."
"As wild as anything in Roseville ever gets." He laughed, and then kicked a stone with the toe of his shoe. It skidded across the vacant street and into an empty gutter. "My mom totally freaked out. She was screaming and trying to drag me into the car." He chuckled, then ran a hand through his wavy hair. "She's a little high maintenance."
"Yeah," I said, smiling. "I know the type."
"No," he said. "Your mom must be cool. I mean, I can't imagine getting to see the places you've seen. All my mom does is cook all the time, you know? Like one kind of pie isn't enough. No. She's got to have three different kinds, and …" His voice trailed off as he looked at me. "I bet your mom doesn't do that."
"Oh, yes she does!" I said quickly. "She's really big on all that stuff."
"You mean, I'm not the only kid who has to sit through eight-course dinners?"
"Oh, are you kidding?" I said. "We do that all the time!" (If eight courses could be defined as five Diet Cokes and three Twinkles.)
"Really? I thought that with the Peace Corps and…"