"The problem is that we were attacked by three highly trained operatives and lived to tell the tale," I said without even realizing that I'd known the answer all along.
"Bingo," Macey said. "And Preston was impressed. Very impressed."
"So boys really do make passes at girls who kick—"
"Bex!" I cut my best friend off.
Can I just say that it's really pretty hard to deal with boys who may want to…
A. Date you, or
B. Kill you, or
C. Learn the origins of your freaklike self-defense capabilities!
And that day it was highly possible that we might have been dealing with ALL THREE!
Will the boy drama in my life ever go away?! Seriously. I'm asking.
"Even after you left, he wouldn't shut up about it," Macey told me.
"You could have shut him up," Bex suggested.
"Don't think I wasn't tempted."
A group of eighth graders passed by, singing at the top of their lungs, but the four of us stayed quiet and still inside the dark alcove.
"You're smiling," Macey blurted, no doubt accusing Bex of doing something Bexish. "Why are you smiling?"
"Nothing," Bex said with a shake of her head. "I just keep thinking…"
Bex isn't one for trailing off. She always knows what comes next and never starts what she can't finish. So maybe it was that fact, or the way the smile faded from her face, but something made me hold my breath as she found the words to say, "I just keep thinking how shocked they must have been. You know…them. They thought they were coming after a girl. But instead they got…"
"Gallagher Girls," Liz finished for her.
The two of them smiled at each other. But Macey and I—we just stared through the shadows, a new realization dawning on both of us as I said, "But they weren't surprised."
Chapter Fifteen
I've told the story here; I don't want to tell it again. This is my official record—hopefully the last time I'll have to answer the question, "So what happened last summer in Boston?"
I've told it now so many times that it comes out automatically, like a textbook I've memorized, like a song stuck in my head.
But after that…
After that the story changed.
The facts were still the same—I'd remembered them correctly all along. But I understood something else then. When the film played in my mind I didn't focus on the hits or the kicks. That night I saw the eyes, the way arms were ready to parry our punches. The way no one seemed shocked as Macey performed a textbook Malinowski Maneuver on a guy twice her size.
A spy is only as good as her cover—as her legend. The
bad guys weren't supposed to know the truth about us.
But they did.
"You're sure," Bex asked me. Again. We huddled together in the nearest, quietest, safest place I could find, surrounded by the remnants of the first-ever covert carrier pigeon breeding program. Liz sat on an overturned pigeon coop. A soft wind blew through the open gaps in the wall, which looked out into the night.
Roseville was just two miles away. And Josh. And normalcy. But somehow my first boyfriend and his perfectly ordinary life seemed like a different world entirely as I looked at Bex and then at Liz and, finally, at Macey.
"They really weren't surprised," Macey said again, almost laughing now. She looked at me. "Why didn't we see that?"
It was as if we'd both missed an easy question on a pop quiz and Macey couldn't help having a good laugh at our stupidity.
"So …" Bex spoke slowly, carefully. "They know."
She looked out the glassless windows as if they might have been out there even as we spoke, because if they knew who we were…they knew where we lived.
"But that can't be," Liz protested. "No one knows the truth about the Gallagher Academy."
But I just followed Bex's gaze into the darkness and thought about another night in another room, when Zach had asked me about the mystery surrounding my father's death. I found his words coming back to me as I wrapped my arms around myself and whispered, "Somebody knows."
"So they knew Macey would have training, and they came after her and Preston anyway?" Liz asked.
I saw my best friends looking at me—and even in the dark I couldn't hide the truth any longer.
"Well …" I started slowly, "on the roof, Preston was with us."
"Yeah," Bex said. I could feel her impatience building, so I spoke faster.
"I got him out of there—got him off of that roof—and they didn't really…care."
"What do you mean, Cam?" Liz asked.
"She means they didn't want him," Macey said. "They didn't want us," she added, growing stronger. And then she stopped. She shrugged. "They wanted me."
I'd been fearing that moment for days, thinking about the girl at the lake. I'd worried what the knowledge might do to her—to us. But from the time she'd stepped foot out of her parents' limousine, Macey had been a surprise, and this was no exception.
She squinted at me. She shook her head. It was the exact same look she got when she mastered a formula for Mr. Mosckowitz's class, as if things were finally starting to make sense.
"I'm gonna get my mom and Aunt Abby." I started for the door, but then Macey spoke.
"You think they don't know already?"
And it hit me—the truth. Of course they knew. They'd always known.
"So either they came after Macey in spite of her training…" Liz started.
"Or because of it," Bex replied.
But the strangest thing was happening. The moon was rising, full and clear. The lights of Roseville shone in the distance. Everything felt alive again, and I could see that in Macey. It was as if she knew it wasn't random anymore—there was purpose. And that made all the difference.