Lucky for me, I had some time to collect myself. So. Much. Time.
Here's the thing you need to know about surveillance: it's boring. Sure, sometimes we blow stuff up and jump off buildings and/or moving trains, but most of the time we just hang around waiting for something to happen (a fact that almost never makes it into the movies), so I might have felt pretty silly if I were a normal girl and not a highly trained secret-agent-type person as I sat on that park bench, trying to act normal when, by definition, I'm anything but.
17:35 hours (that's five thirty-five P.M.): The Operative moved into position.
18:00 hours: The Operative was wishing she'd brought something to eat because she couldn't leave her post to go buy a candy bar, much less use the bathroom.
18:30 hours: The Operative realized it's almost impossible to look pretty and/or seductive if you SERIOUSLY have to go pee.
My homework for that night consisted of fifty pages of The Art of War, which needed translating into Arabic, a credit card—slash-fingerprint modifier that need perfecting for Dr. Fibs, and Madame Dabney had been dropping big pop-quiz hints at the end of C&A. Yet, there I was, rubbing my swelling ankle and thinking that I really should be getting CoveOps extra credit for this.
I looked at my watch again: seven forty-five. Okay, I thought, I'll give him until eight and then…
"Hi," I heard from behind me.
Oh, jeez- Oh, jeez. I couldn't turn around. Oh heck, I had to turn around.
"Cammie?" he said again as if it were a question.
I could have said hi back in fourteen different languages (and that's not including pig Latin). And yet I was speechless as he came to stand in front of me.
"Um … Oh … Um …"
"Josh," he said, pointing to himself as if he thought I'd forgotten.
How sweet is that? I know I'm no boy expert, but I have heard entire lectures on reading body language, and I have to say that assuming that a person will have forgotten your name is way high on my "indicators of humbleness" list (not that I have one, but I totally have a starting point now).
"Hi."
I said that in English, didn't I? It wasn't Arabic or French? Oh, please, God in Heaven, don't let him think I'm an exchange student … or worse, a girl who knows, like, three words of a foreign language and goes around using them all the time just to prove how smart/cultured/generally better than everyone else she is.
"I saw you sitting over here," he said. Okay, looks like we're good on the English thing. "I haven't seen you around at all lately."
"Oh." I shot upright. "I was in Mongolia."
Note to self: learn to be a less extreme liar.
"With the Peace Corps," I said slowly. "My parents are big into that. That's when they started the homeschooling thing," I said, remembering my legend, feeling the momentum.
"Wow. That's so cool," he said.
"It is?" I asked, wondering if he was serious. But he was smiling, so I said, "Oh, yeah. It is."
He slid onto the seat beside me. "So, have you lived, like, a lot of places?"
I've traveled quite a bit, but I've actually only lived three places: a Nebraska ranch, a school for geniuses, and a D.C. town house. Luckily, I'm an excellent liar with a very thorough legend. Four years' worth of COW lessons swam in my head, and I went for some of the highlights. "Thailand's really beautiful."
"Wow."
Then I remembered Macey's don't be cooler than he is advice. "It was long time ago," I said. "It wasn't a big thing."
"But you live here now?"
The Subject likes to state the obvious, which may signify a defect in observation skills and/or short-term memory?
"Yeah." I nodded. And then things got quiet—painfully quiet. "I'm waiting on my mom," I blurted, finally remembering my cover story. "She takes a class at night … at the library." I gestured to the red brick building across the square. "And I like to come into town with her because I don't get out much, thanks to my nontraditional education."
The Subject has really blue eyes that twinkle when he looks at someone like she's maybe a little bit insane.
After a long stretch of really awkward silence, he stood up and said, "I gotta go." I wanted to beg him not to leave, but even I knew that might come off as a tad bit desperate. He stepped away, and I didn't know how to stop him (well, I did, but several of the moves I had in mind are really only legal during times of war).
"Hey," he said, "what's your last name?"
"Solomon," I blurted.
Ew! A large portion of my future government salary will someday be spent trying to understand why I chose that name at this moment, but it was out there and I couldn't take it back.
"Are you, like, in the book?"
The book? What book?
He laughed and stepped closer. "Can I call you?" he asked, reading the confusion on my face.
Josh was asking if he could call me! He wanted my phone number! What it meant—truly and irrevocably meant—I didn't know. But I felt very safe in ruling out the possibility that he thought I was "nobody." Still, that didn't change the fact that the last phone I used doubles as a stun gun (so for obvious reasons I probably shouldn't give him the number of that one).
I said, "No." But then the most amazing thing happened: Josh looked totally sad! It was as if I'd run over his puppy (though no actual puppies were harmed in the formation of that metaphor).
I was shocked. I was amazed. I was drunk on power!
"No!" I said again. "Not, 'no you can't call me.' I meant, 'no, you can't call me.'" Then, seeing his confusion, I added, "There are strict rules at my house." Not a lie.
He nodded, faking understanding, then asked, "What about e-mail?"
I shook my head.
"I see."
"I'll be back here tomorrow," I blurted, stopping him in his tracks. "My mom, she has class again. I'll…"
"Okay." He nodded, then turned to go. "Maybe I'll see you around."
"What the heck is that supposed to mean?" I yelled at Macey, though it wasn't her fault. I mean, if a boy gets all gooey and disappointed because you won't give him your phone number and then you tell him you will be at a designated place at a designated time—therein eliminating the need for a phone number—and he says "maybe" he'll see you there? That's cause to yell—isn't it?
"Maybe?" I yelled again, which might have been overkill since I'd had the whole walk back to school to simmer in his words, and my roommates were hearing them for the first time.
Liz was wearing the same expression she gets whenever Dr. Fibs tells us we'll be needing our gas masks for class— equal parts fear and euphoria. Macey was doing her nails, and Bex was doing yoga in the corner of the room.
Most people are supposed to get calmer with deep breathing and inner reflection—not Bex. "I could take him out," she offered, and if she hadn't been twisted up like a pretzel at the time, I might have worried more about it. After all, she knew where he lived.
"Well…" Liz stammered. "I supposed you'll just have to go, and then if he shows, it means he likes you."
"Wrong," Macey said, making a buzzer sound as she flipped through a textbook. "If he comes, it means he's curious—or bored—but probably curious."
"But when will we know if he likes her?" Liz pleaded.
Macey rolled her big, blue, beautiful eyes. "That's not the question," she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "The question is—how much?"
Is there no end to the things we have to learn?
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.