I should have said something sassy. I should have made a joke. I should have done anything but turn around and walk away from the gazebo and my partner and my mission. Bex and Grant veered onto the sidewalk and headed straight toward me. I felt Bex bump into me, heard her say "I'm sorry" as her hand slid softly over my own.
"Nice pass, Ms. Baxter," Mr. Solomon said as I held the quarter in my palm.
I turned down a side street on the far side of the square, passed the pharmacy, and thought for a second about the one boy who had seen me—once—and I wondered if life were just a series of brush passes—things come and go.
Then I heard a familiar voice say, "Cammie, is that you?"
Then I realized that sometimes things come back.
Chapter Fourteen
Josh.
Josh was standing in front of me. Josh was stepping closer. Josh was looking at me, smiling at me. "Hey, Cammie, I thought that was you."
Now, I know I'm new to this whole ex-girlfriend thing, but I'm pretty sure exes aren't supposed to talk to each other. In fact, I'm pretty sure exes are supposed to hide when they see each other, which totally sounded like a great idea to me, because, well, hiding's what I do best.
But Josh had seen me. Josh always saw me.
"Cammie?" Josh said again. "Are you okay?"
I honestly didn't have a clue how to answer, because, on the one hand, Josh was there—talking to me! On the other hand, I had broken up with him. And lied to him. And the last time I'd seen him he'd shown up during a CoveOps exercise, driven a forklift through a wall, and had his memory modified, so okay wasn't necessarily the word the came to mind when describing how I felt right then.
Spies are good at multitasking—we observe and we process, we calculate and we lie, but I didn't think it was possible to feel so happy, scared, and generally awkward all at the same time, so I muttered, "Hi, Josh," and tried to keep my voice from cracking.
"What are you doing here?" Josh asked, then looked up and down the narrow street as if he were being followed (which, when you think about it, wasn't all that far-fetched).
"Oh, it's a … school thing." At the word school, he recoiled slightly. I looked down at the uniform that—until that moment—Josh had never seen me wear. "So, how have you been?"
"Okay. How about you?"
"Okay," I said, too, because, even though I could have told Josh a lot of things in a lot of different languages, the things I most wanted to say were the very things that neither the spy in me nor the girl in me could ever let him hear.
"So we're both okay," Josh said. He forced a smile. "Good for us."
Oh my gosh, could this moment be any more awkward, I thought—just as… you guessed it… the moment got a lot more awkward.
"Josh." The voice was soft and familiar. "Josh, your dad said he could …" The voice trailed off, and I saw one of Josh's oldest friends step out of the pharmacy's side door.
DeeDee's short blond hair did a little flippy thing where it stuck out of the bottom of her pink hat. Which matched her pink scarf. And her pink mittens. Pink was definitely DeeDee's signature color. "Oh my gosh, Cammie! It's great to see you!" she exclaimed.
She paused and studied my uniform for a second, as if remembering that almost everything I'd told her last semester had been a lie. And then, despite everything, DeeDee hugged me.
"Hi, DeeDee," I said, forcing a smile. "It's really … good … to see you, too." And it would have been if I hadn't noticed something just then that had nothing to do with being a spy on a training op and everything to do with being an ex-girlfriend.
DeeDee and Josh were standing too straight and trying too hard not to touch. A panicked look passed between them that screamed, We've been caught. And, Do you think she'll know?
It didn't take a genius to look at them together—to know that Josh and DeeDee were no longer just friends.
Spies don't train so that we'll always know what to think; we train so that in times like this we don't have to think; so that our bodies will go on cruise control and do the right things for us. My mouth smiled. My lungs kept breathing. I maintained cover, even when I heard Mr. Solomon's voice in my ear saying, "Okay, Ms. Morgan, let's see you hand off."
"We're … I mean…I'm…" DeeDee corrected quickly, as if trying to hide the fact that in the past few weeks she'd lost her single-pronoun status. "I'm on the committee for the spring fling—it's a dance…and you know…kind of a big deal…" She was rambling, unsteadied, which is pretty common for people in deep cover for the first time. "And Josh is helping me get businesses to donate door prizes and stuff. For the fling. Next Friday night. And—"
She might have rambled on forever, and I might have let her, but then a voice echoed down the narrow street. "Cammie, there you are," Zach said as he strolled around the corner, stopped suddenly, and looked from Josh to DeeDee and finally at me. "I was wondering where you'd disappeared to," he said. Then he turned to the boy next to me, stretched out a hand, and said, "I'm Zach."
DeeDee looked at Zach then back to me, and smiled that all-American-girl smile of hers like this was the most superfun reunion ever!
But Josh didn't smile. He looked between Zach and me with the same kind of expression he used to have while doing his chemistry homework—as if the answer were right in front of him but he couldn't quite see it.