"It might make you feel better," she rationalized. "It would make me feel better."
But I didn't think anything could make me feel better right then, especially when we reached the marble floor of the foyer and Bex said, "You could go to that party and show him what he's missing."
Really, going to that party was the last thing I needed, because A) I'd sort of promised under oath that I wouldn't sneak off campus anymore. B) If I went I'd have to take Zach with me (like that was going to happen). And C) I didn't have a thing in my closet that could possibly compete with pink mittens on the adorableness scale!
I was just getting ready to point out those simple facts when I really heard what Bex had said.
"Wait," I said. "How did you know about the party?"
"Cam," Bex said softly, "you were on comms."
Oh. My. Gosh.
As if it weren't bad enough that I'd just had one of the most traumatic and heartbreaking conversations of my young life—I'd had it while wearing a comms unit!
My classmates had heard everything…Mr. Solomon had heard everything…Dr. Steve had heard everything!
That had been my chance to redeem myself in front of the Blackthorne Boys, and I had frozen. I, Cammie the Chameleon, had been seen … by my ex-boyfriend…and his new girlfriend…and I had frozen.
It took all three of my roommates to drag me into the Grand Hall for supper. I barely managed to stay through dessert before slipping away. (Really, there's no reason to waste perfectly good crème brûlée.)
But then I found myself roaming dusty corridors that I know are rarely used, passing entrances to secret passageways and fighting the temptation to slip inside, until finally I was standing in a long, empty hall, staring at a tapestry of the Gallagher family tree, longing to ease behind it—to enter my all-time favorite secret passageway and disappear.
And I might have, too, if I hadn't heard a voice behind me.
"You know, I don't think I ever got the rest of my tour."
Zach. Zach was standing behind me. Zach was halfway down the corridor watching me, and I don't know what was scarier, that I had been sloppy enough not to have heard him or that he was good enough not to have been heard.
"So what do you say, Gallagher Girl?" He walked toward me then hooked one finger behind the ancient tapestry and peeked behind it. "Is this when I get my Cammie Morgan no-passageway-too-secret, no-wall-too-high tour?"
"How do you know about…"
He pointed to himself and said, "Spy."
Zach cocked his head and placed one shoulder against the cold stone wall, and suddenly I became acutely aware of the fact that we were…
Alone.
"So," he said, "that was Jimmy?"
"Josh," I corrected.
"Whatever," Zach said, waving the detail away. "He's a cutie."
And … well… Josh is a cutie, but I highly doubted that Zach meant it seriously, so I just rolled my eyes. "What do you want, Zach? If you came to make fun, go ahead," I said, laying myself bare (or as bare as a girl can be in a government-approved school uniform). "Mock away."
He studied me for a long time, his face fighting a smile before saying, "Gee, you know, I would…but you just took the fun out of it."
"Sorry."
I took a quick step, but Zach blocked my path. "Hey," he whispered. "Why'd you freeze out there today?" Suddenly he wasn't the boy who had winked at me in D.C., and bore no resemblance to the guy who had sunned himself on the gazebo steps. So far I'd seen three different faces for Zachary Goode, and at the moment I didn't have a clue which was real and which was legend.
"I'm fine," I said. "I'm over it."
"No you aren't, Gallagher Girl. But you will be."
Walking to my mother's office on Sunday night, I couldn't help wondering when it was all going to get easier. Josh wasn't even my boyfriend anymore, yet my life was still full of boy-related drama. Hadn't I spent a good portion of my winter break trying to put those things behind me? But that was before I knew that I'd stink at countersurveillance—that the drama would follow me wherever I went.