"She's got to look sexy," Liz said the next night as the four of us gathered in the suite, getting me ready for my mission. Or date?
Oh my gosh—is it a date? I wondered. "Is it a date?" I asked out loud.
Macey shrugged. "Hard to say. Will there be food or entertainment?" I shook my head. "The winning of stuffed animals through competitive means?" Another shake. "Then probably not."
Liz, I noticed, was writing everything down. "But what if there's kissing?" she asked.
"Liz, there will be no kissing. Or hand holding. Or dancing—unless we're studying C&A, and then…There will be NO kissing!"
Liz looked a little confused, so Macey explained. "You can have dating without kissing, but kissing without dating is entirely different." Macey walked to the bed and started sorting through the nine million tops we'd already ruled out as "too dressy" or "too casual" or "too cle**age-dependent" (since I don't exactly have cle**age).
"She's ready!" Bex exclaimed, spinning me around.
Well, I didn't feel ready. With Josh I'd always felt nervous; with Zach I did, too, but in a very different way. I didn't even look ready, not the kind of ready I'd looked like with Josh. Then there'd been lip gloss and skirts and shoes that may not have been conducive to running four miles in the dark. Now I just looked like…me.
"No," I said. "This won't work. He's a spy. He'll figure out that I'm…spying."
"It's perfect, and no he won't," Macey said. She placed a lip brush in her mouth and circled me, surveying what she saw.
"But shouldn't I look…better?"
"Cam, he's seen you in P&E," Bex said, obviously referring to my tendency to be, shall we say, perspiration-challenged.
"And he's seen you totally dressed up," Liz added.
"What he hasn't seen," said Macey, positioning me in front of the mirror, "is casual Cammie."
I felt like Barbie's less-than-perfect friend.
"Everything about tonight has to seem normal, Cam," Bex warned, not seeing the irony in the amount of effort it took to achieve the look of utter effortlessness.
"She's right," Macey said. "Guys are like dogs—they can always tell when you're needy."
"Just remember your cover," Liz said, handing me my backpack.
"And remember to let him lead the conversation—see what he'll give you before you know what you'll have to take," Bex said, quoting one of Mr. Solomon's best lectures.
"Right," I said, reminding myself that we were just going to be in the library. What kind of terrible things could happen in the library, for crying out loud?
"And, Cam," Macey called after me. "Be yourself."
No matter where I went that semester, I couldn't get away from those words: be yourself. But I could never be all of myself, especially then, because a solid twenty percent of me wanted to spike Zach's morning orange juice with truth serum and be done with it. (Actually, that was Bex's idea, but we were saving it for an emergency.)
As I walked down the Grand Stairs I reminded myself that I shouldn't be nervous. I'd been on dates before—both real and of the study variety. And studying with Zach—not Josh—meant I wouldn't even have to hide the fact that I was doing PhD-level physics in the tenth grade. But as I entered the library and looked around for Zach, I couldn't fight the feeling that "myself was one cover legend I didn't quite know how to be.
"Hello, Gallagher Girl." He'd claimed a table in the back of the library. The VERY back.
18:00 hours: The Operative met The Subject in a suspiciously-remote location, indicating that he may have had more "date" and less "study" on his mind. —Analysis by Macey McHenry
Books covered the table. His school jacket hung over the back of his chair.
I sat down across from him. "So," I said, feeling my voice crack, "what should we start on?"
"I don't know," he said, but I got the distinct impression that he did know. A lot of things. Because, for starters, it was my scientific opinion that Zach was one of those people who used his intelligence to make sure no one knew exactly how intelligent he was (a tendency Macey tells me is common among boys with really sexy arms).
18:02 hours: The Operative became overwhelmed by the complete and utter silence at the table.
"Zach," I said, just to make sure my voice was still working. He looked at me. "So, I was thinking we could look at the impact of propaganda in third world economies?"