I tried to remember the last time I'd seen my mother's sister—not since before Mom left the CIA, not since before I started school here. Not since before…Dad. And yet there she was, twenty feet away and walking closer.
Her hair was longer than I remembered, past her shoulders now. She was still thin and athletic, but she seemed shorter somehow, and then, genius that I am, I realized that maybe I was just taller.
"Hey, Cam," Bex whispered, jabbing me in the ribs, "isn't Cameron your mom's maiden name?"
"Yeah," I murmured as if it were just a big coincidence.
I studied her every move as she wove between the tables; she was the embodiment of what every girl in the room wanted to be when she grew up.
"She seems sort of…familiar," Liz said, and I could almost hear her mind working, gears turning, as if my aunt's face were a code she was trying to crack.
Then Abby winked at me, and, for Bex, the pieces fell into place. "No way!" She was pointing between my aunt and my mother as if memorizing every detail of their unmistakable family resemblance. "That's your aunt—"
"Shhh!" I whispered, cutting her off. After all, Tina Walters was only a few feet away; the McHenrys and Agent Hughes were at the front of the room; there were at least a dozen reasons why this was not the best time to go through the entire Cameron family tree, not the least of which was that I was already way more notorious around there than any chameleon should rightfully be.
My mother was the headmistresss.
I'd had an illegal (sort of) relationship with a normal boy who had crashed (literally) my Covert Operations midterm last December.
And the last time several members of the student body had seen me, I'd been kissing a boy from the rival spy school in the middle of the foyer during finals week!
I was not invisible anymore. And something told me that having my aunt leading Macey's security detail wasn't going to help matters. At all. Because even though I hadn't seen her in years, I was sure that if there's one thing Abby is not, it's invisible.
"Cam." Liz's voice was soft. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Aunt Abby finally made it to the front of the room, and I just sat there feeling like maybe … I had.
Questions I Never Wanted to Hear Again After That Night
1. Did Zach call/write/break into and/or bug my grandparents' house over summer vacation? (Because the answer was no.)
2. Did I know that the news channels only showed part of the footage from the attack in Boston, but it happened to be the part where my skirt blew up? Way up! (Because, sadly, the answer was something I couldn't forget.)
3. Did I think Mr. Smith's new face made him look kind of…hot? (Because Smith and hot were two words I never wanted to hear together.)
4. Where had Aunt Abby worked? (Because I didn't know.)
5. What had Aunt Abby done? (Because I couldn't even guess.)
6. Why would an operative in the prime of her career come out of the field to take over Macey's security detail when there had to be a lot more senior operatives who would have dropped everything to keep one of their own safe? (Because I didn't want to think about it.)
"Come on, Cam," Liz pleaded the next morning, the lack of significant intel finally weighing on her. "She's your aunt. You've got to know something."
I just shrugged. "Liz, she's a deep-cover covert operative—you know how it is."
Liz stared at me blankly, but Bex nodded. After all, her parents were with MI6, so she did know. Better than anyone.
"Do you think she'll be teaching a class?" Liz gripped her extra-credit project for Mr. Mosckowitz as if her life depended on it (because, when you're Liz, your life kinda does). "I tried hacking into Langley, and everything about her was classified. I mean, seriously classi—Ow!" Liz cried.
I'm not sure how she did it, but Elizabeth Sutton, the smartest Gallagher Girl in perhaps the history of Gallagher Girls, had just managed to cut her chin with a paper clip.
Bex laughed. Liz bled (but only a little). My stomach growled, and I felt the clock inside of me ticking again, telling me that it was time, so I grabbed my bag and called, "Come on. We don't want to be late."
I was already in the hall before I noticed someone was missing.
"Macey!" I yelled, pushing open the bathroom door. "We're heading down to—" But I couldn't finish. Because Macey McHenry, the girl with the physical appearance so perfect a supermodel might feel inferior, was changing her clothes in the bathroom. And then I saw why.
A bruise covered her entire side, green tinges bleeding into purple. Her elbow was still swollen to twice its normal size. I didn't have to hear her wince to know how much it hurt, and yet the look on her face said that having me witness her vulnerability was the most painful thing of all. Macey's pride was the one thing that had come away unscathed, and she was going to protect it if it killed her.