"And you guys were …" He looked at us as if he were seeing us for the first time. "You're girls!" he blurted as if the fact had totally eluded him until then.
"Thanks for noticing," Macey said, grabbing my arm and pulling me away.
Preston followed after. "But you held your own against like a dozen—"
"Three!" Macey and I corrected him again.
"Men." He stopped in front of us, blocking our path. Which meant that unless we wanted to impress him with our unusual physical abilities even more, we were probably going to have to wait him out.
Just when I thought things couldn't get worse, he looked right at Macey. "How much do you weigh?"
"Hey!" I blurted, stepping between them. "It was nothing. Really! It was like those women who lift trucks off their babies—that's how I felt." I tried to sound like that moment was as exciting and adrenaline-filled and foreign to me as it had been for him.
"Yeah," Macey added.
"But the moves…" he started.
"My mom made me take a self-defense class," I blurted. (Totally not a lie.)
"Wow." He nodded. "Hope you got extra credit."
"I did," I said. (Also not a lie.)
"Well …" Preston ran his hand through his hair and straightened his tie. "They must be teaching you something special in that school of yours."
Macey and I looked at each other as if we knew we could kill him, but getting away might be way more difficult than usual.
And then he laughed.
And we breathed.
And he looked at both of us with (if he hadn't been a politician's son and all) an expression of genuine gratitude as he said, "I'm just glad I get to do this with girls like you."
"Mr. Winters!" one of the agents called. "We're moving."
A team of agents surrounded him, ushering Preston away, but Macey lingered a second longer.
"Well, he seemed…nice ?" I finally found the strength to mutter.
But Macey merely looked at me. "You're a spy, Cam. Don't you know that nothing is ever as it seems?"
I didn't get to mention Zach. I didn't get to tell her what I thought of her speech. I didn't even get to ask Aunt Abby if she was really serious about telling my mom that I'd been caught out-of-bounds.
Instead I watched the Secret Service swarm around my roommate once again. A gate swung open and Macey stepped toward her parents. Her father reached out for her hand, but she was already waving, pulling in votes and smiles and handshakes.
And there was already a voice in my earpiece telling me it was time to go home.
Chapter Fourteen
Do you know how long it took to get back to school? One hundred and seventy-two minutes. Do you know how long it took for things to return to normal? Well… I guess I'm still kind of waiting.
As soon as we got back, Mr. Solomon dragged us all the way down to Sublevel Two to review surveillance tapes and take a pop quiz. (I scored a 98%.) By the time we got upstairs to the foyer I heard the scraping of forks and the clanking of ice in our second-best crystal, but I totally wasn't hungry, especially when I saw Macey walking through the front door.
"Macey!" I yelled.
"Cam." Bex and Liz ran behind me. "What's going on?"
It was a normal night at a very abnormal school. But even by Gallagher Academy standards I'd had a very exceptional day, so I raced through the entry hall and climbed the stairs, still calling, "Macey!"