I heard the music stop and wild applause, but it felt like we were a mile from the party. Josh was in there. Of course, so were two people who could punish me in ways that have been illegal since the Geneva Convention. But still, I looked at Bex and said, "I can't go."
Liz was already climbing into the golf cart, leaving Bex and me alone in the dark.
"I'll be okay," I told Bex. "I'll get Josh and we'll leave." She didn't say anything. We were on the dark side of the party, but I could read her face in the light of the full moon. I didn't see fear; I saw disappointment. It seemed a whole lot worse.
"They could catch you, you know?" Bex asked.
"Hey," I tried, forcing a laugh, trusting my smile to thaw her, "I'm The Chameleon, right?"
But Bex was already sliding into the backseat. "See you at home."
The Operative decided to go into a holding pattern in hopes of extracting The Subject and salvaging the mission. At least two hostile agents were inside (and they were going to get a lot more hostile if things didn't go well), so it was a risky move, but one she was willing to make, even as she watched her backup drive away.
Mom and Mr. Solomon might have had the advantage when it came to training and experience, but I had a superior position and far more information. As I crouched behind the hood of a big, black Buick, watching the doors, I went through my options: A) cause a diversion and hope to pull Josh away in the chaos, B) wait for either Josh or Mom and Mr. Solomon to leave, and pray they didn't decide to leave at the exact same time, or C) think of more options.
After all, I did have access to gasoline, rocks, and aluminum cans, but that old barn seemed really, really flammable, and I wasn't exactly in the mood to take chances.
I was just starting to wonder if one of the pickup trucks parked beside me would have a rope, when I heard someone say, "Cammie?" I spun around to see DeeDee heading my way. "Hi. I thought that was you."
She was wearing a really pretty pink dress that matched her stationery. Her blond hair was pulled away from her face. She looked almost doll-like as she floated toward me through the dark.
"Hi, DeeDee," I said. "You look really nice."
"Thanks," she said, but didn't sound like she believed me. "You, too."
Nervously, I fingered the corsage. The orchid petals felt like silk against my hand.
"I see he went ahead and got you one."
I looked down at my wrist. "Yeah." I didn't know how to feel about the fact that Josh had discussed his corsage plans with another girl, but then I looked at her and realized I didn't feel nearly as weirded-out about it as she did.
DeeDee pointed toward the lights and swaying couples in the distance and said, "I figured if I came late then I wouldn't have to be a wallflower for too long."
I imagined her blending in with the wooden slats and bales of hay, disappearing among the sea of couples until no one noticed one girl standing alone, not quite a part of the party. That's when I knew that DeeDee was a chameleon, too.
"So, what are you doing out here by yourself?" DeeDee asked.
It was a pretty good question. Thankfully, one I was ready for.
I rubbed my temples and said, "It's so loud in there, my head is killing me. I had to get some air."
"Oh," she said, and started digging in her tiny pink purse. "Do you want some aspirin or something?"
"No. Thanks, though."
DeeDee stopped digging, but she still didn't look at me when she said, "He really likes you, you know? I've known him for forever, and I can tell he really likes you."
Even if I hadn't read her note, I would have known how much she liked Josh, how deeply she wished that he would someday buy her a wrist corsage. And she'd wear it—not because it was part of some silly inside joke but because Josh had given it to her.
"I really like him, too," I said, not knowing what else to say.
She smiled. "I know."
And then I thought she'd walk away. I really needed her to walk away, because I absolutely had to come up with a way of getting Josh out of there! "Well, don't let me keep you, DeeDee," I said, running through possible distractions in my mind: small explosion, easily contained forest fire, the possibility that there might be some pregnant woman inside who could go into labor in the next half hour …
"Cammie?" DeeDee asked, and I couldn't help myself, I snapped, "What?"
"Do you want me to tell Josh you need to go home?"
Or that could work, too.
As DeeDee walked toward the party, I found myself envying her. She saw Josh at school. She knew what he ate in the cafeteria and where he sat in class. There was no part of her life she couldn't share with him—nothing he didn't already know from a lifetime of dances and carnivals and ordinary days. And then I found myself thinking: if all things were equal, would he still like me then?
But I would never know, because things would never be equal. DeeDee would always be flesh and blood to him, and I'd always be a legend.
"Are you sure I can't drive you home?" Josh asked as he turned the van onto Main Street and we headed for the square. "Come on. I know you're not feeling well. Let me—"
"No, that's okay," I said. "My head doesn't hurt now." Not a lie.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
He parked along the square, and we got out and walked to the gazebo. He held my hand, and it was a very Dear Diary moment, if you know what I mean, because the lights in the gazebo were on but the town was deserted and his hand was soft and warm, and then … he handed me a present!
The box was small and blue (but not Tiffany blue as Macey would later point out) and circled by a pink ribbon.
He said, "I hope you like it."
I was stunned. Completely. I'd gotten presents before, sure, but usually they were things like new running shoes or a signed first edition of A Spy's Guide to Underground Russia. Never had the presents come with pretty pink ribbons.
"My mom helped me wrap it," Josh admitted, then motioned to the gift in my hands. "Go ahead," he told me, but I didn't want to open it. How sad is that—that the idea of a present was more precious to me than the gift itself?
"Go on!" Josh said, growing impatient. "I wasn't sure what you wanted, but…oh, well…" He started tearing at the paper. "Happy birthday!"
Yeah, in case you haven't figured it out already: it totally wasn't my birthday.
The present in my hands felt foreign and heavy then. Doesn't it usually take 365 days to earn a birthday present? I wondered. I mean, I know I've had a pretty sheltered life and all, but I'm pretty sure that's the standard way in which these things work.
"I bet you thought I'd forgotten," he teased, pulling me into a bone-crushing hug.
"Oh, um … yeah?" I tried.
"DeeDee helped me pick them out." He had taken the lid off the box and was pulling out the most delicate pair of silver earrings I'd ever seen. (Note to self: get ears pierced.) "I thought they'd go with your necklace—you know, the silver one, with the cross?"
"Yeah," I said, dismayed. "I know the one."
The earrings glistened in the night, and all I could do was stare at them, hypnotized, thinking that no girl has ever had a nicer boyfriend, and no girl has ever been less deserving of him.
I felt like I was outside myself looking down. Who is that girl, I wondered. Doesn't she know how lucky she is? Doesn't she realize that she has really pretty earrings that match her necklace and a boy who would think of such a thing? Who is she to worry about quantum physics or chemical agents or NSA codes? Doesn't she know this is one of those rare moments in life where everything is right and good and wonderful?
Doesn't she know these moments always end?
Chapter Twenty-one
As I inched through the secret passageways, my thoughts seemed to echo in the narrow space: But it isn't my birthday.
I wished the nagging doubt would just go away. I had earrings, didn't I? Does it really matter why he'd given them to me? After all, normal girls get mad when their boyfriends forget their birthdays, so shouldn't remembering a wrong birthday be worth bonus points or something? I should have been crediting Josh's account in case he ever forgot something else—like twenty years from now he could forget our wedding anniversary and I could say, Don't worry, darling; remember when you gave me earrings when it wasn't my birthday? Now we're even.
But it wasn't my birthday.
I thought about the date: November nineteenth. I remembered telling Josh that was my birthday during his rapid-fire interrogation by the park, and I wasn't sure which was more sobering—that he'd remembered or I'd forgotten.
The empty corridors seemed to spiral out in front of me. I was tired. I was hungry. I wanted to take a shower and talk to my friends, and so I was already half asleep as I leaned against the back side of the ancient stone that framed the huge fireplace in the second-floor student lounge. In just a couple of weeks the fireplace was going to be useless to me as a passageway unless I wanted to wear one of Dr. Fibs's fireproof bodysuits on my dates with Josh (but they make even Bex look fat), so I pulled the lever one last time, expecting the stones to part, but when I did, I accidentally knocked an old torch holder that slid down, opening yet another hidden door, and revealing a branch in the passageway that I don't think I'd ever seen before.
I don't know why I followed it—spy genetics or teenage curiosity—but soon I was wandering down the corridor, not knowing where I was until I walked through thin slivers of light and stopped to peer through cracks into the Hall of History, where Gilly's sword stood gleaming beneath its perpetual spotlight.
That's also when I heard the crying.
Farther down the passageway I found my mother's office and the bookshelves I had watched spin around to reveal the memorabilia of a headmaster of an elite boarding school. I leaned against them, peered through a crack in the plaster, and watched my mother cry. Someone could have thrown a switch, and the bookcase would have spun around, taking me with it, but as I stood in the cramped and musty space I couldn't turn away.
She was alone in her office, curled up in her chair. The last time I'd seen her she'd been dancing and laughing, but now she sat alone, and tears ran down her face. I wanted to hold her so that we could cry together. I wanted to feel her salty tears on my cheek. I wanted to smooth her hair and tell her that I was tired, too. But I stayed where I was—watching, knowing the reasons I didn't go comfort her: I couldn't explain what I was wearing; I couldn't tell her why I was there; but mostly, I knew that it was something she didn't want me to see.
When she reached for a tissue on the shelf behind her desk, her eyes were closed, and yet she found the box with the sure, steady motion of someone who had known it would be there. It was a practiced gesture, a habit. And I knew that my mother's grief, like her life, was full of secrets. Then I felt the earrings in my pocket, and I knew why the tears had picked that night to come.
"Oh my gosh," I said, once more that night—this time for a very different reason.
I slipped farther down the passageway and eventually slid to a window seat in an abandoned classroom. I didn't cry. Something told me the universe couldn't handle both Morgan women weeping at the same time, so I sat there stoically, letting my mother be the weak one for a little while, taking my turn on duty.