Read Online Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover by Ally Carter - Free Book Online Page B

room, not the girl on the roof. The sounds were
different there—just the buzz of my instructor's voice. The answering of
questions. The muffled shouts of the camera operators as they jockeyed for
position.
    But
in my head I saw the whirl of circling blades. I heard the grunts and kicks,
the distant roar of the wind coming in off the harbor. In my mind, the film was
clearer and slower as Preston fell to safety. And then I watched a masked
figure ignore the son of a potential president, point to my best friend, and
say the two words I hadn't truly heard before.
    The room was dark.
    The walls around us were thick.
    And
I'm pretty sure my aunt was the only person who heard me whisper, "Get her."
     
     

Chapter Ten
     
     
    There
are things spies often carry with them: pocket litter, fake IDs, the occasional
weapon-slash-camera-slash-hair accessory. But the heaviest things, I think, are
the secrets. They can drown you if they let them. As I sat inside Sublevel Two
that day, I knew the one I held was so heavy I might never see the surface
again.
    When
class was over, the lights came on, and I listened as half of my classmates
scattered to explore their new surroundings. I watched Mick Morrison corner
Mr. Solomon with a dozen questions about the Marciano Theory and its proper use
in urban settings, but the rest of the class stood huddled around Aunt Abby,
who was doing a very dramatic reenactment of the time she'd had to sneak a
nuclear engineer out of Taiwan during the rainy season.
    "So
then I told him, I know it's a rickshaw, but that doesn't mean it doesn't
float!" Abby said.
    Tina
and Eva burst out laughing, but I knew Aunt Abby was watching out of the corner
of her eyes as I left the classroom and started up the long spiraling ramp that
led to the mansion above us. I knew she was listening as Bex fell into step
beside me and said, "Cam, slow down," as if it were possible for me
to outpace her. (Which it isn't.)
    But
I just kept spiraling upward, remembering the words I had listened to but
hadn't heard; recalling the attackers' indifference when Preston fell to safety over the side
of the roof—the things I had watched but hadn't seen.
    "I was an idiot!" I
snapped.
    "You
were brilliant," Bex said, and from any other girl in any other school
those words might have sounded like lip service. But not this girl. Not this
school. From Bex, it was an undisputed fact, and she was willing to take on
anyone who said otherwise.
    "Two
girls in this school could have done what you did," She cocked an eyebrow.
"And you're the other one."
    As
we reached the elevators and stepped inside, I thought about how there are two
types of secrets: the kind you want to keep in, and the kind you
don't dare to let
out.
    I
could have looked at Bex. I could have lowered my voice, and there, in that
tiny elevator a hundred feet beneath the ground, I could have been certain that
no one could possibly overhear.
    But
my mother and Mr. Solomon were the two best spies I know, and they hadn't told
Macey. They hadn't told me.
    As
the elevator doors slid open, I heard the sound of girls coming down the stairs
above us. The smell of lunch drifted from the Grand Hall. Things move through
our mansion as fast as fire sometimes. And that's when I knew I had the second
type of secret.
    I didn't dare to set it free.
    Instead
I carried it into the Grand Hall and sat down at the juniors' table for lunch,
barely looking up until I heard Eva Alvarez announce, "Mail's here,"
    She
dropped a postcard on the table in front of me, and immediately I recognized
the ruby slippers from the National Museum of American History and The Wizard of Oz and, most important, from the very place where Zach and I had first seen each
other for what we really were.
    This isn't a
hallucination, I told myself. This is real,
I thought as I turned it over and studied the handwriting that, last spring,
I'd watched wash away in the rain.
    And I read the words "Be
careful."
     
     
    I spent
the rest