Chapter II
Evie's Notes: Hope you enjoy the new chapter! Let me know your favorite part in the comments!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in bold, only my OCs
"Chapter Two" read Rachel Morgan. "Spies have covers for every occasion: aliases and phony passports, pocket litter and fake IDs. A great operative can become someone else at the drop of a hat (and sometimes, actual hats are involved), but I'd rarely seen someone as deeply undercover as Macey McHenry was then".
"Thank you! Thank you very much" joked Macey hopping up onto the table to take a dramatic bow.
"Peacock is moving," one of the agents whispered into his cuff as I followed Macey through the Winters-McHenry temporary headquarters, past rows of laptop computers and screaming interns wearing business suits and campaign buttons and looking like they hadn't had a good night's sleep since New Hampshire. In fact, I actually heard one guy say, "I haven't had a good night's sleep since New Hampshire." But Macey's black hair was as glossy as ever, her blue eyes perfectly clear. "Jeez, Chameleon, do you have any idea how hard you are to track down?" She walked on, seemingly unaware that she was like a princess, and the room was full of commoners who were there to make sure her father claimed his throne.
"Trust me… I'm aware" grumbled the aforementioned princess.
"I mean, first I tried the school, but have you ever tried to get anything out of Professor Buckingham?" My roommate calmly rattled on as if her face weren't being broadcast into every home in America at that very moment.
"You definitely won't be able to get anything out of her" grumbled Mr. Mosckowitz
"Anyway, then I asked the Secret Service, and—"
"Of course that was your next step" laughed Bex.
"Wait," I interrupted. "The Secret Service gave you my grandparents' telephone number?""Well," Macey admitted, "I asked the Secret Service for the number, but I ended up getting it from more covert sources."
"Who?!" asked Alisha, bouncing in her seat.
I lowered my voice when I asked, "The agency?" "Liz," she whispered back, and I couldn't help smile as I thought about our tiniest & smartest roommate.
"Oh… not as fun" sulked Alisha as everyone else laughed.
"So, have a good summer?" Macey asked as we left the war room and started down another long hall. "Yeah," I said, almost out of breath. Two months at my grandparents' ranch in Nebraska hadn't made me completely out of shape, but life moved at a different pace there, so it still felt like a struggle to keep up with Macey.
"I finally got to beat Cam! Best Summer Ever!"
"It was good. Just…" I thought about our classmates, who seemed to scatter to the far corners of the world whenever school wasn't in session. I thought about my mother, who had put me on a plane the first day of summer break and hadn't sent so much as a postcard since. And finally, I thought about two boys: one who I hadn't seen in months and one who I seemed to be imagining everywhere, but whom I knew I might never see again. "Fine," I said finally. "My summer was fine."
"Yeesh… way to bring down the mood Cam" laughed Tina.
Macey knew me pretty well by then, so she just smiled and said, "Mine too."
"Awww! So cute" mocked Patricia.
Our footsteps were whisper-soft against the carpeting as we entered the tunnel that passed under the street between the convention center and the hotel. Secret Service agents flanked the doors, and I heard one whisper into his sleeve, "Peacock is arriving on the scene." "So can I call you Peacock?" I teased.
"Try it and you die" deadpanned Macey with a killer glare.
"That depends: do you want to feel safe while you sleep at…" Macey started, but then two elderly women wearing the biggest sunflowers I have ever seen passed us, and Macey smiled at them—yes, actual smileage—and said, "Well, doesn't the Kansas delegation look festive!" The shift in her had been effortless, as if her thousand-watt smile was attached to a switch that the fates kept flipping off and on.
"Whoa! Go Mace" cheered Bex.
Sure, I might have been the CIA legacy, but right then it was obvious that Macey knew as much about secret identities, hidden agendas, and covert alliances as anyone I'd ever known.
"Damn straight. And don't you forget it".
"So," I started, "what's new with you?" She pulled a neatly typed piece of paper from her pocket. "Six a.m.: appear on national morning shows. Nine a.m.: get fitted for navy suits." Macey leaned closer and added in a whisper, "Evidently, red makes me look trampy."
"No it doesn't" protested Tina. "It actually looks really great with your hair and coloring".
She resumed her usual posture and walked faster, the sloping ramp leading us closer and closer to a pair of metal doors at the end of the tunnel. "Eleven a.m.," she continued, "fun, family bonding with Mom and Dad." Macey stopped. She rested her hands on the metal handles. "So, you know," she said as she pushed open the doors of the single largest room I've ever seen, "the usual."
Several of the girls in the hall nodded along with her, coming from similar backgrounds themselves.
Chairs—thousands of empty chairs—spread across the arena floor. Signs bearing the names of all the states hung above them. We started out in Oregon, then walked through Delaware and past Kentucky. Stands rose high before us. I craned my head upward, scanning the skyboxes that circled the arena, boasting the logos of every news outlet known to man. Macey and I stood there for a long moment, alone for the first time. Maybe that's why she felt safe to whisper, "Thanks for coming, Cam." Her father's face was on the cover of every magazine in America. She was about to be the belle of the country's biggest ball. Probably every girl in the country would have traded places with her, but I saw the misery in her eyes as she stood lost inside that massive space, and I knew why I was there. I remembered that a Gallagher Girl is only as good as her backup. "Let's get this over with and get back to school, okay?" I said. "Okay," she replied. I could have sworn she almost smiled.
"Thanks for having my back Cam" whispered Macey laying her head on Cammie's shoulder.
"Any time M" whispered back Cammie, squeezing the girl's hand tightly.
And she might have if we hadn't been interrupted by the sound of footsteps from behind us and a voice saying, "Hello, ladies."
"Oooh! Who's that" asked Alexis intrigued.
"Don't you have a boyfriend Lex?" asked her roommate Jess.
"Of course I do, but if things don't work out for Cam or Mace, then mystery boy could be the one"
I don't know about you, but there are certain assumptions I tend to make about a teenage boy who insists on calling teenage girls "ladies." You expect him to be handsome. You expect him to be slick. The kind of guy who owns more hair styling products than you do. But Preston Winters was… not.
Rachel continued reading once everyone stopped laughing. He was about Macey's height, but I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say I'm pretty sure Liz could have taken him in a fistfight.
"Hey!" protested Liz.
"Sorry Lizzie" apologized Camie.
His tailored suit hung from his thin frame like he was a kid playing dress-up, which wasn't much of a stretch considering the fact that he was wearing a Spider-Man wristwatch. "Quick question," Macey whispered. "When your mom said that we weren't supposed to use any Protection and Enforcement moves this summer, that didn't apply to presidential candidates' sons, did it?"
"Yes, yes it did" snapped Rachel, fixing Macey with a sharp look. Macey simply held her hands up in surrender.
"I think it might apply especially to them." I'm not sure if it was the presence of the Secret Service or the classified nature of our sisterhood, but something made Macey take a deep breath and smile (and whisper a really bad word in Portuguese).
"Oooh! I wonder which one? We have to know a lot of them…" contemplated Mack.
"You're looking very… patriotic… today, Ms. McHenry," Preston said, looking Macey up and down.
"Ooooohhhh!" teased the seventh graders.
"Oh bug off!" snapped Macey.
I glanced at Macey's red, white, and blue sweater set (I know… Macey was wearing a sweater set!) and bit back a laugh. "I don't believe we've met," the boy said, turning to me and holding out his hand. "I'm Preston. You must be—" "Busy," Macey said, trying to pull me away. "Cammie," I finished, resisting my roommate's pull long enough to shake Preston's hand. "The roommate," I offered. He bowed slightly forward at the waist and said, "It's nice to meet you, Cammie the roommate—"
"Aww look at you with your good manners"
Before he could finish I heard a shrill voice cry, "McHenry family, stage left!" A trim woman was walking onto the stage, Macey's mom and dad following closely behind her. She had a clipboard. And little horn-rimmed glasses hanging from a chain around her neck. And not one but two pencils stuck in the massive pile of hair on the top of her head. "Winters family, stage right!" As the governor of Vermont and his wife took their places, I couldn't help but notice that one of the most powerful men in the country looked absolutely terrified of the woman with the clipboard.
Rachael had to wait till the girls all stopped laughing to continue.
"McHenry family!" the woman called again. "We're missing—" "Here I am," Macey said, dashing toward the stage. Her mother rolled her eyes. Her father checked his watch. But Clipboard Lady just said, "Excellent! We can't have a new Camelot without our young people. Just look at those bright shiny faces."
"Is she for real? New Camelot?" scoffed Tessa.
"Actually, I owe my complexion to your company, Mrs. McHenry." The entire group seemed surprised to hear Preston speaking—especially Preston. But instead of shutting up, he rambled on. "That new blemish reduction cream is… wow. Good job," he added with a self-conscious nod.
"Your mom's products are pretty good," admitted Lexi.
Clipboard Lady glared at him, and it was pretty obvious that the shining faces were supposed to be seen and not heard. "I'll be standing over here now," Preston said, taking his place beside his parents.
The candidates took turns behind a podium draped with what looked like every red, white, and blue piece of fabric east of the Mississippi. Macey stayed in the center of it all, never shrinking from the spotlight, while I eased to the back of the arena and took my place among the shadows.
"So like normal?" clarified Bex.
"Yup!" declared Cammie proudly.
Number of times Clipboard Lady made Governor Winters and Macey's dad practice shaking hands and then turn to wave at the imaginary crowd: 14, Number of times Macey glared at her mother: 26, Number of times Preston tried to catch Macey's attention and she totally ignored him: 27, Number of times Macey had to practice a "spontaneous" dip while dancing with her father: 5, Number of minutes I had to sit alone in that enormous arena, wondering if freedom and democracy were always this well rehearsed: 55.
"Damn Cam, you are rocking those stats" laughed Alyssa
By noon, Clipboard Lady was running through things one final time. "At exactly 8: 04 the music will come up." Clipboard Lady raised her hands dramatically. "At this point," she said, studying the candidates and their families over her dark-rimmed glasses, "I recommend spontaneous dancing." Preston smiled at Macey. Macey shuddered.
"Aww! They sound like they would be adorable together! Right, Jess?" squealed Lexi
"Sure Lex, whatever you say" sighed Jess. She was used to her friend's antics at this point.
"Balloons will fall at 8:06. Celebrate, celebrate. Dance, dance. Fade to commercial." "All done?" I asked when Macey appeared beside me a minute later. She looked more relieved than I've ever seen her. (And that's including the time Dr. Fibs announced that he wouldn't be needing her to help him with his bunion-pads-as-weapons experiment. Which, needless to say, is pretty darn relieved.)
"It was a good idea" sulked the scientist.
"Let's go," Macey told me, but we both must have gotten a little bit sloppy over summer vacation, because Preston was already on our tail.
"Sloppy Miss McHenry. Very Sloppy" scolded Mr. Solomon.
"So, can I interest you ladies in some midday refreshment? I hear the Hawaii delegation might be roasting a big pig." At that point I might have felt sorry for Preston because that was maybe the dorkiest thing I'd ever heard. But Preston didn't shy away from his dorkiness—he embraced it. No part of Preston Winters felt sorry for himself. He was the only person I'd ever met who was completely without a cover. And I liked him for it.
"You know what! I want to change my bet in the pool. I'm now putting my money on Cam dating Preston now instead of Zach" announced Chelsea.
"There's a pool?" squawked Cammie scandalized.
"Of course there's a pool" sassed Tina as she filed her nails. "How did you not know about this? You are a spy right?".
Cammie just grumbled and waited for her mom to keep reading.
"Sorry, Preston," Macey said as she grabbed my arm and pointed me toward the doors. She waved her well-worn itinerary in front of him. "Duty calls." But if there's one thing that living with the child of a career politician has taught me, it's that they never take no for an answer. "Hey," he said. "Yeah. Itineraries. Doing our part. That's great." We were ten steps ahead of him, but for a skinny guy he was really pretty fast. And persistent. "I'll walk with." Since there were two Secret Service agents flanking us, and a news crew setting up for a live feed, Macey must have thought twice about stopping him.
"Good call" commented Bex as she helped herself to another cup of tea.
Instead she pushed against the metal doors again, and soon we were retracing our steps through the underground tunnel. An older man with crazy white hair and wild eyebrows nearly ran me over, mumbling a very southern, "Excuse me, miss." A pair of women wearing "Washingtonians for Winters" T-shirts practically bowed in front of Preston, but he just kept pace beside us, almost jogging to keep up. "So, you ladies go to the same school, I take it?" Preston gasped. "Are all the women of the Gallagher Academy as striking as the two of you?" Macey spun on him. "Actually, striking is what we do best."
"Good one" laughed the girls.
"So, Preston," I said, eager to change the subject. We turned down the dingy narrow corridor that had taken me to Macey that morning. "You must be excited… about your dad. First son. All that." "Oh, yeah," Preston said. "I'm very excited about my father's plan for America." He might have been a politician's son, but I was a spy's daughter, so I knew a lie when I heard one.
"Hell yeah!" cheered all the girls who were descended from spies.
As we reached the service elevator, I watched Macey frantically punch the button, saw her mentally planning ways to keep Preston out, but all I could do was think about another boy and another elevator, and remember that there are some things even a Gallagher Girl can't keep from sneaking up on her.
As the doors slid open, we all climbed on. It was tight fit, so one of the Secret Service agents held back.
"This is Charlie, by the way," Preston said, gesturing to the man who seemed to take up more than his fair share of the small space. "Charlie's been with me since… When was it? Missouri, I think?" The door slid closed. Charlie didn't say a word. And beneath his breath, I heard Preston fill the awkward silence with a whisper, "Good times."
"Awkward" singsonged Anna Fettermen
The ride to the top seemed slightly longer this time. I should have wondered why, but I didn't—not until I heard the ding and saw the doors slide open onto a space that I was certain I had never seen before.
"Well that's not ominous or anything" scoffed Marissa Hale, one of the juniors.
We might as well have been in a different country—much less a different building—as we stepped into the fluorescent glare of a room that had no red carpets, no rushing interns or patient guards. A room-service cart that was missing two wheels sat along one wall. There were laundry carts and old headboards. Massive machines churned, filling the space with loud noise and an almost unbearable heat.
"Yeah… this you two are definitely on the wrong floor" worried Liz.
"Did you hit the wrong button?" I asked, looking at Macey. "It says 12: 05: film promotional video. Service elevator. Level R." She pointed to the big R that had been painted on the wall in front of us. I glanced at Charlie, who hadn't said a word since we left the convention center floor, but he didn't hesitate to hold up his sleeve and say, "Control, I'm with Peacock and Mad Dog—" Beside me, Preston raised his eyebrows and whispered, "I picked that myself." But Charlie carried on. "We're on Level R. Are they filming the video here, or has that been changed?" He looked at me. "They're checking."
The air was hot and stale, the room way too small to be an entire floor. A door with a small window was at the far end, so I wasn't surprised to hear Macey say, "I bet we're supposed to be out here," and see her push out into the light.
Shouts of "No Macey!" and "Wait for your backup!" filled the room.
There are many things a Gallagher Girl has to be: adventurous, daring, and totally unafraid of heights, to name a few. And all of those came in handy as Macey, Preston, and I stepped out onto the hotel's roof. A strong wind blew off the harbor, banging the metal door shut behind us.
"Well shit. Now you're really screwed" swore Mick
As we stepped toward the roof's edge and peered out across the city, we saw historic church steeples and towering skyscrapers. Some buildings looked as if Paul Revere himself were going to step outside; others seemed straight out of the future. Sixty stories below, news vans and tour busses stood on the gridlocked highways, but on the hotel's roof the chaos of the convention seemed to be far, far away. And that, I guess, was the problem. There were no camera crews, no public relations specialists. I glanced at Macey, who said what I was thinking. "This isn't right."
"No duh"
Then she turned to Preston. "Where were we supposed to be, exactly?" Macey looked from Preston to her well-worn agenda, and then she finally held out her hand. "Let me see your itinerary." "Okay, yeah… see that's not so easy to…" Preston stumbled for words and then admitted, "My mom has it." I looked behind us, searching for Charlie, but the man was nowhere to be seen, and in that moment, everything seemed to change.
The entire room was holding its breath as they anxiously listened to the headmistress.
Maybe it was my four full years of training, or my sixteen-and-a-half years of being Rachel Morgan's daughter, but somehow, some way, I knew that rooftop was a very bad place to be.
"Hey, you're"—Preston started as I ran toward the heavy metal door—" a really fast runner." But I barely heard him as I pulled with all my might against the door, trying the handle in vain, banging against the gray metal. It was locked—or jammed—and there was no leaving the way we'd come.
"This isn't right," Macey said behind me, double-checking her itinerary, still so entrenched in the part of herself that was a politician's daughter that she was ignoring the other part—the spy part—the girl she thought she wouldn't get to be during her summer vacation. "Something's just not…" but then she trailed off. Macey's blue eyes stared into mine. I saw in them a realization—a fear—as she looked down at the paper in her hands and then back at me…. And then toward the helicopter that was flying too low, too fast, and heading right for us."
"What! That's it!?" yelled various students when headmistress Morgan closed the book.
"Why don't we take a quick stretch and bathroom break?" suggested Ginny. "We can meet back here in twenty minutes to continue reading".
Headmistress Morgan agreed with the plan and rang the little bell that signaled the end of the meal and dismissed the students for their break.
I love hearing from y'all! Let me know what you think of the chapter and the story so far in the comments or my Tumblr Find-y0ur-j0y! - Xo Evie ✨