Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover by Ally Carter Page B

kick—"
    "Bex!" I cut my best
friend off.
    Can
I just say that it's really pretty hard to deal with boys who may want to…
    A.               Date you, or
    B.               Kill you, or
    C.               Learn the
origins of your freaklike self-defense capabilities!
    And
that day it was highly possible that we might have been dealing with ALL THREE!
    Will
the boy drama in my life ever go away?! Seriously. I'm asking.
    "Even
after you left, he wouldn't shut up about it," Macey told me.
    "You could have shut him
up," Bex suggested.
    "Don't think I wasn't
tempted."
    A group
of eighth graders passed by, singing at the top of their lungs, but the four of
us stayed quiet and still inside the dark alcove.
    "You're
smiling," Macey blurted, no doubt accusing Bex of doing something Bexish. "Why are
you smiling?"
    "Nothing,"
Bex said with a shake of her head. "I just keep thinking…"
    Bex
isn't one for trailing off. She always knows what comes next and never starts
what she can't finish. So maybe it was that fact, or the way the smile faded
from her face, but something made me hold my breath as she found the words to
say, "I just keep thinking how shocked they must have been. You know… them. They thought they were coming
after a girl. But instead they got…"
    "Gallagher Girls," Liz
finished for her.
    The
two of them smiled at each other. But Macey and I—we just stared through the
shadows, a new realization dawning on both of us as I said, "But they weren't surprised."
     
     

Chapter Fifteen
     
     
    I've
told the story here; I don't want to tell it again. This is my official
record—hopefully the last time I'll have to answer the question, "So what
happened last summer in Boston?"
    I've
told it now so many times that it comes out automatically, like a textbook
I've memorized, like a song stuck in my head.
    But after that…
    After that the story changed.
    The
facts were still the same—I'd remembered them correctly all along. But I
understood something else then. When the film played in my mind I didn't focus
on the hits or the kicks. That night I saw the eyes, the way arms were ready to
parry our punches. The way no one seemed shocked as Macey performed a textbook
Malinowski Maneuver on a guy twice her size.
    A
spy is only as good as her cover—as her legend. The
    bad guys weren't supposed to know
the truth about us.
    But they did.
    "You're
sure," Bex asked me. Again. We huddled together in the nearest, quietest,
safest place I could find, surrounded by the remnants of the first-ever covert
carrier pigeon breeding program. Liz sat on an overturned pigeon coop. A soft
wind blew through the open gaps in the wall, which looked out into the night.
    Roseville
was just two miles away. And Josh. And normalcy. But somehow my first boyfriend
and his perfectly ordinary life seemed like a different world entirely as I
looked at Bex and then at Liz and, finally, at Macey.
    "They
really weren't surprised," Macey said again, almost laughing now. She
looked at me. "Why didn't we see that?"
    It
was as if we'd both missed an easy question on a pop quiz and Macey couldn't
help having a good laugh at our stupidity.
    "So …" Bex spoke slowly,
carefully. "They know."
    She
looked out the glassless windows as if they might have been out there even
as we spoke, because if they knew who we were…they knew where we lived.
    "But
that can't be," Liz protested. "No one knows the truth about the
Gallagher Academy."
    But
I just followed Bex's gaze into the darkness and thought about another night in
another room, when Zach had asked me about the mystery surrounding my father's
death. I found his words coming back to me as I wrapped my arms around myself
and whispered, "Somebody knows."
    "So
they knew Macey would have training, and they came after her and Preston
anyway?" Liz asked.
    I
saw my best friends looking at me—and even in the dark I couldn't hide the
truth any longer.
    "Well
…" I started slowly, "on the