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

had seen me, I'd been kissing
a boy from the rival spy school in the middle of the foyer during finals week!
    I
was not invisible
anymore. And something told me that having my aunt leading Macey's security
detail wasn't going to help matters. At all. Because even though I hadn't seen
her in years, I was sure that if there's one thing Abby is not, it's invisible.
    "Cam."
Liz's voice was soft. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
    Aunt
Abby finally made it to the front of the room, and I just sat there feeling
like maybe … I had.
     
     
    Questions
I Never Wanted to Hear Again After That Night
     
    1.                Did Zach call/write/break
into and/or bug my grandparents' house over summer vacation? (Because the
answer was no.)
    2.                Did I know
that the news channels only showed part of the footage from the attack in
Boston, but it happened to be the part where my skirt blew up? Way up!
(Because, sadly, the answer was something I couldn't forget.)
    3.                Did I think
Mr. Smith's new face made him look kind of…hot? (Because Smith and hot were two
words I never wanted to hear together.)
    4.                Where had
Aunt Abby worked? (Because I didn't know.)
    5.                What had Aunt
Abby done? (Because I couldn't even guess.)
    6.                Why would an
operative in the prime of her career come out of the field to take over Macey's
security detail when there had to be a lot more senior operatives who would
have dropped everything to keep one of their own safe? (Because I didn't want
to think about it.)
     
     
    "Come
on, Cam," Liz pleaded the next morning, the lack of significant intel
finally weighing on her. "She's your aunt. You've
got to know something."
    I
just shrugged. "Liz, she's a deep-cover covert operative—you know how it
is."
    Liz
stared at me blankly, but Bex nodded. After all, her parents were with MI6, so
she did know.
Better than anyone.
    "Do
you think she'll be teaching a class?" Liz gripped her extra-credit
project for Mr. Mosckowitz as if her life depended on it (because, when you're
Liz, your life kinda does). "I tried hacking into Langley, and everything
about her was classified. I mean, seriously classi—Ow!" Liz cried.
    I'm
not sure how she did it, but Elizabeth Sutton, the smartest Gallagher Girl in
perhaps the history of Gallagher Girls, had just managed to cut her chin with a
paper clip.
    Bex
laughed. Liz bled (but only a little). My stomach growled, and I felt the clock
inside of me ticking again, telling me that it was time, so I grabbed my bag
and called, "Come on. We don't want to be late."
    I
was already in the hall before I noticed someone was missing.
    "Macey!"
I yelled, pushing open the bathroom door. "We're heading down to—"
But I couldn't finish. Because Macey McHenry, the girl with the physical
appearance so perfect a supermodel might feel inferior, was changing her
clothes in the bathroom. And then I saw why.
    A
bruise covered her entire side, green tinges bleeding into purple. Her elbow
was still swollen to twice its normal size. I didn't have to hear her wince to
know how much it hurt, and yet the look on her face said that having me witness
her vulnerability was the most painful thing of all. Macey's pride was the one
thing that had come away unscathed, and she was going to protect it if it
killed her.
    "Cam!" Bex yelled from
outside. "We're hungry!"
    "Go
on," I called, my eyes still locked with Macey's in the mirror.
"Macey's not letting me go without eyeliner." It must have been a
believable cover story, because the door closed. The suite grew quiet, and
Macey turned around.
    Wordlessly,
she held her arm out to me, and I eased her shirtsleeve over her cast. She
turned back to the mirror but no longer met my eyes as she said, "Nobody
finds out."
    Bex
would have thought it was cool. Liz would have calculated the exact amount of
force it would have taken to do