"Stop it."
"What?" he asked, sounding all innocent, which—I'm pretty sure—he isn't.
"You're enjoying this way too much. You're smirking."
We reached the foyer and turned toward the Grand Hall. "I got news for you, Gallagher Girl, if you're not enjoying this, you're in the wrong business."
And maybe he was right. After all, I'd never seen the Grand Hall look as grand as it did then. Small round tables sat at the edges of the room, covered with orchids and lilies and roses. A string quartet played Beethoven. Waiters carried trays of food almost too beautiful to eat. The room was nothing like a school and everything like a mansion— perfect and elegant, and I was just starting to feel like maybe it really was a party, like maybe putting on a red dress and dancing at a ball might actually be fun.
But that was before I saw Joe Solomon strolling toward us, a stack of files under one arm and a look on his face that was a very grim reminder that tonight was purely business. That was before I heard my CoveOps teacher say, "Hello, ladies and gentlemen. You all look very nice, but I'm afraid you aren't quite finished getting ready."
Can I just say that it's a really good thing Joe Solomon is an extremely skilled operative, because at that moment he should have been very concerned for his physical safety. After all, that is not a thing you should tell a group of girls who have been recently plucked, waxed, gelled, sprayed, and mascaraed.
"I'm afraid we didn't mention that tonight is something of a masquerade ball," he said, and then the panic began.
"But we haven't got masks or … disguises or—" Courtney started, before Mr. Solomon cut her off.
"These are your disguises, Ms. Bauer." Instead of masks, he handed us folders. "Cover legends, ladies and gentlemen. You have three minutes to memorize every piece of information within them."
Immediately, Liz's hand shot into the air.
Solomon smiled. "Even if you are not on the CoveOps track, Ms. Sutton. Spies are the ultimate actors, ladies and gentlemen. It's the heart of what we do. So tonight your mission is simple: you will become somebody else."
It didn't feel like we were playing dress up anymore.
He started to walk away but then paused to say, "It's an exam, people. Culture, languages, observation…The real tests in these subjects don't have anything to do with words on a piece of paper. Tonight isn't about knowing the answers, ladies and gentlemen. It's about living them."
I pulled the folder with my name on it from the stack and found a driver's license, a social security card, even an ID from the State Department—all with my picture and someone else's name.
I know I'd started this semester with a promise to be myself, but as I opened the folder in front of me, I saw that I wasn't going to be attending a ball in a red dress—Tiffany St. James, assistant to the undersecretary of the Interior was.
And that was maybe the most comforting thing I'd heard all day.
Chapter Sixteen
You've probably heard of cumulative exams before; but…well, that was a cumulative night. Every language we'd ever learned was being spoken simultaneously inside the Grand Hall; everywhere I turned I saw someone pretending to be from a country Mr. Smith had lectured on. It was a virtual chorus of music and accents and clanking china. And I was starting to realize that having a legend is a whole lot easier when you're with people who don't know the truth.
I mean, Tiffany St. James, assistant to the undersecretary of the Interior, was supposed to be an excellent dancer, but as soon as I tried doing the fox-trot I felt the entire school staring at me. Of course it probably didn't help that our current boy-to-girl ratio meant I had to fox-trot with Dr. Steve.
"Ms. Morgan, you look just beautiful," Dr. Steve told me, which was nice and all, but I knew I had to say, "I'm sorry. You must have me confused with someone else. My name is Tiffany St. James."
Dr. Steve laughed. "Excellent, Ms. Morgan… I mean, Ms. St. James" He shook his head in amazement. "Just excellent."
And if it weren't bad enough that the only person who had asked me—I mean, Tiffany—to dance was Dr. Steve, then Zach waltzed by, laughing and glancing at me over Liz's shoulder, while she rattled off every single fact in her legend.
"And I was named after my grandmother…And I'm a Gemini…and a vegetarian…and …"
Zach laughed again and twirled Liz.
At that minute Josh and DeeDee were probably dancing in a gymnasium full of streamers, but I was in the Grand Hall of a mansion. I bet the Roseville Spring Fling had a DJ—maybe a local band—but I was listening to Mozart performed by four members of the New York Philharmonic (because that's their cover and all). I wondered when I would start feeling like Tiffany St. James, assistant to the undersecretary of the Interior, and stop feeling like a girl in a dress she totally couldn't pull off. (Also, I was seriously hoping Dr. Steve wouldn't ask me to join him for the tango.)
Courtney Bauer's legend said that she was the princess of a small European country, so every few minutes her royal highness would insist on dancing with Grant, who was supposed to be an infamous playboy who owed a great deal of money to the Russian mob, and therefore was hiding from Kim Lee, who was supposed to be the illegitimate daughter of a Russian mobster. (Which was quite unfortunate for Kim, because I know for a fact she'd been looking forward to dancing with Grant all week.)
I wondered if all dances have this kind of drama—if there's always this much riding on who gets to dance with whom.
On the dance floor, Bex was doing the tango with the security guard who always had a mouthful of bubble gum. An eighth grade boy had cornered Macey by the punch bowl and was trying to act all mature, saying, "So, do you want to go somewhere more private?"
"That depends, do you want to keep that hand?" Macey replied.
Every few minutes, Mr. Solomon would stop someone and ask something like, "There are four men in the room wearing handkerchiefs, name them." So I stayed on my toes—watching, listening. That's why I couldn't really help but notice that Zach was dancing with everyone. A lot. Even my mom (who was undercover as the First Lady of France).
I felt myself sinking further into the shadows of the party until I heard someone cry, "Tiffany, there you are!" Another of our teachers, Mr. Mosckowitz, came rushing toward me. But Mr. M. is pretty new to the whole undercover thing, so he leaned toward me and said, "Cammie, I'm supposed to be your boss. I'm the undersecretary of the—"
"Yes, Mr. Secretary," I said, before he got us both in trouble.
Madame Dabney strolled by with a clipboard. "Addresses undersecretary of Interior as Mr. Secretary—check."
I resisted the temptation to tell him that his fake mustache was an excellent touch. Mr. Mosckowitz smiled, and I remembered that he had spent most of his life locked up in the basement of the NSA, cracking codes, and even the world's foremost authority on data encryption probably likes being somebody else sometimes.
"I say, Tiffany, did you get those memos I sent over?" he asked, trying to sound all bosslike—and it might have worked if he hadn't had some caviar stuck in his mustache.
"Yes, Mr. Secretary. I did." I felt myself becoming Tiffany St. James, which, at the moment, was a whole lot better than being me—especially when Mr. Mosckowitz asked, "So tell me, Tiffany, are you enjoying the party?"
"Tiffany is the life of the party," another voice chimed in.
That wasn't true—at all—but I couldn't exactly say so, because Zach was coming toward us, a glass in each hand.
"Excuse me, Mr. Secretary," Zach said, offering Mr. Mosckowitz a glass, "but I believe this is your drink."
Mr. Mosckowitz twirled his fake mustache until it came off, then quickly stuck it back on. "Oh yes. It is!" He took the glass and leaned in to me. "It is my drink, isn't it?"
"Yes," I whispered back.
"Thank you, my good man," Mr. Mosckowitz said to Zach, and I couldn't help but notice that the undersecretary had spontaneously become British. "Good show!"
Through the twinkling lights of the party I saw my mother standing next to a far wall. I wanted to smile and wave, but Tiffany St. James didn't know that beautiful woman. And something made me stand up straighter, listen harder, and wish we'd already covered lip-reading in CoveOps, because even though two dozen dancing couples stood between us, both the spy and the girl in me knew my mom was worried about something.
"Isn't that right, Tiffany?" Mr. Mosckowitz asked, and it took me a half second to remember that he was talking to me.
"I wonder, Mr. Secretary," Zach was saying to Mr. Mosckowitz, "would you mind if I borrowed Tiffany for a moment?"
"Not at all," Mr. Mosckowitz said, even though Tiffany … I mean, I … might have minded a great deal.
"They're playing our song." Zach put his drink on a passing tray, took my arm smoothly, and pulled me onto the floor.
The bad part about being in deep cover is that you have to like what your legend likes, eat what she eats. Since Tiffany St. James did, in fact, like dancing, there was no room to argue. I had to dance with Zach Goode (after all, a Gallagher Girl always has to be prepared to sacrifice for her country).
In my (very uncomfortable) heels, my eyes reached Zach at about neck level. His hand felt broad on my back, and he smelled, well, different from Dr. Steve. (But in a really good way.)
"You know the undersecretary," Mr. Mosckowitz was saying to Anna Fetterman as we danced past, "is really directly under…the secretary. So really I'm just like the secretary, but …"
"Under?" Anna guessed, but I think Mr. Mosckowitz kind of missed the point, because he smiled.
"So tell me, Tiffany St. James," Zach said. "What does a girl like you do for fun?"
"I didn't tell you my name was Tiffany St. James," I said, hoping to catch him in a mistake. "How did you know?"
"Oh," he said, cocking an eyebrow, sounding exactly like the charming and debonair international art thief he was supposed to be. "I always make it a point to know the names of"—he cinched me tighter—"beautiful women."
And then he dipped me. Yes—actual dippage. And he winked. Yes—actual winkage.
"Come on, Gallagher Girl"—he spun me out and smoothly back—"relax a little."
From the side of the room, Madame Dabney smiled and made a mark on her clipboard.
But at that moment I was capable of doing anything but relaxing…
"Hey." We stopped dancing, and Zach shook me slightly. His voice was different. His eyes were different. He wasn't his legend as he said, "Gallagher Girl? You okay?"
Actually very little was okay…
Because my bra—you know, the strapless one—had come undone.
And things were starting to slide.
Just hours before, I'd thought that the most humiliating thing in the world would be to encounter your ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend…Then getting saved by a Blackthorne Boy…Then finding out that the entire sophomore CoveOps class and two teachers had heard the whole thing.