“Steve,” Mom finally said aloud. “It sounds to me like Hale got the best of your trainees. I have to admit, I’m a little surprised. I mean, they couldn’t jump over those water jugs? Couldn’t see the trap in the production room? And Walter Quaddlebaum—my goodness. Didn’t he just become a junior agent a few months ago? Yet he was thrown by the sound of his mother’s voice? How embarrassing. For everyone.”
“Walter’s mother is the assistant director. It’s not a bad thing for someone to stop when they hear her voice. But this isn’t about my other students. It’s about Hale. He knew the rules. Same rules they always have been—”
“Then you should have explained them the same way you always do,” Dad said. “SRS agents are supposed to notice subtle variations in day-to-day behavior.” Dad laughed and shook his head. “I don’t know why I’m telling you that, Steve—of course you know! How foolish of me to forget the Acapulco incident.”
I had no idea what the Acapulco incident was—I guessed something from back when Otter was a field agent? But the mention of it made Otter go totally silent and grit his teeth.
Dad continued to smile and then said, “Steve, I think it’s important to remember that you, Katie here, Hale, and I—we all have the same goals. We’re on the same team. Right?”
“Of course. But regardless,” Otter said, his voice twisty, “I think it would be best if Hale saved his scheming for someplace else.”
Ah. I knew someone would use the word “scheming.”
Dad wanted to continue, I could tell, but Mom spoke first. “Of course, Steve. I’m sure he’s learned a valuable lesson. Right, Hale?”
I looked at her, about to protest, but then sighed. “Sure have.”
“Right. Well, I guess we’re done here—” Dad began.
“Not quite. He still owes me fifty pushups,” Otter interrupted as my parents and I rose.
“Not today, right, son?” Dad said, clapping me on the shoulder. “He won the race, after all.”
And before Otter could argue, we swept out of the taupe office. The door drifted shut; we were only a few steps away when we heard an angry grunt come from inside.
Large-brutish-man language for “I hate Hale Jordan,” if I had to guess.
Chapter Three
Like everyone who worked at SRS headquarters—agents, secretaries, even the custodians—my family lived there as well, in our own apartment. This whole wing was full of families like our own—Walter and his mom were just a few doors down, actually. I’d never lived anywhere but apartment 300, and even though I was sometimes jealous of regular, non-spy kids who got backyards and swing sets, I have to admit, I couldn’t picture anywhere else feeling like home.
We walked silently down the hall to our door. Dad unlocked it and stepped in first.
“Aha! Got you!” a tiny voice screeched.
I sighed, but Mom smiled. We stepped inside.
“Nice try, Kennedy,” Dad told her, chuckling. “But I heard you snickering before I even took the keys out.” Kennedy jumped down from her perch above the door, where I guess she’d balanced herself between the frame and the ceiling. Kennedy landed, forward-rolled, and sprang to standing like she expected applause.
“Did you really cheat and do an impression of Mrs. Quaddlebaum to beat Walter?” she asked me immediately.
“I didn’t cheat!” I protested. “And how did you already hear about it?”
“Everyone knows about it. Including Mrs. Quaddlebaum,” Kennedy said, tipping forward into a handstand. She followed me, walking on her hands. “You’d better watch it. You’re seriously In the Weeds with her.”
“Everyone’s In the Weeds with Mrs. Quaddlebaum,” I muttered, opening my bedroom door.
“Quiet, both of you. No one is In the Weeds with anyone. And neither of you is supposed to know that term,” Dad called from the kitchen.
“Everyone knows about that too!” Kennedy shouted back, and it was true. It was code. An “In the Weeds” status meant the person was supposed to be eliminated on sight. I’d never seen a mission file that actually contained an In the Weeds target. These days, the only target SRS consistently eliminated on sight was my dignity.
“And if everyone jumped off a cliff, would you do that too?” Dad asked.
“That doesn’t even make sense!” Kennedy said, groaning.
I used the distraction to step into my room. I shut the door just as Kennedy reached it.
“Hey!” she whined from the other side. “I wanted to show you a new cheer I learned!”
“You’re not a cheerleader!”
“Yeah, and you’re not Walter’s mom, but you still pretended to be,” she snapped.
“Kennedy, leave your brother alone!” Mom’s voice boomed.
Kennedy sniffed, but then I heard her bound off, probably to scale some piece of furniture.
Kennedy wouldn’t have any problem passing the physical exam when she tested for junior agent. I was actually surprised her teacher hadn’t recommended she take the test already—she was only nine, but there wasn’t an age minimum. Most people just didn’t have the skill set to pass the exams before they were eleven or twelve. But Kennedy? She could pass it.
My little sister could be a junior agent before me. Great.
There were plenty of alternatives, of course—SRS had dozens of jobs for people who didn’t become junior agents and then field agents. I could choose just about any specialty that didn’t involve the physical exam, like becoming an agent in the Disguise Department, Tactical Support, or Research and Development. I could be a teacher, maybe, or an Explosives Analyst. I could easily pass the exam to get into Home Intelligence Technical Support—we called it HITS—which basically meant becoming one of the computer guys. Sit in the control room and shout at agents through a headset, then race office chairs, waiting to hack a security system or forge a clearance card or book a hotel room. They weren’t bad guys, the HITS. We played video games in the control room when there wasn’t an active mission, and unlike my classmates and the junior agents, they never once called me Hale the Whale, Haley’s Comet, or Fail Hale.
But I didn’t want to be in HITS. I wanted to be a field agent. I’d always wanted to be a field agent. They were in the thick of it—the danger, the excitement, the adventure. SRS teachers had a whole spiel about how “Everyone at SRS is important! Everyone has a role to play, from the teachers to the tech guys to the research crews!” but it never swayed me. I mean, field agents were the real heroes. Who wouldn’t want to be a hero?
I stared at my ceiling for entirely too long, then rose and changed out of my training clothes. I could hear my parents clattering around, making fajitas—they always made fajitas when they’d had a “long day”—and any day where they had to talk with Otter usually qualified as long.
I opened my door and padded down the hallway.
“This is insane,” my mother said, her voice unusually rocky, even barely audible over the sound of food crackling on the stove. I froze, tilted my head, and listened like an antenna.
“We can’t just do nothing, Katie,” Dad said, voice grave. “Think about what it means.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mom said. “You don’t just quit SRS.”
I pressed against the wall, trying to creep closer. Who wanted to quit? Every now and then you’d hear a rumor about an agent wanting to retire and become a baker or something. But Mom was right—you couldn’t just leave SRS. It sounds harsh, but we couldn’t exactly have top-secret spies retiring to lives of pie making, you know? It was dangerous for everyone.
They argued in hushed voices for a moment, until I finally heard Dad hiss, “Project Groundcover is going to make SRS even more powerful!”
“I know, but if it goes wrong . . . We can’t—not yet. Not until we’ve figured everything out. We have to play along, pretend like we don’t know the truth . . .” Mom’s voice dropped at the end and wavered like she might cry. Mom never cried! What were they . . .
“Hale!” Mom was s
uddenly in front of me, her eyes fiery and dark. I jumped down the hall, nearly tripping over the leg of my pants.
“I was just coming to dinner,” I said quickly. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“Then how did you know there was anything to hear?”
“Okay, I heard something,” I confessed. “About someone wanting to quit SRS? And something called Project—”
“Quiet.” Dad looked grave now, way more serious than he usually was inside our apartment, and it scared me a little. “Forget everything you ‘didn’t hear,’ okay, Hale? We shouldn’t have been talking about work at dinnertime. We broke our own rule.”
“You broke the rule?” Kennedy cried, crashing out of nowhere, an explosion of red hair and flailing arms. I really didn’t understand how she could hear so well through all that hair. “Does that mean—”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Mom said, waving a hand as she turned to go back into the kitchen. She seemed relieved to change the topic. Kennedy and I followed. “Darling? Hale caught us breaking our rule. Do we have any ice cream from last time?”
“Check the compartment?” Dad said. Mom ducked into the freezer, grabbed ahold of what looked like a frozen meatloaf but was actually a handle to a small but effective hidden compartment. A carton of vanilla-caramel-swirl ice cream was nestled snugly inside.
“I think there’s enough for one more go-round,” Mom said as she opened the carton to check. We probably didn’t really have to hide the ice cream, even though it was technically considered contraband—SRS agents, after all, had to be in peak physical condition, so ice cream was a treat we got only when we were out on excursions. But Mom and Dad were The Team, so they got a little leeway. Besides, anyone who might turn us in could probably be bought off with a scoop.
“All right. After dinner. And then your mother and I start following our own rules about bringing work home, because you two have no idea how hard it is sneaking ice cream in here.”
Mom handed me a stack of plates to set the table. Kennedy tried to slink away and avoid silverware duty, but Dad thrust a handful of forks at her before she made it out the door.
“Want to hear my cheer now, Hale?” Kennedy asked as she noisily dropped the last fork in its place.
“Sure.”
“Okay!” she said, breaking out a wide grin. Kennedy slammed her hands against her sides and dropped her head. Taking a deep breath, she snapped her chin up and began to chant, slamming her arms at different angles around her body. It was a pretty stock cheer—lots of “Hey! Hey! Step back! We’re on the attack!” type rhymes—but she did it with more enthusiasm in her little finger than I think I had in my entire body. When she finished, Kennedy leaped into the air and slid down into a perfect split, grinning and holding imaginary pom-poms aloft.
“What did you think?” she asked.
“I think . . . ,” I began, pretending like I was going to tease her. Her face fell; I smiled. “I think you’re right. SRS really should have a cheerleading squad.”
“I know,” Kennedy said solemnly, rising. “But I’m going to convince Dr. Fishburn. You’ll see.”
I didn’t think it was likely that Dr. Fishburn, SRS’s director, was going to be convinced about anything that involved glitter and loud music, but I nodded. Kennedy had been obsessed with cheerleading for a year or two, ever since all the SRS kids had gone to the local high school’s football game so we could see non-spy kids firsthand. We were supposed to study them so we could blend in better in case we became junior agents. Kennedy basically spent the entire time studying the cheerleaders (and so did a bunch of the boys in my class, but for a very different reason). I spent most of my time with Walter, taking notes and joking about how neither of us had a clue how football worked. I bet he knew how it worked now. Knowing about sports is probably something that just happens when you gain twenty pounds of muscle and lose one hundred and thirty pounds of Hale Jordan.
I took my seat at the table; Kennedy did some sort of crazy pommel horse move over the back of her chair to take hers. Mom and Dad joined us. We ate dinner fast, all eager to get to the ice cream, and as a result spent the next two hours sprawled out in the living room, clutching our overfilled stomachs. Dad quizzed Kennedy and me on SRS mission history, which devolved into him inventing stories and us adding on, Mom shaking her head at all three of us, smiling.
Here’s the thing about SRS: it was a secret organization, and we were all in it together. We were all members of this great big impressive awesome thing. But sometimes? Sometimes, it was nice to be just a family—me, Kennedy, and Mom and Dad. A really little, probably sometimes a little boring, awesome thing. They felt like two entirely different places. There was SRS, where I had to prove myself, and there was apartment 300, where I could be just Hale and that was enough.
Or at least, it was enough until the next morning, when everything changed.
Chapter Four
“Hale, honey,” Mom said the next morning, shaking a carton of orange juice harder than necessary before she poured a glass. “We’ve got a mission. Should be back late this evening. Emergency numbers for the neighbors and the medics are here.” She tapped the refrigerator.
She paused to wiggle her torso, like something wasn’t fitting right in her suit. It was some sort of stretchy combination of leather and Kevlar, with a zipper down the front and a turtleneck top. Mom tugged at her utility belt and then continued. “Try to get Kennedy to start her reading—I know, I know, but at least try—before dinner. We’ll be back before you go to bed. Kennedy?” she shouted down the hall.
“I’m getting up!” Kennedy yelled, which was a lie.
“No cheers after six, got it? The people downstairs keep complaining.”
“I’m getting up!” she yelled again. Kennedy didn’t so much rise as she did melt out of bed, always leaving a trail of pillows and blankets behind her.
Dad laughed silently at Kennedy as he used the doorframe to stretch his shoulders. Mom finished her juice and joined him jogging in place for a moment. They moved to the living room to practice punching each other as I slogged through the rest of my oatmeal.
“Hale,” Dad said, jumping backward and kicking at Mom’s head. “It might be best if you stayed away from Agent Otter’s bad side today, all right?”
“I try to stay away from all Agent Otter’s sides. I’m not sure he’d like me any better even if I looked like the rest of the class,” I grumbled as I rinsed my bowl out and set it in the sink.
“Hey now, Hale . . . ,” Mom began sternly, ducking Dad’s fist and kicking him hard in the back of the knee. He started to fall, but she swooped in at the last moment to push him back to his feet. She turned to me while Dad caught his breath. “Heroes don’t always look like heroes.” This was something she and Dad said a lot. They acted like it was just general advice, but I knew it was to try to make me feel better about myself.
“Villains don’t always look like villains either,” Dad added. “Nothing is that simple. Just because Agent Otter isn’t always very nice, doesn’t mean he’s your enemy. He’s just still grumpy about being taken out of the field. Don’t think he ever planned on being a teacher . . .”
“Yeah, but he got taken out of the field a billion years ago,” I griped, but gave up when Dad shot me a pointed look. I changed the subject. “So, what’s today’s mission? Is it Project—” I fell silent, because I was about to say “Project Groundcover,” but then remembered how serious Mom and Dad were about me never mentioning it again. They clearly realized what was about to come out of my mouth, though, because they froze and gave me matching stern looks.
“It’s in Spain, I think,” Mom said, without answering my question—which I suspected meant yes. She turned back to Dad. She bounced forward and back on the balls of her feet, waiting for him to strike.
“Spain?” Dad said, shaking out his arms. “I thought Fishburn said Seoul.”
“Maybe. SRS has outposts in both places, don’t they?” Mom shrugged. We lived in SRS’s bigge
st location, but SRS was international—agents were tucked away throughout the world. It was sort of nice, knowing no matter where my parents went, they had allies nearby.
I leaned in the doorframe. “Do you really not know, or do you just not want to tell me?”
“Come on, Hale,” Dad said, smiling. “Don’t you trust us?”
“You’re spies,” I said warily, and turned to go to my bedroom and change.
“We’re your parents!” Mom called back, laughing.
“Also spies!” I answered, shutting my door.
It was uniform day.
I often called uniform day by a variety of names—mostly involving words I heard Agent Otter muttering when the drink machine stole his dollar. I understand why spies have to wear black spandex—I do, really. You couldn’t exactly crawl under a laser grid wearing shorts and a T-shirt. What I didn’t understand was why anyone would make black spandex. Did a bunch of fabric company people get together somewhere to intentionally create the worst material on the planet? Or was it the result of some crazy factory accident? Surely, no one made this stuff on purpose.
“All right,” Agent Otter said, walking briskly into our classroom. He scratched his head without looking at us. “Come on. Formation.”
We hustled into neat rows in the center of the room, barely fitting in between the weight-lifting equipment. Otter turned to the door as the SRS uniform mistress entered.
Ms. Elma was an older lady with pale brown hair and a thin scar on one cheek. She was famous for this scar. She got it in a knife fight and sewed up the wound herself during her brief stint as a field agent. This was a story she liked to remind us of at every opportunity. “Your uniform doesn’t fit? I’m so sorry. I suppose I’m not as good at sewing spandex as I am at sewing my own face.” She was also known for her undying love for the Doctor Joe talk show. Let me explain Doctor Joe for you in one sentence: TV doctor with gray hair tells you to eat more salmon. I thought the show was super boring, but Ms. Elma—and a few of the other agents here—watched Doctor Joe like he was the soul mate they’d never met. I’d even heard that Ms. Elma wrote the guy love letters. Dad said she was just being a fan. Mom said she was just being delusional.