Ally Carter - [Gallagher Girls 01] I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You

"Hey," Dillon said, stepping forward as if he were tired of beating around the bush. "I was wondering if you know someone I know…" His voice trailed off. He leaned forward, and I just knew—I mean KNEW—that he was on to me, but then he said, "The Queen of England."

Well, Bex actually has met the queen, but obviously she wasn't about to say so. She just stood quietly as Dillon and his buddies laughed far too hard at the joke, making it even less funny.

"Honey, I got your—" The woman behind the counter stopped abruptly when she saw four boys closing in on three girls. The only sound in the room was the white paper bag that held Anna's prescription as it crinkled in her hands.

"Thanks," Bex said, snatching the package. "Is this all you needed?" she asked Anna, who nodded, and the color slowly returned to her cheeks.

"How 'bout you?" Macey asked Dillon. "You get what you came for?"

But they didn't wait for his response. Instead, they walked together past a long shelf of magazines, where Macey's face stared out from the cover of Newsweek, along with the rest of the McHenry family, beneath a caption that read The Most Powerful Family in America?

Dillon looked at it, then at her. Macey cocked a hip. "We appreciate your vote."

A long time after they'd gone, I still couldn't turn away from the bells that were still ringing. I watched Anna stroll down the street with her saviors—with her friends. A hand circled my wrist, and Josh said, "Hey." I saw his reflection in the mirror from the corner of my eye, but there was something through that window I couldn't turn away from.

Liz was standing on the sidewalk, staring at me through the glass as if she didn't know me. As if she didn't want to.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Josh asked, finally turning me to face him. "What are you doing with those?" He gestured to the half dozen bottles of aspirin I must have subconsciously gathered in my arms to throw like snowballs at Dillon and his cronies if help hadn't come.

"Oh." I looked down. "I knocked them off and was picking them up."

"That's okay," he said, and pushed the bottles back onto the shelf.

I turned back toward the window, but Liz was already gone.

Chapter Twenty-four

A cold front blew in that night—in a lot of ways.

Fires burned in all the lounges. We traded our knee-socks for tights. Every window we passed was covered with frost, blocking our view of the world outside. But nothing made me shiver quite as much as the look on Liz's face. For days, it was as if we were still separated by the pharmacy windows. It was as if she hardly knew me.

When I went to the chem lab after supper Tuesday night, Liz was already there.

"Well, fancy seeing you here," I said, trying to sound chipper as I gathered my things and moved to the lab table across from her.

Her eyes were shielded behind her protective goggles. She didn't even look up.

"Earth to Liz," I tried again, but she turned away.

"I don't have time to help you with your homework, Cammie," she said, and it might have been my imagination, but I could have sworn all the beakers frosted over.

"That's okay," I said. "I think I've got it under control."

We worked in silence for a long time before Liz said, "He was Josh's friend—wasn't he?"

I didn't have to ask who she was talking about. "Yeah, they're neighbors. I'd met him before, that's why I couldn't compromise—"

"Nice friend," Liz snapped.

"He's all talk," I said, repeating Josh's words to me. "He's harmless."

But Liz's voice was shaking when she said, "Go ask Anna how harmless he is." Of course, word of Anna's encounter in the pharmacy had spread like crazy, and Anna was now something of a hero—thanks to the fact that Bex and Macey insisted that Anna had the situation well under control when they got there.

But I couldn't share this with Liz. We both knew the truth. "If things had gotten out of hand I could have—"

"Could have or would have?" Liz asked.

The difference between those two words had never seemed so huge. "Would," I said. "I would have stopped it."

"Even if it meant losing Josh?" Liz said, not asking what she really wanted to know—that if it had been her instead of Anna in Dillon's sights, would I have saved her; if it came down to a fight between the real me and my legend, which one would I choose?

The glass doors at the back of the lab slid open, and Macey walked in. "Hey, I thought I might find you two—"

"It's gone too far, Cammie," Liz said, shaking ingredients wildly into the mix until the whole thing started to bubble and change colors like something in a witch's caldron. "You've gone too far."

"I've gone too far?" I said. "I wasn't the one blowing up Driver's Ed cars!"

"Hey," Liz snapped. "We thought he was a honeypot!"

"No." I shook my head. "We thought he was a boy." I gathered my things. "We thought he was worth it. And, you know what? He was."

"Yeah," Liz called after me. "Well, I never thought you were someone who'd choose a boy over her friends!"

"Hey, cool it," Macey said.

"Well, I never thought I had friends who'd make me choose!"

As I neared the door, I heard Liz start to speak, but Macey cut her off, saying, "Hey, genius girl, you don't have any idea what kinds of sacrifices she's willing to make for her friends."

"What are you—" Liz started, then her voice softened slightly as she asked, "Why? What do you know?"

When Macey spoke, she left no room for doubt. "Enough to say, back off."

The glass doors slid open and I darted through them just as Liz said, "Okay," but I couldn't stop moving, didn't dare break my pace until I reached the supply closet in the east corridor, where I slid aside a stack of long fluorescent light-bulbs, grabbed a flashlight from the top shelf, and found the loose stone that I had discovered one day during my seventh-grade year while looking for Onyx, Buckingham's cat.

The stone was cold beneath my hand when I pushed against it and felt the rush of air as the wall slid aside. A small sliver of light slipped beneath the door behind me, but it faded into nothing in the deep expanse of black.

An hour later I was standing in the shadows of Bellis Street, shivering in the dark.

What did I intend to accomplish by sneaking through a secret tunnel, climbing over a fence, and literally staking out Josh's house in the dark? I didn't have a clue. Instead, I just stood there like an idiot (and even an idiot who is very good at not being seen while standing around can feel pretty silly while doing it).

This is probably a pretty good time to point out that while it may appear that I was lurking—I wasn't. Lurking is what creepy guys with random facial hair and stains on their shirts do. Geniuses with three years of top secret spy training don't lurk —we surveil.

(Okay, I might have been lurking—a little.)

White eyelet curtains were pushed back from a kitchen window where Josh's mother was washing dishes. When Josh walked through the kitchen, his mother blew soapsuds at him, and he laughed. I thought about Bex, who was probably laughing right then, too. I thought about my mother, whose tears only came in secret. I thought about my life—the one I had and the one I wanted, so all I did was stand shivering in the cold, watching Josh laugh, as I started to cry.

But that's a girl's right—isn't it? To cry sometimes for no reason? Really, when you think about it, that ought to be in the Constitution. Maybe I'll break into the National Archives sometime and write that in. Bex would totally help me. Somehow, I don't think the Founding Fathers would mind.

Chapter Twenty-five

With finals and the stress that comes with them, I didn't really see Liz again until supper the following night when she brought her slice of pizza and came to sit beside me. "So, where did you go last night?" she asked. But before I could answer, she said, "To see Josh?"