Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover Read Online Free PDF

it?" I asked, but her breathing stayed steady,
her gaze didn't move.
    "Macey,"
I tried, "please say something. Please say—"
    "It's
nice," she said as the late-summer breeze blew through the trees. "I
like this. I like the water."
    "Don't
you have a house on Martha's Vineyard?" I asked, wondering how a rickety
shack on a quiet lake could ever compare; but Macey kept staring at the
stillness and said, "This is better."
    "We're
going to have to answer questions. We're going to have to be very careful about
what we say. We're—"
    "They
briefed me already," Macey said, her eyes never leaving the horizon.
"This feels like a
safe house." She finally turned to look at me. "Doesn't it feel safe,
Cam?"
    "Yeah, Macey," I said
softly. "It does."
    It
was getting late. My internal clock had rebooted, and something in the way the
sun dipped behind the tree- covered hills that surrounded us on all sides told
me it was nearly eight o'clock.
    "It's
almost time," Macey said as if she'd read my mind. "They're coming.
My parents want me with them—"
    "Of course," I blurted.
    "—on
the campaign trail," Macey finished. I stared at her, forgetting my aching
head and sore muscles for a moment. She forced a smile. "We're up ten
points in the polls."
    I
didn't know what to say, so I didn't say a thing. Instead, we stood there until
we heard the screen door behind us screech and slam. A minute later a
helicopter appeared on the horizon and dipped, its whirling blades sending
ripples across the quiet lake before landing somewhere in the forest.
    The
wind grew cooler. Macey wrapped her good arm around herself and shivered in the
breeze, but she didn't move from the end of the dock.
    Her
name was probably on every newscast in America. It wasn't hard to imagine that,
back in Boston, a room full of interns was buzzing about speeches that had to
be rewritten and commercials that had to be recut. The campaign had a new
star—a new angle. But all of that felt like another world, so I just stood by
my friend and thought for the first time ever that Joe Solomon was wrong about
something.
    I
hadn't come away in worse shape than Macey McHenry.
    Not by a long shot.
     
     

Chapter Five
     
     
    I know
the sounds my school makes—the squeaky steps and creaking doors, the hushed
voices during finals week, the noisy chaos of the Grand Hall before dinner. The
first day of a new year has a sound all its own, as limos turn down the winding
lane and car doors slam, suitcases bang against banisters, and girls squeal and
hug hello.
    But
the first semester of my junior year…That semester started with a whisper so
quiet I almost didn't hear it.
    "Is
Macey taking the semester off?" one senior asked another as they stood
huddled in the hall outside the library.
    "I
heard they had to amputate Macey's arm and replace it with a bionic limb that
Dr. Fibs made in his lab," an eighth grader said when I passed by the door
to their common room.
    Gallagher
Girls spend their free time scattered throughout the four corners of the
world, but that year every girl who returned from summer break brought back the
same questions. So I kept moving, roaming the quiet halls like a shadow, right
up until the point when I turned the corner and ran into Tina Walters.
    "Cammie!"
Tina cried, and in the newfound quiet of our school, the word echoed. She threw
her arms around me. "You're okay!" she proclaimed, and then she
reconsidered. "You are okay, aren't you?"
    "Yeah, Tina, I'm—"
    "Because
I heard you killed one of them with a campaign button?"
    Tina
is a teenage girl, and a spy-in-training, and the only daughter of one of the
country's premiere gossip columnists, so it's not surprising that she has crazy
theories. A lot of them. All the time. But in that second, my mind flashed back
to the sunny roof. I saw the shadows of the spinning blades, felt the hands
that gripped my shoulders, and then heard the pained cry as I jabbed the
Winters-McHenry button into a hand wearing a ring that I was