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

but
more like she had to say them—like they'd been on her mind for too long and she
had to set them free.
    "That's four," Mr.
Solomon told us.
    The
blades of the chopper were spinning; the ground beneath us was roaring by—trees
and hills, rivers and highways, towns full of normal schools and normal kids
and people who would never ever know the answer to our teacher's questions.
    "Internal,"
I said so softly that with the spinning blades and gushing winds I wondered for
a second if anyone heard.
    But we're Gallagher Girls. We
hear everything.
    "That's
right," Mr. Solomon told us. "And that's the big one."
    I
told myself that he wasn't talking about Macey—that he didn't mean that what
had happened in Boston had been orchestrated by someone inside ,
someone close. But rather he was speaking in general terms, reminding us all of
what we knew too well, that traitors are the most dangerous people of all.
    "You're
going to see a lot of things today, ladies. Seasoned operatives working in the
field with one primary objective. It's not about intel, and it's not about ops.
It's about protection today, pure and simple."
    In
my mind I was already running through the scenarios that only a man like Joe
Solomon could come up with. I was imagining what tests could possibly be
waiting on the ground.
    Bex
must have been thinking along those same lines, because she asked, "What's
our mission?"
    "It's
a hard one," Mr. Solomon warned, then smiled. "Just watch. Just
listen. Just learn."
     
     
    Gallagher
Girls are asked to do hard things. All the time. But until that day I never
really knew that the hardest mission of all is to do nothing.
    After
all, it's one thing to take a group of highly trained teenage future spies and
drop them off in a crowd of thousands and tell them to find the potential
security threat. It's quite another to take those same girls, equip them with
comms units tuned to the same frequency as the Secret Service (not that the
Secret Service actually knew or
anything), and tell them to sit back and enjoy the show.
    I
don't even like letting someone else put the syrup on my waffles (I have a
system), so letting other people be in charge of Macey's safety…well…let's just
say it was a little out of my comfort zone.
    And
if that wasn't bad enough, the jeans that someone had packed for me to change
into were a little on the snug side. And I don't know about everyone else, but
Bex Baxter is the only girl I know who can enter and exit a helicopter without
having it do really unfortunate things to her hair.
    Most
of all, I wanted to pretend that I still believed I lived in a world where hair
and jeans really mattered. But I didn't. So I just thought about my mission and
stared out into the crowd.
    And then I disappeared.
     
     
    The
Essentials of Being a Chameleon By
Cameron Ann Morgan
     
    1. It's very
important, at all times, to look like you belong.
    2.                When #I is
difficult, try pointing to imaginary people and walking purposefully toward no
one.
    3.                Stillness.
Stillness is key (except when you're doing #2) because people
see motion more easily than they see things. So when in doubt, freeze.
    4.                It totally
helps if you aren't all that special looking (in either really good or really
bad ways).
    5.                Acquaint
yourself with your surroundings ASAP.
    6.                Dress in a
way that isn't flashy, fashionable, ugly, or obscene.
    7.                Hiding is for
amateurs.
     
     
    "This
is…wow," Bex said ten minutes after we'd arrived at the park … or what I
think was supposed to be a park.
    A
long grassy promenade covered at least two city blocks. Beautiful historic
buildings lined the space, but at the far end, someone had erected a stage.
Bleachers circled behind it, facing the lawn, and from where Bex and I stood it
seemed like half of Ohio had come out to see Macey's