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He reached for the bacon in the center of the table, handed the plate to ry"

"I thought you wanted waffles," Bex said, eyeing me

"I--"

"Here" Zach dropped a waffle onto my plate and reached for the butter

"No, I’irl who I swear once bought a pair of pants that were a size double zero and had to have theirls look better with some fullness in their face"

So I buttered my waffle and took a piece of bacon from the plate

Bex sood" She turned to Macey "Good call on the tri her handiwork "It’s a patch job, but it’s better"

Everything looked nor sounded normal But I still had cobwebs on my sweater and dust onaround inside ht scream

Zach must have sensed it, because he moved his hand to the small of my back and rested it there

"Did you see your mom?" Bex reached for the carafe and poured herself a cup of hot tea as if nothing rong; but all I could think about hat I’d heard her say on

I didn’t say what I was thinking--that I was pretending too

"U over the answer "She was busy"

Everyone nodded No one thought to ask, Busy hat?

So I ate my waffle and drank my juice and didn’t say a word about what Zach and I had overheard in my mother’s office

"I’ued as I stood and started for the door

With ht have been easy to pretend that ere typical students starting a typical day But then Liz dropped her backpack

Trust ht I’d totally seen before The floor was littered with textbooks and note cards, piles of paper and an extensive collection of highlighters that Liz herself had patented But then I looked past the azines, a whole bunch of thin circulars boasting pizza prices and going-out-of-business sales

"What’s that?" Macey asked, picking up a flyer about an upco local election

"Mail," Liz said Bex raised her eyebrows, and Liz lowered her voice "I got it froo read it to him"

She didn’t use Mr Solomon’s name--she didn’t dare there, in the middle of the Grand Hall But we all kneho she raders stopped and tried to help us pick everything up, Macey said, "We’ve got it," in a There’s nothing to see here tone, and the girls walked on

"Oh, I’m sure he’s very interested in"--Bex reached for a flyer--"the prices of fertilizer at the local feed store"

"It ht help" Liz sounded offended, and I couldn’t blaoing to use all of hers to fix Mr Solo, normal interactions, conversations, and activities can stimulate the unconsciousobscure studies and unproven hypotheses, but I’d stopped listening I was too busy staring down at a padded manila envelope that had fallen to the floor with the rest of the letters There were Italian stamps and an airmail sticker fro ht and low as I whispered, "Me"

Chapter Nineteen

It happened in a flash

Onerows of fa and a poste and running between the tables, bolting through the foyer and up the stairs

She was practically flying So them toward my mother’s office, and it didn’t take a student at spy school to know that that so…was hope

But Bex hadn’t seen the trustees Macey hadn’t heard the deep voices on the phone Liz didn’t know the questions that swirled around me--the ones not even she could answer They just knew there was a clue, and so they ran faster

"Bex," I said just as my best friend yelled, "Head case "Headain

"Bex, I think she’s--"

My mother’s office door flew open

"Busy," I finished, the word more exhale than whisper

"What?" Aunt Abby asked, and the look on her face made me skid to a stop, frozen in my tracks Liz actually ran into me, stumbled, and knocked over a display of hat pins-slash-poisoned daggers that had been used by a Gallagher Girl during the First World War

Zach reached down and pulled her effortlessly to her feet, but all I could do was stare at Abby, as coh the Hall of History She neither sood tian," Bex said "We need to talk to both of you"

"Not now" Abby started to turn and go back to e toward her

"This was at the cabin!"

Abby’s eyes got wide as she stared down and whispered, "Rome"