“Yeah.” Marcus chuckled. “I’m not so worried about that with Margaret.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“What do you call it again?” the headmaster asked while we waited for the girls to arrive. “The technique you used to figure out I’d been to Brazil and that Alexis Fitzgerald paid for the gym.”
“TOAST,” I said. “The Theory of All Small Things.”
He nodded as he contemplated this. “It’s really something.”
“You’ve only seen the appetizer,” Marcus assured them. “Wait until they show you the main course.”
Lucy Mays was the first to arrive. Even though I’d seen her countless times on television and in magazines, I was surprised by how completely normal she looked. She was a little taller than me and her brown-blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She wore the school uniform of a plaid skirt and white polo and had her backpack slung over her shoulder like millions of seventh graders around the world. The only visual clue that marked her as different was the Secret Service agent standing a few feet behind her who was no doubt carrying a weapon, had been trained in deadly martial arts, and was prepared to sacrifice her own life to save Lucy’s.
“You wanted to see me, Dr. Putney?”
“Yes, please come in,” he said. “I’d like to introduce you to Florian Bates and Margaret Campbell. They’re top students at Alice Deal Middle School and are going to spend a couple weeks here as part of a new IB exchange program.”
“Welcome to Chatham,” she said to us.
“Florian’s in your French class, and since it’s in the upper school, I was wondering if you could show him how to get there and be a host for him today.”
“Of course,” she said.
She turned to me and said, “Hi, I’m Lucy.”
“Florian,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”
She was introducing herself to Margaret when Victoria Tate arrived.
Queen Victoria offered a startling contrast to the president’s daughter. Unlike Lucy, who did everything she could to blend in, Victoria had pushed the boundaries of her uniform and the dress code to ensure everybody knew she was special.
She’d rolled her skirt at the waist to make it shorter, popped the collar of her shirt to stand out, carried a designer bag instead of a backpack, and wore boots that Margaret later discovered were available only from a boutique in Paris.
Putney explained the situation to her and asked her to be Margaret’s host. Unlike Lucy, who’d introduced herself to both of us, Victoria just gave us the once-over. Her face was expressionless until she looked Margaret in the eyes. She held the look for a moment and then said a single word.
“Beast.”
“I beg your pardon,” Margaret replied, stepping closer so that she loomed over her. “What’d you call me?”
“Save the outrage,” she said. “It’s a compliment.”
“Really?” Margaret said, her anger building. “Because it doesn’t sound like one.”
“You play center midfield for DC Dynamo, right?”
This caught Margaret by surprise. DC Dynamo was the best girls’ soccer team in the District and she was their star player. I’d seen her almost single-handedly win the city championship and realized that Victoria may very well have been using the term as a compliment.
“Yes, I do,” replied Margaret, the hint of a smile forming on her face.
“I knew I recognized you,” she said. “We call you the Beast because you’re unstoppable. I’ve had nightmares about you. We all have.”
By now the smile was fully formed.
“I guess that’s okay.”
“Are you transferring to Chatham?” Victoria asked, suddenly excited.
“No, I . . .”
“You have to come here,” she said. “With you on our team, we’d be unbeatable. We’d win the district every year.”
Margaret gave me a smirk that suggested the girls at Chatham might not be so bad after all.
5.
Lucy Face
IT WASN’T UNTIL MEETING HER in the headmaster’s office that it dawned on me that I’d never actually heard Lucy Mays speak before. Like almost everyone else on the planet, I knew her from pictures. There was the famous one of her in a bright blue overcoat at her father’s inauguration and the one that was all over the news when she yawned during a speech by the German chancellor. But mostly she was just the kid in countless images of the first family getting off Air Force One or walking across the White House lawn. That’s why I was surprised to learn she spoke with a Southern accent.
“We better hurry,” she said when the bell rang. “We can’t be late for Madame Thibault or she will be très énervé,” she added, using the French for “very angry.”
“Allons-y,” I replied, meaning “Let’s go.”
I thought this was a great start: her talking to me in French, and me responding in kind. I figured by the afternoon bell we’d be bons amis. Turns out I figured wrong. Not only did we not become good friends but our little French exchange was pretty much the conversational high point of the day.
I soon realized that although Lucy was the most well-known thirteen-year-old in the world, it was difficult to actually get to know her well. I tried asking questions to open her up, but she always responded with short answers that revealed virtually nothing. Some examples:
“What do you think of Chatham?”
“It’s pretty good.”
“Are the kids here friendly?”
“Most of them.”
“Are you part of any clubs or teams?”
“Just the orchestra.”
I began to wonder if one of her father’s campaign advisers had instructed her to always give three-word responses. There were dozens of similar exchanges. Each time I waited for more, and each time she just kept walking toward the next class. Fast.
She always walked fast. At first I thought this was because she was worried about being late for French, but as I followed her throughout the rest of the day, I noticed she never slowed down to socialize.
Not only that but she always kept to the far left side of the hallway with her backpack on her right shoulder like a buffer. This put her against the natural flow of students but also made it so that she saw the faces of the people approaching her and limited their interactions to the fleeting moments when their paths crossed.
“Hey, Luce,” someone would call out in passing.
“Hi,” she’d answer with a nod as she kept moving.
These exchanges were almost always followed by what I dubbed “Lucy Face.” It was the expression people made the moment they were out of her view. Some smiled, others rolled their eyes, and more than a few whispered comments to their friends. But virtually everyone reacted in some noticeable way. And since I was an anonymous kid walking a few steps behind her, no one bothered to hide those reactions from me.
Lucy Face made it hard for me to identify potential suspects. I was looking for someone acting odd around her, someone who might be Loki or at least point to a connection between her and Loki. But since almost everyone acted a little bit odd, there was nothing particularly suspicious about any one person.
I found my first candidate by turning that thinking upside down. Her name was Becca Baker and, unlike everybody else, she had virtually no reaction to the first daughter. Even though they sat beside each other in French class, Becca never once looked her way. When Lucy did a recitation and the rest of the class naturally turned to listen, Becca kept her eyes locked on the board as if she were specifically not looking at her.
This hardly made her guilty of anything, but it was different and I was desperate for suspects. I sat right behind Lucy, so I had a good angle to study Becca without being obvious. She had a small black instrument case that held either a flute or a piccolo, and there was a Stanford University logo on her backpack. Among the books I saw in her bag was a well-worn copy of Bulfinch’s Mythology, and I could tell she was a germophobe because she used hand sanitizer at
least three different times, even though she hadn’t touched anything.
The two observations that stood out the most were the instrument, because if she was a member of the orchestra she would have had access to their Chat Chat group page, and the book, because if she was a fan of mythology it might explain the choice of Loki as an alias. Although neither of these was particularly incriminating, I still tried to sneak a picture of her as we left class. I pretended to be texting but right as I went to snap the photo, she turned and all I got was a shot of the back of her head.
I didn’t find any suspects in gym class while we did laps around the track. Lucy ran with a quiet focus and I tried to keep up. But whenever I got almost close enough to say something to her, she picked up her pace and lost me. I couldn’t tell if she was intentionally avoiding me or just having fun seeing if I’d continue trying to catch her. Eventually I got tired and walked the last ten minutes. As I did, I couldn’t help but notice that everybody else either jogged or walked in little groups, talking to each other to pass the time. Only Lucy ran by herself.
It made me kind of sad. It seemed like she was friendly with everybody but friends with no one. All eyes were constantly watching what she did, yet she had no way of knowing what was going on behind those eyes. And as much as I hated to admit it, I was the worst offender. I was an undercover agent literally sent to spy on her.
By the time we were walking across the patio toward lunch, my sense of guilt had reached a breaking point. I had to do something. And for some reason, I decided the thing I had to do was embarrass myself.
“One time I rode a roller coaster and got so scared I started crying,” I blurted out.
I’m certain she heard me, but she didn’t react. She just kept walking. I didn’t care. I was committed.
“It was pathetic,” I continued. “You know those souvenir pictures they sell when you get off the ride? In mine, everyone else has their arms up as they scream but I’m just blubbering like a baby.”
She stopped and gave me a curious look. But since she still didn’t say anything, I just kept talking.
“And whenever I enter a public restroom, I try to identify the best place to hide in case there’s some sort of zombie apocalypse. I figure the undead will check the toilet stalls and supply closets, so I look for a way to use the sink to climb up into the ceiling tiles. They’ll never think to look there.”
Finally she broke her silence. “And you’re telling me this because . . . ?”
“Because it must get old meeting strangers who know all about you, but who you know nothing about. So I thought I’d just tell you some of the most embarrassing things about me to try to even things out a little.”
She tilted her head and studied me for a second. I couldn’t read her well enough to know if my “confession” had been a stroke of genius or just the latest in a lifetime of awkward social encounters.
“Are you done?” she asked.
“That should be enough for now.”
She nodded and we resumed walking toward the cafeteria.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” I added. “I’m terrified of frogs because they can jump in six different directions, which makes it impossible to predict how they might attack you.” I punctuated this with a little shiver of fear.
She kept walking, but I could see her working out the math in her head. Finally she stopped again and turned back toward me.
“Forward, backward, right, left, and up,” she said, counting them off with her fingers as she listed them. “That’s five. What’s the sixth direction?”
“Backward, up, and at an angle all at one time,” I answered, simulating the maneuver with my hand. “Just like a ninja. It’s the most terrifying of all because you think you’re safely behind him and then . . . boom . . . frog attack.”
It was the first time I saw her real smile all day. “You’re not normal, are you?”
Five words. I was making progress.
“No,” I replied. “Not even close.”
Her posture changed. Just a little, but enough for me to notice. “Okay, some tips for cafeteria survival,” she said, looking toward the door. “The pizza’s pretty good. The burgers are okay if you cover them with enough ketchup. But be wary of anything else. Especially if they’re serving fish sticks. Here they call them ‘Neptune Nuggets’ to sound cute, but the rumor is that the Food and Drug Administration told them they can’t be called fish sticks because what’s inside them doesn’t meet the legal definition of fish.”
“Good to know,” I said. “I’ll play it safe and stick with pizza. What about you?”
“No lunch for me today. I’ll be locked in a practice room with my cello. We’ve got a big performance next week and I have to practice, practice, practice. I’ll meet you back here when the bell rings. We’ve got sixth-period algebra together.”
“Great. I’ll be right here.”
“See you then.” She turned to walk away and made it a few steps before she looked back over her shoulder and gave me a warning in French. “Attention aux grenouilles.”
I smiled and replied, “Don’t worry, I always keep a lookout for frogs.”
6.
Saved by the Bell
THE CHATHAM CAFETERIA LOOKED NICER than the one at Deal, but it still had that same stomach-churning lunchroom smell familiar to students around the globe. I guess there are some things even expensive tuition can’t cover up. I got a slice of pepperoni pizza and was looking for a place to sit when I heard a voice from behind me.
“Solve it yet?”
I turned to see Margaret carrying her lunch box.
“Not even a little bit,” I admitted. “In fact, I feel like I know less now than I did when we started.”
“What’s the matter with you?” she joked. “First I beat you at Capital Crimes and now you’re stumped again. You’re losing it, Bates.”
“Correction. You did not beat me at Capital Crimes. We called it a draw and then Marcus solved it with a ridiculous guess. But today, this was hard. Really hard.”
“What’s Lucy like?”
“Nice, I think. She’s quiet so it’s hard to know for sure. I couldn’t get her to open up about anything. I got so desperate I even told her the story about crying on the roller coaster.”
“Awww, I love that story,” Margaret said. “If you’d like, I can bring in the souvenir photo so you can show it to her.”
“I’m still not happy you bought that,” I replied.
“Are you kidding? Me triumphantly raising my hands and screaming my head off. You bawling your little eyes out. It’s like my favorite picture ever,” she answered. “Where is she, anyway?”
“Practicing her cello,” I said. “Which means I’m free for lunch.”
“Great. Come sit with Tori and me,” Margaret said.
“Who’s Tori?”
“Victoria Tate.”
“Queen Victoria is now Tori?” I said incredulously. “This morning Chatham girls were evil and now you’re BFFs?”
“I’m working on a case, which means I’m totally committed to doing whatever it takes to solve it,” she said defensively. “Besides, she’s not a complete monster.”
“So says the Beast,” I joked.
“I’ll never admit it to anyone except you, but I kind of love that nickname. There are girls I’ve never met who are terrified of me. It just makes me all warm and fuzzy thinking about it.”
Tori and three of her friends were sitting in the middle of the cafeteria as though they were the center of the universe and everyone else at the school orbited in their gravitational pull. They smiled when they saw Margaret coming but gave me a suspicious look when they realized I was heading toward them as well.
“Mind if my friend joins us?” Margaret asked, putting them on the spot.
“Any friend of yours is a friend of mine,” Victoria said with a phony smile. “What’s your name again?”
Inexplicably, I decided this would be a good time to do a James Bond impression
. “Bates. Florian Bates.” (Yet another addition to that lifetime of awkward social encounters.)
She somehow managed to laugh and roll her eyes at the same time. I sat down and quickly scanned the faces of the other kids at the table. There were two girls, Mallory and Lauren, whose job it seemed was to pay constant attention to Victoria, ready to laugh at any joke she told or agree with any observation she made. There was also Gunther, tall with sharp features, who looked more like a fashion model than a middle schooler. He spent the entire lunch texting at a ridiculously fast speed. At one point I thought his thumbs might explode.
“I was just telling everybody how great it would be if you transferred to Chatham,” Victoria said to Margaret.
“You simply must come,” said Mallory.
“It would be epic,” added Lauren.
Gunther stopped texting for a second, looked up, and nodded.
“Thanks,” she said. “But I like it at Deal.”
They looked at her as if she were telling a joke and waited for the punch line. Certainly she couldn’t mean it. How could anyone like Deal more than Chatham? It was right around then when I felt the jab in the side of the head.
“Outta my seat,” a voice commanded.
I looked over my shoulder and saw a boy I’d noticed during a couple classes. Since he had his lunch tray in his hands, he was using his elbow to get my attention.
“Get out of my seat!” he said more emphatically. “What’s the matter? Are you deaf?”
“They said it was okay for me to sit down,” I answered. Then I motioned to an empty seat at the end of the table. “Why don’t you sit there?”
“Because that’s not my seat,” he said. “This is.”
Victoria and her friends snickered and it occurred to me they knew this would happen when they said it was okay for me to sit down.
“Fine,” I answered. “I didn’t know. I’ll move.”
Margaret gave me a look but I signaled that it was all right as I picked up my tray and moved to the end of the table. This put me next to Lauren, who cringed as if my lack of cool might be contagious.