But I didn’t have the words. I had never had to say them before and now they weren’t there, leaving me speechless. “I’m not sure how to say it,” I admitted. “It’s hard.”
Roux was growing more concerned by the minute. “You can trust me, I’m your friend. Right? We are friends, right?”
That only made it worse, and I could feel my eyes watering. How many times had I cried on this assignment? At this rate I would dehydrate by the time I turned seventeen.
“Okay, Maggie.” Roux turned so she was sitting directly in front of me. “I’ll say something instead, okay? Is that cool?”
I nodded and thumbed at my eyes.
“Here’s the thing. Before you came here, I was a shitty friend. You know that, I know that. I lied, I cheated with guys that were losers—and I’m still not sure why, but I’m going to blame my parents—I spread rumors. I did all the things that girls do on those ABC Family shows. And it made me really, really sad, but I kept doing it because I didn’t know what else to do.
“And then you showed up at school and we became friends and now it’s like”—Roux’s voice was getting wobbly—“you taught me how to be a good friend. You listen to me, you don’t tease me about being all crazy sometimes, you made sure that I was okay after the Halloween party. I didn’t know how to be a friend until I met you, so if that’s why you don’t want to tell me whatever it is that you need to say, then I just want you to know that I’ve learned. I can be a friend to you because you’ve been a friend to me.”
Roux was crying now, too. “Okay? Does that make sense? I know I ramble, just ask Harold.” We both laughed a little and then she got up to find tissues. “How many boxes of Kleenex does one household need?” I heard her mutter, but she returned after a minute. “Here, they’re the good kind, not those cheap, scratchy ones.”
I wiped my eyes and nose. “That was really beautiful.” I sniffled. “I’ve never really had a friend, either, and I’m scared that what I’m about to tell you is going to ruin our friendship.”
“Well, since I don’t have a boyfriend that you can sleep with, I highly doubt that.”
“Ooh, just wait.” I got up and started to pace. Apparently my mother’s nervous habits were genetic.
“I’ll get motion sickness if you keep doing that,” Roux said. “Just spit it out. Preach to the choir. You’ll feel better and then we can order food and watch movies and you can tell me everything about your date with Jess.”
I took a deep, deep breath. “Roux? I’m a spy.”
“Honey, Halloween was almost two weeks ago. Time to get out of character.”
I had forgotten about my costume. “No, for real. That’s what I do. That’s why I came to our school. My parents and I are spies.”
Roux sat there for almost a full minute without saying a word. (A possible record for her.) I stood there, my heart beating so fast that I thought I might be having my first anxiety attack. “We work for an organization called the Collective. Jesse’s dad’s magazine is going to publish an article about us, and it’s going to name names, including mine and my parents’. So they assigned me to become friends with Jesse Oliver so I could get access to his dad and stop the article from happening.”
I wasn’t sure if the blood was rushing to or from my head, but either way, it didn’t feel good. Roux still wasn’t talking. “You need to say something now,” I told her. “Please.”
She stood up very slowly, then grabbed a couch pillow and hurled it across the room. “Are you kidding me?” she cried. “I tell you all this stuff about learning how to be a good friend and you come back with this crazy story about spies? SPIES! You’re not even seventeen yet, how could you be a spy?”
“Safecracker,” I managed to choke out. “I pick locks and open safes.”
“Right. And I can fly. Are you mentally ill?” Roux paused, another pillow clutched in her hands. “You are, aren’t you. You suffer from delusions. Great, that’s just great!” She tossed the pillow down on the ground. “I went from having no friends to having one who’s batshit crazy!”
I stood up and went over to my bag. “Good! Leave!” Roux said. “I can’t believe I told you all those things about friendship. This is so embarrassing. I trusted you!”
“Roux—”
“No, do not talk to me. Wait, are you recording this?”
“What? No, Roux, I …”
“Are you gonna put it on YouTube so everyone can see what an idiot I am?”
“Roux!”
I yelled so loud that she froze with a third pillow in her hands. “Look,” I said, then unzipped my purse and dumped all twelve of my passports out on the couch. They lay there in a dark blue heap, each one with my picture inside, embossed with a very real-looking and very fake-being gold logo, courtesy of Angelo’s forgery skills. “I’m not lying,” I said. “Not anymore, at least. And I need your help.”
Chapter 28
“So you, like, save the world?”
Roux and I were sitting on the marble countertop in her massive kitchen, all twelve of my passports lying between us. Roux had gone through each one, scanning them like she was a border agent. “Daisy?” she said at one point. “Really? You couldn’t call yourself Jennifer or something? Wow, these look so real!”